After missing the South East Regional by one place, Ryan Sunshine was left with a bad taste in his mouth. This year, he's back and ready for Regionals.
Photo by: Jorge Huerta
Ryan Sunshine was your typical teenager going into the 2012 Reebok CrossFit Games Open, more interested in hanging out with friends than qualifying for Regionals. He had no expectations as he prepared for his first CrossFit competition.
In its aftermath, however, Sunshine was left with a bad taste in his mouth. He ended up finishing the Open in 61st place — just one place shy of qualifying for the South East Regional.
“At the time, I was very upset, but now I realize that I hadn’t put in the effort and trained smart enough to earn a spot,” Sunshine says. “If I had gotten one more rep on any of the five workouts in the Open, that would have been enough to send me to Regionals. It has been almost a blessing in disguise because now a fire has been lit, and I’m determined to make it this year.”
Prior to the Open, Sunshine had been CrossFitting for a year, doing “lots of 20-minute AMRAPs and almost no strength work” as a way to improve his conditioning for the high school wrestling season. When an elbow injury forced him to drop wrestling his senior year of high school, he began to focus on CrossFit.
Now, the native Floridian has moved on to the University of Alabama where he’s leaning toward getting a degree in human performance and exercise science. He works out at CrossFit Tuscaloosa, counting as his training partners a couple of veteran competitors such as Sarabeth Phillips and Drew Shamblin, who finished sixth and 31st respectively at last year’s South East Regional.
Sunshine has also adopted Rudy Nielsen’s Outlaw Way programming. In less than a year, at a bodyweight of 165 pounds, he has seen his snatch improve from 165 lb. to 240 lb. His clean and jerk has jumped from 225 lb. to 285 lb. in a matter of months.
“I never realized how important strength was to metabolic conditioning until after starting Outlaw,” Sunshine says. “With competitions getting heavier and heavier, I feel like Outlaw is preparing me for what I will see.”
His performances at local competitions have established Sunshine as a rising star in the South East.
Not bad for a 19-year-old.
In spite of his recent success, Sunshine isn’t taking anything for granted. He acknowledges that he has a number of weaknesses, which he is addressing in the gym, such as workouts with a heavy weightlifting component. The same could be said of workouts that have a high-rep count of one movement, like Angie, which he says tests his mental toughness.
He also faces a challenge due of what he calls his “abnormally small hands,” which make it hard to maintain a hook grip. As a result, Sunshine says he struggles with hang cleans and snatches.
Sunshine acknowledges that the level of competition is getting stiffer every year. Success one year doesn’t guarantee success the next, and Sunshine is well aware of the ever-improving athletes, as well as athletes who seem to emerge from nowhere every competition season.
“My buddies laugh at me when I say I’m concerned that I could not make it again (to Regionals) because of how much better I’ve gotten since the 2012 Open, but I see more and more great athletes discovering CrossFit, and many people just like me that are also improving quickly,” he says. “I can’t simply just assume I’m going to qualify because I was so close last year.”
Sunshine demonstrates a level of maturity remarkable to someone his age. While his peers enjoy a vigorous social life at one of the biggest party schools in the South, Sunshine mostly avoids that scene and goes to sleep early in order to train the next day. His commitment and performances have caught the eye of sports apparel company RXforTime, which offered to sponsor him earlier this year.
Apart from qualifying for Regionals in 2013, Sunshine has no concrete long-term goals in the sport. He wants to be healthy and have fun working out while continuing to improve on a day-to-day basis.
