Athlete Spotlight – Sean Falconer

1. How did you find CrossFit?
I had heard about it for a while through friends, but then my wife showed me an article about it because she thought it would be something I’d be interested in trying. After reading the article, I looked up the website and started on my own.

2. What is your favourite CrossFit exercise or wod?
It’s hard to pick just one. I like the Filthy Fifty, Angie, any WODs involving running. I generally excel the most at WODs that involve endurance or speed with exercises that involve moving my own body weight. As a result, these are usually my favorite.

3. How long have you been CrossFitting for?
About 16 months. I trained alone for about 4-5 months, and then with one or two other people in a non-Crossfit gym for about a year. I have only recently joined a real Crossfit affiliate.

4. What do you do for a living?
I am a sessional computer science instructor as well as a postdoctorial researcher in computer science at the University of Victoria.

5. What are your hobbies?
For exercise outside of Crossfit, I do a lot of long distance running. I usually participate in about a 10-12 races a year, primarily on Vancouver Island. I also coach the University of Victoria undergraduate programming team. I meet with students during the Spring and Fall terms about once a week to teach them to be better problem solvers and programmers. The best students form teams to compete in a world wide competition. I also occasionally compete in online programming competitions.

6. What are your goals?
I assume you mean fitness goals :-). My primary goal at the moment is to try to increase my strength so I can do the heavy lifting WODs as required and also improve my times on various benchmark WODs like Fran. For running, in the near future, I plan to run a sub 37 minute 10K and I would like to eventually run a sub 1 hour and 20 minute half marathon.

7. Why do you CrossFit?
Crossfit has really changed my perspective on training. I always felt like I worked out hard, and I have always enjoyed pushing my body to the limit and the challenge of different sports and training styles, but before Crossfit I didn’t really have a program to guide my progress or focus my workouts. And, before joining the Crossfit Zone, I never really fully experienced the community and coaching aspect of a Crossfit gym. The help I’ve received from the coaches at the gym has been amazing. I feel like in a short period of time I have really been able to take my fitness and training to a new level. The challenge of the workouts and the social aspect of a gym made up of people you know on a first name basis and look forward to seeing each day, has no comparison to any type of training I’ve ever experienced before.

8. Any advice for future CrossFitter’s?
I think the big thing is you just need to give it a try. I find it hard to explain the experience of a real Crossfit workout at a Crossfit gym versus a regular gym. People think of going to the gym as a solitary activity where you pay your money, put on your headphones, do bicep curls in the corner, and don’t talk to anyone for an hour, but a Crossfit workout isn’t like that at all. It’s more comparable to being on a sports team.

The other misconception about Crossfit that I hear is that people think it’s only for elite athletes, but it’s for everyone. Workouts are scaled to your ability. As long as you are giving 100% at a level your current fitness is capable of, you’ll get the full benefit of
Crossfit. Also, the community aspect of the workouts is going to push you harder than any workout you’ve ever done before.

Thanks Sean! We love having you out at the gym,  you have made a lot of the members step up their game 🙂

And just so everyone knows, Sean’s legs are famous…. he was the one doing the handstand walking on the A-Channel news clip. Check it out!

Today’s Workout:

Buy In – Support Hold technique; 3 attempts of holding in perfect support hold form on the rings for as long as you can.  Elite members can practice the support holds with a straddle position.

WOD: “Run for your life!”

Elite – 3 Rounds for time:

• 1 km run (2 blocks)
• Rest 2 Minutes

Zone 3- scale to 800m run

Zone 2 – scale to 600m run

Zone 1 – scale to 400m run

* Practice “pose running” for a portion of the runs.

Cash Out – 5 sets of 3 reps of Snatch Balance adding weight each set