Gary McLean, owner of CrossFit 365 in South Wales, shares how he started his U.K. affiliate and how the Ospreys Rugby team has embraced CrossFit and shares its facility with the affiliate.
Mark Bennett, the head strength-and-conditioning coach for the Ospreys, and his assistant, Kevin Morgan, discuss how beneficial CrossFit has been for their athletes.
“It’s not just the physical ability,” Bennett says. “It gives us that mental edge, hopefully.”
Bennett says they decided to share their facility with CrossFit 365 for mutual benefit.
“We felt that those values that they would bring to us would help us because those are exactly the values that we want to develop in our squad,” Bennett says.
McLean credits CrossFit more than the coaches for helping CrossFit catch on and grow.
“This thing is so infectious and is something within the human spirit that once you’ve done a WOD with somebody as a complete stranger, you get up as brothers—it’s a bit spiritual where you go with these WODs,” McLean says.
“I think we’ve opened the door to professional sporting bodies and for other CrossFit boxes and affiliates to do much the same because it’s a conditioning program we know works, so it’s a very easy thing to push,” he says.
8min 14sec
Additional reading: Rugby and the Rotational Kettlebell Swing by Nicolas Rithner, published Oct. 5, 2009.