It is often said about many CrossFit champions that this or that athlete comes to CrossFit for just a year. The sports community has seen such stories more than once. However, with a periodicity of 3-4 years, the best athletes still rise to the top of CrossFit-Olympus, who hold their title for a long time, showing truly impressive results. One of these athletes can rightfully be called Tia-Clair Toomey.
She literally broke into the world of CrossFit Games and at once shattered all the notions that women are much weaker than men in competitive disciplines. Thanks to her perseverance and loyalty to her dream, she became the most prepared woman on the planet. At the same time, officially Tia-Claire did not receive this title in the past year, although she showed truly impressive results. The culprit was a change in the rules for assessing disciplines.
Tia is the unofficial leader
Even though Tia Claire Toomey (@ tiaclair1) did not receive the official title of the most powerful woman on the planet until her victory at the CrossFit Games in 2017, she has been leading the unofficial list of the most powerful people for several years.
In 2015 and 2016, despite the emotional distress and lagging behind in performance, no one had any doubts that Tumi's rush hour was coming soon. After all, few athletes in the history of sports, male or female, have demonstrated such a complete skill set and stubborn work ethic at such a young age.
And this moment has come. At the last competitions in 2017, Tia Claire Toomey showed perfect results, almost reaching the mark of 1000 points (994 points, and 992 - for Kara Webb). It took Tia Claire Toomey three years to win the title of the most prepared woman in the world. When she started out in CrossFit, almost no one took her seriously. After all, there were a huge number of more promising athletes.
But the persistent Toomey trained hard and without excessive fanaticism, which allowed her to avoid injuries over the years. Thanks to this, she did not have forced pauses during all these years. The girl showed more and more impressive results every year, surprising the judges with her performance from year to year.
Short biography
Australian weightlifter and CrossFit Games athlete Tia Claire Toomey was born on July 22, 1993. She competed in the 2016 Summer Olympics in the women's under 58 kg weight category and finished 14th. And this is a pretty good result. Speaking also at the CrossFit Games, the girl became the winner of the 2017 Games, and before that, in 2015 and 2016, she took second place.
The girl qualified for the Olympics after 18 months of weightlifting and a little crossfit practice in preparation for the CrossFit Games. Since Tia-Claire competed in the Olympics less than a month after the end of the 2016 CrossFit Games, she received some criticism from the Olympic community for not being a “clean” weightlifter like the rest of the Olympic team.
Many CrossFitters defended Toomey, citing the fact that she did what one would expect from any competitor in the Australian Weightlifting Federation. The magnificent athlete Tia Claire Toomey made her Olympic debut in Rio at the Olympic Games, which became only the third international competition in her life.
Queenslander recorded a 82kg lift on her third fight. After successful first and second attempts, Toomey fought her way to line up the 112kg line clean and jerk, but was unable to lift the weight. She finished fifth in the group with a total weight of 189 kg.
Coming to CrossFit
Tia-Claire Toomey is one of the first Australian female athletes to take up CrossFit at the professional level. It all started at the moment when, during the preparation for the weightlifting competition, the girl stretched her forearm badly. In her search for effective programs for the recovery and prevention of sprains, she stumbled upon the American CrossFit Athletes Association. While on a competitive business trip in 2013, she got to know CrossFit better. The girl immediately became interested in a new sport and brought a whole store of knowledge to her native Australia.
Competition debut
After a year of CrossFit training, Toomey made her debut at the Pacific Rims. There, taking 18th place, she realized how much CrossFit is at the same time similar to weightlifting, and, at the same time, how much it differs in terms of requirements, especially regarding the basic qualities of an athlete.
A year after her debut performance at a serious tournament, completely changing the approach to the training complex, Tia-Claire was able to successfully enter the top 10 best athletes of our time. And most importantly, all this time she has been practicing CrossFit as her main training discipline, even during her preparation for the Olympic Games. As a result - an honorable 5th place in the group in the weight category up to 58 kg with a result of 110 kg in the snatch.
