16.03.08

Crossfit Cleans Up at British Masters Weight Lifting Championship

Posted in Crossfit, General at 10:33 am by Colin McNulty

On Saturday I took a 200 mile round trip to the Lilleshall National Sports Centre near Telford to support 7 members of Crossfit Manchester who were competing in the BWLA British Masters Weight Lifting Championship Finals!

Who were these mighty giants of British Weightlifting? Mark Beck, my Crossfit coach is by most weightlifting measures a wee slip of a man, in fact I think he was probably the lightest male competitor there at about 65kg. One of the other competitors said to me incredulously:

“There’s not an ounce of fat on that man!”

What about the other 6 monster British weightlifters from Crossfit Manchester: all women. In fact at a stroke, Crossfit Manchester doubled the number of women competing in the entire event. So much so that for the first time in living memory it seems, they had to split the women up into 2 lifting groups, something previously unheard of.

Bare in mind that this is the British Masters Weight Lifting championships, which means that you have to be over 35 to compete. 5 of the 6 women are over 40, several of which are ordinary working wives and mothers, who have done no more weightlifting training than simply attend Crossfit for a year, since the doors opened in Manchester.

The most entertaining part of the day was to be found in conversation with other established weight lifting competitors, who were amazed at the 25 or so Crossfitters who had invaded their domain, and were keen to learn about where we were from and what Crossfit was. The best question was:

“So do you do Power Lifting as well as Weight Lifting at Crossfit?”

Imagine their faces when I replied: “On no, we’re not a weight lifting gym at all, we’re a fitness gym. Weightlifting, combined with gymnastics and circuit training, is just part of what we do to get Stronger, Fitter, Faster!” Haha.

I was not trying to belittle the man, I have the greatest respect for athletes of any kind, and there were some very strong and technically accomplished lifters there (there were some who had shocking form however). Many competitors may have been strong, but for the majority, you’d be hard pressed to apply the tag of “fit” to describe their physiques however. Fat, over weight, pot bellied, are words that spring to mind. I did joke that perhaps we should have challenged a few of them to a quick Crossfit Fran or something similar. Lol. It was a good example of how specialism differs in physical results from Crossfits deliberate generalism.

It is a testament to Crossfit’s efficacy that we were able to field 7 competitors in this very specialised event. As it happened, every one of our competitors was unopposed in their combination of age group and weight category, so Crossfit Manchester can now boast a massive 7 British Masters Weight Lifting Champions! And proud of them all I am.

I hope that by next year, my Golfer’s Elbow will have sorted itself out, and I’ll be able to compete myself. At my current weight, I’ll compete in the 85kg category and so need to lift 175kg combined across a Snatch and Clean & Jerk in a satellite competition in order to qualify for the finals. I would hope that a 75kg Snatch and a 100kg Clean & Jerk should be achievable within a year.

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