Riley Karroll can cross a large room to greet you. Walking on her hands.
The coach and owner at CrossFit 604 on West Hastings Street began training for the specialized skill in November by kicking up into a handstand and stabilizing herself using core strength and some of the finest, most precise muscles in her body: the ones in her hands.
“You can use your finger tips and then your palms to find balance whether you’re starting to lean in one direction or another,” said Karroll.
Then she started to put one hand in front of the other, as it were. “Last week I hit 47 feet.”
She didn’t just master the skill on a whim. Karroll sensed a handstand might be one of the tests at the this weekend in Richmond where the top two male and female athletes and the top two teams from four provinces, compete for a spot at the 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games at the 27,000-capacity StubHub Center in L.A. on July 25.
Karroll sensed right about the handstand. “They’re stepping up the level,” she said. “They’ve thrown in a strict handstand pushup. It means kicking up into a handstand against a wall, lowering yourself self down and, still in the handstand, pushing back up.”
A walking handstand, like crossfit itself, can’t be picked up in a single session at the gym, especially by doing nothing more than several hundred bicep curls in front of a mirror, said Karroll.
“It won’t happen over night, but if you do it every day for a few minutes, you can have some frustrated days but you make progress quickly.”
Crossfit, which was founded by a California couple in 2000 and now has more than 9,000 affiliate gyms — or “boxes” — around the world, sells itself as the world’s greatest test of individual fitness. There are 12 official CrossFit affiliates in Vancouver, several of which have individual and team competitors who qualified for regionals.
Practitioners use their own shorthand to describe exercises and routines, including the , or workout of the day, which is used as a kind of measuring stick because they are standardized and can be timed. The official CrossFit brand promotes certain lifestyle choices, including dietary regimens such as the Paleo and Zone diets (organic, grass-fed delivered to gyms) as well as barefoot-style shoes, causing the passionate crossfit community to be derided as “.”
The thousands of spectators who attend regionals will likely be crossfit enthusiasts themselves because they know what it takes to flip a tractor tire 100 metres.
But with a passionate crowd comes spending power. Reebok signed a 10-year deal as a national sponsor in 2011, which was followed by Forbes magazine recognizing CrossFit as one of the world’s fastest growing sport enterprises. The Reebok CrossFit Games seeks to establish the “fittest on Earth,” a trademarked term.
A play on words derived from cross-training and fitness, crossfit uses practitioner’s own body weight as well as Olympic style weight lifting technique, kettlebells, gymnastic exercises and endurance training to work the entire body. It embraces the concept of functional fitness, which means movements can benefit a person’s everyday life for the entire duration of her life.
A single session can include climbing rope, squatting with weights, interval running or rowing and, every kind of sit up. It’s something like an obstacle course without a finish line, a crossfit practitioner might say the finish line is optimal health.
For Karroll, who co-owns CrossFit 604 with her husband Jason Darr, the sport has given her a chance to show everything she’s capable of.
She finished in the top two percentile to qualify for Canada West as an individual and that same score put her in the top two percent in the world.
Last year CrossFit 604 finished fourth at Canada West, two places shy of qualifying for the 2013 Games.
“We were very close,” said Karroll.
She’ll compete this year with Tyrell Mara, Jennifer Dober, Morgan Carlson, Christine Kopr and Pete Kendrick.
“We’re positive and we train hard,” said Karroll. “Anything is possible.”
