"I've always been a competitor as I played basketball through college. The competitive side of CrossFit is something that I'm naturally drawn towards," Merricks said.
Photos courtesy of Shandon Smith.
Following the first week of the 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games Open, a new name appeared on the South East Leaderboard in second place.
After completing 411 reps on the double-under/snatch couplet, Sherman Merricks, 30, made it clear he was a contender in the region. Now, after four weeks of competition, this fairly unknown athlete finds himself in 18th place overall in the South East Region.
Merricks said he has been preparing for the 2014 Open for several years. He has been competing in local competitions since 2011, steadily improving each year, and he finished 200th overall in the South East in 2012.
“I knew when I first started that I wasn’t where I wanted to be,” Merricks said. “After going to the Wodapalooza competition in Miami (in January 2013), I knew I had to make changes to get better in the sport of CrossFit.”
Immediately following the competition, Merricks hired Doug Katona to help him reach his goals.
“I was giving a lecture to the (Wodapalooza) event attendees and he walked up after,” Katona said of his first meeting with Merricks. “His sincere wish to improve his mechanics and to be more competitive really struck a chord.”
The two men worked together and created a blueprint to prepare for this year’s Open. The plan was for Merricks to train for an entire year in order to peak at the right time. Merricks still competed in the 2013 Open, finishing 177th in the South East, but he had his sights set on bigger things for 2014.
Merricks was a collegiate basketball player at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Fla., and was a member of the 2005 NCAA Division II National Championship team. After graduation, he followed a “regular gym routine” for several years, training two muscle groups per day while adding in cardio after his weight training. He used a combination of machines and barbells in his training, but the workouts became boring. Merricks began looking for a challenge, which is what he found when his friend invited him to his garage gym to do his first CrossFit workout in 2010.
“We did a scaled version of the Lumberjack 20 workout,” Merricks recounted. “The workout was very tough, but I was hooked after that.”
He then began researching CrossFit on the Internet and was inspired watching videos of the early years of the CrossFit Games and workout videos from Chris Spealler, Miranda Oldroyd and Josh Everett. His competitive spirit was lit, and he soon realized he wanted to compete in CrossFit.
“I've always been a competitor as I played basketball through college,” he said. “The competitive side of CrossFit is something that I’m naturally drawn towards.”
He decided to get his Level 1 certificate to learn more about the sport and to help people achieve their fitness goals. Eventually, he resigned from his corporate job as an auditor and opened Dynasty CrossFit in Gainesville, Fla., where he is the owner and head coach.
“I just started CrossFit for fun,” Merricks said. “It became a passion and now a career.”
Merricks slowly began to build up his gym by using his passion to help people reach their full potential. He describes the gym as a “strong community of individuals dedicated to improving their lives and the lives of those around them.”
He follows an intense training regimen six days per week. The sessions include two workouts a day, two times a week, mixing in all phases of CrossFit. He manages to balance his training and coaching schedule while also being married with three children.
Merricks said his goal in CrossFit is to “constantly improve.”
“(Jason) Khalipa was able to improve on his weaknesses and take away that big-guy stereotype,” he said. “Seeing the improvements he made in the Games last year really inspired me to get better.”
Over the past year working with Katona, Merricks is starting to see the benefit of his hard work. By focusing on his strength program, Merricks has increased his snatch from 185 lb. to 235 Ib.; increased his clean and jerk from 235 lb. to 300 Ib.; increased his back squat by 40 lb. to 405 Ib.; and increased his deadlift by 30 lb. to 515 Ib.—all of this at a height of 5-foot-9 and weighing in at 180 Ib.
Merricks said he is most pleased with the improvements he has seen in his Olympic lifts, including improving his Olympic total by 115 Ib. in less than a year-and-a-half. Because he was self-coached on the snatch and clean and jerk, Merricks admitted his technique was poor. Working with Katona, he has been able to improve on the lifts in order to reach the next step in his CrossFit competition career.
“Every athlete matures and learns at a different rate, and the programming has to be sensitive to that,” Katona said. “Sherman and I communicate throughout the week to help game plan and having a strategic game plan is something he understands. Sherman implements our game plan and corrective cues about as fast as anyone I've seen."
He has also improved on his gymnastics and metabolic conditioning workouts. He now boasts a 2:30 Fran time, a 7:10 Helen time and can perform 30 muscle-ups in 2:39. All of those benchmarks have improved between 20 to 30 seconds since Merricks has begun working with Katona.
"I would say he is actually slightly ahead of schedule in his development,” Katona said. “He has adapted quickly to improving his movement efficiency, while we have worked methodically at getting him more powerful in his press strength and consistency of gymnastics."
"He is coachable and always positive,” Katona added. “It's important to make training fun and we have a pretty hilarious banter when he reports his results daily. We have an approach of being humble and confident. Sherman is inspired by his family, this sport, and he has a relentless pursuit to improve.”
Merricks said he still has a lot more to improve on before the South East Regional. He would like to continue to increase his strength numbers, while improving his overall work capacity.
“I guess Dave Castro will show me what else I need to improve on at the South East Regional,” he said.
With just one workout left of Open competition, Merricks appears to have earned a coveted spot to the South East Regional. He said he is looking forward to stepping into the spotlight and expects to have a great performance in Jacksonville, Fla.
“I’m a little nervous about regionals,” he said, “but I’m very excited about the live competition with the best guys in the South East Region.
