Click for Audio

Vette:    GSX. This is Vette.

Jon:    Jeff Tucker, please.

Vette:    Yes.  May I ask who’s speaking?

Jon:    Yeah, this is Jon Gilson.

Vette:    Just give me one second, sir.

Jon:    Thanks.

Jeff:    This is Tucker.

Jon:    Hey, Tucker.  Jon Gilson.  How are you?

Jeff:    Hey, man.  I’m doing well.  How are you?

Jon:    Good, good.  I’ve got you on full on record so anything you say can and will be used against you in a blog of my choice.

Jeff:    Let me do it – do me a favor.  Let me put a “In Meeting” note on my board just here for two seconds, and I’ll get right back with you.

Jon:    Oh, go for it.

Jeff:    So nobody bug you.  Hang on.  Okay, man.  I’m all yours.  Use it against me.

Jon:    All right.  Jeff, you are the founder and CEO of GSX Athletics and you are also the man who’s been charged with conducting the Gymnastic Certs for Crossfit.com.  Basically what I’d like to do today is just give the community an opportunity to get to know you better, find out what your aims are, and talk a little bit about what you’re doing and what led you to this point.

Jeff:    Certainly.

Jon:    So, I was hoping that we could start with your background.  I did catch your notes from the things you’ve posted on the web, that you were a competitive gymnast at one point.

Jeff:    Yes, sir, back in the old days.  I’m kind of one of those gymnasts that got put out to pasture early due to an injury back when I was 16.  I was a competitive gymnast as a younger man.  It was my sport of choice.  Did a little bit of competitive Tae Kwon Do.  Did quite a bit of rodeo growing up.

Jon:    Very cool.  What kind of rodeo did you do?

Jeff:    I was a bronc rider and a bull rider.

Jon:    No kidding.

Jeff:    Yeah.

Jon:    You went straight to testosterone land.  And then you…

Jeff:    I was a full impact body athlete is what I was.

Jon:    So, it seems like that formative experience in gymnastics obviously shaped what you’re doing now in some way.  How did you make the transition from athlete to trainer?

Jeff:    Well, it’s really funny in gymnastics if you’re under the tutelage of good coaches or even in team atmosphere, there’s a lot of transference that occurs through gymnastics.  I mean, not only in the sport that I did; it transferred into my bull riding.  It transferred into me being a firefighter.  It transferred into any sport that I wanted to try to be a part of.

But you have the ability.  You’re teaching other gymnasts in the gym that you’re in as younger people growing up and they look up to you as maybe an older member of a team or an older coach.  That’s just always been a part of my life.  I mean, I’ve been involved in coaching teams or individuals for over two decades now, since basically the ’80s.

As I have stayed with my hand involved in either tumbling or gymnastics or training individuals that carried over to when I became a coach at TCU for six years.  Yes, just always kind of been involved in it.  It’s kind of like that monkey on my back I’ve never been able to quite get rid of.

Jon:    Yes.  At Texas Christian University you did gymnastics as well as instruction for the cheerleading team?

Jeff;    Yes, my title there was Gymnastics and Cheerleading Instructor for the University.  I was also involved as an Academic Advisor for athletes, for sports of basketball, volleyball, golf and some football players and baseball as well.  So my hand was really, when I was there at TCU I was working on my PhD in History and working in the athletic department, working there as a coach for six years, yeah.

Jon:    Very cool.  So you are a gymnastics instructor.  Did you obtain your PhD?

Jeff;    I’m still chipping away at it.  It’s one of those things that has as I’ve been coaching more in the past six years, and especially when I started GSX, I just had to pick and choose what I had time for.  I’m literally still writing quite a bit into my thesis and dissertation for my degree but I just kind of slowly chip away at it when I have time.

Jon:    Well, most CrossFit-oriented sites aren’t going to ask you this, but I want to know what your dissertation is about, Jeff.

Jeff:    Oh, it’ll completely bore you to tears.  Being a firefighter, I chose to do a bit of provincial history here in Fort Worth.  I’m basically writing about the Volunteer Forest Fire Department back in the 1870s, and how frontier towns and communities here in the West helped shape and mold their respective cities.  Basically kind of using that frontier line from, gosh, 1850 back in Fort Worth all the way up to Iowa and the Sioux Nation, the little towns that were developing there or other small frontier towns like in Missouri; things like that.  Just how the fire companies changed a lot after the Civil War.

Jon:    That’s amazing.  Did they ever make it to fires in time to…?

Jeff:    You know, believe it or not, they got better at it.  But it’s kind of, like I said, it’ll bore most people to tears, but after the Civil War the fire service changed to what we really now have as civil service.  It’s very paramilitary, so I’m kind of writing about those nuances and things.  That way people have something to read and go to sleep to.

Jon:    Absolutely.  You have some experience in the field.  You were a firefighter.  Are you still part of a volunteer corps or…?

Jeff:    Not at all.  In the metroplex that I’m in or the metropolitan area we have very few volunteers here. 

Jon:    Okay.

Jeff:    I know in the Northeast there you guys have a lot of that.  But yeah, we were a paid professional department.  I did it for twenty years.  Spent ten years out in Operations and six years on the Arson Bomb Squad as an investigator.  Kind of did a little bit of tour duty at the Fire Marshall’s office.  Right before I retired went back out in Operations and did that for a few more years and then got out after twenty.

Jon:    With the arson and bomb investigation, is that something where you just got on the job training?  Doesn’t seem like a degree in History would get you there.

Jeff:    You know, the degree in History actually helped.  They liked it that I had a degree.   It showed that I had no issues doing a class or doing academia.  But no, we spent literally a year in training.  I spent 6 months with – I’ve actually been a certified Police Officer in Texas since 1984.  But I spent literally 6 months in the Ft. Worth Police Academy.  Got to be a rookie all over again.  Spent six weeks out at the Redstone Arsenal through FBI training for bomb school.  Spent another 3 weeks with ATF.

We had to do a lot of federal training to both understand State and Federal laws and arresting powers. But yeah, we became all certified bomb techs and police officers and crime investigators.  We were kind of a one-stop shop.  We’re one of very few cities that where the fire department handled both arson and bomb together.
   
It was a lot of fun.  It was real exciting.  We averaged about four devices a month.

Jon:    You’re kidding.

Jeff:    I was on – yeah, real devices when I was on the squad.

Jon:    What was the average before you were on the squad?  Were you...?

Jeff:    It stayed at that average for a while.  It was right after the Gulf War.  When I went through the – the Unabomber was a big deal.  I was actually studying his devices when I went through the bomb squad.  But yeah, we have – gosh, you’d pull a rough area of town.  I remember pulling twenty-five pipe bombs out of a house one night back when the gangs were kind of a big deal here in Fort Worth back in that time.  So, it was really, but we also covered a large tri-county area so we assisted other areas that didn’t have bomb squads that needed our expertise.

