Growing up in the Congo, 21-year-old Charlotte Bobcats center Bismack Biyombo lifted. But he admits he didn’t know what he was doing.
“I (would) just go to YouTube and find whatever, ya know,” says the 6-foot-9 athlete, laughing.
When he arrived in the U.S., he searched for a place to build his physicality. That’s when he found Josh Elmore, owner of CrossFit Eternal in North Carolina.
“When I started, I didn’t have any balance. I couldn’t do a squat,” Biyombo explains.
Today, he’s doing 155-lb. snatches for reps and close to 200-lb. clean and jerks for reps.
“We had to just go ahead and start getting his power back ’cause he had been on this kind of linear progression that he got bigger and he got stronger but he also got slower,” Elmore says. “And kind of his game of being explosive had gone away.”
Biyombo says: “Every minute, every second I spend in this gym (I’m) trying to get the best out of it ’cause I know I got nothing to lose and the only person I need to compete with is myself.”
Video by Mike Koslap.
5min 38sec
HD file size: 102 MB
SD mov file size: 38 MB
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Additional reading: Additional reading: Shabazz Muhammad: Top Basketball Prospect, CrossFitter by Dan Edelman, published May 7, 2012.