Pottstown Athletic Club

This program offers an avenue of expression and socializing for area youth who find team activities difficult for whatever reason. Some in the Karate train for free because of their socioeconomic origins. This discipline teaches valuable personal management skills that these children have not been learning elsewhere for a variety of reasons. Karate is the art of unarmed self-defense. Karate is a Japanese phrase meaning   "kara"   - (empty),   "te"   - (hand), or the way of the empty hand. Karate is a centuries old martial art, formally introduced in Japan by Master Gichin Funakoshi. Since the 1950s, karate has been practiced throughout the United States and other parts of the world. Karate is an excellent exercise, utilizing 90% of the body muscles. The mental aspects are as important as the physical. The main objective of karate training is development of character, although karate is also a practical and effective self-defense system.  Men and women...

To move all significant health markers in the right direction, do more work faster, trainers say. The only way to know intensity is to experience it. It is not a mythical creature born of grunting loudest, sweating most or cheering excitedly. It is also not a matter of opinion. It’s physics. Scientifically speaking, intensity is defined as power: force multiplied by distance, then divided by time. Simply put: Intensity is doing more work faster. “You have to teach people how to do it,” said Chris Spealler, a member of CrossFit Inc.’s Seminar Staff and a seven-time CrossFit Games athlete who owns CrossFit Park City in Utah. Fran, for example, is a workout most of the general population should be able to finish in roughly 7 minutes or less, he explained. The workout calls for 21-15-9 reps of thrusters and pull-ups. For an athlete who is trying to break into that time domain, Spealler provides the road map: Do the 21 thrusters and 21 pull-ups in no more than 2 sets each,...

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...

In this open letter to CrossFit trainers, Coach Greg Glassman discusses the importance of virtuosity, defined in gymnastics as “performing the common uncommonly well.” Unlike risk and originality, virtuosity is elusive, supremely elusive. It is, however, readily recognized by audience as well as coach and athlete. There is a compelling tendency among novices developing any skill or art, whether learning to play the violin, write poetry, or compete in gymnastics, to quickly move past the fundamentals and on to more elaborate, more sophisticated movements, skills, or techniques. What will inevitably doom a physical training program and dilute a coach’s efficacy is a lack of commitment to fundamentals. Rarely now do we see prescribed the short, intense couplets or triplets that epitomize CrossFit programming. Rarely do trainers really nitpick the mechanics of fundamental movements. I understand how this occurs. It is natural to want to teach people advanced and fancy movements. The...

Coach Greg Glassman offers a beginner’s guide to CrossFit that focuses on problems and solutions. Nearly every aspect of our model is at odds with the fitness magazines and programming in commercial facilities. CrossFit is a leader in the fitness community. By definition functional exercises call for an essential bit of human capacity. Due to strength or injury, often a particular exercise is not immediately possible. In nearly every case what we do is find a method to reduce the load to insignificant levels while preserving precisely the line of action or substitute movements of similar lines of action that will prepare for the missing capacity.  Any weightlifting exercise can be done with a broomstick or PVC pipe. Every body weight exercise can be substituted with gateway movements. The CrossFit approach is to embrace, study, practice, and train for functional mastery. CrossFitters at every level are on the same path - moving from functional competence to functional domina...