What is a master?
In CrossFit a master refers to a specific age group of members, typically, 35 years and up. Masters athletes are a unique category of members, they vary largely in their experience, knowledge, capacity, health and responsibilities in life. Take a 63 year old man, he may be retired, love playing golf 3 times a week and wants to avoid the crippling effects of ageing via the sedentary model. This man, takes up CrossFit to keep his ligaments, tendons, muscles and bones strong and potentially can even increase his strength depending on whether he is a trained or un-trained member and whether he can recover properly and eat a high quality diet. He requires more scaling than the 23 year old girl who has just stopped playing A grade hockey, he also needs a little more advice around when to push and when to pull back on workouts. It's easy to get carried away and want to do the same workout type as his 40 year old mate Gary, but it's more important that he gets a good workout that still allows him to enjoy his golf tomorrow.
Gary is a different story. Gary grew up playing Cricket and worked hard to make it into the 1s and played there for many years. Even though the last 10 years or so he has let himself go, he reconnected with fitness and good healthy habits through CrossFit 3018 last year and has managed to reshape his body, develop a really strong frame and do things he never dreamed of like handstand push ups and a 150kg deadlift. Whilst Gary is in the "Early Masters" bracket, only 5 years into the masters division, the tendency for members or athletes of Garys nature is to try and keep up with the 30 year olds. This is a really healthy drive to have and will bring out some epic performance in Gary, he is far more capable than he realises and the younger athletes will be a good push and inspiration to him. Gary needs the coaches to be onto him and let him know which movements and workouts are the right ones for him to push a little heavier on, and which ones to hold back on. The coach is also aware that Gary's overhead position is tight and compromised and his left ankle is stuck from too many rolled ankles as a cricketer. Our coaches are aware of this and we encourage Gary to keep the weight a little lighter on overhead squat workouts and we look out for him grimacing when he is running which might be a sign of him trying to hide the pain in his ankle.
We strive to create an environment and experience for our masters athletes of all ages, that is safe, inclusive and suitable for the individual. Whilst the workout of the day (WOD) is the same for all athletes to view, its our goal as coaches, to educate and support all members to choose the right adaptations (scale) to suit the progress, development and safety of our members.
Our values are Fun, Community, Progress and Results and we achieve this with safety in the forefront of our mind..
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