Congratulations to Kyle Bergquist, our April 2023 Member of the Month! Kyle (husband of our January member of the month) is a loyal member of our 5am CrossFit class who saw tremendous progress in our recent nutrition challenge. Outside of the gym, Kyle enjoys biking, photography, and taekwondo. Keep reading to learn more about him!
- What are your hobbies/interest/talents outside of the gym?
When I have a little extra time during the day I enjoy taking my bicycle out for a ride and looking for interesting old houses to photograph. Sometimes I do both at the same time, but more often I pick the activity that matches up best with the day’s schedule.
- Share with us one thing that most people do NOT know about you?
I’m a 2nd degree black belt in taekwondo. That’s a fun program too – I started during college, took a bunch of years off, and then restarted training and recently reached the black belt level.
- How long have you been with us at Viking Athletics?
I joined in August of 2021. Covid put a real damper on the taekwondo training, and Amy eventually convinced me to join Viking to try some different things in an environment with much more personal space.
- Take us back to your first week here. How did you feel? Remember the workout?
Prior to joining Viking Athletics, I had never done any serious work with free weights. Moving a barbell from the floor, or a rack for that matter, was a new experience and something that took a bit of time to get used to. Everything was sore after the first few workouts, which I’d experienced before when beginning other programs. My main memory was doing weeks and weeks of snatches with a 35 pound barbell to try to figure out how the motion was supposed to work. Still working on that…
- What moment/achievement are you most proud of at Viking Athletics?
There’s no one shining moment that stands out, and instead there are a lot of little wins. I see the program as a way to build strength and general fitness so it’s always rewarding to do something a little better than last time. Sometimes it’s better technique, other times it’s more weight. There’s almost always something positive to take from a workout.
- Design your perfect workout?
We would do a full body endurance workout that included a bunch of stations to rotate through, hitting most muscle groups at modest weights.
AMRAP in 40 minutes:
1k Bike
10 Push Presses (95#/65#)
15 V-ups
5 Pull-ups
25 Double Unders
10 Power Snatches (95#/65#)
10 Overhead Squats (95#/65#).
- What is your least favorite movement?
Every style of burpee is unpleasant.
- Summarize your lifestyle in 5 words or less.
Curious to see what’s next.
- Have you experienced any changes in your lifestyle since joining Viking Athletics?
The most important one is that I am more aware of what I am eating. Working with Erik on the nutrition side has been helpful in getting me up to speed on proper fueling. It was initially an adjustment to get up to the number of calories that I need, but once we put some systems in place and began food prepping it became much easier to hit both the calorie and macro targets. Also, I get up a lot earlier now.
- What advice do you have for anyone who is thinking about joining or who has recently joined?
I think the most important thing to remember is that we are going to the gym for ourselves. Wodify has a leaderboard, and it’s tempting to try to compete for the best score. But that’s not the point of the program for the overwhelming majority of members. We’re trying to get stronger and healthier on our own terms, not somebody else’s terms. This is a good program for making incremental improvements in our individual objectives, and doing it in a fun group environment.