Roy Leedy returned to Mansfield from the International Cross Fit Games in California this week. Leedy was ranked 14th overall this year in the 50-59 age group. “There was no one else from Ohio,” said Leedy. “Three or four from the East Coast were represented in my age group.”
“The process takes a workout each week for five to six months, sent to Cross Fit headquarters, which is posted on a leader board, ranked, and if an individual has the ability to place themselves on the top, the invitation is given,” said Leedy. That was how Leedy qualified. He has a unique perspective, helping push this paradigm shift in the sports world with his hybrid gym Fit1.
“Olympic athletes are sports specific,” Leedy stated. “Cross Fit is different. There’s a range. An Olympic athlete would get crushed if it’s not his world.”
Cross Fit challenges athletes to be more like gymnasts than bodybuilders. It involves compound movements, learning technique, not doing repetitions, but timed workouts.
“These guys move with more force in quicker time than anybody else,” Leedy stated, “And I don’t need a TV to work out.”
Leedy feels there’s a social quality to Cross Fit. People are pushing each other, helping each other through timed workouts as if it were military; and he creates a unique workout each day. When Leedy was in CA last weekend, he met a fellow Cross Fit competitor from Iceland, and he picked up new techniques Something he’ll be working on for next year is the Olympic Lift. Leedy will meet with trainers twenty times in the next six months to work on the Olympic Lift, and continue passing on his knowledge to his fitness clientele. “I will be opening up, starting in September,” he stated.
“I’m a rookie,” he claims, an International competitor. “It takes 10,000 reps to master a move in Cross Fit.” As a fitness leader in the area, Leedy stated, “It’s possible to accomplish a few thousand reps in a year.”
One of Leedy’s best of three days at the Cross Fit International competition was a day called ‘Pullgatory’.
“It started with push presses at 95 lbs. lifting into set position, dips down, and drives right above the head, fifty push presses. Then the competitor drops the weight, and runs across a field to pull a sled weighing 135 lbs. Arm over arm, not allowed to move the feet during the pull. Pull a third of the field. Run and do 40 burpees, then pull the 135 lb sled another third of the field,” said Leedy.
Before he could pull the sled the rest of the way, Leedy stated they did another 70 weighted sumo deadlift high pulls, a wide-stance lift with fists close together, toward the center of the bar, pulling the weight up to the collarbone. Then he dropped it, pulled the sled the final third, and sprinted to the finish for his time. Roy finished 4th with his time in Pullgatory.
With his energy devoted toward learning and achieving, Leedy looks back at the International Competition with a sense of gratitude. “I accomplished six things I could never do last year,” he stated. “So I’m going to go out and accomplish something new every year.”