Jon:    Sure.  Well, we wonder, with all this great civil service, coming from a gymnastics background, and working at TCU, how in the world did you find the time, energy and effort to start yourself a gym?

Jeff:    You know, one thing that I’ve always prided myself on is I can multi-task and juggle a lot of balls at one time.  I don’t know that I do it real well but I can attempt to.  I’ve always been – normally my students and my clients’ families would always say, “You know you really ought to open your own place.”  Even my students at TCU, one of them who is actually a partner here with me.  I know you guys have seen him on some of the videos is Jason Malutich.  

Jason is one of those guys that said, “You know, Tuck, just open a gym, man.”  So, we did it.  We did that for about three years in a little storefront and then just decided, “Hey, if we’re going to do this let’s do it right.”  Then we build GSX and we’ve been running it full bore now for over two years and it’s just been incredible.  The outpouring from our community has been very supportive.  It seems like we’ve hit a niche here that’s needed to be filled for a long time for our community.  So, that’s kind of how we did it.  But yeah, I’m pretty organized or I think I am.

Jon:    Very good, very good.  You said you’re filling a niche there in Fort Worth.  Is there a general lack of physical culture?  Is there a general lack of functional training?  What niche are you filling?

Jeff:    Oh, I think yes to both of your questions there.  There’s the normal mainstay that’s going on here what people think fitness is.  It’s been really interesting since we opened here.  We built this place from the ground up.  We opened it and we didn’t know anything about CrossFit when we opened it.  About four or five months after we got affiliated, when we found out about it, because we really have a passion for gymnastics-style training here.  I thought, man, this could really be something cool for us.    

So, we affiliated.  We’ve experimented with it for about four or five months and then in January of ’08 we launched our first Cert here. Then right after that launched CrossFit classes, and it has blown up.  So, we’re obviously feeling that little niche for a different method of getting real functional fitness to people.

Then we’re very family-oriented here.  Like 700 of our clients are kids.  About 150 clients are adults in the CrossFit community here.  Then we’ve got Tae Kwon Do that we offer here.  We offer I guess we’ve got like Parents’ Night Out for families on Fridays and Saturday nights, we do birthday parties here, we do specialty events.  We’re not trying to be all things to all people but we really do offer a lot out of this space. 

And the community’s responded to that.  I remember the first few months we were open here.  You’re kind of scared.  I mean, because this is the largest thing I’ve ever done from an entrepreneurial standpoint.  You’re going, “Hell, are they going to come in?  You know?  We’ve done our advertising.  We’ve done our homework.  We’ve picked our demographic,” and I’ll be damned if they didn’t come in in droves.  But I think it came from proper planning.

Jon:    Can you talk a little bit more about that, Jeff?  I mean, you obviously are set up to succeed.  You’re bit of a renaissance man, if you’ll allow me to fix the label here.  Did you have any history of entrepreneurial activity prior to GSX?

Jeff:    One thing that the Fire Department afforded me, I only had to work ten days out of the month.  A twenty-four hour shift and then off two days so that let me have a lot of time on my hands.  Hell, man, I built homes on my days off.   I have been a house painter.  I’ve published some books.  I did some self-publishing mainly about the fire service.

I’ve always kind of had that entrepreneurial spirit.  My wife refers to me as a “serial entrepreneur”.  So, yeah, but I mean for me this is really, I’m getting up there in years.  I’m forty-five now.   Not too far off from forty-six.   I just really want to sink my teeth into something that was my passion.  So, I pulled back to my gymnastic background roots and my entrepreneurial spirit that I’ve learned here over the past ten years and said, “I think I can put something together that will benefit people, people and their families.”

So, yeah we’ve – I’ve never been afraid to try something if I can sit down and see a vision for it.  That’s what GSX is kind of become for us.  We don’t want this to be the only GSX.  We have plans of opening others.  When I sat down and did my intellectual property development for this company I sat down and got the right lawyers and spent the right amount of money.  Told them I want a national and international trademark.  I hope to do business in France and Mexico and Canada.  There’s lots of things that I’m looking at over the next five years that I hope we can do with this company.

Jon:    Very cool.  Let’s bring this towards CrossFit.

Jeff:    Sure.

Jon:    How did you get involved with HQ, with the Certs, with becoming our de facto gymnastics instructor?

Jeff:    Well, first off, I really consider myself a small cog in the big wheel of CrossFit.  I mean this sincerely.  I’m extremely humbled to be a part of it.  I think that we have in a short span of time hopefully made a big and positive impact in the community.

I talked to Greg Glassman right after the first Cert here.  I was trying to express to him and Dave Castro when we called and said, “Hey, we would really like to host a cert.  We believe we have one of the” – and I mean this humbly – but I believe we’ve got one of the best gyms in the nation.  I would tell them, “Hey, we’ve got 11,500 square feet, 8,000 feet out back and 2 more acres next door if you need it.

We were ready to show them how hungry we were to be a part of this community.  So, when they came here, the proof was in the pudding.  We’ve had five certs here, Level One certs; one gymnastics cert and a barbell cert.  At Level One Certs are always where we see the show, “Hey, we want to be a good host and we’re all about service.” I think at the last Cert we had 72 people at a Level One Cert which was huge.  I think the proof for us has been in the pudding to show CrossFit HQ that we’re all about trying to help this community and help spread the word.  

So, basically just started with a phone call, Jon.  We called up Dave and said, “Hey, we’d like to host one here.”  Dave called back and said, “Well, okay.  You’ve already got one down.  How about another one in March?”  “Okay, let’s do it.  Let’s make this happen for you.”  So, that’s how it started.  Then Tony Budding, we were so not prepared for this, but in the first cert he pulled out a camera and said, “Hey, you mind if I get some of you coaching?  I was kind of watching you work with some people the other day.”  I said, “No, I don’t mind at all.”    

They just started shooting some film and it just started from there. I feel like we’ve had a pretty positive feedback from the community.  I’m always open to see and find if there’s a better way to do what we’re doing.  As I’ve come to know this community in the past year I really have tried to think about how gymnastics could fit into it better.  I certainly agree that it’s a foundation of CrossFit.

Jon:    Sure.  Let’s move towards that, Jeff.

Jeff:    Yeah.

Jon:    I’ve seen the theory as a CrossFit trainer myself that we are about gymnastics.  But I’m not sure that that carries much further than pull-ups, pushups, sit-ups, squats, L-sits, muscle-ups and pullovers. I think that there’s some room here for someone with your specific expertise in gymnastics to make a big impact.  What do you see happening going forward with gymnastics and CrossFit?

Jeff:    I think there’s a couple of things and I’ll back up to the newbie here.  We get a lot of new people in here that say, “Look.  I can’t do the WOD online because it’s got handstand pushups in it.”  The fact that we can show both newbies and trainers how to scale a handstand pushup, just using a couple of power bands, is a mental and physical victory for that individual being taught.

