You may have never seen Adam McCluskey in person. A 5:32am* regular, he doesn’t often come to the gym in daylight hours. When most of us are still asleep, Adam is crushing it with the rest of the daybreak crew, 5 times a week. He also will stick around to do extra work after class (gotta keep that bench up and work on those cartwheels). Adam is approaching his 4-year anniversary at the gym, and his fitness demonstrates what daily hard work over years accomplishes. Read below to learn about his athletic background in rugby, his nutrition changes over the years, and his dramatic decrease in puking at the gym.
*Adam is consistent but not punctual
What does an average day-in-the-life look like for you? (food, training, work, recovery, leisure time, etc.) Mon to Fri is pretty similar. I roll out of bed at 5am, gather myself together while eating half an apple as I head in to the 5:30am class. Crush some pre-workout as well, then I get all jittery and weird for class where I try and keep up with the early morning crew. Lots of beauties in that class. When I get home I make a morning smoothie (spinach, scoop of vega, half avocado, three cardamom seeds, and some frozen cherries) and usually spend 15 minutes or more of just foam rolling my hips and hammies and doing some light stretching. This usually escalates with my kids goading me into trying to hand stand walk, then I fall over and nail my foot off the coffee table...erry day. I try and do extra bench once per week as an homage to my younger days when it was chest and bi's every other day, why work out your back when you can't see it, right?
I'm usually in for 8am at work where I try to have a litre of water before I get hungry at 10am, if I'm busy I don't eat. If I have time I might have a protein shake or a little snacky of something. Lunch SHOULD BE home made and I try to keep it high protein with some leafy greens as anything heavy in carbs makes Adsie sleepy and dumb. Protein shake around 3pm then super at 5-5:30 when I'm home for work. I sneak in some play time with my children before starting their night routine at 7:30pm. If I'm putting them down, I'll usually fall asleep reading to my son and then I wake up super cranky and I'm generally unpleasant to be around (wife's fav) or if she puts them down, I clean the kitchen and makes lunches for the next day. Then I get to connect with my wife, often over a glass of wine or prosecco...sometimes brie. Sometimes tea. Ok we had tea once. In bed for 10:30pm unless I have to do a little work.
Have you changed the way you eat since you began CrossFit, If so, how? Oh man. I did the nutrition challenge this past summer and I really learned a lot. I was straight up counting macros and weighing food for the first time in my life. I actually put weight on, but I was way leaner and my recovery was noticeable improved. That really got me thinking that there could indeed be some sort of corollary between diet and performance, like the quality of your nutrition could play a big role in your general well-being (that sentence was rich with sarcasm). From that challenge, while I don't weigh my food or keep a close track of macros, I do have a pretty good sense of the makeup of my plates. I really try to eat shit tons of leafy greens (spinach, arugula, kale) at every meal. Especially if I'm going to eat something carb heavy, like pasta, then I'll half my portion of pasta and put some spinach all over the place and eat that. I also try and get a nice window in between supper and breakfast. Ideally, I finished supper at like 6pm, and then don't have a full meal until 7am which is usually a smoothie. I make poor choices late night, but even though I'm damn near 40, I'm feeling pretty good over all.
How does training/CrossFit fit into your life? I was never a morning person and when I was younger and playing a lot of rugby, I primarily trained in the evenings. Since kids, evenings are out and if I want to train it kind of has to be before anyone wakes up. Now I'm an annoying morning person that is up and finished training before most are out of bed. I try to train 5 days per week and take the Sat/Sun off, but still do some recovery work in there. In the summer time, I masquerade as a younger man and play rugby. So I trade CrossFit for rugby practice on Thursdays, usually play a game on Saturday and then cry all day Sunday about how sore I am.
What reasons did you have to train when you started CrossFit? Have those reasons changed? If so, how? I played competitive rugby for nearly 20 years (I'm super old), playing at provincial, national and quasi-semi pro levels. I took some time off as my body was ravaged and we were starting a family. I took a few years off with the first and a few off with the second (I have a 9 year old Girl and a 6 year old boy). Then I got to a point when I was pretty unhealthy, I hadn't done anything physical in a while, was probably tipping the scales at 236 which was my heaviest weight and weird things were happening like my asthma came back, allergies, etc. We had recently moved back to Kingston from Vancouver, and I was trying to do something to shake up my routine and get healthy. My wife remembered that I had done 2 months of CrossFit before we left BC, so she found a gym in Kingston and gave me a month membership for me to try out. I was hooked right away. Started out going once per week as I was extremely sore. I slowly ramped up how many days I would go over the years. Initially my reasons were just to get fitter, drop some unnecessary weight, especially in the jowls as that's where I keep a lot of weight. I look like I'm drowning in my own face if you can picture that.
