Birthdays
Katie 10/3
Marco 10/5
Lindsay 10/8
Parker Mc 10/8
James 10/ 12
Vivian 10/15
Andy MC 10/17
Bob 10/20
Erin 10/20
Amy 10/24
Blaine 10/27
Kayla 10/28
CrossFit Adaptives Games 2024
Andy Here- I am glad to be back to a sense of normalcy!
I want to share with you my experience at The CrossFit Adaptives Games hosted by WheelWOD 2024.
I went as Mat’s coach. We have done this once before. Last November we attended The WheelWOD Championship, this is prior to CrossFit’s name headlining the event. CrossFit has had adaptives in past years, however this is considered to be THE YEAR for the adaptive community as the community continued to mention throughout the weekend.
For the last ten years, a man named Kevin Ogar along with his wife Shannon, and some close professional friends have been developing the adaptive space for a community of amazing people. I can’t speak to the devotion, education, pioneering, passion and long nights that took place over those years but I can speak to my experience this year. Professional, respectful, wholesome and life changing. These are the words I associate with my experience in that CF adaptive space as I played the role as Mat’s coach in San Antonio, TX. Remind you I was a coach, mainly in the background, taking notes, watching interactions between athletes and staff. Seeing the smiles and excitement on the faces of the athletes as they were being treated like the “elites” they really are. The care and procurement of the sponsored apparel and free gear was top notch. The professionalism was set and you could tell. I saw for myself the recurring gratitude on the faces of many athletes as they opened their swag bags to see for the very first time, their name on the clothing! Immediately following check in was an outfit change and an opportunity for professional photos to be taken. Thank you to Mat for pulling me into a few photos so we could share that experience. That was really nice.
A Brief History
-CF GAMES last year (2023) maybe 20-30 adaptives
-Wheelwod Games last year (2023) 102 adaptives
-This year (2024) at the CrossFit Adaptives Games hosted by WheelWOD. 272 ATHLETES IN 15 DIVISIONS, streaming in two languages, a sign language interpreter and something to the tune of 20+ countries represented! Thanks to Kevin Ogar and his team!
Prior years we have seen the Games highlight the able bodied, elite age bracket athletes. Honestly that is the minority of the CF space globally. The teens, masters and adaptives, although elite in their fields, are much more of the majority population. These groups are much more likely to be the ones watched by spectators with the thoughts “I could do that” as they look on in amazement. Why then don’t they get the screen time so few others do? For the last two years CrossFit says its goal is to, by 2030 double the amount of humans taking part in this incredible methodology. How do you do this when only the top 80 athletes in the world get to be on ESPN or the main YouTube stream? GOOD QUESTION CLASS! Affiliate owners like myself have been emailing and asking that for a while now!
To avoid a tangent, I’ll say they are now trying to broaden the viewership….CrossFit isn’t the small entity it once was and along with investors come growing pains, ROI concerns & frankly a lot of BS. But, they are working on it.
Back to the Games! The time line is a blur. What I know is that Kelly, Mat and I arrived in Texas on Tuesday. Two days before comp in order to go through athlete/coach checkin and event safety briefs. Kelly came early to take care of the house and food! Kel is amazing in many ways and for Mat and I she ran point on meal prep, logistics and timelines for the week! Love you for that Kel!
Wednesday
Mat received the dopest competitor kits! Shirts, shorts, shoes. Northern spirit and GO Ruck, Goodr glasses and CrossFit headbands and sweatbands. They have professional photos for every athlete and hooked them up with some other free gear from sponsors. Mat is really comfortable in new spaces and in my experience from last year he thrives in this kind of community based environment. Mat introduced me to many of his friends that he had met online but hadn’t met in person until this week. I hugged a lot of new people thanks to Mat LOL! We also found some really good mexican food. I ate as much as I could. Mexican food is my passion.
Thursday
Excitement in the hottest conditions of the comp and I couldn’t reel in the giant tuna which was Mat on day one! We were prepped and ready for the comp to start and we were given some gifts immediately. “Stadium Trials” was shortened by 250M on the row and the ski to limit heat times so later athletes who were to run last, instead of bike, spent less time in the heat! That improved out work capacity on the Echo bike and gave Mat an advantage. He took it upon himself to send the bike to 70+ rpms for all the 70 CALS! Following that workout we had a SPRINT ahead of us! In between workouts I spent my time running around the complex trying to track down my athlete, making him eat and hydrate, trying to get him to sit down and stop saying hi to EVERY DANG PERSON he saw….I need my athlete to recover right?! Mat was having a ton of fun and it was his comp so, I did my best to let him live it up as I told myself it was going to be ok LOL. He had me nervous and stressed out for sure. We talked about it during our nightly debrief. He crushed Event 2! We sat around and soaked in the amazement that is the wonderful world of adaptives. By midday Emily and Jackson joined us along with most of the rest of the Family. Maddy, Susan, Jerry & Joanie.
