I started my coaching journey as an apprentice in a small local gym focused on strength training for endurance athletes. I am grateful to my mentor for instilling in me two principles that I’ve carried with me since my early coaching days: movement is play, and movement is serious.
The two may seem contradicting, but let’s look at them from my perspective.
Movement is play. Movement is a time to see what we can do. To open up, try new things, and to begin to trust our bodies through the exploration of movement.
To me, this idea translates to sports like CrossFit or Strongman. Where you’re challenged to test your strength and skill under varying circumstances. Can I out lift someone who just outran me? Can I execute flawless technique while my heart is racing? Will the strength I’ve worked so hard to build translate to a movement I’ve never tried before? Is my training comprehensive enough that I’m prepared to hike, run, or compete and perform well without months of specific practice? Let’s find out! Let’s learn about ourselves from the experience.
Onto movement is serious. Not the antithesis of our first principle movement is play, but rather it should be taken seriously and be respected. Be skeptical of Instagram trends. Understand the physical demands of the positions you’re asking your body to perform. Earn your PRs through technique work combined with the appropriate load that will allow your body to adapt and progress. Know that your absolute strength can only be fully expressed when you put the work in week after week, and have the discipline to taper in preparation for a specific test. This principle is illustrated beautifully in sports like powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting, where the goal is to move as much weight as possible without any outstanding variables.
To me, it is the melding of these two principles that keeps training from going stale. It’s a constant ebb and flow of choosing a priority for a training cycle or season and rotating through them again and again so each piece can evolve incrementally over time. It’s this strategic strengthening of the entire system that creates unstoppable humans and cultivates the curiosity to wonder “What can’t I do?”
-Coach Lizz Walsh
Coach Lizz is an ISSA Certified Personal Trainer and Licensed Massage Therapist. She enjoys many disciplines in the world of training, primarily gravitating towards powerlifting and CrossFit. Her favorite part of coaching at Iron Legion Strength Co. is watching her clients build confidence in themselves as they get stronger in the gym.
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