Owner of CrossFit Equator Brian Pandji talks about opening a box in Indonesia, his community and Open Workout 13.1
Why call your affiliate CrossFit Equator?
After finding CrossFit and seeing the change in me mentally and physically, I fell in love with the sport and decided it was time for me to give back to the community. Attending the Level 1 Certificate Course only confirmed that I wanted to share the CrossFit philosophy with everyone I knew. At the time, I was living in America, and I decided there and then that I wanted to be the pioneer in Indonesia for this awesome movement.
My mission is to spread CrossFit throughout Indonesia. It is a big goal as Indonesia has over 17,000 islands with an overall population of 242 million people, but we hope that we can be the beacon that will help others establish and maintain the highest quality of coaching and mentorship. “Equator” was picked because the Indonesian archipelago lies on the Equator and is the country with the most cities in which the Equator line passes through.
How is the community responding to the arrival of the sport?
It was challenging at first to get people to try CrossFit, largely because the concept of “fitness” here is still often misunderstood. In the beginning, people tried it because they were curious, but they quickly left because they thought it was too hard. Being a garage gym allowed us to stick with small groups and focus on the fundamentals.
As time passed, the athletes (who) stuck around saw results, and their friends saw their transformations, then people started running back to us. We are now being accepted as a different type of gym where people come to work hard, experience progress and hang out with their friends.
How has a relatively new affiliate like CrossFit Equator been preparing for this year’s CrossFit Games Open and the season?
This year, we tried to engage our members before the Open by educating them about the CrossFit Games season. We invited people to attend our ‘Competitor's Course,’ which looked at maintenance and recovery, and included mock Open Workouts, where athletes would complete an Open Workout from seasons gone by, with their own judge to experience how the next few weeks might feel. Coincidentally, all of our athletes are also in the middle of a nine-week long paleo challenge, so now they have additional motivation to continue to eat clean!
Any goats you’ve been working on?
Gymnastics are not our strong suit. Our goats continue to be running and things like muscle-ups and bar work. As our programming has a strength bias, we feel more comfortable with the barbell. What we have done to tackle this is to ensure that each Open competitor does some skills practice after each met-con and that they are supplementing their workouts with some isolation exercises to strengthen specific muscles needed for those goats.
How are you psyching up the CrossFit community in Jakarta during the Open and beyond?
Because CrossFit is still such a small community here in Jakarta, we’ve focused on getting most of our members to participate in, and experience the Open for themselves. We started creating a buzz about six weeks ago by letting people know that the Open was coming up and we educated them about the history of the Games and how the Open works. Five weeks before the Open, we started the ‘Competitor's Course,’ as well as a mobile group chat where we can talk about past WODs, Games athletes and predictions for upcoming workouts and strategies. Every Saturday during the Open, we will gather as many people as possible to come to the box to cheer for their teammates, run and judge the WODs and follow up with a lunch gathering. For 13.1 we held a BBQ at the box, and next week, one of our athletes is inviting us to his steak restaurant and sponsoring us with burger patties. We plan to continue to do this for the rest of the season.
Thoughts on Open Workout 13.1?
When announced, I thought the (workout) was a simple combination of 12.1 and 12.2, and didn’t think much of it. But after doing it, and then discussing it with our athletes, I realized it's another awesome workout.
This WOD was tough for everyone. The barbell beasts had trouble with the burpees, while the ‘ninjas’ struggled with the weights, so it really tests how well rounded you are as a CrossFit athlete.
At our box, the burpees all the way to 100 reps felt like a warm-up, but the 135-lb. snatch was an enormous feat. Everybody cheered and yelled while the athlete was giving it their all to lift that weight. It was awesome.
