The Difference is CrossFit

July 20, 2016

Andréa Maria Cecil

Seven-time masters competitor Lynne Knapman credits methodology with improving intellectual, motor skills of special-needs son.

When her now 26-year-old son Chris was a baby, Lynne Knapman thought he was going to die. So she said a prayer to God that was more analogous to brokering a deal.

“'If you let him live, I’ll never complain about him,’” Knapman recounted.

And she doesn’t.

But she does have three other children, the 56-year-old quickly added. And she complains plenty about them, she said with a hearty laugh.

Chris was born with an intellectual disability that also affects his motor skills. In the past, it was common for him to “cause a calamity” by simply walking down the street, much less running, Knapman said. Chris did not possess the judgment to walk around another person. Instead, he would just walk right into them, with his mother right behind him profusely apologizing to strangers.

Things have changed in the past several years, though.

“He’s really agile on this feet,” Knapman said. “If you could see the difference it’s made in him, it’s incredible.”

That “it” is CrossFit.

Chris could not even hang from a pull-up bar when he started training at CrossFit Active in Australia. Today he can do 10 unbroken pull-ups, can complete box jumps and has a 154-lb. back squat. And Chris was able to complete all the scaled workouts in this year’s Open.

“It’s immensely scalable,” Knapman said. “It’s given my whole family a life that we wouldn’t have otherwise had.”

She continued: “It’s worth every single cent we’ve ever paid. It’s absolutely fabulous.”

Knapman’s CrossFit journey started in 2009, when she became a personal-training client of former individual Games competitor Chad Mackay. Her husband, Pete, had dragged her along as she was planning on participating in the annual City2Surf run that starts in Sydney and ends at a beach nearly 9 miles away.

“I think my husband thought he’d be left with four children because I’d be dead,” she recounted with a laugh.

She was 49 at the time, loved running on a treadmill three times a week and could only squat to a 30-inch plyo box.

“I was the raw sponge on the floor,” Knapman said.

Today she’s the only athlete to qualify for all seven CrossFit Games masters competitions. It’s an impressive feat, though Knapman doesn’t think so.

“I’m not that great,” she stressed after Tuesday afternoon’s Adiós Amigos event. “It’s not me just being polite either. … I’m just not that bad.”

Knapman finished the event—with snatches as heavy as 95 lb. and a total of 5 ring muscle-ups—in 9:34.85 to record a fourth-place finish.

All of this competing, she said, happened by accident. The first time she qualified in 2010, it was a surprise.

“After that, I tried,” said a jovial Knapman.

One of her first competitions, she recalled, included a max clean. She didn’t know what it was.

“’Max Clean—who’s he?’” Mackay remembered her saying.

“I thought a clean was a man,” explained 134-lb. Knapman, laughing.

After the first event of her second day of competition at this year’s Games, the full-time math teacher sat in third place overall in the Masters Women 55-59 division.

Her athletic achievements, however, aren’t what excites her most.

“I’m healthy, but the best thing of all is I’m strong,” said 5-foot-2 Knapman, who once weighed 154 lb. “To be strong at … (56) feels awesome.”

Asked how much longer she would keep competing, Knapman smiled.

“Ten would be a good number, don’t you think?”