What's CrossFit, the new buzz word in individual fitness?

Philadelphia, Pa- Many of you city-dwellers have heard about one of the newest fitness fads in recent years- CrossFit. While CrossFit is big in Philadelphia and other cities in the U.S., I haven’t seen it expanding into the suburbs yet (although it only seems a matter of time). Several of my friends are CrossFit members, and I will warn you- they certainly drink the kool aid. However, in a nice preview for CrossFit Novem owner Lesha Meyer’s interview next week, here is some background information on the CrossFit phenomena and why it’s good for all types of athletes (this article focuses specifically on tri-athletes). Happy reading!

How CrossFit Can Benefit Tri-Athletes, by Nathan Helming for Active.com

These days, CrossFit has gained national attention with its explosive growth of affiliate gyms, the members who attend them and the recent exposure of the Crossfit Games on ESPN. With this attention comes both enthusiasts who praise the program and the skeptic who questions its safety and efficacy.

When done correctly, CrossFit can be fun, invigorating and intelligent strength and conditioning program that can  help get athletes over a frustrating plateau of persistent injury and stale performance and onto a new upward athletic trajectory.

Here are five things a good CrossFit program can add to your triathalon training to help make you a strong, faster and healthier athlete.

1.       Crossfit teaches proper body mechanics

Most endurance athletes look for either a decrease in injury or an increase in performance when heading to the gym. CrossFit programs start with an intensive series of sessions that teach you how to do basic movements like the squat, deadlift, press, jump/land and Olympic effectively. These movements are all very technical and, while there is a learning curve, they challenge the athletes’s coordination and motor control. With feedback from the coach, these technical movements teach athletes how to move better and improve shoulder, hip and knee mechanics.

2.       Crossfit identifies athletic weakness and imbalance and provides tools to address them

If you struggle with basic swim, bike  and run mechanics, chances are you also struggle to maintain good posture in CrossFit’s basic movements: the squat, dead lift and pushup. A knowledgeable coach can watch the movements you perform and use them as a screening tool to assess your strength, muscle flexibility and joint mobility.

For example, if your elbows flare out in the push-up or you have difficulty maintaining a strong neutral plank position, the coach knows you lack mid line stability (core strength) and shoulder stability. Without meeting these basic demands, you will struggle to reach your full potential as an athlete.

3.    CrossFit builds greater strength, power, agility and speed

Mobility and flexibility are not the only limiters. Endurance athletes often lack top-end speed, strength and power output. Marathoners and Ironman-distance athletes come to mind here. Too much time spent going long and slow leads to an athlete that can only go one speed: long and slow. At CrossFit, athletes learn to incorporate strength and gymnastic skills into their workouts. They jump, spring and develop power they previously thought impossible. Time and time again, we have seen these new abilities translate to increased athletic performance.

4.       CrossFit develops and builds true functional strengths

Many strength programs promote sport specific and functional strength movements for endurance athletes. While these movements sound great, many of them involve overly complicated exercises that ironically lack true substance. Functional strength does not need to be sport specific. It should focus on building your general physical capacity with multi-joint movements that you already do day-to-day. With an improved ability to pull, push, squat, dead lift, jump and even throw, you will approach your sport with greater levels of strength, power, body awareness and confidence.

5.       CrossFit develops skills that transfer to our specific sports

Too often endurance athletes are disconnected between the brain and the body. You do sit-ups and crunches but stand hunched over and over-extended in the low back. You probably even run and swim with poor posture. At CrossFit, functional exercises can and should contribute to better swimming, biking and running. Your understanding of mechanics will enhance your sport specific output. Find a qualified gym, with a good coach and discover first-hand how CrossFit can intelligently elevate your game as an endurance athlete.

If you want to sell hot dogs, go out and sell some hot dogs, advises Jamie Punderson, CEO of Networks & More!

Austin, TX- Last week you read the first interview in a two-part series about James Punderson, CEO of Networks & More!, an education consulting company based in New Jersey. He took readers through the highs and lows of starting new businesses, with his expertise ranging from fruit baskets to educational technology.

In the second interview, Punderson advises other would-be entrepreneurs to have a goal and go for it.

“Some people think they need to have an office first, stationary first, business cards…its better just to begin,” he said. “If you want to sell hot dogs, the first thing to do is sell some hot dogs. If customers are buying, then get whatever equipment you need to accommodate the business. Do it on a part-time basis and test the market without spending a lot.”

While easier said then done, Punderson’s advice is a product of a particular characteristic he exudes- a resolute confidence. This trait is easy to miss, because it’s subtle-something that can often be missing in better-known entrepreneurs (think Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs). Brought up in a DIY (do-it-yourself) family as one in a gaggle of children and adults living under one roof, it’s no wonder Punderson has been instilled with a can-do attitude.

“I just figured how to do it and did it,” said Punderson of how he got started. “I came up with my own ways of doing things.”

As for his family, Punderson has always kept them involved in some way. Sarah English Punderson, Jamie’s wife and former gourmet caterer, often makes lunch for the Networks & More! staff. All three Punderson children have worked in the office at different times- answering phones, working on spreadsheets, stuffing envelopes- whatever needed to be done.

When asked about how integral his wife’s support has been while making it through the hard times before his businesses were profitable, Punderson said:

“I think Sarah’s support was in trusting and relying on my judgment rather than looking for the security of me having a job working for a large corporation or the government. That was extremely helpful.”

If you think Punderson is all computers, all the time, you’d be mostly right. However he did work on a side project with his pal and securities lawyer Charlie O’Rourke in the late 90s. With Punderson’s experience in the brokerage business and O’Rourke’s law background, the tandem teamed up to write ‘How to Sue your Stockbroker without a Lawyer’. The 274 page paperback was published in 1998.

