CrossFit Woodbury Helps All Ages, All Levels of Fitness

Since opening in October 2010, owners Matt and Nicky Burns have tried to spread the word about their unique workout system. Woodbury Patch recently sat down with the couple to see what their workout facility is all about.

Woodbury Patch: Why did you choose this city to open CrossFit Woodbury?

Nicky Burns: We moved here from San Diego last June. We came because Matt was retiring from the fire department, and we wanted to leave California. Our kids were attending a German-immersion school, so I researched other programs in the U.S. We chose Minnesota because of the school program and our son plays hockey, and the more we looked into Minnesota the more we liked it. That’s what drove us here.

Patch: Is CrossFit popular here?

Matt Burns: You’re starting to hear about it more—a lot more athletes are picking it up because it’s not sports-specific. For example, what we see with athletes who play hockey, and who only work their legs, is that eventually they’ll top out at a certain point. But if we work on them as a system, the whole system gets better. There’s a lot of balance in the body—the legs can’t get stronger unless the back gets stronger, and the back can’t get stronger unless the upper body gets stronger, and vice versa. There’s balance that the body seeks in training. Once you get to a certain point, you can move forward.

Patch: Everything is interconnected?

Matt: Pretty much. We’re trying to get the hockey boys to work their upper body more, to move more weight overhead and stuff. They’re still generating power with the legs to do the moves.

Patch: So what is a typical CrossFit workout?

Matt: Every day we put the workout on the wall, and it’s always different. You might see a certain workout twice, but it’s probably not for five or six months. We’re always changing it up. You’ll never do the same workout in the same week. CrossFit utilizes functional movements are multi-joint, not isolated. That means you’re not really doing a lot of repetitive movements—you’re gonna move something pretty large over a substantial distance in a pretty short amount of time. The time factor is what we use to gauge the effectiveness of the workout—we log everyone’s times to see their improvement. The basic idea is to get it done quickly.

Patch: The program seems like it’s really designed to be done as a class—why is that?

Nicky: People have great stories about being at their gym, and the looks that other gym members give them when they’re running from one side of the gym to the other, picking up and dropping weights, and just trying to do CrossFit in that kind of environment.

Matt: When we lived in San Diego, I started to do it on my own, and it’s possible to find workouts online and try to do it at a gym with whatever equipment they have, but it’s hard. I started going to a gym designed for CrossFit, and it really took my fitness level up because suddenly I felt like I had to compete with these guys. It drives people to try harder when they’re working out next to people.

Nicky: A lot of it is difficult—when you’re working out by yourself, you’re more likely to stop or think, "I can’t do this." But if you’re with other people who are doing it alongside you, you push a little harder because you see that it is possible.

Matt: For example, probably 90 percent of the women who come in here can’t do a pull-up. But we’ll get your chin over the bar at a level you can do, if we have to use bands or whatever. We have a lady who’s 61 years old, and she couldn’t do a push-up when she started, so we did a few modifications for her—it’s no problem. But just this week, after four months of doing CrossFit, she did her first real push-up. 

Patch: There are modifications, then, for people to perform to the best of their ability?

Matt: Modifications are scaled. Like with the on-ramp program, which is where people gradually move into the program. Every part of it is scalable; just show up and we can figure it out.

Patch: What kind of background do your members have?

Matt: We have a lot of high school athletes right now, but like I said, we have everyone from the lady I described earlier to a surgeon who comes in with his 16-year-old daughter and his 11-year-old boy.

Nicky: There’s a perception that it’s only for elite athletes, and if you Google it, that’s who you’ll see promoting it. But we have PVC pipe for people to use when they’re learning how to do an Olympic lift, and bars that are 11 pounds. It’s really for everyone.

Patch: When are classes?

Matt: Classes begin at 5 a.m., and run throughout the day til 7 p.m. We try to meet everyone’s schedule, and every week we do a free introduction class for anyone who’s interested. So come in and try it out!