“We want it pretty badly. We know it will be a fight, but making the Games again is definitely doable.”
Ben Wise started CrossFit in his friend’s garage gym.
“We did Fight Gone Bad,” he remembers. “It was pretty terrible. I was in decent shape, but it still left me crushed at the end. I think my first score was right around 250. I went back once a week and did Fight Gone Bad every week.”
After two months of working out in the garage, Wise began to loosely follow main site programming for about a year. It wasn’t until he graduated college in 2009 that he joined Diablo CrossFit.
“Since then, I’ve pretty much convinced everyone I know to get into a gym, including my mom, dad, brothers, sister, cousins and roommates,” Wise says.
This year’s Open was a mixed bag for Wise. His schedule is tight as he prepares to attend the Fire Academy.
“The Open was pretty mentally tough this year … I wasn’t able to put as much time into the Open (workouts) that I have previously, and I only really had one chance to do each workout,” he says.
Still, Wise exceeded his own expectations and finished ninth in NorCal and 105th worldwide.
“I thought all of the workouts were a good test,” he says. “My favorite workout was 13.2 — box jumps are one of my best movements. My least favorite workout was 13.5. I have never spent so much time in a workout looking up at the clock willing it to move faster.”
After the Open, Wise had to decide whether he would stick with a team for Regionals or venture out as an individual. After being accepted into the Fire Academy and being forced to put his training second, he decided to go to Regionals with the Diablo CrossFit Anejo Team once again.
“I am currently trying to start a career in the fire service, so right now there isn’t really a lot to my life outside of CrossFit and Fire Academy,” he says.
“I fell off a bit from where I wanted to be,” Wise says. “We made the decision as a group to go team again this year because our goal is to win the CrossFit Games Affiliate Cup.”
Once Diablo athletes Whitney Hueser, third in NorCal, and Eleni Frediani, fourth in NorCal, decided to go team again, Wise knew he made the right choice.
“They are the ones who keep me motivated to stay fit and workout all year,” Wise says about his teammates.
Throughout the year, the athletes on the Diablo team train individually.
“We kind of work on our own things and do individual programming based on our needs designed by Jeremy Jones and Achim Christner.”
Now that they have secured their spot to Regionals, the team has started doing skill work including practicing transitions and focusing on communication.
Owner and head coach at Diablo, Jones comes out with a spreadsheet of lifts, met-cons, skill work and accessory work at the beginning of each week.
“We call his programming Plan D (D for Diablo). We also have another coach, Achim Christner, who takes Jeremy’s weekly programming and puts it together in what we should be doing on a daily basis for those of us who need further direction,” he says.
“We definitely hope to qualify for the Games; we have the last two years.”
The team finished third at last year’s CrossFit Games team competition.
“We want it pretty badly,” Wise says. “We know it will be a fight, but making the Games again is definitely doable.”
