Soccer Season is HERE!

 Be A Good Role Model. To a large degree, your players & parents will follow your lead. Be a good sport & don't yell at the referees or at the other team. After the game, seek out the referees and shake their hand and thank them, even if they made some bad calls.

Coaching Soccer

The fullest involvement from child athletes is more likely to come if they feel welcome, appreciated for their effort and not put down for errors. Give verbal and non-verbal praise and support. Use a smile, a nod, a pat on the shoulder, a wink or clap. Praise for thoughtfulness, effort, skillful application, keeping to team rules, not responding to adverse provocation and ethical actions. Praise specifically and honestly and recognize individual and team improvement. Children warm to a caring coach who is positive and constructive - with a sense of humor. You will need these qualities!

A Coach

A coach is someone who you put your trust in. You trust us to hold you accountable, push you when you need to be pushed. We keep you from beating yourself up and get on you for slacking on your form. Coaches mentor people. I have had a few mentors in my life whom I seek council from regarding different aspects of my being. I draw on their experience to help me through tough times and give insight into things I cannot see. A good coach can help you be the best all around person you can be.

COACH OKIE DB

A BIG Congratulations to CrossFit Huntsville’s  Dennis Berry who placed 7th in the WORLD at the 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games for Masters Men 45-49. Dennis, we are all so proud to call you our coach!

Great Coach, Great Competitor

Chris Spealler

CrossFit T-Town Promo Video

Our great friends over at The Signal Factory shot this super cool video for us.

 

 

 

Click Here

Do you want to be a better CrossFitter?

My advice would be to start to focus in on your weaknesses. Talk to your coaches and see if they can advise you on something to work towards. They will know what you are good at and what you are not so good at and will be able to implement a plan for you to follow to improve those areas. Perhaps you could start making use of the Open Gym times at the box to specifically work on these things and give yourself a change from the coaches programming everything you do. Take responsibility for your training and learn about how to improve your all round game. Swap one of your WOD classes a week for an Open Gym session and really work towards your new goals.

Good coaches show the path, not the shortcuts

A coach is a motivator and an innovator. His goal is to take a team or individual to the next level. In sports, the coach can be the difference between a win or a loss.  A good coach convinces you that you can do something you never believed you could, and then teaches you how.

A Good Coach

As a coach it is good to separate your goals from those of your athletes. As a coach, your job is to prepare your athletes for their specific needs. Coaches are not judged by their own athletic abilities. The coach is judged on his ability to teach and prepare his athletes for their respective events. Yes, past experience is important and relevant, but the experience should already be present, as it should be a prerequisite to earn the position.

Practice what you preach

If you’re involved with anyone who comes to you with the thought that you’re the expert, you should have at least trained in the way that you expect them to train. For one, you should have a better understanding of what they’re feeling. If you’re programming for any type of strength gains, you should have some type of respectable strength levels yourself.

Coach

A coach is someone who you put your trust in. You trust us to hold you accountable, push you when you need to be pushed. We keep you from beating yourself up and get on you for slacking on your form. Coaches mentor people. I have had a few mentors in my life whom I seek council from regarding different aspects my being. I draw on their experience to help me through tough times and give insight into things I cannot see. A good coach can help you be the best all around person you can be.

Effort

"Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile".
"Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work".


Vince Lombardi

To train or be trained

What if a coach set a program for his athletes with conditioning workouts, but he had entirely different goals for himself? Separate your goals from those of your athletes. As a coach, you should prepare athletes for their specific needs. Most coaches are not judged by their own athletic abilities. A coach is judged on his or her ability to teach their athletes. Past experience is important and relevant, but the experience should already be present, as it should be a prerequisite to earn the position. Five years from now, I might be training for a marathon or perhaps a triathlon. Wherever my passion leads me, I will be sure to target my goals on my own time. It will not interfere with my coaching. Your job is to make them the best that they can possibly be. If you are always trying to stay a step ahead, your priorities will interfere with the development of your athletes. When you train an athlete, he or she must come first. Don’t let your ego interfere with their development.

On-Ramp Classes

At Next Generation CrossFit we teach:

• Fundamental movements that everyone should be able to perform.

• Advanced movements that everyone should be practicing.

• Intensity and efficiency and why they are essential to any training program.

• How to turn potentially challenging situations into winning achievements.

• How to be even more confident in any endeavor you pursue

If interested in the on-ramp classes @ Next Generation please email.

