What struck me once again is how many coaches there are out there who want to learn and grow so they can best serve their clients.  They come to our courses and hear a lot of new thoughts, ideas, and principles.  They engaged in coaching practices, communication and brainstorming sessions in order to expand their perspectives and learn from one another.  And what they tell me at the end of the course is that they are fundamentally changed, their eyes have been opened to the nuances of people and the differences that exist between us all.  Their coaching bandwidth has been expanded because their capacity to coach a variety of people has been stretched.

Routine is a part of life—particularly if your fitness and exercise regime is important to you.

Madi Glass is a high school Onsite Coaching Client here in Scottsdale.  She is coached by Head Coach Michael Bann.  Her priorities are a linear progression in basic barbell lifts with unilateral work for accessory training

Miko’s training initial training focus has been on addressing some underlying structural issues that led to a minor back injury earlier in the year. As these continue to improve we’re starting to incorporate more barbell work and technique focus into his training.

“At this time of year, athletes only really need to focus on refining skills in relation to the competition they are going into. Too many athletes tend to overcomplicate their training in the hopes of improving. The reality is that athletes don’t get tremendously better between the Open and the Regional Competition.”

Tennil will be tackling 18.3 in her morning session at OPEX North Scottsdale.

Whether you are an athlete, a business owner, or somebody looking for health and fulfillment there becomes a time when you must go through discomfort.  That discomfort can come in many forms:

The 2018 CrossFit Open was slated to be a rather routine and uneventful step for OPEX Sponsored Athlete Austin O’Neal on his path to the South-West Regionals and ultimately, the CrossFit Games. In fact, much of his training was focused on the regionals competition rather than the Open. However, that all changed during the second workout of the 2018 CrossFit Open, 18.2.

Every year, Zen Planner produces a financial report compiled from surveys of all of the gyms in their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Information such as member size, rent expense, number of instructors, and types of classes offered is compiled and analyzed to benefit their community and the fitness industry as a whole. We can learn a great deal about the fitness industry, how to run a gym, and how to determine what success means by taking a look at this report.

Pacing, or tempo training, has been around for as long as we can remember. However, how do you incorporate tempo training while using mixed modal training? James Fitzgerald talks through how to build aerobic endurance and how to attack a mixed modal workout while using pacing throughout.

First things first, it’s important to define what exactly ‘Paleo’ means when you ask the question, because depending on who you talk to, you may get conflicting points of view.

When you’re thinking about quality of service, you have to think about what exact experience you want your clients to have. If you don’t know what you want them to do, feel, think on a daily basis when their thinking about their training or when they’re doing their workouts in the gym, you won’ t create it. You first have to map out the experience you want.

The flood of information out there about health can make living a healthy life very difficult and confusing. At OPEX Fitness, we often onboard a lot of clients and at

As a coach, the importance of recognizing emotional as well as physical constraints cannot be overstated.  I try my best to anticipate physical and emotional challenges before a client reaches them.  Being able to anticipate a specific challenge offers the opportunity to provide support to your client as they transition through the challenge and reach success or failure on the other side.  A couple of years ago I watched as a client practiced a routine muscle up transition and moments later left the gym with tears welling in her eyes.  I was barely able to ask if she was ok before she was out the door.  At first I worried she was physically injured, but within seconds I realized she was emotionally distraught.  This incident was my first exposure to the complexity of certain emotional challenges.

Tennil has 3 sessions today as she prepares for the CrossFit Regionals. In the AM she has some skill play, front squats, power snatches and some increasing effort work. Noon Tennil has some HS walk practice paired with ring muscle ups and pistols. In the PM a long walk in the elevation room.

This is how I see the proliferation of CrossFit testing across the board for masters and teens in particular. I mean why have Masters competitions? In reality it makes sense, as there is some truth in people getting older and not being able to “keep up” as hard as it is (speaking personally). From this comes variations in the competition to allow “these others” to play.

James FitzGerald has been a long-time advocate for creating quality and consistency within competitive functional fitness. Gretchen Kittelberger launched what is today the International Functional Fitness Federation, IF3, with the mission of organizing functional fitness and ultimately being invited into the Olympic Games. When IF3 launched FitzGerald immediately felt a deep connection to the mission, sport, and governing body.

I gave it a “chance”. Many others around me did not. As with all things I come into play with, I am patient and all consuming of it for a while before making statements as to its validity and truth. I dissect things to their depths before making truths happen. This was done through me, others, groups, reading, asking, and more importantly, time.

Train your mind as well as your body. Reading is critical to furthering your knowledge as a coach or pursuing your full potential as an athlete.

Murat Erbaytan is a masters athlete who started with OPEX HQ Head Coach Matt Connolly back in May.  He came to us with a partial labral tear, meaning he has certain limitations in shoulder movement.