Callum Pryce coaches competitive CrossFit athletes at an affiliate in Manchester. Last year he prepared one athlete, a 34-year-old project manager named Jowen Hartfield, for a regional qualifier. The process exposed three operational gaps in how the gym was running athlete development programmes. Each one has a direct parallel for how service businesses manage client preparation cycles.
The baseline assessment problem
Callum began by running a full movement and benchmark assessment across ten days. He discovered that Jowen had a significant overhead squat limitation that had never been formally identified despite 18 months of membership. The gap existed because no systematic reassessment protocol was in place for members beyond the initial onboarding screen. Fixing it required six weeks of accessory work before competition-specific training could begin.
Communication between coaches broke down
Jowen trained with three different coaches across the week. Callum was the lead, but the other two were not briefed on the specific limitations or the periodisation plan. By week three, Jowen had been given conflicting cues on his clean technique by two coaches who were each working from their own observations rather than a shared brief. Callum introduced a shared Google Doc with weekly coach notes for each athlete in the competition track.
What the competition result showed
Jowen finished 14th out of 38 in his division. Callum considered this a reasonable outcome given the six-week delay in starting specific preparation. More useful was the post-event debrief, where Jowen identified that the final three weeks felt rushed. That feedback directly shaped how Callum now structures 12-week blocks for all competitive athletes.