Three qualifying workouts later and CrossFit Harrogate were on their way to the finals of The Glacier Games, The Meltdown 2016, held in Gateshead on Sunday 19th June. Our team consisted of Annelize, Rachael, Tom and Ryan. We had a really good time and improved on our qualifying position in the face of some very tough competition.
Only a handful of members have ever been to a fitness competition so we thought it would be good to get two perspectives…first of all, in this article, we have a competitor's point of view and in a future article we will cover the experience through the eye of a spectator.
Annelize has competed in a competition prior to this one back in 2012, just 10 months into her CrossFit journey. She admits she was very nervous and overwhelmed by the occasion, partly because Sam Briggs was there! From then on she spent more time on building a strong foundation to then add more complex movements to her repertoire so that she could “Compete with more mental and physical confidence.” Here’s what she had to say about her Glacier Games experience and how she prepared herself for it…
“My training focus for The Glacier Games was to try and work on the basic lifts i.e. Clean & Jerk, Push Press and Snatch. Weightlifting is the weaker part of my training and I have been stuck on my Snatch weight for over 6 months now.
My goal was to get to open gym as much as I could. I structured my time to a 15-20 min warm up where I tried to do functional warm ups with the dumbbells, which I really enjoyed. I am happy to say that even though snatches did not come up in the competition I feel so much more confident with the movement and also the weight I have been working towards over the past few months. Focusing on overhead work also increased my confidence in other lifts and on the day I managed to get a PB on the Jerk.
The actual day was brilliant, the workouts were doable and my team was super cool and laid back, which massively helped the nerves. Holding a 20kg plate above my head for 5 rounds proved an issue for me but I still learnt a lot from even that experience!
When you are at these competitions you naturally look around and compare yourself with the other athletes, and the females competing at the Glacier games were generally super fit and so strong! It’s perhaps easy to get frustrated that others are so far ahead of you but I must admit seeing fantastic performances and amazing weightlifting really spurred me on to train my weaknesses and enjoy reaching new levels of proficiency in my training while hanging out with lovely people and having a laugh doing it.
The support from the box members who were able to come and watch was also fantastic and it just wouldn’t have been the same without them there!
If your thinking of competing give it a go! It is really rewarding!”
There you have it, a good insight into Annelize’s preparation and experience during this year’s Glacier Games.