Friday, September 26, 2014

The Holy Land With Russell Berger: Part 5

In 2014, CrossFit hosted its first Level 1 Seminar in Israel. Seminar Staff member Russell Berger took the opportunity to spend an extra week traveling the country, visiting its affiliates and experiencing the culture. In this six-part series, explore the Holy Land with Berger and the local community.

In Part 5, Berger visits the Dead Sea, one of the world’s saltiest bodies of water. The salinity creates a harsh environment in which marine life cannot flourish, but when Berger jumps in, he notices something else—the buoyancy.

“Imagine swimming in magic water on the moon,” he says. “You get in the water and it’s like someone is picking you up and holding you at the surface, and you have to be really skilled to drown.”

Berger addresses concern surrounding the safety of CrossFit in an interview with a reporter from an Israeli financial newspaper.

“I think most of the (criticisms about the safety of CrossFit) are unfounded,” Berger says during the phone interview. “I think most of them are exaggerations, and the source of those criticisms, more often than not, is the fitness industry that we’re replacing.”

The Level 1 Seminar is still underway at CrossFit Modiin, and the instructors find nostalgia in the atmosphere. With CrossFit still in its infancy in Israel, the basics are brought back to the forefront for Berger and the rest of the Seminar Staff.

“We’re getting a ton of questions,” Berger says, “and a lot of the questions are questions that I haven’t heard since I started working for CrossFit. You gotta dust off some answers, things I haven’t had to say in a while, which is cool.”

Video by Carey Peterson.

12min 16sec

Additional reading: Dallin Frampton: CrossFit in Kenya by Emily Beers, published Sept. 17, 2012.

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