October Featured Athlete - Chris Anderson

1.  Where are you from?
I am Canadian – happy Canadian Thanksgiving BTW Monday October 8th -  I spent most of my formative years in the province of Ontario – in the general area between Detroit & Toronto.

2. What brought you into CFP?
Lindsay, my partner in crime started a few months before I did and it sounded pretty cool! I was participating in endurance events at the time -  my body needed a change and I really didn’t have the time anymore for 5 hour bike rides.

3. What do you do for a living?
I am a faculty member at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration.  I broadly work in the area of data analytics and spend most of my time on pricing related problems. 

4. What's your best CF accomplishment?
Not sure if I have any of those, just happy to make it to class every day and avoid (exercise related) injuries.

5. What are some goals you have at CFP?
Overall fitness I guess, ideally make some progress on gymnastics related movements, keep up with my kids.

6. What's your favorite CF movement? / What's your least CF movement?
I will answer these questions as one as the great part about CF is that every movement should be your favorite movement - you just need to scale it appropriately so you get a good workout.  I really suck at anything that involves heavy weight but I am OK with because I just focus the correct movement with lighter weight.  Clearly wallballs, rope climbs, and rowing are tall-person friendly so are good for me, whereas movements that require more coordination are not!

8. If you could write a workout, what would it look like?
I am a big fan of grinders – any workout in the 30 minute window that doesn’t involve me trying to go to fast on any single movement; make sure there are some wallballs, burpees and pull-ups in there – box jumps are OK as long as there is a soft box (remember the coordination comment!)

9. What do you do for self care?
Try to hit yoga w/ Lex but that is pretty challenging on weekends as we seem to be always taking one of our kids somewhere for some kind of event.  I have an exercise ball and Interstuhl (google it) stool in my office to work on core and posture while I am pontificating at work.

10. What's your favorite Ithaca (area) restaurant?
The Pines – we live just down the road so it’s an easy & regular stop.

11. You're a regular 6am'er- what motivates you to come that early?
As you get older you find a need to ‘schedule’ exercise. With both Lindsay and I at Cornell plus three boys with their own busy schedules – 6 am is really the only time that I know I won’t have a meeting or don’t need to drive our kids somewhere (not quite true, we drop one off at crew practice on the way to 6am class). Plus, it is great to have it out of the way and makes the rest of day easier …. That said,  6am classes are getting busier so everyone else should go later in the day – I hear 8:15 is excellent!

12. You also come pretty regularly to Thursday mornings at 6am, what drives you on "off days to workout?
At some level it is just a pattern, get up early, have coffee,  go to gym – kind of like the old dunkins commercial where with the dude making the donuts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=petqFm94osQ ).  Thursday are great though – either makeup a missed workout from the week, work on something specific, little extra time rolling out the hammys…or like this Thursday going in to do some wallballs, pull-ups and box jumps just because they are fun!

13. What's your favorite season?
Summer and Winter are great as I find it easier to go out and do something w/ the kids, we live on the lake so in the summer there is lots to do, and in the winter you need to get outside and hit slopes to keep your sanity – these all seem to get harder as our kids get older and have their own agendas though.

14. Liquor, beer, cider, wine, all/none?!
Bud Light all the way no question!  If I know I am only having one, then a stout.

15. You've made great strides to improve at CF, including your squat! What measures have you taken to improve it?
Mostly just time and persistence, foam roller on the hamstrings and keeping the weight lighter to make sure I get full range of motion.

16. If someone was hesitant to start CF, what would you tell them?
It’s a great way to start the day! There is always a way for everyone to participate in every WOD, I had a 6 stiches in my index finger a few weeks back and I was still able to workout just needed to scale, well I always scale, just a little more that go around.