By Ricky Frausto | Owner of CrossFit Omaha
Hello to all. My name is Ricky Frausto and I am the co-owner of CrossFit Omaha in Omaha, Nebraska. We have been in existence as a CrossFit affiliate since the early part of 2007. Here is my story.

I am originally from Amarillo, Texas where I attended and wrestled for Caprock High School. I have been wrestling since the tender age of six years old. I was a Texas state wrestling champion in high school and was blessed to be offered an opportunity to continue wrestling into the college ranks at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. This gave me a chance to attain a college degree while doing something I loved so dearly. I wasn’t much of what I had hoped to be while wrestling in college but I did have success and was, during my senior year, crowned a conference champ and qualified for nationals. Although this was the extent of my accolades on the mat, my experience as a college wrestler went far beyond the mat. I met some of my best friends in college and the wrestling program itself, truly is one of a kind.

I have learned many of my positive work habits from being a part of the UNO wrestling team and owe much to both our head coach, Mike Denney, and assistant head coach, Ron Higdon. They were excellent mentors and provided me with an example on how to lead life and how to treat people. I will never be able to repay them for this but am very much appreciative.

During the middle of my senior year of competition in 2001 and about a year and a half still away from graduating, I decided to enter the field of strength and conditioning. I stayed on as a student-coach for the wrestling team and began to study human performance. I began to watch athletes of many sports train for competition and learned how a strength coach handled a high number of athletes at one time. I did this on my own time all while still helping the wrestling team.

How an opportunity in the weight room became available to me is a very lucky one. I talked to our strength coach about becoming a graduate assistant and specifically working with the wrestling team but that I was open to attaining experience with as many teams as possible. Unfortunately, I was told that they were looking to hire two females and that they would keep me in mind should something in the future become available. Not a week had passed when I was informed that one of the females decided not to take the position and it was available to me. I jumped on it. I didn’t have any experience whatsoever but I knew that I wouldn’t get an opportunity like this again.
I did a lot of reading and asking questions during the first six months as I tried to soak up as much information as possible. I’ll tell you right now, I didn’t really know what I was doing in the beginning but having presence and command will help compensate until you do. It is so important, looking back, to have leadership skills and a willingness to be in front of a group of kids and actually lead them. I was assigned the wrestling team and the woman’s swimming and dive squad. I remained with both until I resigned in from UNO in 2008.

From this beginning, I was able to help produce a number of individual national champions in both wrestling and swimming as well as be a part of three back to back to back national team titles with wrestling. I was also given the opportunity to design and implement programming for the football team. This was a huge accomplishment for me. I wrote their program and lead over a 100 guys through their strength and conditioning sessions. Talk about having to grow up quickly.

During my time as a strength coach, which spanned the better part of 5 years, I began to refine my philosophy and practice new ideas and programming on myself. I was lifting heavy and self correcting technique. It was a fun time. I was given more and more responsibility and I was getting stronger. Right around January slash February of 2007, a former co-graduate assistant who was now working in the public sector started bringing in clients of his and running them through unfamiliar workouts. These workouts broke all the traditional rules. It resembled a circuit but definitely was not one. I didn’t have time to talk to him about it so I never really paid much attention in that first month or two but one day that all changed. He had a workout written down on a piece of paper that also had a time written down next to it from one of his clients who did the workout. I actually saw him put his client through it one day so I kind of remembered what the exercises were. In any case, I decided to suit up and give it a shot. Boy was I in for a slap in the face.

The workout had in it some things we as CrossFitters don’t normally do but at the time, it didn’t matter. There were DB shoulder raises, burpee long jumps, air squats, and about 3 or 4 other exercises. I was to complete 3 or 4 rounds as fast as I possibly could. Piece of cake, right? Whether it was 3 rounds for time or 4, I quit one round early. I’ve never quit like that. I just stopped. I was inexplicably, to me anyways, about to go into cardiac rest while also feeling queasy. It was a feeling I had never felt before and I liked it. I don’t know why but I really liked it. That workout was as if someone had just laughed at my religion and told me it was wrong. I was on a mission from that day forward.
Before, I had no time to ask where my former co-worker where he found this workout but after trying it, I wrote down questions I was going to ask him the next time he came in. This is how I found out about CrossFit. I was on the main site 24/7. I couldn’t get enough. My technique with most lifts was above average because that’s what I did. I taught athletes how to lift correctly. Where I lacked was with range of motion requirements. I actually have video (I can’t find it but if I do, I’ll post it) of one of my first workouts and the range of motion was horrendous. It’s quite a sight to see. It doesn’t matter though, I was hooked and I wanted nothing more than to soak up as much information as I could.

Every year, as a strength coach, we get to book a trip for continuing education. Those of us in the weight room would usually go to the Sports Specific Training Conference hosted by the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Not this year. I knew exactly where I was going. I asked our head strength coach and he gave me the okay. Joe Westerlin, who is the other owner of CrossFit Omaha, was working in the weight room at the same time I was and because he was not a graduate assistant, did not get money for continuing education but was onboard. He put aside $1000 dollars of his own money and we both booked our flights. Santa Cruz, here we come.

I still remember our level 1 certification like it was yesterday. Joe and I were giddy. We had every reason too. We were about to set foot in CrossFit’s Mecca, the place where it all started. At that time, Coach Glassman was still doing most of the lectures along with Nicole being the show girl. It was the perfect combination, the intellectual coach and the hot girl that had really good technique. I got my first muscle-up there, learned what Tabata squats were, beat everyone doing Fat Helen (600 meter run), my team won the chipper on day 2, and I got to meet Dutch, Speal, Steve Serrano of CrossFit Marina, Jolene, Eva T, Annie, and a bunch of other really cool people that day. I will never forget my level 1 cert and how I first started CrossFit. It is the very reason why I own an affiliate now and why I take great pride in teaching and motivating the masses. My experience in these first few months of learning about CrossFit has taught me many lessons but one sticks out more than the rest.

The level 1 cert may not be what everyone wants it to be but it is usually the first introduction that most have with CrossFit, the company. It is, to most, the chance of a lifetime. It is this very thing that reminds me that when a person walks into CrossFit Omaha, it may very well be the first experience they have with CrossFit but at the very least the very first experience they have with CrossFit Omaha. I may grow tired of doing one on ones, intro sessions, and leading classes but that is because I practically live here. My members do not. It is my responsibility to make sure everyone that walks in the door to our gym gets the experience of a lifetime. An experience like I received back in early 2007.