LAKELAND \u2014 It can be a grind on the grid.<\/p>\n
For the athletes in the United Grid League \u2014 including the Tampa Bay Brigade, the best team you\u2019ve probably never heard of \u2014 the sport can be \u2026 intense. It requires precision, timing, patience and, of course, plenty of grueling hard work and training.<\/p>\n
The United Grid League \u2014 formerly known as Florida Grid League when it was founded in 2017 \u2014 is a combination of sports. One coach described it as \u201clike crossfit, football and American Ninja Warrior had a baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Which is true, as the sport features a match against two teams with about a dozen or so \u201cplayers\u201d that will perform such activities as weightlifting, gymnastics and functional fitness bodyweight movements. Those athletes perform all those on the grid, which is comprised of four quadrants, each with a special move or element to complete.<\/p>\n
The elements can range from lots of things, such as clean and jerk with a barbell, squat presses with dumbbells, exchanging a medicine ball, swinging pullups or ring pullups or even burpees over a bar. Even though it\u2019s about who can complete the grids the fastest, Tampa Bay Brigade athlete and owner Jess Krezmien says the outcome, believe it or not, comes down to strategy.<\/p>\n
As in who to assign which elements and quadrant to.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s 13 races, with each match taking about an hour and a half, so it can really come down to milliseconds,\u201d said Krezmein, who, for work, also runs a nutrition company and Crossfit gym in Tampa. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely different than Crossfit. And there\u2019s guys and girls on the team and sometimes I\u2019m going against a guy, sometimes I\u2019m going against another girl and so that comes down to knowing your team and a lot on the coach, with plenty of practice to see who can get the best time at any of the elements. There can be a lot of layers just for knowing when to or when not to sub someone in or out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each player or athlete on the Brigade, or other grid teams, has a specific role \u2014 elements or movements they specialize in. For instance, Krezmien will more likely do bodyweight elements, while the team\u2019s strength specialists Rebecca Rouse or Brittany Latham focus on elements that require lifting weights. However, many of the athletes are utility players, such as Dalton Herrero, a Wesley Chapel fire fighter, or Isabella Carvalho, a fitness instructor in Clearwater, who can pretty much take on any element in a match.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Crossfit (competitions), you kind of have to be good at everything,\u201d Krezmien said. \u201cWhereas (in) grid, we\u2019re a bunch of specialists. We\u2019ve got gymnastic specialists and they\u2019ll be flying around everywhere and strength specialists which do the heavy lifting and me as a utility player \u2014 I do a little bit of everything, but I\u2019m not going to do the heaviest (weights) or be crazy on the rings.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when you\u2019re building a team, and we have tryouts if we\u2019re looking for players, you want to have a good combination of those people because, when you\u2019re going all out for 10-30 seconds at a time, it matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
The matches, with the latest held in Lakeland, pit one team versus another, with about four per day. Teams are awarded points per the 13 races, and since the league keeps growing \u2014 with new teams added, like the New York Wolves, the newest team and the one the Brigade defeated in its latest match \u2014 the production value of the matches is quite impressive.<\/p>\n
Not only are there plenty of fans in attendance to watch, but the match comes with a lot of judges. Also, production coverage including play-by-play and analyst announcers is extensive, with matches later being shown on the likes of ESPN.<\/p>\n
The teams travel all over the country to compete, as well. And while grid players don\u2019t receive a salary and still have regular day jobs, teams can earn sponsorships, like the Brigade being sponsored by Last Rep, a THC social drink.<\/p>\n
And, of course, the teams vie for a championship. 10 teams have two more two-day matches upcoming in New York and Dallas. According to Brigade history, that team won the first ever grid league championship in 2017 and is looking to add another after finishing fifth in the league last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what anyone who joins a grid team loves is going all out,\u201d Krezmien said. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely very different from CrossFit, in that respect, because sometimes you\u2019re going through, like, any 20 minutes of sustained effort, whereas grid, it could be literally the fastest 10 seconds you have, and then get off the grid. So you\u2019re leaving it all out there.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou do your job as fast and as good as you can to then tag your teammate. It can be pure adrenaline and even stressful, at times, because you could be in a lot of races, you\u2019ve got to be up and down, but, in the end, it\u2019s always pretty fun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAKELAND \u2014 It can be a grind on the grid. For the athletes in the United Grid League…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[120257,25830,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-323143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-headshots","tag-marinemax","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}