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Hang squat clean 2-2-2-2-2-2-2 reps

Meet a Root – Charlie Schira

1. Vitals: name & nickname at the shop if you have one on whiteboard, class time most often attended, months/years CrossFitting.

Charlie with no whiteboard nickname. I usually workout at the 5 pm WOD (4 pm on Fridays), but sometimes to Oly on Mondays and have started to attend the Thursday gymnastics workout, CrossFitting since January 2010.

2. Favorite WOD or lift (pick one)?

I think it might be the one that just ended. I don’t really have a favorite, and different movements seem to click for me at different times.

3. Least favorite WOD or lift (pick one)?

I suppose I’d like a few minutes alone with whoever thought up the burpee pullup. I didn’t think burpees could get worse, but I guess I wasn’t using my imagination.

4. What do you do for work? (career)

Attitude control. It sounds funny, but “attitude” is the word used to describe how a spacecraft (or an airplane) is pointed. So I work on the system that figures out how a spacecraft is pointed and moves it to point in the desired direction.

5. What’s your background? Athletically, life, moves, etc.

I was a team sports person – football, basketball, baseball as a kid, then I took up soccer as a 30 year old when I moved to Germany for four years. When I started playing soccer I was quite possibly the worst soccer player in Germany.

6. What is your favorite thing about CrossFit?

In the long run, Crossfit makes all the other athletic things I do more fun and I believe will help me get old better. Day to day, Crossfit make me feel great.

7. What is your least favorite thing about CrossFit?

Those nasty callouses on my delicate hands!

8. Do you have any goals in CrossFit?

Yes! I want to get muscle-ups back (I had them before a shoulder injury that’s now recovered enough to try again, but I’ve lost the technique)!

9. When you’re not CrossFitting, what activities keep you busy?

I bicycle (commute to work all but winter, road bike for exercise), hike, trail run, and skate ski.

10. Where were you born/raised?

Born in Hawaii, moved all around until I was 8, then raised in a Chicago suburb.

11. Married, kids, family?

My daughter is about to get her BS from Colorado School of Mines and my son is a sophomore at CU.

12. How do you make CrossFit a part of your weekly schedule?

I sign up early and block out the time on my work Outlook calendar. It’s usually late in the day, so there’s rarely a conflict. If I show up at an early workout it means I’m traveling later that day (and I’m sure I could get used to it, but you morning people are crazy).

13. Any favorite stories from Roots or a group class? Funny, comical, happy, cool?….

I’d been crossfitting for a few months and always had an extremely immature, Beavis and Butthead-level laugh inside my head whenever Nicole would call me out on not getting deep enough into an air squat or wall ball by yelling “Charlie, give me one more inch!”

I wasn’t sure of her sense of humor, so waited until I was pretty confident she’d think it was funny and finally told her “I think crossfit is the only place a woman can scream that at me and I could actually give it to her.”

Not only did she laugh at that, but replied “it’s also the only place where a dude can tell a woman ‘your snatch is a little rusty, but we’ll get it cleaned up.'”

Okay, then.

14. Anything you’d like to add?

I’ll add a category: Favorite thing about Roots: I love the environment that Nicole and all the coaches and athletes have created, where there are people who are badasses for the numbers they put on the board and other people who are just as badass for going their hardest even if they are finishing last, all working out together and supporting one another. To all the coaches and athletes: Thanks for that!