Rookie Season
After 16 years of bringing serious fitness to the heart of Central Texas, the TFX team is welcoming its newest division to the floor. Introducing the Rookie Division.
While still fresh, we wanted to take time to map the journey of how we landed on creating this special division and speak to the powerful and incredible journey to which we believe it serves as an epic beginning. In truth, we all started somewhere.
First things first, we wanted to better align what our divisions are called with the broader CrossFit community and affiliates.
When we hear the word “scaled”, a default idea pops into our minds that is closely informed by the concept of “scaling” common to the day-to-day of any given gym. At local comps, this might translate to the “scaled” division taking on hanging knee raises and jumping-pull ups. But at TFX, athletes in the “scaled” field have leveled up to commonly perform toes to bar and pull-ups. The simple rename to “Rookie” makes sense as movement standards are concerned, and it’s truly just the beginning of an incredible journey athletes take as they progress year to year.
When asked about the vision for the Rookie Division, TFX Founder and former CrossFit Games Athlete, Jeremy Thiel added, “The rookie division has been a long time coming. As we thought about how best to serve the community we believe this division needed updates to best support the growing and upcoming athlete. We want to provide a road map for athletes to empower them to grow each and every year and advance divisions if that’s their goal. The rookie is a great place to start and grow as an athlete.”
Next, the Rookie Division is for athletes with a competitive spirit and are looking for their next challenge. They know the difference between a Snatch and a Clean. The Rookie does the majority of their gym’s workouts RX. At the end of the day, they may be caught scrolling their gym’s leaderboard to see how they stack up with the rest of the gym. Not every workout will be in their wheelhouse, but they are ready to step up to the challenge.
They also hold themselves accountable to movement standards. They value movement integrity and strive to cultivate virtuosity as they develop their skills, going the distance as a shortcut won’t cut it. We identify this division as a great opportunity to take to the competition floor in the first of many large-scale, national competitions while paying homage to the local comps that pave the way.
Finally, at TFX we aim to be a stepping stone in an athlete’s competitive career. We have been running TFX for 16 years and have had athletes start competing in our Rookie Division who later go on to qualify for our RX Division. How cool is that!?