If you’ve got a WOD that’s got thirty muscle-ups in it, rather than going and doing the substitution for it I would rather see us teach a scaled version of a muscle-up so that we’re training that muscle memory and that muscle group to develop it into a muscle-up.  And hopefully eventually and the pinnacle of a muscle-up which would be just a pure strength/control move as opposed to using a kip.

So, I think there’s a lot of nuances that we can throw out there to the what I would call a Level One Gymnastics Cert.  I think the future holds for us because we get this a lot.  I’ll use John Brown as an example from Agoge Gym.  A guy comes in here.  He’s working and training a Level One Cert and goes, “Hey, I want to learn how to do a back tuck.”  “Okay, well, you’ll meet me at lunch.  Let’s go over your forms and make sure you can do a back tuck.”

As I work with him, because he is such an astute athlete and really listens to the cues, he’s dialed in to learn this move.  In a matter of an hour and a half the guy’s thrown a back tuck on the ground by himself.  Now, would that apply to everyone?  Hell, no.  That’s something that normally we really take a lot of first steps going into a back tuck movement.    

So, I think the future could hold that we have a Level Two Cert Gymnastic development for people who’ve been to a Level One who kind of want to maybe incorporate some of this ground based tumbling or more difficult moves and apparati.  But I think right now our focus for CrossFit really needs to be on – I know that when I teach people how to do a “skin the cat”, for example, Jon, they really don’t know what’s involved in that move.  Once we go through it and I say, “Okay”, well, imagine doing three sets of ten of that.  Normally that’s when the whole room’s eyebrows are raising up like, “Hell, this would be work.”

Well, that’s how people learn these strength core control moves.  As you get stronger in it you know as well as I do, Jon, that that’s just going to transfer into all these other movements we’re doing.  Whether it’s – we might be in a hollow position for gymnastics but we’re going to get strong in that position.  We’re going to get strong in our full body core control move and will that transfer over into a barbell move?  Well, hell, yeah, it will.

We’re going to get stronger and we’re just going to change our body position.  We’re going to have our lumbar curve there.  But they’re still going to be compliments to each other in that training.  That’s what I want people to understand.  I even kind of hate that we use the term “gymnastics” for CrossFit but I can’t think of anything else.  Because really what we’re doing is taking elements of gymnastics and applying it to the WOD.  That’s what we need to do, I mean, in my opinion.

As we get better at something on this Level One area of gymnastics WOD elements then hell, let’s bump it up.  Let’s raise the bar.  Let’s do something different.  I think eventually we’ve got to say, “Okay, we’ve got a Level One here.  It’s understood what this Level One is.  It’s understood how it’s going to transfer into my workout and strength.  And as I become a better CrossFitter maybe I’ll want to go do the Level Two and test my body a different way.”  Does that answer your question?

Jon:    Oh, absolutely.  We’ve had female athletes show up at CrossFit Boston from a gymnastics background.  Some merely when they were little girls; some all the way through the collegiate level.  And they, without exception, outperform our standard female and the majority of our male demographic.

Jeff:    Yeah.

Jon:    Could we talk a little bit about how gymnastics transfers into the demands of CrossFit, why we see that, and do you see that transference also happening in the reverse order?  Can I be a CrossFitter and learn gymnastics and have that go back?

Jeff:    Absolutely.  In talking about women’s gymnastics, too, when I was a young competitive gymnast what was really funny and I talked to Gillan Mounsey from New York about this at the Games.  She wasn’t even allowed to touch a set of rings.  Her coach would not let her touch rings.  This is a woman today who can knock out muscle-ups, man.
   
I told her, I said, “That’s really unfortunate.  That’s really some of the old die-hard thinking of gymnastics that women shouldn’t be allowed to get on a set of parallel bars or a set of rings or a pommel horse.”  That’s old-school thinking and I don’t agree with it.  I mean, I would not preclude Gillian from doing any kind of gymnastic move she wanted to do, male or female genre.

The short answer is, the gymnasts I have come in to this gym have an incredible body awareness, even if it’s been a while since they’ve done gymnastics.  When you talk about a “gliding kip” they know what a gliding kip is.  Then we say, “Well, okay, let’s do a gymnastic kip for your chin-up versus a bent-knee Cross Fit-style kip.  They know.  They remember this stuff, and it doesn’t take long to get back to a pretty decent performance level.
   
Now, younger folk, I mean, the gymnastics of today is so different than what it was in the ’70s and the ’80s.  So, I date myself quite a bit, but I try really hard to keep up with where gymnastics is as a community today.  But, I don’t think there’s any doubt when you see a gymnast come in the gym and number one, you can only spot them, as you know.  Number two, you know what you can get out of that individual.  If I’ve got a room full of gymnasts, there’s a lot I can do.  I know it’s going to be a good day.

Jon:    Yeah, I know that as a coach, yeah.  It’s like, “Oh, thank you, God, for dropping these individuals in my lap.”

Jeff:    Absolutely.

Jon:    Because I’m not going to have to coach very much to get them to a very high level of performance.

Jeff:    Absolutely.

Jon:    You start your gymnasts young, I imagine, as most programs do.  How young and what is the advantage of starting with a younger individual?

Jeff:    Well, I think like anything and we try really hard because, you know, when you’re coaching kids you’re actually coaching parents, too; even if it’s indirectly.  At our facility now at GSX we don’t do any rec full-out gymnastic apparatus competition or any competitive teams.  I want to have a life, so I’m just not going be that coach anymore.
   
But we teach gymnastic elements and we teach gymnastic-based tumbling and just a touch of apparatus here.  We start at age 3.  We start with the preschool class.  You make it fun and you make it exciting.  You make it a game and you teach the decorum of sportsmanship and attentiveness.  And that normally just goes right into the, after age 5 that we start bumping up the level a little bit. 
   
Now, a kid coming in here learning a forward roll and a backward roll or a handstand movement, all of this stuff is assisted for obvious reasons.  But through the repetition you show both the child and the parent what their body is doing and how they’re learning kinetic awareness and how they’re learning body awareness; where I’m at in the air when I’m falling into the pit.  It just happens over repetition.
   
That’s really, it’s really interesting that when we get a lot of adults in here for CrossFit that want to learn the gymnastic stuff.  Maybe they didn’t get to do it as a kid.  They really long for that day when they could be a kid and learn it when they didn’t have the fear factor and things like that.
   
That’s why I really love to see kids start young.  It doesn’t mean we can’t start with you at age 40.  We can.  But it’s probably going to take a little bit more time.  You’ve probably understood now at age 40 that when you fall down you might get hurt.  So that fear factor actually becomes a big mental blockade that we’ve got to kind of overcome. 
   
So that’s why I think it’s great to start…I tell parents in here all the time if I can get them in here at 3, 4, 5 and 6, by the time they’re 10 or 11, these kids are going to be tumbling their butts off and they get great self-esteem and great body awareness and good muscle strength.  There’s just a night and day difference in performance level.  They’re normally better students because they have great body- and self-awareness; great self-esteem.

Jon:    Is there carry over between your gymnasts and your CrossFitters?

