In Affiliation, CrossFit, HD Videos
January 10, 2012
There are no bumper plates, medicine balls are thrown against a concrete column, and box jumps are completed upon a wooden divider on which most others set their gym bags.
Not your typical CrossFit facility.
Panther CrossFit is a group of University of Pittsburgh students who came together over their fondness of CrossFit to form a club. It all started in 2008, when John Schneider hosted Fight Gone Bad 3 at his box, ThreeRivers CrossFit in Verona, Pa., just outside of Pittsburgh.
A Pitt student by the name of Zach Miller showed up and ended up scoring a “430-something” on the workout, Schneider says. Miller finished second in the country.
“And he said, ‘Hey I want to start this.’ And I was working at the university, so I was like, ‘OK, I’ll be the adviser for the club, and we’ll get it going,’” Schneider says. “All it is is a group of kids that come together, and they come to the local gyms which aren’t set up as (CrossFit gyms), but we find a way to make it work within the community we have here at the university.”
Most of the time, the group does WODs in the basement of the college’s Trees Hall, where the gym is shared with faculty and other community members.
“It’s a challenge,” Schneider says. “We have other people working out in the facility that aren’t accustomed to CrossFit ... . So whenever we’re making noise and the weights drop, people get scared or offended. And so we’ve had some conflicts with that. So we try to be polite and not upset anybody, but we still get our workouts in and improve our fitness.”
HD file size: 241 MB
SD wmv file size: 107 MB
SD mov file size: 97 MB
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8min 56 sec
Additional video: The Zach Miller Story, published Dec. 7, 2011.
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12 Comments on “Panther CrossFit”
1
wrote …
I may forget a lot of lessons learned from college classes, but the lessons I learned with the Panther CrossFit bros/broettes I'll never forget.
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2
wrote …
awesome story! its great to see that they're making this work with the limited amount of equipment. i only wish that i had this sort of group to join when i was in college.
3 things i especially loved from this video: the shot of the guy reading a book while on the exercise bike, the shot of the sign on the wall that says to not drop weights, & the hatboro-horsham shout out (im from north penn)!
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3
Darren Coughlan wrote …
great work!
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4
wrote …
This is a great story and hits close to home for me. I am in the Navy and run into this problem every time I move to a new location. Saying the word CrossFit on a navy base will be met with a lot less accommodating attitudes than these guys at Pitt got.
It was refreshing to see people making it work for their love of CF.
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5
wrote …
Great article. I like the reminder that some people initially start with a vain perception of fitness but change their attitude to a performance based goal.
I'm also in the Navy, and I've also been meet with a less than favorable outlook about CrossFit. I've had some friends kicked out of base gyms because what they were doing was deemed unsafe. The people that run the base gym fitness programs are government contracted civilians. Their claim, in addition to being unsafe, is why are military personnel going out in town paying for CrossFit fees when we (base gym) have everything here (i.e. aerobics, hip hop classes, free weights, treadmills, etc)? Sounds like job security worries to me.
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6
wrote …
That is awsome. Just shows that it doesnt matter where you are, or what you've got, all it takes is somebody driven enought to make good things happen. Very inspiring.
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7
replied to comment from David Beam…
Thats surpising? I thought the military (particularly the NAVY) was one of CFits biggest advocates with guys like Dave Castro and Josh Bridges. Guess there is misinformed people everywhere.
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8
wrote …
As a PITT graduate wish they would have had Crossfit when I was there. Keep up the good work! This video finally allowed me to find the Cellar Dwellar sign! HAIL TO PITT!
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9
wrote …
This is perfect. Did you guys have to pay the affiliation fee to have this?
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10
replied to comment from Jeremy Donner…
Jeremy,
No we did not. It's a nonprofit affiliate.
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11
wrote …
very inspirational, I used to have to attempt crossfit style workouts by myself in a university gym and ended up getting kicked out.
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12
wrote …
it is always relieving to hear other peoples' struggling for perfection! kep it up guys!
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