Instead of a typical suit-and-tie senior photo, Matt Hendershott documented his first muscle-up.
Most high-school seniors wear a suit and tie in their senior photo. Matt Hendershott, 18, had no interest in the standard senior photo. The moment he wanted to remember was the day he got his first muscle-up.
He asked the photographer to show up at his box, CrossFit Gryphon.
At the shoot, he chalked up his hands and grabbed the rings. He tried to do a muscle-up, but failed, again and again. As he grew more frustrated, he could hardly hear his coach’s cues. Eventually, the photographer told him he was on his final attempt.
He made it.
“It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done,” Hendershott says.
“You would have thought someone won a million dollars,” Hendershott’s mother, Diana, says.
That was five months ago. Today, Hendershott has signed up for the 2013 Reebok CrossFit Games Open.
Most of Hendershott’s life has been about sports — mainly, him wanting to play and his coaches benching him, he says. He wasn’t good at distance running, and his 125-lb. frame wasn’t ideal for football.
“I have always been the little guy,” he says.
Hendershott goes to school with 1,400 other students. Before CrossFit, he would just sort of blend in, his mother says. But now, “CrossFit has given him a spotlight.”
His mother fully supports him pulling out of other activities in favor of CrossFit. She couldn’t be happier for him to be surrounded by fit, healthy people.
“They’re not meatheads,” she says. “They’re policeman, fireman and the military, and they’re all spending time with my son without the politics of high school.”
This is Hendershott’s first Open competition and he’s hoping for bodyweight movements like push-ups, pull-ups and muscle-ups. His Annie time is 5:36 so double-unders would be great, too, he says.
