After i got my Crossfit Level Trainers certificate i was adviced about taking a few extra online courses to broaden my horizon and dive deeper into topics not or partially covered during the training course. In this blog i wanted to write about which online courses i took, what i thought about them and how it helped me during training.
There are a bunch of online courses but the once i took are:
The courses
In general the courses are not cheap compared to what they provide. The anatomy for example is 120$, i understand the busines model behind it and it’s very lucrative but the value for money is in my opinion a bit off and should be reduced by 20-25%.
The good thing about the online courses is that you keep access to the material and that you can print a certificate when you complete the course. However i would have expected more material to be available for each course. For the scaling, for example, it would have been nice to have a downloadable overview of all the excercices with variations of scaling options.
The courses themselves are well structured, take you step by step through the course and provide to-the-point information with lots of visuals and video’s. Especially the scaling was well done with relevant examples.
At the end of each subpart of the course you take a quiz consisting of about 8 to 14 questions. The questions themselves are not that hard, if you can understand and read English properly. Otherwise it might take a bit more time. What is sometimes a bit frustrating is that you have 1 question wrong and you have to take the quiz all over again before you can move to a next block. And then the questions are exactly the same, so it’s technically possible to not read anything and just do the quiz ‘mastermind’-style. But then again, who would do that. I would like to have seen a bit more of a coursera-style where you get maybe 3 or 4 tries before having to wait 24 hours. Also having a variation in the questions as to keep you on your toes would be an improvement
The questions for ‘spot the flaw’ were a bit different because you got videos of people working out and you have to tell if they did it wrong or how many did they do wrong/right. Most of them were okay but with the kipping pull-up it was very difficult and i only got it after 5 or 6 times. At that moment i was just going up or down 1 because i simply couldn’t really see it well. Which can be illustrative for real-world workouts. Sometimes you just can’t see properly.
So all-in-all decent courses, well structured with good material and examples but if you really want quality from people and making sure that a certificate actually has more value then there is plenty room for improvement.
Courses Applied
So how relevant and valuable are these courses in practice? For me personally the scaling course was the one i found most valuable and that’s because in my class if have to scale a lot. The course really helped me with some basic principles for scaling which i can apply to almost anything. Also coming up with a few options for injured athletes and and just having to think about how to scale what for whom has been really helpful.
The spot the flaw was decent and it added a bit of value. However most flaws were addressed during the CFL-1 course so i knew most of them. So this was more of a repetition which is always good. However, as mentiond above, i miss a good overview and was expecting that here.
The anatomy course was a more difficult course, or at least more timeconsuming. There’s lots of (for me) new things to learn and know and from my experience if you don’t use terms on a daily basis you tend to forget. And that is my concern here. It helps me in terms of having more anatomical background and understanding how and why things (don’t) work. Especially the ‘lever’ part will give you some more insight why certain positions work better. But if you aks me in 2 months to name all muscles around the hip & femur, or the 4 joints in the shoulder or all parts of a vertibrea…..i probably have to look stuff up.
Next steps
There are 2 courses still on my list
- Masters: in my class there are a few athletes over 40 and i’m just a tad over 40 myself so having a bit more knowlegde and background for that category will certainly help me.
- Running: i don’t really like to run and for me it’s a weakness, and i want to see if i can improve and also help others improve there running with some tips&tricks.
There are more online courses that are interesting but like i said, they cost money so i’m spreading the costs a bit. But they certainly have their added values and relevancy that you can apply or at least learn from. So have a look and have fun learning.
Always Learning 