"Negativity, I can't have that ... Now, it's all about, 'What's the next workout? What do I need to do, and how am I going to do it?'"
The night before the 2014 Central East Regional, three-time CrossFit Games athlete Michelle Kinney lay sleepless in her stuffy hotel room.
“Literally, I was up all night with visions of the hang snatch and handstand walk,” Kinney said. “It was a very intense way to open the competition; there were a lot of nerves there.”
She had reason to be nervous. After watching five-time CrossFit Games competitor Stacie Tovar fail to qualify out of the North Central Region the week before, Kinney knew her first-place Open finish predicted little for the regional weekend.
“It’s a different set of workouts and it’s a clean slate for everybody,” Kinney said. “I know better than to take the Open too seriously in terms of expecting to win the regional.”
With a 160-lb. hang squat snatch, Kinney tied Heather Welsh, Danielle Sidell and Mikki Nuccio for sixth place on the first event. A couple minutes later, she kicked up into a handstand and walked nearly three-quarters of the way across the competition floor. With a total distance of 85 feet, Kinney finished the event in 11th place.
To close out the first day of the regional, Kinney completed all 150 pistols, 21 muscle-ups, and 30 125-lb. hang power cleans in Nasty Girls V2 in 10:06 for ninth place.
She would enter the second day of the regional in fourth place, 8 points behind third-ranked Alyssa Ritchey. While fans fretted another veteran might fall, Kinney celebrated. Her 160-lb. hang squat snatch was a 5-lb. PR, equal to her best full snatch from the floor.
“I was super happy with Day 1,” she said. “My handstand walk wasn’t my best but I didn’t choke, and to get a personal best in a strength event was pretty frickin’ awesome.”
The PR, she said, was the result of strength-biased training over the past year, and a slight change in diet that added 8 lb. to her 5-foot-4 frame, bringing her from 137 lb. last year to a current weight of 145 lb.
“I ate sandwiches twice a week, and drank more beer—dead serious,” she said. “(The weight) has been helpful, and hasn’t been too detrimental to my gymnastics and endurance.”
That much was clear after she tied Nicole Holcomb for fourth place in Event 4, a descending ladder of strict handstand push-ups, front squats and burpees. Breaking the handstand push-ups into sets of 2 and 3 and maintaining a conservative, but consistent, pace on the burpees, she hit the mat at 11:29, 40 seconds faster than her pre-regional practice run.
The gap between Kinney and Ritchey shrunk by 2 points, but then came the rope.
Event 5 wasn’t Kinney’s first experience with legless rope climbs. At the 2013 Reebok CrossFit Games, she took 25th place in Legless, a couplet of legless rope climbs and thrusters. Knowing how quickly her arms would burn out, she paced the event, turning the 200-foot sprint into a jog and taking time to shake out her arms before her first pull.
The plan worked until her final ascent.
Ritchey and Kinney—one fighting to keep the final podium spot, the other fighting to claim it—sprinted nearly step-for-step toward the rig for their final ascents.
With Ritchey closing in, Kinney spared no time for rest, leaping straight from her sprint to the rope. She made it halfway up before she could pull no more, falling back to the ground before the rep was complete. She fared no better on her second attempt.
Though Ritchey also struggled with a double no-rep, Kinney was slower to recover. While Kinney shook out her arms on the floor, Ritchey minimized her rest, leaping for a third attempt just after the 7-minute mark. After making her final ascent, Ritchey hit the mat at 7:38. Kinney finished 24 seconds later, sprinting to her mat at 8:02 for 13th place in the event.
Her rank after Day 2 was the same as it had been the day before: Fourth place overall and 8 points away from the podium.
“In (Event 5), I took a risk and it cost me a lot,” Kinney said. “I expected to gain ground and I lost ground.”
Kinney’s friends and family greeted her silently as she emerged from the athlete village after the day’s events.
“Everyone was super quiet, and not talking about the obvious challenge in front of me,” Kinney said. “I was bummed about it, but I knew it wasn’t over. Anything was possible.”
That night, Pat Sherwood of the “CrossFit Games Update” predicted Kinney would not make a fourth trip to the Games. But Kinney wasn’t watching.
“Negativity, I can’t have that,” Kinney said, remembering the depression she slunk into after failing to qualify for the Games two years ago. “In 2012, I dwelled on things, and it was very much reaction-based behavior instead of sticking with the plan. Now, it’s all about, ‘What’s the next workout? What do I need to do, and how am I going to do it?’”
