A visit from Coach Burgener

Hearty thanks and big love to Coach Mike Burgener (and fellow biker and weightlifter Tony Duchi) for the excellent coaching and “Burgee” workout, to our neighbor (and CrossFitter) Milt Battle for the delicious BBQ he provided, and to all of y’all in our local CFES family for coming out to make Friday evening such a good time. We’re truly delighted that so many of you were able to join us.
Thanks too to Susan Street-Wong and Carmen Buchmann for all their work on planning, logistics, and set-up and general behind-the-scenes “get’er done” attitude.

Coach B reminded everyone that Olympic-style weightlifting boils down to jumping and landing and is fundamentally about creating--say it with me--"momentum and elevation on the bar.”

He got into James’s face with his Marine Corps drill instructor persona to school him on his start position, and then exposed his teddy-bear side to gently help Jenika hone her pull. He ran Ronnie through some drills to help him receive the bar in a strong position, showed Sean how to channel some of that power and strength of his into sound technique, elicited some of the best lifting we’ve seen Vinay produce, and remarked on Leah’s real Olympic lifting potential.

Bill worked on refining his snatch technique, Robyn (who came, with Jenika, all the way from Canada for the evening, eh) on keeping the bar in close on her pull ("elbows high and outside!"), and Irena on not getting too wide in her receiving stance. Kathryn and Heather both got a chance to demonstrate the functional importance of all the time and sweat they’ve put into developing strong squats.

Legit.

Now, if only we could convince Coach B that the weather here is better than in Southern California…