Five-Time Games Team: CrossFit Atlanta

Now, with less than two weeks until the 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games, CrossFit Atlanta is preparing to compete for its third year in a row and fifth time overall.

 

This year, its team shirts read: “5 CrossFit Games-Cali Bound: 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014.”

 

As Georgia’s first and oldest CrossFit affiliate, CrossFit Atlanta dates back to 2005. Many of this year’s team members have been a part of the growth of the CrossFit movement in the area. 

 

The team prides itself on bringing a wealth of experienced athletes to the competition arena. 

 

“Experience is a big thing that separates this team from some of the others,” said team member Mike Giardina. “There is a lot of training and competition experience among us and I think it helps. Most of us have been members at the gym for five years or more.”

 

The team members are practically family, and they agree that also plays a large role in their comfort with one another on the competition floor.

 

“We have a married couple,” team member Rob Miller said. “I am dating one of our girls, Leah, and my younger brother Andy is on the team. We spend a lot of time together, and the last thing any of us want to do is let everyone else down. We train for each other.” 

 

The names on this year’s team roster include Giardina, his wife Bethanie, Leah Polaski, Kylie Crane, and brothers Andy and Rob Miller.

 

Giardina, or ‘Mike G’ as he is known in the CrossFit community, is the veteran of the team. He discovered CrossFit back in 2007 after getting out of the military. He quickly took to competing. 

 

“If someone would beat him in a workout in the gym, he’d take his shirt off, turn around and do the workouts all over again,” box owner Dan MacDougald said. 

 

Giardina, 33, has competed every year at regionals and/or the Games since 2008. From 2008 to 2010, Giardina competed at the Games as an individual. He then decided competing on the team was more fun and participated on the 2011 regional team, as well as the Games teams from 2012 to 2014. 

 

Bethanie, 29, was next in line to find CrossFit. She has been part of CrossFit Atlanta since 2008 and part of its team since its inception in 2009, sitting out only in 2011 to have a baby. She met Giardina through the gym, and the two are now CrossFit Level 1 Seminar Staff members. 

 

Polaski, 34, joined CrossFit Atlanta right after the Giardinas. She originally discovered CrossFit in 2008 when she moved into a house right around the corner from the box. After months of driving by, she decided to drop in one day to complete a version of Cindy.

 

“After getting my butt kicked by a 10-minute Cindy that Monday morning, I was hooked and have not looked back since,” said Polaski, who couldn’t do a pull-up at the time.

 

Three months later, Polaski was competing in local competitions, and by 2010, she was in Carson, California, competing as a part of the team at the CrossFit Games. She went on to compete as an individual in 2011 and then back on the team in 2012 and 2013. She is also on the Level 1 Staff.

 

Polaski said her biggest strength as an athlete is that she specializes in not specializing. She said this makes her a better team player.

 

“I don't really have any obvious strengths,” she said. “I'm pretty well-rounded, which bodes well in CrossFit competitions. I won't win many events, but I get through most anything.” 

 

The Miller brothers were both Division I collegiate swimmers at Georgia Tech University prior to discovering CrossFit. The eldest, Rob, 28, was the trendsetter upon graduation six years ago when a former teammate introduced him to the sport as a means of releasing his lifelong competitive energy. 

 

“I've always been pretty competitive so the competitive side of CrossFit really appealed to me,” Rob said. 

 

Rob has been competing in some form of CrossFit since 2009 when he participated in the Georgia Regional. In 2010, he went to sectionals, placing sixth. In 2011, he competed individually at the South East Regional, placing 36th overall. After that year, he decided to give the team a try, and from 2012 on he has been part of the CrossFit Atlanta team. 

 

Rob is quick and prides himself in many of the body-weight movements and metabolic-conditioning events where his former distance swimming endurance helps out. He boasts a 10:55 Angie time, 28.6-round Cindy, a 6:49 Helen, a 446-rep Fight Gone Bad, a 15:36 Filthy 50, and 30 muscle-ups in 2:38.

 

Andy, 26, joined his brother and the rest of the gang in 2012, bringing his strength and speed to the team. 

 

“As a swimmer, I was a sprinter, and my best event lasted less than a minute,” he said. “I qualified for the NCAA championships in the 100 breaststroke. In the team competition, rep speed is more important than the ability to grind through longer workouts, and I find myself well-suited for that.”

 

“Examples of my specific strengths include a 345-lb. clean and jerk, 370-lb. bench press, a 1:19.8 500-m row, a 4:20 Karen, and of course, swimming,” Andy said.

 

Lastly, Kylie Craine, 34, has been a member of CrossFit Atlanta since 2010 and took the third spot this year. While all team members, except for Craine, have competed in Carson together, her roots with the team run deep. She competed on the 2011 team at the South East Regional when it just missed the chance to go to the Games with a fourth-place finish. 

 

While the team redeemed itself the following two years by qualifying for the Games, Craine was forced to sit out due to a shoulder impingement in 2012 and torn forearm muscle in 2013. This year, she said she’s finally feeling healthy. 

 

“Going to the Games has been something I wanted to do for four years now, and it’s great to be back,” Craine said. “I am so happy to finally be healthy this year.”

 

On the first day of the 2014 South East Regional, however, Craine’s wish to qualify for the Games looked like it might be in jeopardy.