Jeff:    Oh, yeah, absolutely.   That was what I was doing in the beginning after we affiliated.  We really wanted to make sure that we could make this fit at GSX.  What I mean by that is that we had to completely revamp what we were doing for fitness.  But heck, we put our Tae Kwon Do kids through workouts at the end of their hour-long session of Tae Kwon Do.  We put our power tumblers through CrossFit workouts at the end of their evening as conditioning.
   
We immediately saw effects in the first three to four weeks. We started winning more Gold and Silver Medals on the mat with our TKD kids.  We also noticed by that third round that they’re standing in the center of the mat waiting for the opponent, not over in the corner breathing heavy, talking to their coach.
   
Our power tumblers’ tumbling improved.  We actually kind of had to really watch what workouts we do because they were getting so powerful.  We were worried about injury.  Because as you know with kids you’re dealing with – when they figure this stuff out, when they figure out their body and they figure out how to use that muscle and how to use that floor, man, you kind of got to throw a halt around them and pull them back a little bit.  Because they try to push that edge of the envelope too much.

Jon:    We’re talking about CrossFit transferring. When you actually run Gymnastic Certs you have a lot of powerful individuals showing up.  And they’re powerful in a lot of domains.  In my experience I’ve seen them lacking kinesthetic awareness to some degree.  Have you shared this experience?  And when you do get these folks in, how do you overcome that?

Jeff;    Well, and again, I’ll use San Diego.  We recently did one there.  San Diego’s trainers came out and they were just incredibly strong people.  There’s no doubt about it.  But it was interesting to see an individual with an incredible body, incredible muscle physique but yet have no stabilization control on the rings or no stabilization control on our bar variations.
   
What we were showing them is you can have all the muscle in the world but if you don’t know how to use it, if you haven’t learned how to develop that kinesthetic awareness, then you’re going to basically check that ego at the door. We’ll start back to what I call, I mean, I tell everyone.  “Look.  Small steps are going to bring great rewards.  You’ve got to be patient with this stuff.  You’ve got to learn it.  You don’t just get in there and just do it.  You have to really learn it. 
   
“If you learn it, by learning the motion and learning the form and pushing toward perfect form in these elements, and in the skills and drills that we teach.  We may never achieve that perfect form, but we can keep striving for it.  And from that we’ll come in some incredible rewards.” 
   
There’s nothing wrong with teaching an iron cross to someone who has got the muscle mass to do it.  But obviously there’s going to be some things we do prior to that muscle – excuse me – that iron cross.  We’re going to make sure they’ve got an incredible l-sit.  We’re going to make sure that they’ve done some drills to develop the muscles and the control for an iron cross.
   
But there’s also some great ways to scale an iron cross. Same thing in a muscle-up.  If I’ve got someone male or female who can’t hold a support worth a damn on the rings then I don’t need to be teaching them a muscle-up yet.  I can sure scale it.  I can sure show them how to use the band to develop that movement.
   
So, when we show them this, again, it gets back to one of those deals, Jon, that the proof’s in the pudding.  A) They understand what cues they need to be giving and what cues they need to be accepting. And b) They understand that this won’t take very long if I train my body properly.  It’s just like learning a thruster or any barbell movement.  You get the right form, it doesn’t take very long.  Your body will adapt to that movement and then to make it more difficult we add more weight.
   
Same thing in gymnastics.  If we do a different form or element it’s going to make it a little more difficult.  We don’t have to add any weight.  We’ve just got to change the body position. And by doing so we’re training those muscles and those stability muscles and then, hey, all of a sudden I’ve got a muscle-up.  All of a sudden I’ve got a swing to support in a handstand if that’s what they want to learn.
   
We were doing in San Diego, too, there was a couple of guys that wanted to stick around after the cert.  We were doing a backward roll to support on the rings.  We pulled them aside because, a) We knew they could do it.  They had demonstrated throughout the cert that they were strong enough and they had the mental veracity to do it.
  
The limitation is only the mind and the body, in my opinion.  If you’ve got a willing participant who has the capability to show some strength in these moves and patience to listen they can learn this stuff.  I might have segued like hell there, man.  I don’t know.

Jon:    With these certs, Jeff, we have, we’ve got two days.  We’ve got a limited timeframe there and obviously with gymnastics and any high skill movement there’s the need for constant repetition and feedback.  When balancing those needs, two days, and that need for repetition and feedback, how do you go about that?  What are you hoping to achieve in that two days, that sixteen hours you have with these athletes?

Jeff:    I’ll tell you what.  First, when we sent out the outlines to the gym about what we’re doing the first thing on there that we do is we obviously have some Q & A time in there.  We actually bring out a DVD presentation.  We’re going to show these forms and we’re going to break down these elements in the most rudimentary way.  We do that because we know that at every cert we’ve got, like you said, some pinnacle athletes to the very, “Hey, this is the first time I’ve ever even attempted a handstand.”
  
All of the information in my opinion applies equally to both groups there.  We will always start with safety.  We will always start with letting these people know that you’ve got to know how to teach it.  You’ve got to know how to understand it.  You’ve got to know how safely spot it.  It’s never shocked me that someone in the room doesn’t know what a “spot” is, or how to do it. 
   
There’s a lot of useful information that they’re going to get out of this that they can take back to their box.  Or they can take back to their box in their own house gym.  But I think what we have finally is a really good equitable outline that will immediately help everyone with their WODs, help out with the Workout on the Day online that will immediately allow them to develop the skill sets and the strength moves to reach for muscle-ups or levers, back levers or skin the cats or handstand pushups or self-supported handstand pushups without a spot.  It’s going to let them start at the very ground base level and work toward an advanced movement. 
  
So, we do some of this in lecture.  Normally about 30 minutes of lecture and about an hour and a half of practical.  We will be repetitive throughout the day.  We do not do any WODs during that weekend, mainly because their bodies are going to be probably completely hammered by the next day.  That second day, in the evening it’s about all I can do to keep people focused and awake, because they’re just tired.  There’s only so much the human body can do and throughout that eight-hour day we’re going to be putting them to the test, physically and mentally.

Jon:    And these are some strong people, without a doubt some fairly well-conditioned folks.

Jeff:    Absolutely.

Jon:    What do you attribute the excessive fatigue to?

Jeff:    Well, let me put it this way.  When we do repetitive handstand moves and handstands we’ll be using ground-based handstands.   We’ll do parallette handstands.  If I’ve got a really decent group and I feel like we can get on the rings, we’ll do some handstands on the rings.  We’ll do press into handstands.  Just imagine what that’s doing from everything from your wrist all the way to your lats.
   
We teach the importance of being tight in a movement.  I have people point their toes and every movement that we do; not because it’s aesthetically looks good, but because I know that they’re calf is tight and balled up.  Therefore their entire body should be tight.  If you’re having to keep your body position inverted, tight, going hollow, pressing through your shoulders, being active with every muscle you’ve got, you’re going to get pretty fired up pretty quick.
   
