THE PROFESSIONAL COACH

Coaching requires balancing multiple skills like teaching, seeing, correcting, and managing a group, and coaches often have areas where they need to improve. The key to effective coaching is giving timely, direct, and actionable cues to athletes, ensuring they correct poor movement mechanics immediately. Coaches can refine their skills through intentional practice, feedback, and following structured progressions for movements, which help them better see and correct athletes' form while maintaining the flow of a large class.

In a recent Affiliate Town Hall, Lisa Ray highlighted the transformative power of exceptional coaching, emphasizing its role as the most valuable service a CrossFit affiliate can offer. Effective coaching, beyond just programming, is key to member success and injury prevention. Coaches are encouraged to assess their service quality, align it with their vision, and set a positive gym culture. Practical advice includes reducing class volume, streamlining sessions, and experimenting with programming for personal growth. Ultimately, the long-term success of a gym depends on strong coaching relationships and delivering impactful, life-changing experiences to members.

When faced with crowded classes, rather than moving locations or capping attendance in your CrossFit affiliate, consider optimizing the use of your existing space. CrossFit Thin Air, a small 400-square-foot garage affiliate, successfully accommodates multiple 12-person classes by being efficient with space by reorganizing equipment, adapting programming to fit the space, modifying workouts to manage equipment limitations, and strategically positioning both the coach and members for better visibility and correction. By making small adjustments and maximizing every inch, affiliates can continue to thrive even in limited spaces.

Highly nutritious whole food sources of protein from meat (as the catchall term for beef, pork, chicken, seafood, dairy, etc.) provide the essential “structural” elements in the diet to build the strong muscles and dense bones we need to maximize our work capacity across broad time and modal domains. Across the years of our lives, those muscles and bones we built up allow us to not just survive but thrive, tackling any adversity or taking on any adventure that comes our way well into our 80s and 90s. 

CrossFit advises mastering a strict pull-up before attempting kipping pull-ups to establish a solid foundation of shoulder stability and strength. However, it's not uncommon to find members in your affiliate who have been doing kipping pull-ups for years yet struggle with a single strict pull-up. 

While some movements in CrossFit—like the single-leg squat (aka pistol squat), handstand walk, or ring muscle-up—might never be used outside the gym, their value extends far beyond their immediate application.

Recently, readers of the Professional Coach have asked us questions about scaling and coaching older athletes, so we wanted to share a simple framework you might consider when classifying, assessing, and coaching these athletes in your gym. 

I can understand how a novice coach or a new coaching hire would be nervous about approaching a longtime CrossFit athlete with strategies to enhance their movement, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.

After attending an inspiring weekend course packed with information and tools to enhance your coaching, you are motivated and eager to implement these changes in your next session. However, two weeks later, you find yourself slipping back into old habits, such as favoring certain cues or using habitual coaching methods. You’re not the only one facing these challenges. Many coaches, like you, find it difficult to implement lasting changes in their coaching practices.

Those new to CrossFit or those who don’t understand the big picture that’s taken into account when programming an entire year of workouts may not see the harm in doubling up all the time. Taking time to explain it can go a long way in minimizing frustration for members and for a coaching team that has to keep addressing the question. 

Find links to cornerstone articles, worksheets, templates, continuing education courses, and more that will help you develop as a CrossFit coach, no matter where you are today, so you can change even more lives.

The true beauty of CrossFit lies within its scalability. No matter your fitness level, the CrossFit gym is the best place to be, surrounded by passionate and encouraging members, and knowledgeable and enthusiastic coaches. Whoever you are, whatever your athletic ability, you will be championed as an athlete.

CrossFit does not discourage the development of the Zone 2 pathway, but when it comes to providing the best experience possible for our athletes, we strive to find a balanced approach to developing all 10 general physical skills. This means we must consider cardiorespiratory endurance, strength, stamina, flexibility, power, speed, balance, coordination, agility, and accuracy. When we consider the breadth of our focus, it rarely allows us to simply do Zone 2 cyclical-based erg work.

Developing the front squat is valuable not only for the exercise itself but also as a crucial component of other movements in our workouts, such as the clean and the thruster. The mechanics of the front squat greatly influence the loads we lift and our efficiency in conditioning workouts. The front squat places substantial demand on the lower body, particularly the quads, due to the load placement and the need for a more vertical torso. The trunk muscles, including the abdominals, obliques, and spinal erectors, play a crucial role in maintaining stability, which can make or break a lift.

Growing as a coach is a never-ending process that can be tackled in various ways. In a perfect world, you’d be surrounded by other coaches who push and motivate you to do better. Collectively, you’d all strive to master your craft and bring your members along for the ride. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Still, if those scenarios aren’t in play, that doesn’t let you off the hook. Here are 10 activities you can do to achieve excellence as a coach, even if your gym and coaching environment aren’t ideal.

CrossFit is about building healthier humans and staying fit for life.

When it comes to CrossFit's nutrition recommendation, getting quality right is only one part of the equation. Quantity and macronutrient ratios matter a lot and are often the part of our nutrition recommendation that gets missed: “Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.” This is a hard and fast rule. No excuses. No apologies.

As a coach, your role is crucial in constantly observing and assessing your members. This is especially important for new athletes, as you need to determine the necessary adjustments for a given situation or desired training outcome. So, how can you work on developing this skill with these new members within the next hour without sacrificing the quality of the session for the rest of your athletes?

What do you do when an athlete refusing to scale? CrossFit Level 4 Coach Stephane Rochet offers solutions for the scaling-resistant athlete.

I want to do a muscle-up. Where do I start? This is a question coaches receive on a regular basis. There is no one-size-fits-all program that can be handed out to allow athletes to develop at the same rate. Rather, a program can be developed that establishes specific goals for athletes to achieve before moving forward. The timeline is specific to the individual.