Certified CrossFit Trainer
By
June 2, 2016
Thanks to everyone for the words of encouragement and congratulations over the past week. (Yes, I passed.) Many of you have asked what this Level 3 exam and certification is all about anyway. Since you asked, I want to take the opportunity to explain it and why it matters.
In order to coach CrossFit, you must take a Level 1 certification course and pass the exam. This ensures that you have a core competency in the movements, the points of performance, and keeping people safe. You get some exposure to programming, correcting movements, and group management, but much of that is taught and learned by rolling up your sleeves and working with athletes under more experienced coaches.
Once you've gotten your feet wet with coaching and have some miles behind you, the next level of certification is the CrossFit Coaches Preparation Course (Level 2). This course puts you on stage in front of a whole bunch of other coaches and exposes your weaknesses and growth opportunities as a coach. You get tons of feedback on your ability to teach and correct movement from some of the best trainers in the business. It is entirely hands on but you leave the course with so much to work on and an unbiased assessment of how you stack up as a coach. CrossFit does not require coaches to complete this level, but if you are serious about coaching and being good at it, you will.
The Certified CrossFit Trainer credential (or Level 3) requires all of the previous certifications along with a minimum of 750 hours of CrossFit coaching experience to even apply for the exam. It is a challenging exam designed to test a wide range of relevant subject matter from anatomy and physiology to injury prevention to industry standards across the fitness industry. Of course it also digs deep into the well of CrossFit from programming to scaling to running a gym. While rigorous and challenging, it is meant to differentiate coaches that have demonstrated a higher level of knowledge, experience, and commitment to training others.
I am proud to have achieved this milestone and be counted among the small, elite group of coaches worldwide that have accomplished this credential. The ability to offer higher quality training and coaching to the Catacombs community is well worth the investment of time, energy and financial resources.
I am looking forward to unleashing some of that newly minted knowledge on you guys in the gym. Thanks for always challenging me to grow and improve.
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