That’s why we do it in a way that I’ll divide them up into ones and twos and we’ll have people step up and spot.  We’ll have people do the motion. Then they swap.  That way there’s actually some rest throughout the day but knowing that by the end of the day they know they’ve done some work.  By the second day they damned sure know it because they’re traps and shoulders and abs and glutes and quads are just completely on fire.  So there’s not any reason to throw a WOD in, in our Gymnastic Certs.
   
Plus, we want that repetition.  We want there to be repetitive moves on everything that we do.  We really won’t pull away from that repetitive teaching until I know that everybody in the room’s got it.  It doesn’t really take that long.  Normally with proper coaching, if you’ve got an astute group that wants to listen and learn, it doesn’t really take that long.  We go through it.  They’re comfortable.  We want them to be comfortable to spot it and to teach it.
   
But yeah, Jon, they’re going to get fired up.  And normally most people by that second day come up and say, “Hey, thanks for not throwing in a WOD.”  It’s rather interesting.

Jon:    I often counsel my athletes not to practice new skills or even skills, period, in a state of fatigue.  Is that something that you ascribe to?  Am I way off base there?

Jeff:    You’re not off base at all.  We really take safety and part of this is my background but part of it I’ve coached a lot of different people, a lot of different youth groups, a lot of different adult groups and safety has just always got to come first.  If you’re fatigued, why are you working on a move at all?  You’re just fixing to get into an injury issue.
   
We teach that.  We want them to know that, gosh, and I’m sure you see it in your gym all the time. “Well, hey.  Let me just do one more.”  “Hey, let me just do one more.”  Well, no.  Screw that.  As the coach my job is to say, “You’ve done enough.  You have this in your brain but your body can’t physically attempt another.  So let’s back off.  Let your body rest and do it another day.”
   
In the CrossFit community that’s one of those things. I wrote about this article recently in August that that really is the hardest thing for me to do is to get a well-conditioned CrossFit athlete to slow it down for this stuff.  Because they’re used to going seventy miles per hour and when you try to pull them back to twenty miles per hour, and we do a lot of repetitive moves, that’s not normally how they go about CrossFit.
   
Yeah, we want to make sure that they’re not so fatigued that they can’t even perform.  We want them to slow down.  And like I said, learn this stuff; not just get out there and throw a bunch of them.  If they’re going to do a WOD that requires thirty muscle-ups then we want each muscle-up to be a maximum effort but to be done with maximum form.  That way, when they’re done at the end of thirty muscle-up they might feel a little better than just up there kipping the crap out of each one of them; if that makes sense to you.

Jon:    It does, because I kip the crap out of every single one of them.

Jeff:    Yeah.

Jon:    Yes, I absolutely do.  Jeff, you’re a first responder in multiple capacities and you are actually unique there, in that I haven’t met too many folks that have done both fire and law enforcement.  What were you doing for fitness during that period of your life?

Jeff:    You know, probably after – you know as I said I had an injury back when I was 16, 17 years old.  It was actually a compression fracture in some vertebrae that went undiagnosed.  I had a dune buggy roll over me when I was kid, right before I was getting ready to go to State for competition.  It kind of ended my gymnastic career.
   
When I turned 19, I got on the fire department and I was just a kid but I still kind of did – I’d go out to the local college and work on some parallel bars or rings.  I’ve always kind of kept my hand in it that way.  That was really a lot of my fitness.  Then I started gearing up to, “You know, I’m a firefighter now.  I’ve got to put on a little bulk.”  
   
So I started doing what I thought was fitness and I say that laughingly.  I think by age 32 I had actually gotten to where – I’m 5’ 9.  I put on 205 pounds of pretty good solid muscle and meat.  The crap, I just wasn’t functional at all.  I could go knock down a wall but I just noticed that I got really fatigued quickly or that I didn’t have the agility that I used to have when I was a gymnast.
   
So, I started backing off the weight and going more to what I considered a cardio-style workout.  I got back down to like 190 pounds and was in pretty decent shape at that time in my thirties.
   
I was telling somebody in the gym the other day because they were also a firefighter here in the local area.  I said, “You know what, man?”  I said, “If I had of had CrossFit coming up as a rookie and me taking it through my career in the department I would have been a hell of a lot better first responder.  It is just no doubt about it.” 
   
I think gymnastics served me well as a firefighter but I know that if I had had CrossFit I’d been a much better firefighter.  There’s just no doubt.  I mean, when these guys go into fires they’re probably with all their bunker gear and the stuff they’re carrying in.  They’re carrying in an extra 84 plus pounds. 
   
They’re doing tremendous – I mean, firemen, in my opinion are industrial athletes.  Police officers, too.  Military guys as well.  If you’re in better shape then when it comes time to put the wet stuff on the red stuff or assist somebody in a disaster, then you’re a lot better off to them.
   
Hell, I wish I had of had it back then but I just didn’t.  I was just doing what we call “normal fitness”.  We took a fitness exam every year.  I normally scored Excellent or Superior.  Figured I was in good shape until I found CrossFit. 
   
I’ll tell you another thing it’s done for me.  I had a knee surgery in October that went really, really bad.  I’ve been using CrossFit the past six months to really rehab my body.  I’ve also been using “Starting Strength”.  Gosh, I’ve lost – I’m really embarrassed by the original videos because I think I was carrying about an extra twenty-five pounds there but I’ve gotten back down to 180 and I’m in good shape.  I’m doing Starting Strength.  Really enjoying it.  Would get in there and get a bar on my back and do some of this barbell work.  I still get in there and get on the rings. Do my gymnastic stuff, too.

Jon:    With the injury and the recovery, have you been through anything similar prior to that experience?  Had you had surgeries, joint reconstructions, that sort of thing?

Jeff;    Yeah, I did on the right knee.  When I was on the bomb squad, that suit weighs about 84 pounds.  I actually had done some damage to my right knee and I rehabbed it.  I know the marked difference between what I did then and I’m doing now.  Even then I was younger.  I was probably about 32, 33 when my right knee was injured.
   
Being 45, age is a great equalizer.  Don’t let anybody tell you different.  As you get older your body is just going to respond differently.  It’s going to heal differently.  But doing – I was talking with Mark Rippetoe, who I really respect, and I got in there and started doing light sets of five by five with a bar.  I got in there and started doing light sets of 95 pounds with the bar, back squats and deadlifts and presses.  I have seen my body respond to it.  Eventually it went against doctor’s orders just because I was tired of sitting on my ass.  I was tired of not healing.  But when I challenged my body –

Jon:    What were your doctor’s orders, Jeff?  And how did you go against them?

Jeff:    Well, I’ll probably get in trouble for this if he reads it.  I had oats and micro-fracture on the left knee.  All of it is probably come from—my whole life has been impact sports in one way or another.  The twenty years at the department was impact sports, the gymnastics, the rodeo; all of that was impact.  My past history finally caught up with me.  So I had about three places that had bone on bone.  One place was five centimeters and it was really messed up.  So they took some osis, where they go in there and core out some good tissue in a non-load bearing place and bring over the bone and the cartilage in that area and graft it.
   