Crossfit in Toomey's life
Here's what the athlete herself has to say about how CrossFit has influenced her and why she still remains in the sport.
“There are a number of reasons why I do what I do. But the main reason I keep fighting to be better is the people who support me! Shane, my family, my friends, my CrossFit Gladstone, my fans, my sponsors. Because of these people, I constantly show up in the gym and train. They constantly support me and remind me how lucky I am to have so much love in the world. I want to achieve my goals, to repay them for the sacrifices they have made for me, and to inspire them to follow their own dreams.
I have been fortunate enough to work with very experienced and well educated coaches. Now I want to take CrossFit to the streets and share my knowledge and programming with people who, like myself, are looking for guidance and encouragement in their training. My programs are adapted for people of all skill levels. They cover all aspects of fitness to develop and strengthen the body.
You don't need to do CrossFit professionally to follow my programs, as I have a wide range of clients who follow my program to meet a variety of fitness ambitions. You don't have to be competitive, you just have to want to focus on improving your body. You can be an absolute beginner, just entering the sport, but with the desire to complete your sports career on the world stage. Or you may even have a lot of classroom experience but want to relieve yourself of the stress of programming and just focus on your own learning. No matter what your goals are, if you have the determination and the drive to do the hard work, you will succeed. "
How is CrossFit useful in other sports?
Unlike many other athletes, the brilliant athlete Tia Claire Toomey made no difference between preparing for the Olympics and doing CrossFit at the same time. She believes that CrossFit is the preparatory complexes of the future. This girl claims, based not only on her own experience. So, she analyzed many complexes invented by both Dave Castro and other trainers, and divided them into general strengthening and profiling.
So, she believes that workout complexes can be used as a warm-up for athletes of shock and power sports. After all, they allow you to strengthen the body in general and prepare it for more serious stress.
At the same time, amazing strength complexes, depending on their focus, can help in sports such as weightlifting, freestyle wrestling and even powerlifting.
With regard to weightlifting and powerlifting, Claire Toomey believes that it is thanks to the crossfit complexes that serious barbell resistance can be overcome. In particular, overcome the force plateau and, most importantly, help shock the body in order to optimize energy systems as part of the periodization training system.
In particular, the athlete recommends switching completely to workout complexes immediately after the end of the competitive season and maintaining her body at this stage for the first month, after which she will return to the classic profiling mode.
At the same time, Tia-Claire believes that CrossFit is not only a way to become the strongest and fittest, but also an excellent sport that shapes the athlete's figure, eliminating the imbalances associated with the profiling competitive discipline.
Sports achivments
In recent years, Tia Claire Toomey has been showing better and better results. Despite the fact that she started only in 2014, unlike other athletes, the girl immediately took a high start and showed truly impressive results.
Tournament results
At CrossFit Games-2017, the athlete deservedly received her first place, and, despite the presence of such formidable rivals as Dottirs and others, she successfully snatches victory.
Year | Competition | a place |
2017 | CrossFit Games | first |
Pacific Regional | second | |
2016 | CrossFit Games | second |
Atlantic Regional | second | |
2015 | CrossFit Games | second |
Pacific Regional | third | |
2014 | Pacific Regional | debut 18th place |
Based on her athletic achievements, we can safely say that a woman does not have to do CrossFit for years in order to become one of the most prepared in the world. In particular, Claire Toomey took only three years to completely change her mind about herself, starting practically from scratch. She climbed to the top of Olympus in 3 years, moving all eminent and more experienced stars from it. And, judging by her achievements and sports performance, the girl will not soon leave the first lines of the leaderboards. So now we have the opportunity to observe the growth of a new crossfit legend, which from year to year, will show more and more impressive results and can become the new “Matt Fraser”, but in a female guise.