High fashion, big personalities and some humility
Tattoos galore. Lots of dogs (that we weren’t allowed to pet…lame) Many Accents (so many that I traveled the world twice and wish I knew more languages) Prosthetic limbs that were decked out with tech and stickers. Wheelchairs built to custom conditions and desires, painted and pimped. Visually stimulating with a side of its offensive to look! I thankfully felt at home right away BUT last year was quite the eye opening experience. I was nervous about being so uncomfortable, so under prepared for the experience. Year one, I didn’t know how to act, or not act. I hadn’t had regular interactions like this before with a community such as this one. What I found out after talking to a bunch of people was, they are fucking normal. Just like me, they joke and laugh, they eat and workout. They are in fact regular good hearted people. Just never use the handicapped bathroom stalls during an adaptive event! Seriously, last thing you want is to have a wheelchair bound person waiting on you to walk out the large stall designed for them…. any who.. As soon as I realized that all the stigmas or preconceived notions you pick up along the way of life were incorrect, all that insecurity fell away and it was an incredible experience! Prior to last years WheelWOD comp I just didn’t have enough reps around anyone who had a neurological condition, who was missing a limb, was wheel chair bound, who have intellectual disabilities, who are short statured, etc. To be honest, when I look at Mat I don’t see anything, I guess I never did. OR I wasn’t educated enough or whatever. Luckily my fears didn’t come true (shocker) and I was greeted and welcomed immediately.
Friday
We were joined by the rest of our cheer squad! Moana, Elzira and a previous member Brenden came to town to support! The events completely flip flopped from Sat to Friday and vice versa! Turns out some equipment didn’t arrive on time. Can you imagine….I’d die, and theres not enough coffee on the planet to have calmed me if I was walking in Kevin’s shoe, I mean chair, that day… LOL Don’t judge me, adaptives have some colorful humor AND I took that one straight from Kevin himself! “Seated 2, stand up and step forward”, “Vision impaired, I can’t see you, where y’all at?!” Those are the polite ones! My favorite from last year when the power went out during the event, “at least we can still run the vision impaired heats!” you can laugh, it’s ok.
Competition mindset was 100% going into the weekend. Mat had new competitors this year who were some heavy hitters. It didn’t matter. Mat showed on Day 2 that he is supposed to be in the mix with the top 10 in the world. With Hanging Frace “21-15-9 Hang power clean and jerk and pull-up ” and a max effort power clean for load set for the day, we were pretty excited.
So far we had placed 4th and 5th on most events and finished the day off with a PR power clean under the lights! Also if you are following along (like Maddy was) with the gogo squeezie consumption, we are at 6 by end of day Friday. That is our pre-workout carbs. Applesauce, the official pre carb of the fittest Neuro Mod Man in the US of A! Just enough sugar to prime the system without giving anyone an “icky belly”.
Day to day flow
By this point of the weekend Mat and I are in a groove. The team had found their stride also! Maddy is Mat’s sister and she was director of social media, gogo squeezie count and kept us up to date on her favorite seated athlete Tom Miazga who we all call DADDY LOL! It looks like this: Wake up and have coffee aka quiet time, butts in seats- hard out time or you have to get yourself to the comp (this goes for Mat, Kel myself and Emily and Jackson Hotho, who joined us in TX) We don’t actually drive unless we had too, Mat and I talk expectations, goals, strategy. Then we compete, cool down, decompress and watch a heat or two of new friends based on available timeline. We head back to the air BNB and eat, shower and quiet time. Every night after dinner we have a lights out time- just like when you send your kids to bed when it is like 7pm but they don’t have to go to bed. Before lights out we connect. We debrief the days events and more importantly we talk about unrelated topics, we just get to know each other better or we listen to each other chosen topics. We have become really close by this natural progression of communication. I think we both grow immensely during these talks.
OK,OK,Saturday
The Combine and Double sided coin. Buy this time we knew our strengths and all the other competitiors strengths. We believed the bench press- pig flip, rope climb & the sand bag throw was a damage control event. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t show up to win. That doesn’t mean I don’t show up to coach. We watched the early heats, we watched the work out play out for many heats. We found a strategy that really paid off! Mat wins two of the three parts of the event!
