Pottstown Athletic Club

Septuagenarian CrossFit coach Mike Suhadolnik refuses to let his peers age gracefully. Mike Suhadolnik, a former offensive tackle and middle guard at Illinois State University, spent most of his life powerlifting. At this best, he benched 350, squatted 450 and deadlifted 550 lb. His physique implied fitness. But when his daughter Molly and her now-fiancé Tim Hahn asked him to overhead squat more than seven years ago, he couldn’t get the bar over his head. Then they asked him to do burpees. “I played football in college. I said, ‘No problem,’” Suhadolnik recounted. “I couldn’t do a burpee.” Disturbed by this, the then-65-year-old visited his doctor in Springfield. “I told him I wanted to live until I was at least 110 years old but that I did not want somebody pushing me around in a wheelchair, walking with a walker or having someone wipe my butt,” said Suhadolnik, today 223 lb. The doctor recommended changes...

I am a 33 year old, single mother of three children under the age of six.  My lifestyle is hectic to say the least.   In 2009, I was given the life changing news that I had Multiple Sclerosis.  I was a relatively active person, or so at least I thought.   Walking and jogging on a treadmill and doing some abdominal exercises were my routine workout.  I tried the local gyms, but I got bored and didn’t see any difference in my energy level or appearance.   One day, in August 2013, I walked into CrossFit Pottstown, and that’s when my world really changed.  Prior to this, I was having vision issues, memory loss, cognitive impairment, and numbness and pins and needles on my entire left side.   After one month of CrossFit, my vision improved, I could read again, and was having no issues with my memory.   It has been almost eight months since I walked through those doors, and I haven’t had any issues with my left side ...

CrossFit Journal, June 8, 2016 Warning: Reducing intensity can be habit forming. Please consult your CrossFit trainer immediately. You have to do Fran today. Stop reading, close your eyes and really think about that for a moment. Note the freefall feeling in your chest, the sweaty palms and the subtle changes in your breathing. Now consider this statement: You have to do Fran in less than 12 minutes today. I bet you suddenly don’t feel nervous at all. You might even view the reps as a warm-up for another workout. Same weight, same reps, same workout—different results. Intensity burns. It tastes like a mouthful of old pennies soaked in battery acid. It makes you dizzy. It causes you to writhe around on the ground trying to work the misery out of your muscles. It usually requires a period spent on your back or butt, and sometimes it sends your lunch back the way it came in. Intensity gets caught in your throat and keeps you hacking hours after the wor...