First gym to try out: Crossfit Rise

The past week I've been attending Crossfit Rise, and I have to say I'm impressed with the place. The owners are a married couple, with the wife (Jessica Schulz) having gone to crossfit nationals last year. It's brand new, they opened up in April, and it's the closest gym to where I'm living at being only a 15 min drive away. The facilities are top notch, 12k sq feet, oly platforms and a 30m grass track for sled work. One thing I really, really like about what they have to offer is they have an olympic lifing instructor come in every Wednesday and go over the lifts. This is awesome. She's not even a crossfitter, just a straight up NSCA certified oly instructor. I attended the class and we worked on the double knee bend for the clean. The double knee bend is the most effiecient way to lift weight, but because of its complexity we never really worked on it at CFOT.

Because they are so new they only have like 20 members. A large class for them is four people! This is nice in that I get a lot of personal attention (was called out for pressing out on a jerk during a met-con), but the downside is that they don't have much of a community yet. I know they will, the market is there, it's just going to take time. ...Another nice thing is I seem to be one of the more fit people in the group, I find myself having faster times and lifting heavier weights then anyone else, it can be nice to be a big fish in a small pond. The pressure of feeling like I HAVE to finnish first is a nice change, it really motivates me to do better and to push myself.

When asked about their programming, they said they don't have a strength bias per se, but tuesday and Thursdays are strength days, and they're able to figure out a plan just for me. Not exactly what I'm looking for, but I get the feeling there isn't a real big strength bias around these parts.

Because of the facilities, proximity, and mostly because of the Oly class, this is my current frontrunner for my new crossfit home.