18 Aug TCL Podcast Ep. 31 – Darren Coughlan – Give’m Cold Steel
Darren Coughlan is an OG within the Australian CrossFit community. He owns and runs CrossFit Newcastle, which was the 3rd registered affiliate in Australia. Darren is also the man behind the beast ‘Give’m Cold Steel’ which is an online physical training program business, boasting CrossFit Games athletes such as Pip Malone, Zeke Grove and Madeline Sturt. Although one of the main focuses, CrossFit is not the be all and end all of Give’m Cold Steel, Darren explains. They tend to do quite a lot of work with strength and conditioning coaches both nationally and internationally in the rugby world.
We dive through the hoops and walks of Darren’s life including his football career (both league and union), how he fell into coaching, running a successful CrossFit affiliate for 11 years, as well as excelling as a coach through on going learning (he’s also currently studying an MBA).
‘If you do everything right in results based fitness, it will tend to look like CrossFit’ Darren says.
We have a super interesting conversation on drugs in sport and the morals and ethics around it. At the end of the day nice people take performance-enhancing drugs too. Darren takes the precautionary methods of making his athletes sign a declaration stating they don’t and will not take drugs for the time that they’re working under him. He then also makes his athlete’s do the online further educational courses (level 1&2) on the ASADA websites.
Darren was in charge of organising and running the ACT & NSW 2010 Sectionals. He explains how much of a nightmare the event was. In his eyes the open is an unreal upgrade in regards to finding the fittest on earth. He explains how equipment was stolen, judges didn’t show up, people turned up with ego’s and left a bad taste in the air. Along with that, Daz lost $15,000 on the two day event.
We talk about the mental capacity needed for a Games athlete as well as the needs of their training. Differentiating the everyday gym goers to the full time athletes and how one should be for performance and the other for health.
Tune in, as there is a heap more crammed into this episode.
You can reach Darren on Facebook:
Give’m Cold Steel
Or
http://crossfitnewcastle.com.au
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
