"You must train consistently with a coach... eat right and realize that improvement will come, even if it's not immediate."
With certain CrossFit athletes comes a long history of athletic achievement. Bill Grundler was a high school and collegiate champion wrestler. Jarrett Perelmutter is an undefeated and world champion kickboxer. Some CrossFitters, however, come from more modest athletic resumes.
Southern California’s Jon Pera, for example, is headed to the Regionals ranked 3rd between Perelmutter and Grundler. Pera is not a champion wrestler or world-ranked kickboxer or even an ex-collegiate athlete. He never competed in the upper echelons of a sport before CrossFit. He was a baseball player, but only from little league through high school.
The leap from a little league diamond or high school field to college or professional sports is like going from learning your “A-B-C’s” to drafting a novel. How, then, is Pera competing with, and surpassing, CrossFitters with much heftier athletic resumes?
He was a contender in the 2010 Sectionals less than three months after joining CrossFit Rancho Cucamonga. Pera acknowledges he was a capable CrossFitter since he began trying CrossFit alone at his gym at work. Pera made his first trip to the CrossFit Games last year and has even won unsanctioned competitions such as this past winter’s Next Level Invitational Series.
However he didn’t immediately succeed at CrossFit. In his first organized workout, a 21-15-9 sequence of burpees, box jumps, and sumo deadlift high pulls, Pera suffered through the mortal pukie. Even at Sectionals that year, he admits being tormented by double-unders. In the Stadium chipper at UCLA’s Drake Stadium, Pera, who was in the third heat of that workout, completed much of the zig-zag course of exercises before many of the athletes that started before him. But Pera was stalled trying to complete 70 double-unders, the chipper’s last exercise; he hadn’t yet learned that movement. It was in this bittersweet moment, he brandished his abilities but also showed he was an inexperienced athlete, demonstrating talent alone didn’t take Pera to where he is today.
This instance at Sectionals was where Pera also developed a resolve to dedicate himself to CrossFit. Sometime during this chipper, either when Pera was flying through the stair exercises or failing to complete his double-unders, he realized how much he was beginning to fall in love with the competitive and painstaking attitude that’s a part of the sport. He just didn’t want to quit. He loved the competitive excitement so much that he’s continued training to compete and be the best.
Along with this credo comes Pera’s dedication to preparing for this season’s Southern California Regional event. He is coached by Dan Mielke at CrossFit Rancho Cucamonga. Pera testifies that having a coach is absolutely necessary to be a competitor. In addition to keeping Pera in line with his training schedule and programming, Mielke acts as both an observer and strategist for Pera, not to mention a training partner (Mielke is an accomplished CrossFitter as well). “You must train consistently with a coach like Dan, eat right and realize that improvement will come, even if it’s not immediate,” he says.
His long training days with his coach include a full morning of track work, perhaps 6x800m sprints. The afternoons are complete with a gym session of strength training and Olympic lifting followed by a met-con, some interval training and core or accessory work. Just days away from his showing at the Southern California Regional, Pera will engage in some light workouts, and light endurance work along with just resting and recovering.
“I feel as if competition was born in me, I was raised to always strive to be the best at what I do, and to be thankful for the opportunity to do what I enjoy,” Pera says.
It is this intrinsic doggedness coupled with his sense of hard work that has brought him to where he is as an athlete. Pera, it seems, has had that tenacity since he began CrossFit. It’s a quality that makes you admire him and the journey he’s made from his work gym a few years ago to Carson last summer and now ranked 3rd going into the 2012 Regional.
The journey of this once-amateur CrossFitter and athlete parallels that of so many other CrossFitters out there. And if you either can’t make it out to Pomona, California next week or your allegiance lies with another athlete, think about Pera the next time you’re fighting for that last rep in your own workout.
