“There is a great sense of community in CrossFit, and I felt that as a physio, contributing my skills and expertise to help support the athletes at the Regionals was a great way to get involved.”
Credit: [photographer]
After finding CrossFit in 2009, Jess Ackad is one of Australia’s more experienced CrossFit athletes. The 2013 CrossFit Games Open is her third as a competitor and the 2013 Australia Regional will be her second as a volunteer physiotherapist.
“I volunteered for the 2012 Regionals because I wanted to be a part of it all,” Ackad explains. “There is a great sense of community in CrossFit, and I felt that as a physio, contributing my skills and expertise to help support the athletes at the Regionals was a great way to get involved. It was also a good challenge for me professionally and a chance to learn and grow as a CrossFitter.”
Ackad is looking forward to volunteering again this year.
“It was a great experience actually, so pretty keen to get down there again,” Ackad says.
Along with a couple of other physiotherapists and massage therapists, Ackad will be on call for the athletes.
“We sit down in the dungeon behind the scenes and any athletes that come up with any sort of injuries, or if they've got anything that's pre-existing, we try to patch them up so they can continue competing on the day,” she says.
“Normally, I'd try and take a long-term approach to it and really treat something so it doesn't become an ongoing issue or prevent it from coming back for someone, but when you're in a game day or competition scenario and you're on the sidelines so to speak, it's more about patching someone up so they can go back out there and finish their competition.”
What makes Ackad’s dedication to CrossFit even more impressive is that she also runs her own physiotherapy clinic, which requires her to schedule her training and participation in the Open at CrossFit Ignite Sydney in Sydney around patient treatment and paperwork.
“I train in my lunch break. I start at 7 a.m. and finish at 12 p.m., and then I train. Because I actually run the clinic, the afternoon I use for meetings and paperwork,” Ackad says.
“I just make sure that I make time to get to the box and train. I love it but it's also great for stress release and it refreshes me to go in for the afternoon. I'm lucky enough to be able to be in control of my own hours so I can timetable around that.”
The Open requires her to change her schedule slightly in order to do the workouts with her trainers.
“It's a little bit later than I'd usually train, but we’ve been doing it on a Thursday about two hours after they release the workout to get it over and done with,” Ackad says.
After 13.4’s couplet of toes-to-bars and heavy clean and jerks, Ackad finds herself in 222nd place in the Australia Region. She has no burning desire to compete at Regionals, she says.
“I'm pretty realistic. My biggest issue is really strength, and with the way things are going with CrossFit, it's just gotten heavier and heavier as the sport's progressed, which in a lot of ways it has to,” Ackad says.
“You've got to separate people out somehow. When I started three years ago, the loads of the recommended workouts were out of my reach but now I’m more than comfortable with them.”
While she isn’t aiming to compete at Regionals, that hasn’t stopped her from striving for perfection in her technique. As a physio, she is fully aware of the risks of participating in any sport without the right base.
“I'm not perfect … I rely quite heavily on the coaches at CrossFit Ignite to make sure that I do get picked up on any little technique issues,” Ackad says.
“I'd prefer to be picked up on technique issues and pulled back than to do something at a really high volume or high load, and take myself out with an injury.”
Ackad is content to continue as she has for the past two years.
“I'll just be volunteering for the foreseeable future,” she says. “I come from an endurance background rather than a lifting type background, so light and fast. If it was all light and fast bodyweight stuff I'd be happy and at home.”