“It was a great deal of fun writing that book,” Punderson chuckled. “We’d get together one weekend a month and had a lot of laughs, wrote a few chapters, went out to dinner. At the time, there were a lot of bad apples in the brokerage business and we wanted to show people how to get their money back. We never had the expectation it would be a best-seller, but it’s still selling on Amazon and it’s in the Library of Congress. We’re self-published authors,” said Punderson.

Learning about yet another industry seems to be what keeps Punderson lively. And as the interview came to a close, he had a one final tidbit to share about starting up a business.

“Most businesses don’t take very much money to start, they take sales,” said Punderson. “It’s a good discipline to start a business without money, you’re less likely to spend money on things you don’t need.”

Coming tomorrow, the second interview with start-up specialist Jamie Punderson

Coming Sunday (3/11), Jamie Punderson's second interview in a two-part series. In it, he discusses his book, his family, and some final advice for would-be entrepreneurs.

Teaching, trading, technology: James Punderson proves there's many paths to success



James Punderson, CEO of Networks & More!



Island Heights, N.J.- I hit the road for this week’s blog article, which begins with the first interview in a two-part series with entrepreneur James Punderson, my father. Punderson is the current CEO of Network & More!, a privately-held educational technology company based in Island Heights, New Jersey. Punderson hasn’t worked for anyone else since 1974. 



The second-oldest of nine children in an Anglo-Irish-German Catholic family, Punderson is the only sibling to have entered the small business world. While attending the University of Notre Dame on his own dime (often hitch-hiking to get home for holidays), Punderson started United Student Services and solicited parents via mail selling fruit baskets during exam time. He made enough to pay a significant portion of his tuition as a senior and laid the groundwork for his professional journey. After leaving South Bend, Punderson went to graduate school at Bowling Green and worked as a teacher for a few years, then decided to take a shot at law school. 

“My second year in law school, I decided I wasn’t interested in being a lawyer,” Punderson said. “I was spending a lot of time handling my own investments, trading junk bonds. Various people asked me to manage their money, and in 1981 when there was a computer program to help do that, I bought my first computer from RadioShack.”

The budding entrepreneur formed an investment advisory company, James Punderson & Co., registered it with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) and set up shop. Without a background in trading, Punderson, the quiet kid from New Jersey, had been ditching the Ohio State law library while still in school and had been poring through investment books. His compensation from the business was one percent of the money under management per year. With several million dollars under management, overhead was low and Punderson’s business was profitable.

“We weren’t wildly lucrative, the principal source of income was still my own trading account,” Punderson said.

In 1988, Punderson formed a registered brokerage firm, which meant he could now hire a bond trader and could buy and sell on behalf of investors. This new company, VP Securities Inc., was formed with Punderson and a business partner. When his partner decided to leave in 1990, Punderson sold the business and moved on to his next venture.

During his stint with VP Securities, the business had a very profitable year. His partner bought six cars that year. Punderson invested it. It was that investment money that sustained him (and my family) for three years when he didn’t have any income from business while starting up his current operation, Networks & More!.

“In the final few years of the brokerage and investing advisory business, I learned about computer networking and picked up the skills and experience to set up and maintain networks, which was a growing field,” said Punderson.

There was increasing interest from schools, so Punderson decided to see if there was a business in advising schools on what technology they needed and how to set it up.

“I decided to get into the business of educational technology consulting," said Punderson. "Networks & More! got going sometime around 1994. The first big project was for the Bordentown Regional School District."

“They hired me and my company- which at the time was me, for a big project,” said Punderson. "I ended up hiring a few people to work on it and after that the calls started rolling in.”

My father has been known to softly lull family members to sleep at the dinner table by talking shop, so in order to keep you awake, I won’t get into the technical aspect of his business. However if you’re interested in learning about the nuts and the bolts of this business, just go to www.k12usa.com .

Evolving seems to be a key factor in Punderson’s business survival. 

“In 1999 we had seven people going out and driving all over N.J. providing schools with services,” said Punderson. "It quickly became a numbers game; the only way to make more money was to hire more people or charge more per hour or both. It was much like running an accounting or law firm. It’s a good way to get started in a business, but the growth potential is limited.”

Punderson experimented in writing software for schools, certain his business would need to change to keep up with the evolving needs of the educational world. He came up with the idea to offer software that ran on the internet, rather than software that needed to be installed by his employees at schools. It wasn’t a unique idea, but there was a growing niche in his industry for it.

“We sold access to the software on a subscription based plan,” said Punderson.

In 1999, Networks & More! generated 100% of their revenue by going out to schools. Today all revenue comes completely from internet-based services. Gradually, Punderson shifted the direction of the business to include programmers and tech-support employees. 

“It’s been great going all these years without having to answer to a third party…other than my wife of course,” Punderson said. 

Networks & More! officially reached adulthood with their 18th anniversary in 2012, and what seems so impressive is that Punderson has done it by his bootstraps. With a positive cash-flow and seven full-time staff members, it looks like ‘Pundy’, as his friends called him growing up, is trending in the right direction.  

However, it’s not all fancy monitors and wireless keyboards for Punderson and his staff.

Check back in next Sunday (3/11) for the second interview in this two-part series.

Coming Sunday (3/4)...

Coming tomorrow (3/4), the first interview in a two-part series with entrepreneur James Punderson, my father. He'll dish on his experiences starting up numerous businesses, life as an author and even opens up about his long-time love interest. Check back on Sunday!