Then they basically broke my knee cap.  They micro-fractured it to create some adult stem cells to help it regrow and make it stronger.  Two weeks out of surgery I’m starting rehab.  I ended up getting a blood clot in the leg and I ended up getting an infection, a really bad infection in the kneecap.  Necrosis set in.  They thought they were actually going to have to take some tissue out but we got past it with some pretty decent antibiotics.

  

But anyway, and I asked the doctor, I said, “Why is this happening?”  He goes, “Well, you’re a guy that goes 70 miles an hour.  We’ve made you stop.  So, your body is kind of just reacting to this adversely.”
   
Jon, after that what I did is I had to physically be on crutches for eight weeks.  Then when the doctor said, “Well, I don’t want you doing any kind of squat or any kind of anything for about another seven or eight months.”  So, hell, we’re talking about almost a year of just not moving with the lower body.  Now, I specialized in my upper body; my chest and arms and shoulders.  I’d go in there and knock out 100 dips or go in there and do L-sits and stuff like that.  My lower body was just wilting away.  I finally just got sick of it.

Jon:    We see this pervasive need from GPs and surgeons to tell folks not to move things that have been surgically altered; that have been injured.  I have found almost the exact opposite advice, “Move it now and move it as far as you can without popping something off,” to be the advice that gets our athletes back on their feet.  Recovery gets those hormone injections going on.  Not exogenous of course.  The pituitary gland doing that work.  It’s interesting to see that seconded in your experience even after forty-some odd years of abuse.

Jeff:    Yeah.  It really…I’m going to be really anxious to see what I look like in six months because I really have seen the change in my body.  It’s responded.  I really, I mean, Mark Rippetoe is an incredible character.  But he’s also, he’s probably going to hate me for this but I think he’s got a big heart.

Jon:    Yeah, don’t tell anybody.

Jeff:    Yeah, I won’t tell anybody.  But he just looked at me, and said, “Well, Tucker, do some by God five by five and do light weight.”  I just did it.  I just started doing it.  It has been awesome. 
  
My knee doesn’t swell up anymore.  I don’t have to go get any fluid drained off of it.  My legs are starting to slowly come back and the strength is there.  I know a deadlift of 300 pounds isn’t a lot probably to somebody but to me, for what I’ve been through this past year, it’s a huge victory.  And to be able to go in there and do that and my knee not hurt the next day, that’s a damned good feeling, man.
   
So, all I’m looking at is the horizon and where I can be in about six months.  Plus, I hate that everybody else in the damned gym was getting to do stuff but me.  It was mentally pissing me off.

Jon:    You can only sit around there and watch for so long.

Jeff:    Yeah, you know?  You’re sitting here eating a butt load of food and not doing any work.  Hell, it caught up with me, man.  I didn’t like carrying the extra weight.

Jon:    Have you made any dietary modifications to go along with training?

Jeff:    I really have, yeah.   I owe that to Robb Wolf.  He helped me get off the sugar.  I’ve really kind of been, especially this last month, I’ve really been dialing in the Zone and the paleo.  I’ve kind of been doing a little hybrid of that.  I’m probably not eating enough blocks for Starting Strength but I lack –

Jon:    Jeff?  Jeff, you need to drink milk.  You need to drink a gallon a day.  You’re too damned small.  You’re a baby mammal, Jeff.

 

Jeff:    Look at those femurs.  You know, if I could drink a gallon of milk without throwing up I probably would do it.  But I have upped my milk intake.  I have done that.  I’ve upped my calorie intake a little bit because, I’ll be honest, I was doing about fourteen blocks.  Wasn’t enough.

Jon:    Yeah, that’s what we give our 120-pound girls.

Jeff:    Yeah, I know.  Thanks, man.

Jon:    Just trying to help out.

Jeff:    No, really, I’m seeing the benefits here and I’m trying to not just preach.  I’m trying to really practice hard now and it’s paying off.  I’m excited.  And it’s nice to be excited again.  It’s nice to feel good about going in that box and doing a workout.  I may not be the fastest bastard in there but I’ll finish the workout.

Jon:    Speaking of your box, I’ve seen a lot of gym envy from folks coming out of GSX.  What have you got going on down there?

Jeff:    Man, I’ll tell you, that is a huge compliment.  I mean, I think honestly some of the perception is from people who have a 3,000 or 5,000 or even 1,800 square foot box, they come here and we shut down the whole place for the weekend for the Certs.  So we use every part of the facility.  I think that sometimes makes it look a little larger than maybe it is.
   
But we do, we’re very efficient about what we do here.  We use every square inch.  We’re real proud of our CrossFit box here, man.  We normally have on average twelve to fifteen people every class and we have an open-gym policy.  So that’s another thing that I think people ask us a lot of questions about, about how you do that.
   
But we’re here all day.  We’re here from 8:30 to 8:30 or 6:15 am to 8:30 and throughout the day we have a lot of programs that go on here.  It lets us – we’ve always got a Level One Cert individual, trained individual in there to help someone on staff.  I feel like we do a lot of that correctly.
   
We’re always real open about, “Hey, this is how we did it.  May not be the way you need to do it.”  But we’re real open about discussing what has worked for us and what hasn’t. 
   
Yeah, anytime anybody compliments us on it, it just tickles me to death because it makes us feel like we’re doing something right.

Jon:    Well, that’s great.  Now, in your box, you’ve got a big toolbox.  You’ve got I’m sure from what I’ve heard; you’ve got everything you need.  When you go to a box, let’s say CrossFit Boston; find five sets of rings and a bunch of people smiling.  What do you – how do you utilize that space in kind of with the diminished resources?

Jeff:    Well, I’ll tell you what.  Yeah, let’s just use Boston.  Aren’t you about 5,000 square feet?  Is that what you are there?

Jon:    Oh, not even close.  Not even close.

Jeff:    Okay.

Jon:    We’ve got a main room that’s about a little over 1900…

Jeff:    Okay.

Jon:    And the secondary room is a little over 800.

Jeff:    Okay, and I think when we spoke about using that, here’s what I need and I really like going to the boxes to do these Certs because that’s where the work is done.  What I want to do is say, “Well, can I get six people on a chin-up bar at one time?”  If I can, I can get six spotters there with them, because the spotter’s job is to learn how to spot and cue and coach.  The active person on the bar is to learn how to do the movement.  Then they’re going to be switching out.  Because this is so repetitive they need a little breathing room in between sets.
   
So, I’ll have everybody divided up in ones and twos and that’ll be their spotter and their trainer for the weekend.  These people are going to go through those movements on the bar variations.  We’ll go through every damned one of them.  We’ll go through them until they’re comfortable.
   
When we do the scaling of some of this stuff, we’re going to get six sets of bands up there.  We’re going to go through that and six sets of rings.  We’re going to go through that.  And twelve sets of parallets.  We’re going to go through that.
   
