Nexus Stockholm in Alvik, where the course was taking place during the weekend
Waiting for the seminars to start
During our lunch hour both days the seminar staff would train. It was really inspiring to see them train.
Our workout on day 1 was tough!
I was sweaty after that!
Thank you guys for making this weekend so much fun! I learnt loads!
The awesome crew from the weekend
Hello guys! Wow the miracle of food and sleep has made me feel like a person again! I redid my workouts yesterday in class and I did a lot better. What a relief. I just didn’t want to leave those workouts feeling bad and associating it with a bad feeling so I’m happier now. It’s funny how you take sleep and food for granted when you’re at home with the same routine more or less everyday, you make sure you eat enough and sleep enough. When you’re busy and away it’s easy to forget these things and the routine falls a part. It’s even more important to be conscious of this and prepare for it. Next time I’ll do better! You always learn and grow.
I wanted to share a little bit about my Crossfit Level 1 weekend because I haven’t actually written that much about it! It’s two very full on days where you start 8.30am on the Saturday and finish around five. On the Saturday we even had a little social after we finished the course for the day, so I didn’t get home until just after 7pm. On the Sunday we started at 9am and finished around 5.30 or so. The seminars and workshops were back-to-back with an hour lunch break.
It was a great weekend but mentally exhausting getting a lot of information thrown at you and trying to remember it all. The same in the workshops when we went through movements. It was really fun taking part and a challenge at the same time trying remember all the great pointers they were giving us! You wanted to note down everything and even film it so you could remember (but memory just had to do, when you were standing in an overhead squat there wasn’t much space to write notes!). We did loads of adjustments and progressions. For instance I’ve now learnt the progressions for muscle ups. Now I only need to build up the strength to do one hehe. We only pretty much used wooden sticks as bars the entire weekend and who would’ve thought you’d get tired from just lifting a wooden stick? You do! And you get very warm. I learnt a lot about my own technique and small things I didn’t realise I was even doing and also how look for points to improve on others.
In preparation for the course they tell you to read through the Crossfit manual and familiarise yourself with it. I’m really glad I did a proper read of it and took notes because there’s only so much they can go through with you in the time that we had. I heard a couple of people say they never opened it before the course! It also helped with the information overload, you already had an understanding of what they were talking about so it wasn’t all brand new information, you got points you were unsure of clarified and a lot of information repeated to you. Instead it becomes sort of like a revision session, you’ve heard it before. i’d definitely recommend ready it all through thoroughly at least once before you go. It’ll help you loads!
As with everything new, I was a bit nervous showing up on my own not knowing anyone. There was quite a few people who clearly knew each other from before but there were also plenty of loners like me! I met some very lovely people and the seminar staff were amazing. The seminar staff were a mix of people from Spain, Sweden, Wales and Russia and made the learning so much fun. The guy from Wales, Davs, had even been to Glasgow loads to do the seminars so we had a lot to talk about which was fun!
Overall I enjoyed my time away. Obviously because of it being a Crossfit course, this was all about learning how to best teach Crossfit. It’s all to help people perform the best they can in this form of exercise. There’ll be a lot of stuff you take to heart and take away with you and other things you perhaps won’t. Even Nats, one of the coaches said so in the seminar when we were talking about nutrition, take the things that resonate with you and apply them.
The nutrition seminar was an interesting one because I eat mainly plant-based so what they said and suggested I couldn’t really relate to. It was still interesting to hear it and learn about it. Obviously when I coach in the future I’ll work with a mix of people with different dietary preferences and want to know all kinds of different approaches to nutrition. I think that’s always going to be the case when you do a course, you’ll agree and disagree on some points but that’s what makes each coach and their approach unique. Everyone has a different take.
Other than that we also did two small workouts during the weekend. They were quite tough but really fun! I did my first ever medicine ball cleans and boy, if anything they were a workout for the brain. I couldn’t get my head around the technique. It’s an odd movement if you hadn’t done it before. I was fine doing it during the run through of the movement but them piecing them together in a workout at a faster pace, let’s just say it got complicated!
Now looking back on my experience I’m really happy I went. I wish the course had been a bit longer because I feel like there’s still so much to be learnt! If I pass this text I am allowed to start teaching, they do recommend you starting with assisting and small groups and then build up your experience. It’s an exciting but scary thought! We’ll see how the test goes, I find out the results in a couple of days.
The test felt quite difficult so I’m not really sure how it went at all. Apparently quite a lot of people fail. It is multiple choice the exam and a lot of the answers seemed quite similar so I almost feel like you need a bit of luck as well. I think I had a slight advantage having lived in an English speaking country for so long because some of the questions had quite difficult language in them. It’s a shame because obviously the majority of the people on the course will be teaching in Swedish and perhaps they knew all the information but didn’t quite get the language.
We’ll see how it goes! The next question is, what now? Where do I go from here? I have no idea. Well I have some ideas. I need to figure out lots of things but I feel like this course was the start of something. It made me realise even more how much I love functional training and it’s something I really believe in. The community around Crossfit and all these smaller gyms it was makes it so special and why people get the results they want. These gyms make you want to go because you get a life around them, friends and people you love. I’ve met the most amazing people in they gym. That’s why I want to help others find this joy. I think this is the beginning of it! I’m so excited, we’ll see where it leads me next.
If you guys have any questions about the course please let me know, either send me an email at madeleinemoves@gmail.com or just comment below. Always happy to help out if I can.
