AFRICA ON THE ELFIT ELITE PODIUM
Elfit is definitely a place for African athlete exposure.
Bringing emblematic Athletes like Brent Fikowski this year or Khan Porter on the previous edition has comfort Elfit on the place to be for any athletes from this continent who wants to compete on elite level.
This has been well understood by the Vivifiyu team from south Africa who demonstrate is intention by landing 2 of them on the podium, 3rd place for Gilmari Reyneke on the women side and 2nd place for Ruan Potgieter on men.
Gilmari began functional fitness at the age of 20 after always being in the sport sphere (200m and 400m sprinting). As many of us, she felt in love with the sport of fitness, pushed her limits through, she reaches the 4th place at fittest in Cape Town 2021 Crossfit semi-final that after being positive to covid few weeks before.
Despite some serious health issues due to a non-adapted training, Gilmari found is way through the 2022 quarterfinal where she was close to give up! What she felt like the end has finally be the starting point of her new career by meeting Vivifiyu head coach Ricky Huiser who identified her problem and build a specific protocol to bring her back to her best level of health and fitness.
Even the 9 places below, the 13th place at 2022 semi final was a comeback to the love of this sport and the Elfit podium a confirmation of this new way of training, where science is the guideline.
To those who find themselves overwhelmed and anxious- fearing failure and believing working through the pain is the way to go… I beg of you to find your balance, find a team that understands you, listen to your body and mind..Trust yourself and the process..
Ruan has not always be in the sport, started to play Rugby in grade 8th where his coach introduce him to YouTube video of Rich Forming as aerobic conditioning reference. He started officially CrossFit in 2016 and always trying to be competitive as Froning is his role model in and out of fitness space since the beginning. Years after years, competitions after competitions Ruan reach the 2021 African Crossfit semi final where he finished 6th and got a 2 places improvement in 2022. He met Ricky 8 weeks before the 2022 semi-final and like Gilmari, he found a proper training designed for him what resulted to a massif improvement.
In Elfit Ruan finish 2nd behind the professor, don’t letting him holding back, and got clear victory on event 6. Event 4: “Arab Taxi Experience” (suicide run) is the only “It was not my best” because he wasn’t wearing the right shoes and kept “drifting”.
If you want to become the best compete with the best, Ruan learnt a lot by sharing the floor with Fikowski and Brent is not stingy with advice and encouragement. In my Brent interview (will be posted on youtube ) he praised the young athlete and he’s confident for his future.
Ruan want the CrossFit games, it is not a one-shot goal, he wants to be the next Jason Smith, representing his country year after year.
Coach Ricky Huyser from his « engineering » point of view talks about the rooms of improvement. About aerobic et anaerobic systeme the conclusion is good: « After the workouts none of them was broken and recovered fast, this is the point where they need to be. «
Some mistakes that cost the second place to Gilmary (HSW and Rope Climb), linked by a technical point of view is the next objectif by working on the nerve system and seeking for more exposure to grow the experience doing it.
Ruan bring him an overall satisfaction, praising the quality of his engin and the goal is to getting him bigger and stronger. He has been already feeding 5000 cal/day for the last 6 months, this is in what they are working hard to reach 88 KG. The last point than Coach bring is the « Rushing »: Ruan tried to go unbroken on the horizontal pegboard to catch up Fikowsky.
To conclude Ricky said: « experience is what making the difference between the second and the first place.
