Training in the Great Outdoors

WODland is a unique outdoor Functional Fitness competition that started last year. Hidden in a forest within the stunning Yorkshire landscape is a sports venue like no other. This awesome creation was the brainchild of Chris Kirk

Aside from creating a brand new style of competition and venue, Chris is a high level track and field athlete having represented GB at an international level. However, Chris took a massive blow professionally and mentally when he narrowly missed out on a place at the London Olympics.

Chris said: ‘My whole world disappeared, I lost my sponsors and my place in society, it was a huge knock. However, I’m quite an optimistic guy so after the initial shock I decided to become a coach myself. I drew on all my experiences as an athlete, from nutrition, psychological coaching and strength and conditioning and CK Elite came to fruition.’

That was 8 years ago and Chris has come a long way! In the interim he discovered CrossFit and was won over by functional fitness training. Like many others he thought he was fit until he started to train in this new sport.

Chris explains: ‘I was so used to training in one plane of motion, up and down, for the long jump that anything overhead was a shock to the system! However I realised it was the community and the competitiveness that I got out of this style of training that I was yearning for, and it didn’t take me long to enter a local team competition and bag first place!’

After this he saw a great opportunity and started to look at small local competitions in and around his area. But his vision was bigger and he wanted to create a community event that would blend Tough Mudder, OCR style events and CrossFit and thus last year saw the inaugural launch of WODland.

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60 teams of 6 members descended upon a forest in Yorkshire to a big reveal of a vast outdoor wooden rig. This was a two day event that included elements like a team relay mountain bike race. Unfortunately, like most events, this year WODland 2020 has been postponed until August 2021.

But there is always a silver lining! Chris discovered FITR Training to deliver his own personal coaching and has started to utilise it for his event.

Chris explains: ‘I came across FITR Training from seeing other coaches using it and started to play around on it. I found it so easy and simple to use and kept thinking ‘it's free, what is the catch!’

‘Since using it the features have just got better and better and it was a perfect forum to use to communicate to my WODland teams. I was disappointed for everyone who entered this year so I was really keen to give them something back. I created a  4 week ”LockDown” program to look at getting everyone back ready for their gym and this was free to all competitors and I was able to use the coupon option that FITR provides to give out a 100% discount coupon for them. The software is proving a big hit, even more so now the leaderboard is active!’

‘FITR has been brilliant to help keep the WODland community going. I have even started doing a Saturday zoom and I put the link directly in the program so I don’t need to WhatsApp it out.’

Chris is also utilising his WODland sponsors to give up 6 spot prizes each Saturday over the 4 week program. Anyone can join the program, not just WODland competitors.

It’s great to see Chris really use the FITR Training software in a different way and to be able to link his event with his personal account so he only has to log in once!

Here’s to a great 2021 for Chris, packed full of awesome competitions. Watch this space!

#fitrtogether

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