A CrossFit BlackRock team of 13 athletes made their successful foray into the competitive side of the sport Oct. 17 and 18 when they tried their hand at the Highway 9 Throwdown in Yorkton.
Five competitors from CrossFit BlackRock earned top 10 finishes at the tournament, with Shawn Loughren and Scott Shauf gaining a top five overall placement in the Scaled Men's event. Female competitors Jennifer Olfert, Shanda Tegart and CrossFit BlackRock co-owner and coach Krista Schwentke all earned placement in the top 10 in the Scaled Women event.
CrossFit is a strength and conditioning program that is made up of movements that replicate real life and use intensity and variance to structure its exercises. It is meant to deliver fitness in a broad and inclusive way and its training can be adapted to fit anyone’s needs.
Schwentke said the 13 athletes from their club on Fourth Street competed in four workouts on the first day of the tournament and two on the second. She said the competition is structured by having athletes partner up, with each group having to complete a specific exercise event such as the sled pull.
That is when a person pulls a sled 50 metres and then switches off to their partner, with the final score compiled from how many sled pulls the group could complete in a certain amount of time.
“Everything we do is functional movements, so you’re squatting, jumping, running and throwing,” said Schwentke. “It’s all the stuff that you would see in your everyday life that you just have to do out of movement anyways. That’s what we train for.”
The Highway 9 Throwdown was Yorkton’s first CrossFit competition and focused on delivering a tournament that could include members who are new to the sport and those who are more advanced. It accomplished this through having a scaled division and a RX division where the weights are heavier.
Schwentke said CrossFit competitions are growing rapidly across the globe. In this province, the Yorkton event joins a fall tournament in Saskatoon, a spring event in Regina and a February tournament in Lloydminster.
She said watching the CrossFit BlackRock athletes going into Yorkton for their first competition and pushing themselves out of their comfort zones was amazing. Competing is not a requisite of being a member of the club, but the coach hopes this first tournament will get more people wanting to try it in the future.
“It just gives you that extra fire under your butt so to speak in terms of progressing your fitness level,” she said. “When you get into that competition environment it’s completely different than the gym. There are people watching. You’re competing against people you don’t know. It gets the adrenaline going a little bit and then makes you want to get that much better when you get back home.”
The women’s scaled division had a lot of entries, so to have four of their athletes finish in the top 10 is quite an achievement, said Schwentke. Then having Loughren and Shauf finishing in the top five through making it to the final Showcase event on the second day is just the icing on the cake for the club.
“We’re not even a year old,” said Schwentke. “To send 13 athletes away to their first competition is huge for us. I think a lot of them really enjoyed it, so they’ll want to do more in the future. Also we had a large group of spectators come along and support our athletes and if they’re not already doing CrossFit I think it kind of inspired a lot of them to start.”
