What brought me to Catalyst? My wife actually. She picked me up from work and said we were stopping at this gym on the way home for a “No-Sweat Intro”, so I didn’t really have a choice. We met with Jess and I kinda hovered in the back ground as Emily asked all these questions and signed a waiver so she could come and do a class the next day. We’re both fairly active, so after some convincing from her that night I went along the next day for our first workout.
My first impression (before getting there) were somewhat skeptical. I looked at the WOD online before going and it didn’t seem like much, 20min AMRAP of mostly cardio. Once I got there, warmed up, did the AMRAP then went outside and threw-up! That’s when I realized I wasn’t in as good of shape as I thought, and when my opinion changed. The next few workouts were great, I was introduced to a few of the Olympic lifts. The coaching and scaling is excellent, they’ll suggest when you can go harder and tell you when you’ve had enough. It leaves you feeling like you’ve accomplished something at the end of every workout.
It’s hard to say what caused my greatest improvements. The layouts for the WOD’s really keeps you improving by themselves. Your constantly getting stronger or faster almost every time you revisit a specific lift or workout. I think just going, enjoying the company, coaches and trying hard has kept me motivated and seeing results. I did just do the gymnastics course with Jess and that was great. We spent a lot of time working on specific moves that come up in workouts and having the extra coaching and time to work on technique really helped out with progression there.
Double-unders are a huge thorn in my side. I can link an OK numbers sometimes, other times i’m struggling to get 3 in a row. I’d really like to improve on those, if you can’t do DU’s you can’t get a good time in any WOD that includes them. Besides DU’s, i know i have a really week squat. Getting that strength up will really improve a lot of other lifts.
I’ve had lots of great Catalyst memories so far and i’ve only been going for 6 months. Podium week was really fun, everyone was there to have a good time, it was impossible to have a bad workout that week. I think my favorite though has been the Open workouts. The gyms packed, every ones cheering people on, it’s just a great atmosphere to try your best at some really hard workouts. (Getting my first muscle-ups was great too, that’s been a goal for a long time.)