It was an attitude she honed while making her comeback last year, a philosophy of positivity taught by her coach CJ Martin of CrossFit Invictus.
“Michelle showed last year that she understands what it means to fight and give her full effort whether she was trailing or leading in competition,” Martin said. “Because of her mindset, I knew she would never crack under the pressure.”
And she didn’t crack—not even while chasing Julie Foucher in Event 6, with whom she had not competed since the year Foucher took first place at the regional while Kinney missed the podium.
“I learned from 2012 to not try to stay with Julie Foucher or else you crash and burn,” Kinney said. “I put my head down and kept moving; that was the game plan all along. There was a little more sense of urgency, a little more hurt.”
Kinney’s seventh-place finish in Event 6 held her in fourth until the final event, just 3 points now standing between her and Ritchey. The podium was decided in just more than 2 minutes.
With 64 pull-ups and 8 heavy overhead squats between Kinney and Carson, California, adrenaline took over. The pull-ups felt easy and her body seemed weightless. She was tempted to go for broke with large sets on the rig. But she was smarter than that.
“If you change your game plan, things blow up,” she said.
She broke her pull-ups into a set of 30 and two sets each of 10 and 7 reps. But she wasn’t the only one who was fast on the rig.
“I noticed that Julie and Alyssa were off the pull-up bar right around the same time as me, and for a brief second, I was like, ‘Man, I don’t have (the) Games,’” Kinney remembered. “But I switched focus and thought, ‘Put your hands on your bar, just like you practiced, and lift the weight.’”
Forgetting the athletes around her, Kinney cleaned the bar, and gave just enough of a jerk to lift it over her head and onto her back, from there, she reset her hands and push pressed it overhead.
Putting four reps in the bank before Ritchey had finished 1 overhead squat, Kinney’s year of squats and sandwiches paid off with 8 unbroken 135-lb. overhead squats. She raced to her mat to stop the clock at 2:09—5 seconds behind event winner Foucher.
But the game wasn’t over. In order to claim the third podium spot, Kinney needed at least two other competitors to beat Ritchey’s time.
As Ritchey looked to go unbroken, Kinney’s fourth trip to the Games began to fade before her eyes. But after failing to reach full depth on her final overhead squat, Ritchey was called back to her bar to re-do the final rep.
While Ritchey wrestled with her bar, four other competitors in her heat hit the mat, and her time of 3:04 put her in eighth place for the event.
Still, the math was confusing, and at first, Kinney thought her performance hadn’t been good enough to close the point gap. As the Leaderboard shifted, the Jumbotron in Fifth Third Arena broadcast her worry for all to see.
“It was a pretty terrible feeling,” she said. “I thought I had missed (qualifying for the Games) by 1 (point).”
But when the numbers were totaled, Kinney came out ahead, taking the third podium spot by a 3-point margin. When Head Judge Adrian Bozman told her the news, she broke into tears.
“That moment was pretty amazing,” she said.
Now, Kinney will prepare for her fourth trip to Carson. It’s an opportunity she doesn’t take for granted.
“I know how special it is, so each time holds a special place in my heart,” she said. “This past year particularly I’ve been given so many amazing opportunities to travel and train, and meet some of the coolest people I’ve ever met in my life.”
Between now and the Games, Kinney will continue to develop strength, squatting with the sunrise. Working with high percentages and low-to-moderate sets of reps, since January she’s added 15 lb. to her front squat for a PR at 225 lb., and 20 lb. to her back squat for 265 lb.
After rounding out the morning with Olympic lifting, she coaches the lunchtime class at her affiliate, CrossFit Chickasaw, and caps off the day with gymnastics skill work and conditioning.
“I need to get more efficient with the bar muscle-up, and the crazy stuff you never know if they’ll throw at you,” she said, referencing freestanding handstand push-ups or forward rolls on the rings.
Remembering her 25th-place finish in The Pool at the Games last year, she also plans to hire a swim coach and “work on getting from point A to point B, efficiently,” she said with a laugh. “Then I’ll hit some open water as the Games get closer.”
But she’s not stressing out by trying to read Director of the Games Dave Castro’s mind.
“My goal is to enjoy the CrossFit Games every moment, and do the best I can,” she said. “And show people to give everything you’ve got to whatever it is you’re after. If you give every ounce of your being toward that, you have to be satisfied with the effort and enjoy the ride.”
