Samantha Briggs & Hayley Knowles Teaching here at CrossFit Colchester:

On Sunday25th August, the 2013 CrossFit games winner Samantha Briggs came to CrossFit Colchester to present a gymnastics workshop to a lucky group of our members.  Sam was also accompanied by the very talented Hayley Knowles, who together taught our guys many new training methods and an brilliant insight into their own training regime.

When they arrived everyone was a bit star struck (Carl Saville!), Sam is to CrossFitters what David Beckham is to Football fans so you can imagine what a privilege it was to attend this workshop and have her at our box showing us all her secrets……

After warming up Sam and Hayley explained what they would be doing throughout the day, pull-ups, toes to bar, muscle ups, handstand walks and hand stand push ups were all on the agenda for our athletes to learn nd fine tune their current skills.

We started on pull ups and Sam explained the importance of being able to do any exercise strict before you added a kipping movement to it. We practised kipping pull ups, buffer fly pull ups and a new technique to everyone- frog pull ups, (which Chris Quinney picked up beautifully). The high light of the day for me was when we went on to muscle up’s, feeling a million miles from getting one I was so excited to see what Sam could teach us, we set up boxes under the rig and did bar muscle up’s from the box! We then moved on to the rings and while two people stood either side and helped you up, next you know you’re doing a full muscle up!

We took a break for lunch and Sam sat outside with the rest of us and tucked in to a Nando’s!  We got to ask her questions about her life and how she first found CrossFit, she told us about her diet and her job which she is currently taking a career break from to concentrate on her training and retaining her title in 2014.

Back to work and next up was handstands and hand stand walks, we set up a long row of crash mats and after a brilliant demonstration from Hayley (and our own Darren Hotten) one by one we walked on our hands. For those that needed support we were holding on to each other’s legs to help balance and some people who couldn’t before were even doing a few steps by themselves by the end of the day using the key element of the hollow.

Finally we attempted some Handstand push ups, ranging from a 1inch elbow bend for some to a free standing headstand into handstand push ups (now this was just showing off- Andrew Kearton) but everyone had a go and everyone got further than they had ever done before.

Sam showed us that with hard work and dedication anyone can make huge progression, Sam has not been doing CrossFit her whole life; she only started when she was 26 and went on to win the 2013 CrossFit Games at age 31.

Every single person took something from the day and either learnt a new technique or got their first unassisted pull up/HSPU/Handstand walk etc the experience was priceless and something we will all look back on ever time we are struggling to get the hang of something or getting frustrated, even the best fail and struggle at times but it’s the ones that keep trying and pushing themselves harder that reach their dreams.

Fantastic workshop from start to finish and for great value too, now we are all looking forward to the Olympic Lifting workshop next!

Written By: Stacey Louise Saville