 

“As soon as we saw the workouts, we knew we just had to make it through Day 1,” Polaski said. “We are definitely more of a strength-based team, not a gymnastics team, so we just needed to survive that day.”

 

The team actually did better on Event 1—muscle-ups and clean and jerks—and Event 2—a hang squat snatch—than they initially thought. 

 

“Muscle-ups have always been my weakness so having muscle-ups as the first movement of regionals was scary for me,” Craine said. “I did a lot of mental prep for that event. Luckily, the rest of my team flew threw their muscle-ups, so we did OK, finishing fourth in the event.”

 

The team knew Event 3—a max-distance handstand walk—would be a struggle, and ended up finishing in 14th place. Its 365 total feet accumulated was 165 feet less than the event’s first-place finishers CrossFit Adrenaline. 

 

While Event 3 did not seem to work toward its favor, a couple of the teammates actually set new PRs—Craine by 25 feet, walking a total of 50 feet, and Polaski by 22 feet, walking a total of 25-feet. 

 

“For having only walked a total of 3 feet before as an individual at the Games in 2011, I’ll take it,” Polaski said. 

 

All in all, the team did not let their performance on Event 3 get them down. 

 

“The handstand walk went pretty much as well as we all expected. Other teams seemed to have a couple token people that were great at handstand walking, and we didn't. It was hard not to be affected by the standings after Day 1, but based on past experience, I knew we were only going to climb from there,” Andy said.

 

At the end of Day 1, the team sat in fourth place. That night, the team members ate dinner together, went back to their hotel to get some sleep, ready to come back stronger the rest of the weekend. They said there was no extra strategizing or over-analyzing of the Leaderboard needed. 

 

“We don’t really do pep talks with one another,” Bethanie said. “We all know our goals and what we are working towards.” 

 

Days 2 and 3 went exactly as planned—in their favor, with no less than a top-five finish on all events. 

 

For Events 4 and 5, both the women (Event 4) and men (Event 5) took second-place finishes in the thruster and rope-climb event. 

 

“My biggest contribution was likely during the rope climbs in Event 5,” said Andy, who stands at 6-foot-1. “Being taller and having a longer wingspan is bad for the vast majority of CrossFit movements, rope climbs being one of the only exceptions.”

 

The team’s first-place finish on Event 6—strict handstand push-ups, hang power cleans and burpees—was enough to put Day 1 behind it. 

 

“We started working on our strict handstand push-ups about a week before, Bethanie said. “For all three of us girls to get them in time was a huge accomplishment.”

 

The team never even practiced the event together. 

 

“Each team member ran through Event 6 individually so we knew we could complete it under the time cap, but it didn’t really matter what order we went in because all we wanted was to finish strong,” Craine explained of the team’s strategy. “I had never done strict handstand push-ups in a workout before that event, just occasionally did them during warm-up.”

 

Following its 17:49 finish on Event 6, the team found itself sitting in third place overall going into the final day—14 points out of first place.

 

With a fifth-place finish on Event 7—row, double-unders, deadlifts and toes-to-bars—and a third-place finish on Event 8—pull-ups and overhead squats—CrossFit Atlanta secured second place overall for another trip to the Games. 

 

The team credits the support from its affiliate to its second-place status. Thirty members traveled more than six hours to support the team in Jacksonville, Florida. 

 

“Our gym comes out in force—to the regional and the Games—all to support us. We wouldn’t be where we are without it,” Polaski said.

 

Polaski also credits many of the CrossFit Atlanta members, who were cheering them on from home, for pushing the team to a podium finish during their daily grind in the gym.

 

“We have a gym that thrives on friendly competition, which consistently pushes each other to be better,” Polaski said. “It makes all of us want to improve. That competition helped us get where we are today.”

 

In fact, the team said the competitive atmosphere of its affiliate has helped the athletes make it to the Games for five years. Due to six busy schedules, the team only trains together once per week, and each member often relies on other gym-goers to give them the extra push they need to get through their daily training.

 

The 10,000-square-foot space houses both an open gym area for members to train and follow their own programming throughout the day, as well as plenty of space for classes to take place at the same time. 

 

“I never set out to create a competitive gym; it just happened,” MacDougald said. “Competitive people flock together. I coached rugby at Georgia Tech for years, and I found if you had good athletes who came out, you’d attract good athletes. We’ve always emphasized high-quality movement and coaching.”

 

Each individual typically trains at a different time and completes whatever workout Giardina and masters qualifier Ken Gall have programmed for them to do each day.

 

“Our workouts typically consist of met-cons including a fair amount of work-rest intervals to mimic the tempo of many team workouts,” Polaski said. “We've also added in some movements that we think might prepare us well for the unknown and unknowable aspect of the Games, such as swims, overhead carries, heavy sled pushes and pulls as well as heavier loads in higher-skilled movements. All of us continue to focus part of our training on our individual weaknesses so for me, that is strength work, specifically as it relates to Olympic lifts, as well as high-skill gymnastics movements.”  

 

This method of training on their own schedules has always worked best for the team, and with the same goal of qualifying for the Games, the team said it doesn’t matter whether they are in the gym at the same time or not. 

 

“Our goal is to just finish better than last year,” Polaski said. 

 

Giardina added: “And have fun.”