How I Found CrossFit and Community During Lockdown

Being a jiu-jitsu practitioner for the last ten years, I have naturally adopted the mindset to stay calm and leverage opportunities. However, it’s tough to practice the art as regularly as you would like because you start to lose muscle memory, rhythm, and accuracy.

That being the case, I had to find another sport that instilled the same discipline while putting myself outside of my comfort zone.

Enter CrossFit Firefly, a box gym I found on Facebook with no website, no significant presence, and no Yelp account. This was going to be interesting.

Good Coaching Cues Fire Up Neurons

Ferdinand Thieriot taught my first session with a glass-blower turned trainer and co-owner of Crossfit Firefly. While calling me out on my bad form, he eloquently elaborated on the little details that fixed my curved back and form throughout the AMRAP exercises.

It’s not exactly what he said, but how he said it that made it all click.

It was like engaging with an eccentric fitness guru that dedicates his time and effort to perfect the art of training another individual.

His few words opened up a new point of view that resonated with me.

My neurons and nerves were firing as I reinforced the habit of redistributing the weight across my feet rather than just the ball of my feet. And within three weeks, I did a set of cleans with perfect form during the AMRAP WODS.

Building a CrossFit Community

Ferdinand runs and co-owns CrossFit Firefly, established in 2015, with his wife, Tracy Thieriot. They are avid Breaking Muscle readers and credit Chris Holder’s kettlebell instructionals as one of their best resources for form and movement.

While Ferdinand built his career in the fitness industry through strong attention to detail, intense self-awareness, and a specific sense of direction, Tracy relied on her fiery creativity and sense of adventure as a dance communication and ethnic studies major who believes that entropy is her default state. Her modern dance and contact improvisation background led her to find CrossFit and explore other arts like Capoeira and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

We instantly connected through sharing our experiences in dance and mobility. Tracy says that doing WODS helps her develop a better sense of managing her center of gravity while exploring mobility and movement through her craft.

As a competitive athlete at 5’11″ with an ectomorph body type, that conversation hit home.

CrossFit is an excellent form of training to get in shape and condition your body if you’re a practitioner specializing in another art form.

The Circle Concept of Energy Transference

If you’ve read this far, then you might realize that Tracy and Ferd are purists who believe in the healing effects of exercise and the impact it has on the community.

They talk about this concept of circle technology—specifically the transference of energy through support, suffering, cheering, and abandoning all pretenses.

It’s raw, and it’s real.

We’ve all seen the best and worst of each other, so we might as well put in the real work.

You can say that the stars have been aligned for the CrossFit couple to serve the community through their box gym.

When you have all your members asking you to stay open throughout the lockdown, how can you not be motivated to fight for the right to keep your doors open?