Better Than Yesterday: Chris Shimley

March 7, 2013

Brittney Saline

"Better than yesterday" is Chris Shimley's motto for this year's Open.

 

“Throughout my training for the Open, I’ve been saying, ‘Better than yesterday,’” Chris Shimley says. “At the end of the day, I look back and say, ‘What did you do today that’s gonna leave you better than yesterday?’”

Three years ago, Shimley started CrossFit to improve his performance on the football field. Soon after, he traded the field for the box. One year into CrossFit, he became a trainer at CrossFit Crown Point, in Crown Point, Ind.

Shimley took 178th place in the Central East in last year’s Open. Today, he’s determined to be better — a lot better.

“My goal is to make it to Regionals,” he says.

He has hit many PRs including cutting his Fran time from 2:50 to 2:20, and turning a three-rep, 380-lb. front squat into a five-rep, at 385-lb.

“I was at the point where football was turning into a job, and I was enjoying CrossFit so much more,” he explains. “It was the realization that (CrossFit) is what I want to do for the rest of my life. (I wanted to) be a coach and be able to come to a great gym everyday, see awesome people and help them get better.”

When the 2012 Games season came around, he jumped at the chance to compete.

“It kind of filled the void that football left,” he says.

The Open offers a test of fitness and willpower, Shimley says.

“One of the things I love most is being able to test your willpower against another person. It’s awesome to test who is the strongest, (and able to handle) being uncomfortable with the suck.”

When he went back to review his worst performances in last year’s Open, he quickly realized he needed to improve his gymnastics skills, like toes-to-bars, if he wanted to be competitive this year.

So, he worked on his goats.

“I try to do high-volume pull-ups and toes-to-bars in a WOD at least twice a week to build up that work capacity,” he says.

Most weeks, he does two workouts a day, six days a week. He writes his own programming, and often creates couplets with gymnastic skill-work, like thrusters and bar muscle-ups or handstand push-ups and deadlifts.

At a local competition, his effort paid off.

In January, he competed at CrossFit Indy North’s 2013 Great Lakes Invitational, and came in sixth place on a chipper involving handstand push-ups, pull-ups and bar muscle-ups. By the end of the weekend, he landed in 11th place out of 53 competitors.

Shimley is confident his higher fitness level will show in the Open. Recently, he re-did all of the 2012 Open Workouts to see how his scores would change. He improved markedly on every workout, including a 16-rep PR on 12.4.

Whatever the 2013 Open brings, he’s ready for it.

“Bring it on,” he says. “I’ll give it my best shot.”