So, I don’t really need a lot of space and I think that’s one other thing that the community needs to know is that you don’t have to have an 11,000 square foot gymnastic facility to teach this stuff. 
   
When I went to Cherry Point, they didn’t have an indoor facility at all.  We went outside to where the Marines train.  We got on their chin-up bars and we did three-quarters of the class outdoors.  If that’s what they got rain or shine then by God we’re going to show them how to do it.
   
For me, it’s not about the size for the CrossFit box.  It’s about the basic equipment that you have in there.  You know damned well if Coach puts a workout in there that’s got muscle-ups and handstand pushups, or L-sits, chin-ups, handstand pushups then you’ve got to have the room to do that.  What we’re going to do is show coaches and trainers and newbies how you’re going to do this in a box atmosphere.  So, I mean, it’s just not that tough.

Jon:    Right, and the equipment need it sounds like is very, very inexpensive from my viewpoint and also not that hard to come by.  You’re talking about a pull-up bar, six sets of bands and twelve pair of parallettes.

Jeff;    Yeah, that’s what I would need to teach twenty-five people at your box.  That’s all I would need.

Jon:    And if we could get a number on that, I mean, even assuming the pull-up bars already there, it’s an investment of about $500.00.

Jeff:    Yeah, absolutely.  And most people what I’ve found out…I just got off the phone with an affiliate about doing one in January.  Well, heck, she had almost all the equipment we needed.  We just – I said, “If you don’t want to buy the additional power bands I’ll bring some.”  But the cool thing is, is as their box grows they’re going to find out they need this equipment anyway.

Jon:    Yeah, yeah.

Jeff:    So, yeah…

Jon:    Absolutely.  Well, I’m looking forward to meeting you, coming up here very shortly, actually.  It looks you’re going on the gymnastics world tour starting, Jesus, starting this weekend.

Jeff:    Yeah, yeah.  I’m really…I’ve kind of told everybody here locally, “Don’t expect to see me on the weekends for a while.”  I’ve got – see, we’ve got this weekend I’m going to Camp Pendleton.  We’ve got about 30 Marines we’re going to be training up there.  Then after that I’ve got to go to Virginia and we’re doing one there at the CrossFit Alexandria. 
   
I think I’ve actually got four lined out for September.  Four lined out for October.  November, we’ve got a couple that we’ve just kind of posted to see how they do.  Australia looks like it’s almost sold out which is just awesome.  We’re talking to some other people about Manchester and Denmark.
   
There’s no place that we wouldn’t come to.  I really think it’s important – I believe so passionately about this, Jon, that it’s important to get people to understand that gymnastics is really, it is the foundation, one of the foundational points rather that Coach has developed for CrossFit.  We got to show people that this is just as important as the Olympic lifting, you know?
   
I mean, no matter where I go, you see everybody doing the barbell stuff and the Oly stuff.  What I have not seen across the board is as much of the gymnastics.  We’ve got to get that in there.  I think a lot of it has been people think, “Eww, gymnastics.  I don’t know.  I’m not sure I can do that.” Or they conjure up an idea of the Olympic movement in their mind.
   
What we’re doing is try to educate and say, “Hey, look, this is about the element of gymnastics and how it’s going to apply to your body and how it’s going to transfer into your Olympic lifts, and how it’s going to transfer into your metabolic workout for metcon.” That’s what we’ve get people to understand out there. 
   
We’re very passionate about it, and Jason and I are just dying to come across the nation and teach it.  I think after about a year of doing this probably what we’ll do is maybe pick a few spots in the nation that we would travel to and then try to bring most of it where people would come to our own box here locally, just so that we’re not traveling so much.
   
But that’s kind of the plan.  And I hope that as we get a good resonance of gymnastic Level One stuff going, figure out how we can kick in a Level Two and up the ante a little bit.

Jon:    Now, Jeff, if people, if the affiliate owners out there want to get in touch with you and set up a Cert what’s the best way to do that?

Jeff:    I just got off the phone with Kelly Moore about this. They can contact Customer Service for one if they like.  They can also contact me directly at tucker@gsxathletics.com.  If they look at our website, www.gsxathletics.com, our contact info is in there as well.
   
But there’s lots of ways of getting in touch with CF about this stuff.  We’re getting quite a few emails fed to us from CrossFit HQ about people who are interested in doing it.
   
Some of what we’ve got to really look at is what is your area?  Would it support a good training session for the Cert that weekend?  One of the things I think is a great benefit here is just like coming to you.  By coming to your box I think it’s really important that people take advantage of this right now because then, locally, all they got to do is come from their house to your area.  They’re not having to worry about a rent car or airfare or hotel room, that kind of thing.
   
So, if people will take advantage of this as we’re traveling, I think it’ll be a real benefit to them financially but certainly for their CrossFit workout.  Then as they want to progress to get a Level Three Cert…I think the new requirement now, you can correct me if I’m wrong, don’t you have to have a certain amount of Certs under your belt to go to Level Three?

Jon:    I will profess ignorance and edit the shit out of this portion of our conversation.  I don’t know.  I’ve heard smacks of needing this and that for Level Three.  I think that, yeah, I mean I know that there’s a specialist requirement.  I think there’s a lot of people that are a little too fucking excited about what number they have after their name and aren’t taking the time to learn shit.

Jeff:    Yeah, I hear ya.

Jon:    So, you know, I’m hoping that absolutely you get that going, man.  They are going to need specialty certifications but the how and the when I don’t know if that’s been ironed out.  If it has, it hasn’t been communicated to me.

Jeff:    Yeah, I thought I had heard that, that it had come out.  I swear to God I thought I’d read it somewhere but shit, I’ve slipped some things…

Jon:    Oh, I mean if you’ve read it I’d like to see it.  Honestly, I have no fucking clue what’s going on there, Tuck.  Let’s see what I can find.

Jeff:    Yeah, edit the shit out of that.

Jon:    Oh, here we go.  “To attain Level Three Certification you must demonstrate the ability to train other trainers by attending CrossFit Level One Cert as an intern.”  Okay, I’ve done that, all right.  You have to attend at least five of the following specialist certifications:  Basic Barbell, Oly, Kettlebell, you, Gymnastics.  They still got Roger up there.

Jeff:    Yeah.

Jon:    Nutritional…So, yes, let’s erkkk.  Jeff, you’re correct.  The Level Three does require attendance at least five CrossFit Specialist Certifications.

Jeff:    Yeah, okay.  Very good, very good.  I’m glad the senility hasn’t kicked in like I thought it had.

Jon:    No.  Good on you, man.  That’s how much attention I pay.

Jeff;    I hear ya.

Jon:    I’m in my own little world over here.  So, Jeff, I think what you’re doing is fantastic.  I’ve always seen personally a dearth of gymnastics, of qualified instruction in CrossFit.  We get our folks inverted, we skin the cat, we do back levers and front levers but to have someone with the expertise putting an eye on that, transferring it around the nation and getting that done is great.
   
