Durban athlete eyes Crossfit Games

As Crossfit continues to grow as a training discipline worldwide, interest in the competitive arm of the sport has as well. The beauty of the sport is that everyone, from beginners to full-time athletes, has the opportunity to test themselves on the global stage through the Crossfit Open.

Every year people can enter the Open online, which comprises of five workouts over five weeks. After tallying the results of the five workouts, athletes finishing in the top ten places in their respective regions qualify for Regionals – which serves as the final qualifying round for the prestigious Games hosted in California.

Pullen managed to finish in 5^th place in the Africa region this year, earning him a spot at the European Regionals in Spain next month.

From kayaking to Crossfit

Born and raised in Durban, Pullen was schooled at Clifton College. A keen sportsman, he dabbled in a variety of activities before settling on kayaking. He spent three years training in Pretoria after Matric and was rated as one of South Africa’s top sprint kayakers.

Like many bitten by the ‘Crossfit bug’, Pullen was introduced to the sport and quickly traded in the monotony of paddling for the constantly varied workouts that have made Crossfit a worldwide phenomenon.

“Crossfit looked very cool because there is such a mixture of things you can do. There wasn’t a lot of support in kayaking whereas Crossfit is community-based – there is a lot more support,” Pullen told ECRSportswave.

Having built a high-level of fitness, Pullen was confident that he could make the transition to the multi-faceted discipline. By definition, Crossfit intends to improve conditioning through constantly varied training by incorporating gymnastics movements, Olympic lifting, running, swimming and a variety of other training methods.

For an athlete like Pullen, this provided the perfect challenge – a far cry from paddling for hours on open water.

“One of the reasons I started Crossfit was because I thought I could compete in it. I’m competitive by nature and I was fit so I thought it would translate well.

“I think the biggest challenge was the Olympic lifting just in terms of the technique, it takes a long time to work on that. Honing in on those technical skills was the biggest thing. My strength was reasonably there but it was about technique in the lifting as well as the gymnastics.”

Taking a shot at the Games

Setting out in 2013 with the aim to compete in the sport, Pullen tore into training. He met his current business and training partner Russell Swanepoel around that time and the pair now own and run Crossfit Shumba in Umhlanga Ridge.

Having forged a close friendship, the duo has focused on Pullen’s training regime in between training clients at their 'Box' - as Crossfit gyms are known.

The 24-year-old qualified for the Africa Regionals in 2014 and finished eighth – he had to come first in order to qualify for the Games.

The following year Pullen struggled with a knee injury which greatly hampered his training. Swanepoel put that down to overtraining as they looked to improve on shortcomings identified the previous year.

“After Regionals in 2014 we realised that Olympic lifting was the area that needed the most work. We ended up doing a load of squats, cleans and squat cleans and snatches,” Swanepoel explained.

“As we’ve learned, there is no actual template to train from and as we go on we learn about how important mobility, recovery and planning are. More is not better, intelligent training is.”

Despite being unable to train for most of the year, Pullen still managed a top finish in this year’s Open. Looking ahead to the Regionals, Pullen is going in with modest expectations.

“I expect it to go well; I tend to perform a lot better in competition compared to training in the gym. Being at a competition, you can pace yourself off the other guys and feed off the crowd.”

Knowing how stiff the competition will be, Pullen and Swanepoel have conservatively aimed to only make the Games next year. Nevertheless Pullen will do his best to finish in the top five next month, which will seal a spot at the Games later this year.

“The goal isn’t for me to make the Games this year, obviously that would be a bonus though,” Pullen said, before Swanepoel interjected.

“This year the goal has been achieved, now he just needs to go and throw it down. Like Billy said, he wants to find out where he stacks up against the guys in Europe who have five or six years of Crossfit experience,” Swanepoel said.

Jason Smith, Ruan Duvenage and Alan Foulis are the other three South African athletes jetting off with Pullen to the European Regionals. They will face 36 athletes from Europe in seven different workouts over three days from May 27 to 29. The top five finishers will go to the 2016 Crossfit Games.

Crossfit Shumba will be hosting a couple fundraising workouts this Saturday, May 14. The fabled Hero Workout Murph will be done in teams at 08h00. Thereafter a weight lifting competition will be held at 09h30. Shumba is asking for a R100 donation to fund Pullen’s trip to Spain. T-shirts, donuts, raffle tickets and ladies clothing will be on sale as well.

Contact Swanepoel on 082 544 8190 for more information.

Twitter - @gazza_jenks @ECRSportswave 

Facebook - ECRSportswave

Picture credit - James Peters