Our program delivers a fitness that is, by design, broad, general, and inclusive. Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist.
My name is Ryan Miller and I founded Strongpoint CrossFit in Jacksonville, Florida in 2011. I found CrossFit in 2008 when I was still an active duty Marine Corps Officer. I dipped my feet into the water with the classic benchmark workout “Barbara,” got hooked, and immersed myself into the system over the course of the next year. Not only did I see significant gains in my own performance during that time, but I was able to help the men and women under my charge improve as well.
My purpose for opening Strongpoint was simple – to build a community of like-minded individuals and help them achieve their potential through better fitness and sound lifestyle choices.
I am passionate about CrossFit and wholeheartedly believe that it is the most effective tool on the planet for helping regular people achieve their potential not just in fitness, but in life. I saw my fitness level dramatically improve and used it to train hundreds of Marine Corps and Navy Officer Candidates to a higher level during my time on active duty. I love the CrossFit community and watching people that did not even know each other prior to CrossFit become best friends in and outside the gym. I love the sense of confidence and empowerment that CrossFit gives to people. Put simply, CrossFit makes people better!
Strongpoint CrossFit is a world class fitness facility. We are focused on lifelong functional fitness for our athletes…not just throwing you into a class environment without any knowledge of the movements and proper technique.
We have spent many years studying, learning and experimenting with ways to get people fit in a safe and effective manner. We have learned how to get people motivated and to keep them injury-free so they can be fit for life, not just for a quick fix.
We strongly believe in the research that Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, shared with the fitness community several years back in the CrossFit Journal article “What is Fitness?” He prescribed a formula of constantly varied, functional movements, at high intensity. He also stated that, “The magic is in the movements, the art is in the programming, and the fun is in the community.
We follow this formula that has been proven across high level professional athletes and those simply seeking to be fitter versions of themselves. The functional movements that Glassman refers to are effective, challenging, and complex. For this reason, we teach and then continuously review and refine our members’ movements. You will typically not see things like bicep curls in our classes. It’s rare for anyone to operate a single joint at a time in life and sport and that is exactly how we train in the gym. Expect to see compound, multi-joint movements. That is the heart of functional movement and is where we get the intensity from in CrossFit. A lot of people do a twenty minute workout in two hours… Our members do a two-hour workout in twenty minutes!
In terms of programming, our classes are very structured into specific parts. We begin each session with a thorough warm up and mobility work followed by a strength or skill piece and then capped off by a conditioning workout. We focus hard on instructing basic movements and our coaches teach, review, and refine movements every single session. Our goal is brilliance in the basics and this comes back to another tenant of CrossFit, learning correct mechanics, performing them with consistency, and then adding intensity. In other words, we want our members to do things correctly before they start moving with greater speed and heavier loads. Beginners and experienced Strongpoint members alike routinely scale and modify workouts to their ability level, which ensures that they get the correct stimulus needed to adapt and improve without going too hard too fast and injuring themselves.
As for the fun in the community, the philosophy that Glassman began teaching has been shown to be effective in prescription and we have seen amazing results when implemented in a group environment. These movements are taught best under the watchful eye and the skillset of great coaches, but made better when the practitioner is immersed into an environment of individuals that have been practicing and perfecting the movements. Our community is strong. It is friendly, positive, and chock full of good natured competition that will pull you closer to your goals at a faster rate than the individual gym experience. While competition intimidates some at first, our members generally find that it steepens the learning curve and accelerates their development. We firmly believe that the most important competition in the gym is the one with yourself and we want to see our members become better than they were where they started wherever that may be.
We have learned over the years that a higher coach to athlete ratio provides a better learning experience but also a safer environment. It allows the athletes to learn better movement patterns and, as a byproduct, yields a stronger community of people. While we typically have one instructor leading each class, it is not at all uncommon to have several Level 1 certified instructors on the floor training during our classes and lending a hand when needed.
At Strongpoint CrossFit, you will start out in a safe one-on-one environment at an Introduction to CrossFit. We conduct a thorough review of your health history, athletic background, discuss your goals, and make sure the program will be a good fit for you and what you hope to accomplish. From there, we will provide a broad overview of CrossFit as a fitness system as well as how we implement it at Strongpoint from how we organize our workouts to where to find the basic tools we use to help our members succeed. From the introduction, we place you right into our group classes so you can get a feel for the community and start becoming a part of it!
Simply put, we help committed people get into the best shape of their lives!