Just on a personal level, it’s funny how everybody puts so much into that muscle-up.  I was over in Ann Arbor and the kids were all clapping, jumping up and down doing the muscle-ups.  So I got up there and threw a couple of skin the cats, a front lever and a back lever and just showing them there’s something else going on up there.  Using those rings for something besides a dip and a muscle-up I think is tremendous too.   The midline stabilization required of those movements.

Jeff:    Oh, God.  Just staying inverted on the rings…

Jon:    Brother, I’m scared of you.  Like I do a back lever and I don’t want to do shit for the rest of the day.  You know?  I can’t imagine what kind of hell you’re going to put us through.

Jeff:    Not really.  I mean, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.  That’s normally, I’ll be honest with you, man.  That’s normally the first reaction I get. “Oh, my God.  I’ve got to do thirty of these.”  Well, no, you don’t, and you’re going to get some downtime by being a spotter.  You’re going to get a little downtime by waiting your turn.
   
Now, we don’t make you sit around very much.  I’ll tell you that.  But we also between each sets of these we’re going to sit down and have some very important clinical discussion about it.  I really try hard to not, to dumb this crap down for the layman.  I mean, there’s just not any reason for us to go into the physics of gymnastics.  What we want to do is say, “Here, look.  Here’s the movement.  Try this movement.  Spot this movement.”  Hands on, you know?
   
We talk about a grip.  We always have some around the bar.  I don’t really give a shit that it’s going to tear your hands up a little bit this weekend.   I’m sorry up front but we’re going to make damned sure that your thumb is around that bar. That’s probably one of the hardest things for people because they’re so used to doing the monkey grip without that evolved fifth digit.  That when we add that to it they tend to rip a little more.
   
But, it also emphasizes that the grip is drastically changed.  That you, by using your full grip, your form strength is increased and your hand strength is increased, and safety therefore is increased.  So, that’s probably the biggest complaint I get is “my hands.  I really have ripped them up this weekend.”
   
So, we try to tell them to get those calluses filed down, make sure you bring some tough skin.   Make sure you’re ready for that.  Yeah, it’s not where we want to beat the hell out of you. We don’t.  We just really don’t.  We want you to learn this stuff and we want you to be comfortable with it and be able to as a trainer or even a newbie pull a lot of things out of your haversack that will just help you so much with this other stuff.
   
I know you know what a back lever is on the rings.  But there are so many people who just don’t even know how to do a dislocate on the rings, or how to do it properly, or how to make it fun.
   
Gosh, John Brown, I’ll use him again.  When I met him the first time, he came down here and we showed him how to do some levers and stuff.  He started following our journals online.  When I met his wife at the Games, she goes, “Oh, you’re that guy that’s been screwing up my husband’s shoulders.”  I said, “No, wait a minute.  I didn’t tell your husband to hold a lever for thirty seconds.  I never said that.  He just thought that would be cool.”   
   
So, we try really hard to let people know, too, that this crap can come up and bite you in the ass.  You need to know that it is a strength core control move but you can also overdo it.  Even in stretching; we’ll talk about stretching and how long you should stretch and when a stretch become an adverse thing versus a good thing.  I think people will pull a plethora of information out of these conversations.
   
One question I got from San Diego from CJ down there, who I greatly respect, we’re sitting here talking about back levers and we’re having a little debrief.  He goes, “You know, Tuck, why am I doing a back lever?  What the hell is that going to do for me?”  This was on the first day.  I said, “If you’ll keep an open mind and go with me on this, I’m going to show you what it’s going to do for you.”  And on that second day he got it.  He understood how that’s going to transfer into his muscle-up.  He understood how being strong in that movement is going to transfer into any other CrossFit WOD.

Jon:    Everything in the world.  That’s baffling to me but the midline stabilization demand there is tremendous.

Jeff:    Oh, yeah.

Jon:    The whole body tension demand is tremendous.  That’s as far as developing strength to bodyweight ratio for any athlete, your ability to do that with your own body is going to make throwing around anything under one and a half, two times bodyweight a freaking joke.  Sorry.  Sorry, I’m getting off my soapbox.

Jeff:    No, but you’re right.  You’re right.  But again, it’s just like that when I normally get a bad-ass CrossFit guy or gal in there and I get them on rings, all the sudden all things are equal.  The ego has left the building.  And that’s some of the beauty of this stuff is most people I think – and I think you might agree with me on this, Jon – most people are very, very good metcon.  They’re very, very good at the barbell stuff.  And the gymnastics used to be the thing that they’re weakest in.
   
That’s what we want to give them is to say, “Hey, look.  Here’s ways to get strong in this, man.  This makes you stronger.”

Jon:    I think part of the reason they’re weak in it is under-exposure.  It’s a classic Glassmanism that we fail at the margins of our experience.  Frankly, gymnastics is it for us.  We’ve had now for years competent certifications in Basic Barbell, in Oly lifting, now with Brian McKenzie with the running.  We have not had someone consistently to rely on for this sort of education.  I don’t mean that as a slight against Roger.  He’s obviously been involved in this community from the get go.
 
But the general availability of that kind of training, to CrossFitters to date, in my mind, has been lacking.  And to see you and Jason come on and bring that to us I think you’re going to find that maybe a year and a half, two years down the line, CrossFitters aren’t going to be lacking that anymore.  You’re going to walk into the box and go, “Well, shit.  I’m going to make this de facto Level Two because I have to.”

Jeff:    Exactly.  Yeah, and really, that’s our goal.  That’s what we want to do is because honestly, it’s what the community wants.  I believe the community wants to keep raising that bar.  You know, if you look at the Games, and look at what they announced right before the Games, chest to the bar.  Jesus Christ, that’s a change.  Does that change everything?
   
You know what the beauty of that is?  As a gymnastics coach I’m looking at that, I’m going, “man, if gymnastics doesn’t help this movement I don’t what the hell does.”  And chest to the bar was tough.  That was tough.
   
But no, and I agree.  I don’t thinking it’s been from a standpoint of people not trying to do this.  I kind of compare it to Mike and Rip.  There’s room for more than one coach out there and we need to be getting this info out there, especially as fast as the community is growing.  I think the sooner we get it out there, the sooner we make it an everyday thing in these boxes all the better.  Just all the better.

Jon:    Absolutely.  Well, thanks for taking the time, Tuck.  I appreciate you sharing a little bit about this with me.  Competitive gymnast, firefighter, instructor, police officer, gym owner, entrepreneur, Renaissance man.  Thanks for taking the time and I’m really looking forward to meeting you later on here, right down the road.

Jeff:    Jon, it really is my pleasure. And once again, we’re looking forward to coming there and meeting you guys and being of service to you in any way we can.

Jon:    All right.  Thank you.

Jeff:    All right, man.  You bet.

Pictures courtesy of CrossFit Camp Pendleton and Jeff Tucker.