Mike Burgener
Position:
Coach and Geezer
The legendary “Coach B” Mike Burgener has been coaching weightlifting for more than 50 years. He has been named “Coach of the Year” by United States Weightlifting and is a Level 5 senior International Weightlifting Coach. It was an unlikely friendship, however, that led Burgener to CrossFit. “Greg Glassman [the founder of CrossFit] calls me up,” recalls Burgener. “He asked if I was the guy holding courses for Olympic weightlifting and I said ‘yes.’ He said, ‘I’d like to bring my athletes down at this gym that I have in Santa Cruz, and I’d like for you to get them certified for USA Weightlifting.”
This was 2005, the early years of CrossFit, but Olympic lifts were already at the core of the workout’s philosophy.
The rest, as we say it, was history. CrossFit Weightlifting exploded. (Read more here.)
He is a graduate of Notre Dame and obtained his MS degree in Exercise Physiology from the University of Kentucky. He was a Captain in the United States Marine Corps. He runs a Regional Training Center for
USA Weightlifting from his home in
Bonsall, California. He has coached the Junior World Women’s Weightlifting Team (which I was a member of in 1997!). His son and daughter, Sage and Casey, are also notable lifters.