Many of the Neuro Moderate field has a biased upper or lower condition that doesn’t allow them to be dominant in something like a tall box get over or a rope climb. Mat is partially effected on his right side of hie body with smaller disruptions across his body, so he isn’t effected too heavily leaving him with the ability to still be explosive, nimble and delicate enough to crush part two! The sand bag carry was just a major shock to us all in regard to how the method of throwing the sand bag was approached. Everyone, fail after fail, when the bags got heavy, continued with this strong man style kettle bell overhead swing. During the workout standards briefs, Kevin said “get it over any way possible, I don’t care if you do a thruster to get it over!” Well, I feel like I was the only one who heard that!
We didn’t have the bags to practice with and I think that was to our advantage! We talked about throwing them across us on an angle to keep the straps taut. Most of the field was swinging the bag and it was hitting the ground which caused a loss of connection to the body and a loss of power (core to extremity for all the nerds out there) mixing that with the idea of just push pressing the light ones since Mat is like 12ft tall, we went with that plan. You all saw what happened with that strategy BC a ton of you attended the watch party and got to see Mat CRUSH THE FIELD! 2 out of the 3 parts of that event were won by Mat! We left that night with absolute confidence that he belonged. That is why you always show up regardless of what is in your wheel house.
We have a chance at 3rd place. Points are stacking up and what is called moving day did just that. As we settled in for the night we were still really feeling good, energy levels were maintained the whole weekend and Mats body was holding up really well.
SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY
No, not football….. CROSSFIT!!!!!!!!!!! I hope I used enough exclamation points. Sunday came with a slower morning that allowed us to sleep in a little. We were all up by 7am anyway but the idea that we didn’t have to do anything until 8ish was nice. Again, a quiet morning with coffee and little chatting until we all actually woke up was the vibe. Just like all the other mornings, butts in seats was proceeded by prepping our lunchbox with fuel for our athlete for workouts, more caffeine and some snacks for the group.
Off we go to The Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center. The interstate in TX is crazy so I sit in the back and basically hold my breath the entire way! Meanwhile Kelly and Mat are bumping T-Swift and singing all the words as they navigate the drive!
We knew that the last workout was going to be a close race. Heavy jump rope, calories, deficit push ups, burpee broad jumps, a sled drag and finally to end the whole weekend, chest to bar pull ups! We were taken back a bit by the troubles that other competitiors in our division had with chest to bar. We had them, and they had been feeling good in practice back home and during warm ups. Some of the other athletes came up and mentioned how impressive the C2B were during warms up. One said “someones gotten some new skills since last year” with a chuckle and a sincereness to his tone. To be clear, they all want to win, all weekend the warm up area had each athlete watching the other. Eyeing each other up! We were pretty amped as we realized we may have a better shot at 3rd place than we originally thought!
Mat had found a way to get locked in last year when his mind would start to race. This was something that was really incredible to watch develop naturally. It turned into a masterclass execution of self talk. After Mat’s heat would get corralled, tensions would get high, nerves would heighten and the potential to get overwhelmed right before you hit the floor and compete could change your performance. Rookies cut their teeth with experiences like this all the time in competition and unfortunately some athletes fall apart. Mat looked within, settled himself with a personal mantra and took the floor with his focus on the task at hand. The first time I saw it happen it was special. Mat, standing tall and quiet amongst the controlled chaos that is the Games, setting his intentions, controlling what he can and defeating his untrustworthy self so he could go show the world what he was capable of. Before each event, I was the last one who talked to him before we went to athlete control. So, every time I knew he was going to lock in I would get each team member we had last year to see it. Kel, Nick, Maddy, Susan, Jerry, I tried to get them all to see it so they could also experience it too. I learned a lot from that experience and I’ll write about being a coach below.
This year Mat had a different approach to dialing in his intention and performance. We talk a lot, like a lot a lot. He knew that this year he belonged at the Games. He also knew and understood just how special the community at LCF really is. This year Mat used memories from the gym to focus with along with some really special moments chosen chosen to allow to push on the harder events. He even asked for some memories from the members on FB. This idea was cool in a different way. Mat connected with LCF while he was away and used it as an external motivator.
Back to the last event. I guess that was all a back story for this right here. We knew this workout could put our guy on the podium! I was nervous as shit, my voice was trashed and I was jacked on gummy bears and a nitro cold brew. I told Mat to send it. The only thing that was new to us in that workout was the burpee broad jump. We practiced it so no big deal. Full send and put yourself in a spot where your pushing to redline on C2B to the point of potentially falling off the rig so long as were not missing reps.
Mat was 100% down for a full send moment and knew he was capable of doing so. Every event I hovered during the last athlete brief just before they walk out onto the floor. I don’t think my coach bracelet gave me unlimited access to the whole comp but, ask for forgiveness at this point right? We locked eyes, we nod at each other and thats my cue to go get out to the comp floor with our team and watch the show!
