Valley brothers to compete at CrossFit Games

WASILLA — When Luke and Tim Pearson moved to the Valley from Kodiak with their parents, the first thing they did is look for a CrossFit gym.

About five years ago, in Kodiak, the Pearsons lived next to a couple who directed CrossFit workouts out of their garage. Tim and Luke were 9 and 10 years old at the time.

But rather than being excited about the prospect of pumping iron with his parents and neighbors, Luke said his mother had to make him go.

“I really hated it at first,” he said.

Three weeks later, he changed his mind. During a running workout, Luke just decided he wanted to win — and he did. And that was enough to hook him.

Tim came to appreciate the workouts a little sooner than his older brother. His mother told him the neighbor woman “was the only lady she knew with a six pack, so whatever program she did, it must work.”

Not that it was easy.

“The first day I just could not get out of bed,” Tim said. “It felt like my arms were falling off.”

But eventually, the brothers “got serious about it,” Luke said, and stopped feeling sore all the time.

“At first I just wanted to be fit, then I started getting pretty good at it,” Luke said, of CrossFit.

As the boys’ skills increased, they started to seek out competitions, and soon heard about the CrossFit Games, “the world’s premier test to find the fittest on earth,” according to games.crossfit.com.

Having a goal to work toward, Tim said, made all the difference.

He told himself, “There’s no point for me being here (at CrossFit) if I’m not gonna give it my best.”

“From that point on, I just decided, ‘you know what, I’m gonna work as hard as I can,” Tim said.

Fast forward to February of this year. Luke is 15, Tim 14. Their coach, Tiffiny Wohlers, files their scores and sends video submissions to the CrossFit judges for The Open, to see if they qualify for The Games in the youngest age bracket.

Luke won the Northwest Region for teenage boys with nine points (the best and lowest score possible is six, which is also the number of workouts scored) and Tim tied for second with 15 points. Luke’s scores put him in third for all 14-15-year-old boys in the world, and Tim’s placed him in sixth — meaning they could skip the regional competition in May and go straight to The Games in Carson, California, July 21-26.

To date, according to his athlete profile, Luke can dead-lift 345 pounds, squat 285 and do 44 pull-ups, just to list a few of his numbers. Tim’s scores are similar, though he has his brother beat with 50 pull-ups, as the leaner of the two boys.

But lifting isn’t all they do.

Beyond CrossFit

Both Luke and Tim are homeschooled, and were trained when they were very young to “get all the stuff done by ourselves,” Tim said. The cultivation of those time management skills has allowed them to enjoy all kinds of activities throughout the week.

On a typical weekday during the school year, Tim and Luke start their morning with CrossFit from 6 to 8 a.m. Then they do their schoolwork — all subjects, every day — for 4-5 hours, pausing to eat lunch somewhere in that time frame. After that it’s time for hanging out with friends and/or doing some relaxed outdoor activities. And once a week, they swim.

“Not by choice,” their coach said, knowing full well that they’d like to be swimming all week.

The Pearson boys were born in Hawaii, where they swam often. When they moved to the Valley, both began swimming with the Northern Lights Swim Club, but when they started getting serious about CrossFit, they cut back — they knew that less time swimming meant more time doing CrossFit, which would mean better scores.

“I am a believer in ‘more is not better,’” Wohlers said. “Training quality over quantity is definitely super important, first and foremost for (Luke’s and Tim’s) age, but also for the sport.”

“Balancing their training to maintain their competiveness and keeping them injury free is where I put most of my efforts in helping them achieve success,” Wohlers added later.

How to CrossFit

For the average person looking to get in the best shape they can with the time available to them, CrossFit can be just a series of Workouts of the Day, or WODs. WODs can be completed during a scheduled class time or individually, and exercisers can keep track of their points or not.

And WODs might not even be a person’s main workout of the week, Wohlers said — activities like hiking, biking, gymnastics and swimming can also be incorporated into and labeled “CrossFit.” And it’s open to any age.

“CrossFit’s all encompassing,” Wohlers said.

To learn more about CrossFit, visit matsucrossfit.com or talk to trainers in person at the Mat-Su CrossFit facility, 7610 E. Palmer-Wasilla Hwy., Palmer. You can also experience CrossFit at the MTA Sports Center down the road or Denali Gymnastics (Denali CrossFit) in Wasilla.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.