Learning As A Coach

I posted this last year and I've decided to repost it. Sometimes, it is hard to let someone else tell you, you are wrong, give you instructions, criticism, or call you out on not giving your full effort. I should know. That kind of thing makes me mad. When I first started I was a good athelete, but not so good on form because I was trying to beat the clock. BUT, the reason I have improved as a CrossFitter/Coach over time is because I turn that madness into a focus on learning as much as I can and getting better. I ask everyone I meet who knows anything that might help me what I should do. I read how to books on everything, I go to certifications, I watch videos, and I ask Eric. I watch you all and learn from seeing you work through technique issues. As your trainer, it is most satisfying for me to have great CrossFit students. It is hugely rewarding for me to share what I know with you. I love Crossfit and love helping people get better. And yet, one of the most difficult things we do is to correct you. To ask you to drop weight because you don’t have the flexibility or range of motion to be safe at the weight you want to lift. To tell you that a low fat diet is not healthy. Attending your workouts as a student, with student mentality, will get you the most out of your trainers. You might not like what I say, you might get annoyed, you might disagree. Ask me questions, play around with my suggestions. Remember that if you are frustrated with your performance and your training you can choose to turn that frustration into a quest for perfection. Require me to assist you in that quest for perfection. Catch yourself if you are turning your frustration towards your trainer. I am offering you knowledge, strategies, support, information, safety and technique. Let's work on the basics, skills and technique before we worry about getting the best time.

Great CrossFit Coaches

Being a great CrossFitter is great and all. Getting your level 1 is a start. Neither would automatically merit you a job in a gym. Being a great CrossFitter does not mean you are a great coach. Being newly level 1 certified does not mean you are a great coach. Really loving CrossFit does not make you a great coach. Experience makes you a great coach, and there’s really no way to fast track that fact. Hours and hours of training people is what makes a great coach. Experience working with clients and getting them results. Experience generating respect with people and getting them to positively change their behavior. Surrounding yourself with more experienced coaches than yourself helps make a great coach. Being humble and aware of your strengths and weaknesses and the desire to continually learn are all components of a great coach. I've been coaching for about 10 months and I keep learning everyday. I have learned from all these great coaches in the pictures.

CrossFit KB Cert

The weekend was time well spent with the great KB expert Jeff Martone. I have a video of Jeff juggling, doing the helicopter, and flipping a 53lb kettlebell, but was unable to load it. Well to my surprise the certification focused some on joint mobility and flexibility. Necks, Shoulders, Elbows, Wrist&Fingers, Spine, Hips, and Knees as a warm-up for the kettlebells. Most of these stretches relate back to my Yoga belief, that everyone needs it before and after a CrossFit WOD. After two days of training we had to take a Kettlebell Performance Test. We had to do 5-10 reps for every exercise and perform it correctly.

-Russian KB swing
-Power KB swing
-American KB swing
-Single arm KB swings(L&R)
-KB swing release(2 hands)
-Half rotation switch
-H2H swing switch
-Floor press(single arm)
-Floor press(2 KBs)
-Arm-bar stretch
-TGU
-Dead hang clean
-Swinging clean(single arm)
-Swinging clean(2 KBs)
-Military Press
-Push press
-Snatch
-Thrusters(2 KBs)
-Front Squat

Upon the 1 hour successful completion we received our certificates. I met a lot of cool like minded people and enhanced my own skills.

CrossFit Kettlebell Certification

Today and yesterday are being spent with Jeff Martone learning all about Kettlebells. I'm getting my 4th CrossFit cert and I'm learning so many new things about coaching and being an athlete. I will post more after certification is finished.

Being "Coachable"

To be coachable means “hearing” and “feeling” their resistance as useful feedback about your behavior, your impact on them. I spent a lot of time last week thinking about what it means to be a coach, and by default, a role model. I am serious about taking my training to the next level by attending more certifications and participating as a demonstrator and coach. In order to establish myself in those roles, I need to do more than just improve my coaching skills and log more training time. I also need to be coachable as an athlete. I was thinking about how so many people are very uncoachable. They don't want to listen to advice or tips on a better way. Coaching happens all the time. Most often, it's not from a professional coach. In fact, the best insights and advice usually come from informal or unexpected sources. Be more open-minded and listen to what people have to say. Not all advice is good advice, but at least you have the maturity to know the difference what is good and what is bad.
Symptoms of uncoachability:
-Challenging the credentials of the coach
-Announcing that you're being unfairly singled out
-Pointing out, angrily, that the last few times, the coach was wrong
-Identifying others who have succeeded without ever being coached
-Resisting a path merely because it was one identified by a coach
Are you coachable??

CrossFit Level 1: Day 2

I learned a ton about CrossFit this weekend.
-what fitness is and how it’s defined
-the importance of technique
-the super-importance of proper nutrition
-how to progressively teach all important functional movements
-spot and correct errors in those movements
-and of course, how to correctly perform them.
Crossfit lives up to its word and it does as it says and says as it does. I like the foundation, principles, elements, and fusion of these things. In reality it did not reinvent the wheel but took a ton of great parts and put them into an awesome package that delivers results. If your goals are to be fit across the board and be able to play with your kids, run with your friends, do some gymnastic moves like pull-ups or handstands, lift some heavy weights and you love variety, community and self competition then you have found a great system. I give a big applause to the Coaches who ran the show this weekend, they did an excellent job of explaining and representing the system. I look forward to contributing to the community through my better coaching.