3.2.1.GO! Everyone in the crowd new these were the last times the athletes would take the floor and it was absolutely incredible to experience. The crowd for every heat in the last event was soooo loud with cheers and yells of support! Just like our gym, it doesn’t matter who finished last, no one finishes alone. One at a time, each athlete would finish, celebrate, then look for a fellow competitor to cheer on, to motivate, to support. Humanity, community, love, respect. These people had it.
Our boy comes out hot and so does the rest of the field! Some trip on the mono rope right off rip which gives Mat an immediate jump (lol) on half the field. Mat is second to the ECHO and crushes the cals after going unbroken on 16 deficit pushups (a year of pushups after workout every day will help with that) Then comes the burpee broad jumps! After a small miscommunication Mat gets hit with a no rep from the judge on the burpee set up but quickly resets and presses on to the a sled pull that he hits with a vengeance. A surge of power after a certain heart rate spike from the no rep makes quick work of the heavy sled!!! After 2 sets of 2 on the C2B Mat moved to singles and again get a few no reps. The judges were solid all weekend. I was impressed at the quality of judging I was seeing. I’ll never like seeing Mat get no repped but it is what it is. If the judge calls it, at this stage, you just do another until the judge is satisfied! Mat finished the tenth C2B and runs across the finish line to his starting mat.
Mat falls to the ground. 3 days of competition with 7 events, 1 major schedule change, 2 major workout changes and 8 competitors all looking to be the fittest. Every workout has more anticipation, preparation and time spent in strategy than actually spent working out. It was all over. Within 30 seconds Mat gets back to his feet, he’s looked over and found me in the crowd and we share a moment. Its quick and emotionally packed. I through my hand up pointing past him and yell with whats left of my voice, “go cheer on your friends!” He turns to do so and I start crying.
The event ends and a huge cheer storms from the bleachers. A well deserved thank you from the crowd for the high level output and effort that was given all weekend long. Everyone gets together for a division picture and everyone starts walking off the floor. Before they do, Mat takes a look back over his shoulder, back across the competition floor he’s been on all weekend and then back at his friends/competitors and they huddle up. One last moment, soaking in the feels, standing quiet as a group. I cry again (this continues about 3 more time but ill spare you for when exactly it happens). One by one each competitor signs each others name placard before they walk out into gen-pop. Off the floor stage left and Mat’s whole support crew awaits! Incredible. The whole thing, incredible. Each hug with a family member special, each embrace with a friend who joined for the weekend, a connection made stronger. I have more to say, more to share, more stories of uncontrollable laughter or silly moments that can’t be forgotten but I don’t want to share his experience, I can only share my perspective and even then some things are just for me to keep close.
Mat, you are inspiring, i’m grateful to have you in my life. Congratulations on finishing 4th in the world at The CrossFit Adaptives Games. Elite level athleticism does not have to come at a cost of character or selflessness, thanks for showing us that , I love you!
What I have found out to be true about being a coach-
Education alone in the sport of fitness doesn’t make someone a good coach. In order to truly help any athlete achieve their goals you must be able to connect with them. Learning how to listen, show and receive empathy, trust each other and be accountable for your actions are corner stones to becoming an amazing coach. These are also characteristics of a good human. Not everyone is born with these life skills and for me, I lacked many of them as I moved from a part time coach, to a full time coach to becoming the owner of a CF gym. As a matter of fact I lacked them for a very long time, I had only started recently to taking inventory of these defects of character about 10 and a half years ago.
I have mad a lot of mistakes during my coaching career and I will most likely continue to do so. These mistakes make me a better coach IF I use them to teach me lessons, IF I reflect on them and see how I can act differently in the future.
I hope that I am always a student. If I am the only one I am listening too, I am in big trouble and surely not on the continued path of success in this ETHOS I have come to love and feel belonging to.
I have a true desire to see my peers succeed. Caring coaches can see potential. I believe I have this ability. I am more excited to see others success in the gym than to experience my own. That’s not to say I don’t care about my fitness or that I am not trying to continue to develop skills, get stronger or hit new PR’s! I believe in the CrossFit methodology, it is a part of me. I’ve been coaching almost as long as I have been doing CrossFit. Theres only 3 or 4 months difference between me starting CF and sitting for my Level 1 CF seminar to receive my certificate.
With all that being said, I still get nervous about making decisions in the gym. I still feel the magnitude of being the leader of this community you all love so dearly. I will always play my role with you all in mind. I will continue to lead from within the community and not from the front or from a high ground. You all make this community at LCF incredible, my job as coach is to keep the doors open, my job is not to take credit. I am here to educate, inspire and motivate you so you can become whatever version of yourself you can imagine.
I love you all.
