Watch Tia-Clair Toomey and Brooke Wells’ First CrossFit Workout as Teammates
2020 CrossFit Games fifth-place finisher Brooke Wells announced that her new coach is Shane Orr — the husband and trainer to the four-time Fittest Woman on Earth® Tia-Clair Toomey. After news spread on Instagram that Wells and her former coach Ben Bergeron were splitting ways in November 2020, fans were wondering where she’d end up. Well, if you can’t beat them, join them, right? On Dec. 16, 2020, Toomey posted a video to her YouTube channel of her working out with her newest teammate (and fellow competitor). You can check out the video below:
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According to Orr, the team — which also included an appearance from CrossFit athletes Alec Smith and Will Moorad — is in a testing phase for the upcoming CrossFit season.
“We’re looking at a lot of movement — strict and kipping movements — seeing where we are, particularly with their joints and mechanics,” Orr explains in the video. “We are also going to play a lot with position work, testing overhead squat holds…looking at those complex movements so we can formulate a plan so that we can progress toward the Open.”
Team PRVN Fitness proceeds to tear through a workout that included rope climbs, single-leg box jumps, snatches, ski erg sprints, handstand walks, sprints on the erg and Airdyne bike, and toes-to-bar. That’s a lot of training variance, but Orr uses this to see how the athletes are moving, where their muscle weaknesses may lie, and who needs to focus on what. This initial workout will allow Orr to craft specific plans for the CrossFitters. It’s the workout before the workouts, so to speak.
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The 2021 CrossFit Open is currently scheduled to take place sometime in February and March, though exact dates have yet to be announced. And Toomey is one busy woman. In addition to prepping for the 2021 year’s CrossFit season, she recently announced that she and Orr are moving to South Korea to train with the women’s Australian bobsled team. In another YouTube video announcing details of her transition to bobsledding, Toomey implied that she would also be competing in CrossFit. Her goal is to qualify for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in bobsled.
It seems that Toomey and Orr are still living in Cookeville, TN, as the training video was filmed at CrossFit Trivium in Brentwood, TN, right outside of Nashville. When this article was written, details on how Toomey plans to balance her CrossFit Open and bobsled prep are unclear. However, what you can bank on is that she and Wells — whether together or apart — are working hard to make this their best seasons yet.
Featured image: Courtesy of Tia-Clair Toomey & Shane Orr’s YouTube channel