In addition, do not forget that Tia-Claire Toomey was noted by Dave Castro himself. This proves once again that in CrossFit it is not necessary to have outstanding performance in weightlifting. You need to be really prepared for everything, and, therefore, be able to quickly adapt to any situation.
Indicators in basic exercises
If you look at the performance of the athlete, officially provided by the Federation, you can easily make sure that they are “head and shoulders” above the results of any lower athlete.
First of all, it is worth noting her background in weightlifting. Despite the fact that this is not Tumi's main sport, years of hard training in these disciplines allowed building a powerful base that determined her strength indicators. Weighing only 58 kilograms, the girl shows truly impressive strength results. However, this absolutely does not prevent her from showing equally impressive standards in speed exercises and endurance complexes.
Program | Index |
Barbell Shoulder Squat | 175 |
Barbell push | 185 |
Barbell snatch | 140 |
Pull-ups | 79 |
Run 5000 m | 0:45 |
Bench press standing | 78 kg |
Bench press | 125 |
Deadlift | 197.5 kg |
Taking a barbell to the chest and push | 115,25 |
Execution of software systems
As for the execution of software systems, it is far from ideal. However, it is important to note that, unlike other women, Tia-Claire was able to show her best results not in different competitions, but within the same season. This together makes her more prepared than any of the rivals. It is thanks to the opportunity not to profiled, but to achieve everything at once, the magnificent athlete Tia Claire Toomey, and literally snatched her title of the most prepared woman on the planet.
Program | Index |
Fran | 3 minutes |
Helen | 9 minutes 26 seconds |
Very bad fight | 427 rounds |
Fifty fifty | 19 minutes |
Cindy | 42 rounds |
Elizabeth | 4 minutes 12 seconds |
400 meters | 2 minutes |
Rowing 500 | 1 minute 48 seconds |
Rowing 2000 | 9 minutes |
And don't forget that Tia-Claire Toomey does not consider herself exclusively a CrossFit athlete. Therefore, her main training is aimed at preparing for the next Olympic Games cycle. At the same time, she is an exemplary athlete who repeatedly proves to the world community that CrossFit is not a separate sport, but a new method of training athletes for other sports disciplines.
This is clearly evidenced by Tumi's fifth place at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Then she, not having any special data and skills, was able to become one of the strongest athletes, ahead of many Chinese weightlifters, who, by right, are considered the leaders in this sport.
Commercial activity
Since, until recently, CrossFit in Australia was not sponsored at the state or large holdings level, it did not bring money.
Therefore, in order to be able to fully do what she loves and not leave sports, Tumi created her own website. On it, she offers her visitors a number of sports services, in particular:
- get acquainted with the training complexes that she uses during preparation for the competition;
- recommends sports nutrition and combinations that will improve performance;
- helps visitors create an individual training and nutrition plan;
- shares the results of experiments;
- conducts registration for paid group trainings.
So, if you have the financial and time resources, you can always visit an athlete in her native Australia and do group training with her, learning about the real secrets of training the best of the best athletes on earth.
Finally
Despite all the above-described achievements of the magnificent Tia Claire Toomey, one must not forget about one important point - she is only 24 years old. This means that she is still far from the peak of her strength capabilities, and in the next years can only improve her results.
The athlete believes that big changes are expected in the coming years, and by 2020 it will no longer be a separate discipline and will become an official all-around, which will be an Olympic sport. The girl believes that neither the weather, nor the region of residence, nor various drugs, but only diligence and training make athletes champions.
Like many other crossfit athletes of the new generation, the girl seeks not only to increase her performance, but also to create an ideal body without classical fitness techniques. CrossFit allowed her to keep her waist and proportions, making Tumi not only incredibly strong and enduring, but also beautiful.
We wish Tia Claire Toomey the best in her new training and competition season. And you can follow the girl's progress on her personal blog. There she posts not only her results, but also her observations related to coaching. This allows those who wish to know better and more about the mechanics of CrossFit from the inside.