My reasons have changed, I got fit enough to play rugby again which was a massive plus for me as I thought I had retired. A lot of my nagging injuries got better over time from CrossFit, the strength and mobility work did wonders for me. I've played the past two seasons with the Kingston Panthers with a bunch of 20 year olds and while I'm slower, I'm rich with treachery and I'm efficient at throwing the dad bod around with reckless abandon. Now I train to be better at training and I'm constantly trying to increase my time or weight depending on what we're doing. Part of the reason is I want to keep getting better and another part of me needs the constant struggle mon-fri so I feel like I've overcome something each day, it keeps me fired up throughout the day and keep an edge while I'm at work. Like I get all squinty eyed at some guy and be like "no way he was doing jaguar jumps over the box this morning...no way at all...maybe I should jump across this desk and bite him?". Maybe that's a bad example.
What improvements have you made in the past 6 months that you are most proud of? Extra mobility work for me. I'm in the 120 day challenge and at some point you had to spend at least 15 mins of extra time doing something. That something was focusing on my hips/hammies with stretches and foam rolling. I can't believe the difference. Both in my range of motion, but how much better my knees feel. I was having problems with my knees where they would ache all day or sometimes I'd move funny and my knee cap would feel like it wasn't in the right place. All of that is gone with 15mins of stretching per day. Also, I've only thrown up once in 6 months... no.... twice.
Do you currently have a main focus or goal(s) with your training? I've been working on gaining some of the skill sets that I lack, such as hand stand walks, butterflies, ring muscle ups. My butterflies are coming, though I refer to them as "moths" at the moment. Handstand walks are dodgy but getting better and apparently, I can only do ring muscle ups when wearing cut off denim shorts. True story.
Also - I think a lot more about pacing. I'm still not 100% consistent at pacing which is evident if you've ever tried and talked to me in the first 30 mins after a WOD, but I'm getting better.
What would you consider to be your greatest strength as an athlete? I’m stubborn. I don't like not being able to do something and will generally try and try and try until I get it. Not afraid to go so hard that I might puke either. Is that a good thing?
What is one thing that you do every day that you feel is essential in contributing to your success in the gym? I'm very consistent with hitting 5 days per week, and I always try and leave everything behind me when I walk in the gym. One of my favourite parts of CrossFit is that when you go to that dark place in the middle of a WOD, everything goes away, you can only hold one thought in those moments and I enjoy that silence immensely.
If you could give yourself one piece of advice when you started CrossFit, what would it be? Buy your own skipping rope and when you get close to "red line" just step ‘er back a bit so you don't puke at the gym, freaking out any newbies and then hate yourself all day. Don't get loser drunk at the social and rave dance at some club like you're 20... you idiot.
Do you have a go-to self-pep talk? (i.e. something you tell yourself when things get hard with training or during a workout) Oh man, so I think because of Rugby my self-talk is not super constructive. I'm used to getting yelled at, swore at or ridiculed when training. But, like clever ridicule such as "McCluskey, your body position reminds me of an octopus trying to fold a deck chair" or "McCluskey, you look like your dancing with your sister". That last one was in reference to a poor tackle when I tried to use my arms too much in an awkward stand up tackle thingy. Quite clever actually... full marks for the burn.
I've gotten better, I will remind myself now "just do another one then see how you feel" or "3 left, you can do three, do three more then get some chalk" but then sometimes it comes out as "let's go you piece of shit, get on that fucking bar you coward" or something.
Chalk is often my reward… even when rowing.
Is there anything you would like to add? I've been around the block and I recognize what makes this gym special and it's the culture/community. You'll find that it's a rare treat to be a part of something so awesome, so I hope people really, really appreciate it. Also, I think cartwheels are underrated.