HOW sturdy are those parallettes?

I've written a few times about my experiences at the CrossFit Gymnastics Certifications - everything from an analysis of the skills taught to my own experience conquering my handstand fears. Last weekend, my friend and Brooklyn Boy Justin Algera (otherwise known as Thor) attended his first gymnastics cert, a little bit at my behest. (Translation: I might have bullied him into it, at first.) Here's a fresh new review of the cert, from Justin's unique perspective as a big guy, an Oly guy and a CrossFit Brooklyn coach.

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Ever since I started CrossFitting in 2005, the gymnastics stuff has always been a big ol' goat of mine. It's not that I didn't like the sport - fact is, I’ve always been a fan of gymnastics. My wife and I used to go to the University of Florida women's gymnastics meets, since it was cheap (and fun) entertainment. But watching and doing are two different things, and doing has always been a struggle for a big guy like me.

I will admit, though, for some of the movements, I just didn’t see the value in doing. Let’s take handstands, for example. Sure they are hard. But just because something is difficult doesn’t mean we have to do it as exercise. Hell, marathons are hard too, but I’m not doing that shit either. I mean come on, I'm trying to be fit here, not join the Cirque Du Soleil. I'm not so much scared to be upside down, but being 240 lbs. inverted on parallettes just reeks of "bad idea". To me these moves were for (a) people who have trained for them since before they could walk, (b) Romanians, or (c) petite men and women, NOT guys who weigh 240 lbs.

But when the gymnastics cert showed up on South Brooklyn’s website, I thought what the hell, why not? For one, if I’m going to be a good coach, I need to have a wide variety of tools in my tool box, and two, it should provide plenty of entertainment for the rest of the participants. So I signed up. Now I’ll be honest, even up to the day before, I thought, “Why not just postpone and get out of this cert and you can save it for some other time”. But I could hear Byers in my head, calling me out… so I sucked it up and went.

All I can say now is I am SO glad that I went. I learned a great deal in those two days, and feel that I would have lost out as a coach, had I skipped out. First and foremost, I would have missed out on the chance to work with Jeff Tucker and Jason Malutich. That alone was worth the money for the cert. These guys more than know what they are doing, and whether you are a strong CrossFit bad-ass, or someone who has little in the way of a strength-to-weight ratio, they will have you doing stuff you never thought possible. Not only did they have me inverted on rings (and yes, doing handstands on parallettes), but I was even doing a back lever with spotters. At this point in my CrossFit career, I don't get excited too often about "fitness" accomplishments, but this one definitely put a big smile on my face.

Beyond that, I now have a better appreciation of why these moves are important to us, not only as CrossFitters, but as people who were meant to move. I truly believe now that just working on the basics of these moves will benefit anyone who wants to get serious about their fitness. Just look at all the shoulder flexibility and range of motion limitations that seem to be so common in CrossFit. Learning how to properly warm-up, stretch, and open/close the shoulder girdle (skin-the-cat anyone?) would really help anyone looking to improve their Olympic snatch or jerk.

And learning how to properly introduce and scale the movements was invaluable to me as a coach. I would feel comfortable taking my mother-in-law (who is just starting off in her quest to get fit and lose weight) through many of the basics we did this past weekend. Does that mean I have to keep working on everything that we went over? No, of course not. But at least now I can see the benefit of the movements, and if someone wanted to be trained in these movements, I feel pretty confident that I could help them learn.

I feel like I’m a much better coach now, in general, for having gone through the cert. Tucker has a unique perspective on the CF community and the way he feels these moves should be performed and learned. It is a perspective that I share completely, and to hear it, learn it, and put it into practice with my own abilities and ideas as a coach only serves to make me that much better to my clients and those who come to me for help. And finally, I am now excited to work on these movements a lot more now in my own training. I’m still probably not going to do shit on parallettes (because I just know at some point, they will snap), but I’ll be damned if I am going to stop trying to get that unassisted back lever.

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Justin Algera (Thor) is a CrossFit Certified Level I Trainer, and has completed his CrossFit Olympic Lifting and Gymnastics Certifications. He has been training CrossFit since 2005, and began training with CrossFit NYC in 2006. In his own words, "I truly believe that CrossFit and its ideology are the best way to get into the greatest shape of your life, and there is no better place to learn these principles than here at the Black Box."

Thor, stretching at the Gymnastics Cert, and in perfect extension in his natural habitat.