My next feature athlete is Robert Battalio. I have A LOT to say about Robert. When Robert came to CrossFit for the first time it was Thanksgiving Day 2010. Well, we all know that the WORST time to start CrossFit is during our annual Blow Your Turkey WOD but we did have a few new brave souls that not only survived the workout but came back and joined CFM knowing that Jim Turnbo sometimes thinks he is Richard Simmons. Robert started his essentials classes with me in December (when it took him 3 days to recover from one workout being an active runner he knew he had been missing as essential part of his training).
Robert, like so many of us who first start out in CrossFit lacked one if not many of the ten components of CrossFit. In his case, I noticed that he was lacking balance, coordination, and flexibility to perform a simple air squat. I witnessed Robert doing the Team Jackie WOD on Friday February 26th and he was doing 45# thrusters like a pro. His squat was below parallel, his elbows were raised so that his back held the lumbar curve, when he drove through his heels from deep in the squat and pressed the bar over his head to a locked out position, popping his head through "the window!", I nearly cried! I saw his successes with my own two eyes.
Robert is a man with very few words, when I asked him for a testimonial of how he was feeling I got something like this: "I am running better....am feeling stronger...am eating better..." but he said it best when he was walking out of the gym on Friday. He said, "isn't the fact that I show up here every day for my assigned classes and you to torture me proof enough that I am getting results!" Well put!
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