"It has been so long since I got a chance to really compete. I want to see how I will do and what will come up next."
No, this isn't another article on an athlete at the top of the Leaderboard. After 12.2, Ammon Woods sits on the fourth page of the South West Leaderboard in 640th place. You could say he's an Average Joe CrossFitter, like me, who's enjoying letting out his inner beast in the Open.
This is Ammon's story.
First Exposure
Ammon Woods’ first exposure to CrossFit came in Lexington, Ky., in 2008. He lost interest in the globo gym scenario and was going to a small boutique gym that focused on rehab. A friend recommended that he try CrossFit and invited him to CrossFit Lexington (now CrossFit Maximus).
By his own assessment, he had his hindquarters handed to him. He wanted more. The high intensity and the improvements he saw left him hungering for more. It wasn’t long before he was able to convince his wife, Brooke to join him and it soon became something they shared with each other.
Woods saw a team preparing for the CrossFit Games, but it was still too soon in his experience and he didn’t feel prepared yet.
Starting a New Adventure
After about a year, Woods switched jobs and moved to Arizona. Moving, getting oriented and still fulfilling his responsibilities as a husband and father to four little ones swallowed up his time and he didn’t get an opportunity to find an affiliate that he wanted to attend.
A short while later, as Woods started getting settled in his new position, he received a gift most CrossFitters would love: a bar and bumper plates. At the same time Brooke decided that she didn’t care to be involved in the boot camp class she joined, but wanted to train with a group.
She gathered four to five friends from the neighborhood and volunteered her husband to train “the girls group” three times a week out of their garage.
Within a month the group swelled to 10. Woods started getting some requests from guys in the neighborhood and some of the husbands wanting to participate too. He bought some more equipment and started a “guys group.”
With things growing, Woods quickly went out and got his Level 1 certificate and added another class. He now has a waitlist with almost 30 athletes in classes. He created a blog and has about 15 friends and family around the country following his programming.
Progress Continues
Quite a few of the people in the classes start with minimal experience and many have not exercised in a decade or more. All the workouts involve a healthy capacity for scaling, depending on the abilities of the participants. People are progressing quickly with a few people having lost more than 20 pounds in just a couple months.
"I love watching people get as excited about CrossFit as I am once they get a little taste,” he says. “And I love to watch the body transformation almost as much as the confidence transformation.”
Most of the time, Woods does his own programming. When his classes come in, one of the first things they look for is how their coach did on the workout. This really helps drive him when he is working out by himself knowing that his athletes are going to be looking to see how he did and how they compare.
Enter the Games Season
Four months ago, Woods had hernia surgery and took the required rest period. As soon as he was allowed, he started to get back into the workouts and wanted to objectively see how he was progressing. When he noticed the 2012 CrossFit Games Season was coming up, he wanted to see how he compared with others around the world and signed up for the Open thinking, “Why not?”
So far he has loved the competition. “It has been so long since I got a chance to really compete. I want to see how I will do and what will come up next.”
He plans to affiliate sometime in the next year as things continue to grow. But in the meantime he is enjoying the challenge and opportunity to push himself and see what he is capable of.
