CrossFit Running Certification | Day 1
Crossfit Run Endurance Certification is designed to bring a ‘standard’ to running and endurance training – and naturally, is created to complement CrossFit training.
CrossFit Run Endurance Certification | Day One
Today, we started the day with individual introductions expressing our love/hate for running, our CrossFit experience, injury experience, and what we hoped to get out of the Cert.
Brian Mackenzie, founder of the certification and experienced ultrarunner and endurance athlete, began the morning with some solid lecture and explanation to the prescribed running technique, which is very similar in principles and methodology of the POSE running technique.
Video Doesn’t Lie
Then, it was on to the video session where Brian videotaped each runner. This is where everything we thought we were doing was proven wrong. Video doesn’t lie, you know.
Brian went through and analyzed each runners video segement, in a group setting with all of us, and the instructors took note of:
- Our body position, including hips, shoulders, and head
- Our stride positions
- Our time of impact
- Our individual running issues – pronation, supination, etc…
- How long it took before our the balls of our feet were below hip
- How long our feet were on the ground
- How extreme our rear leg lock-out was or was not
- How long we were airborne
The goal is balance. The runner is less prone to injury when in the air. Interesting…
Drills, Drills, Drills
Next was a series of drills to help us reprogram our running strokes and implement more of a hamstring-pull movement when coming off the ground. We also worked on the concept of “posing” and then “falling”.
Every Cert has a WOD
Lunch, more lecture, and more drills ..then, came the obligatory workout of the day – CrossFit style of course.
The workout consisted of three rounds of:
- 20 squats at the bottom of a hill
- Run 100 meters up a steep hill
- Halfway up, at a sort of flat spot, do 5 burpees
- Continue running another 75 meters to the top of the hill
- 20 more squats
- Run back down to the bottom
Total of 120 squats, 15 burpees, and about 500 meters of hill running. NICE!
7:13
The top finishers completed it in 6:04… studs.



