Nicki Violetti

One of our desires for our coaching staff is for everyone to feel confident speaking in front of groups. The more knowledgeable and articulate we are the better we are as professionals.  So in an effort to provide a supportive arena to practice our speaking skills we use some of our monthly meeting time to play a little game called speaking baseball.

Natalie Taylor, now our director of training, was one of our very first clients from early 2004 and one of the first trainers we added to our team. She brought this game to the table when we were discussing the desire to get our folks more comfy explaining some of the more challenging topics that come up in our profession.  As a former high school and middle school teacher she used this as a tool to get her teens some public speaking practice. Well, if it’s good for the teenagers it’s certainly good for us crusty adults

How it works:

You draw a topic from the hat and 3-2-1 Go! The goal is to speak on that topic for a full minute without striking out.  Strikes are constituted by any prolonged pause in speech, and any space filler words like: uh, um, like, etc. Each 15 seconds that you speak moves you to a base. If you speak for 30 seconds before striking out you make it to second base.  If you make it the whole minute you get to home plate.  Pretty simple.  And fairly fun. 

Some example topics:

• Defend the statement “the kipping pullup is cheating”
• What is linear progression?
• Why do we take fish oil?
• Explain the role of insulin in body composition.
• Why do we do DROM?
• Why no gluten?
• What are CPK levels and how do they relate to CrossFit?