Hey guys, My name is Nathan Wiese and I am a proud brand ambassador for B3 Massage and Movement.
I have been working in the fitness industry for ten years now – 1 year as a casual coach and nine years as the owner of EFM King William Street. I absolutely love what I do which makes that 4:30am alarm bearable every day. There is something about meeting my clients for the first time and watching them learn and progress through their fitness journey. It may sound a bit corny but it is true. Seeing someone come in the door, overweight and unhappy with their body, unsure as to how they got where they are and with a thought that they are currently doing EVERYTHING in their power to improve their situation and slowly educating them on what exercise is going to help them get the best results as well as what food is going to help them reduce their body fat % and improve their mood the most is an AMAZING journey!
After joining the first Crossfit gym in Adelaide (with the original PT who asked me to try it out) I finally found some exercise that really challenged me every single day and although it was uncomfortable and hard, was something that I absolutely loved. Fast forward five years and I am still training in Crossfit every single day and am I now a Level 1 Crossfit Coach. This is the basis of training that I use for my clients and I have never found a better system to both get people the best results at the same time of improving their overall everyday lives.One of my favourite parts of Crossfit is the competition side. You could say that I am a bit competitive. My friends would say that I hate to lose. And that really drives me. Since starting Crossfit I have competed in approximately 3 – 6 competitions per year.
For those of you unaware of what is involved in this, this is my best description. It is an overall test of fitness. Crossfit has a standard list of movements that we use but are not limited to. These movements can be put in any combination meaning that we need to be ready for anything.
Any given workout can be anything from 3 minutes long to 60 minutes long and could include running, rowing, weightlifting (clean and jerk and snatch), gymnastics movements (pullups, pushups, muscle ups, handstand pushups, handstand walking), squats, deadlifts, kettlebell movements and the list goes on.
All of these are done to a pre – determined standard as fast as possible. The person to finish the workout first wins. Oh, and we could be doing up to seven workouts in any given competition on any given day. It’s intense. To train for this kind of thing you need to be consistent. I train up to 8 times per week in the gym with Thursday and Sunday as active recovery days. Training covers a broad spectrum from overall strength to muscular endurance, to cardiovascular endurance to skill work.
This is backed up by daily mobility work to make sure that my body can take the stresses of training. I also follow a reasonably strict paleo diet during the week with a cheat day on the weekends (to keep me sane).
All of this is topped off with a weekly massage from B3 to keep my body in top condition. From time to time, I will suffer from niggles and injuries and that is up to me to manage and rehabilitate them to get my body back to working order as soon as possible.
The mental game is also a HUGE part of it. Firstly, you have to work within your limits. If a workout involves 1000m of rowing followed by 50 back squats (a squat performed with a weighted barbell on your shoulders) followed by 30 pullups, you need to be smart about it. I need to work out the pace of my row so that I am still able to get off of the rower and have some energy left in my legs to be able to squat. I also need to save enough grip strength from the rower to be able to hold onto the bar for pullups after that. BUT if I go too slow to try and save too much energy, I have no chance of winning the workout. So you need to be working on that fine line of optimum performance and fatigue the whole time.
Sometimes I push too hard and hit a wall. Although this is never ideal, it happens. At that point, it is up to me to manage my fatigue as best as possible and really get into that pain cave.
I need to block out what everyone else is doing (whether I am winning or losing) and focus on what I am capable of doing under this much fatigue. Most workouts in a Crossfit competition are concluded with competitors all writhing around on the ground both in pain and out of breath.
The mental training side of Crossfit competition is extremely hard for a lot of people. In the end, it comes down to two things – who has put in the best preparation in the gym and who is willing to hurt the most. As humans, we naturally avoid feeling uncomfortable so pushing past that pain is something that we need to train also.
The best part about Crossfit is that when you get away from the competition side, it really is for EVERYONE. Every single workout can be scaled down (or up) so that anyone can complete a version of it. That doesn’t mean that it is easy, but it definitely means that it is worth it and I honestly swear by it for all of my clients.
