“My Personal Wod” originates from Anna and Andrea’s experience:
expats in Shanghai from 2008 to 2014,
CrossFit Box owners since 2015,
active all their lives.

Andrea Tallone

CrossFit, Functional Fitness, Bodybuilding

Italian, class 1983.

Water-polo player before moving for the University, body building enthusiast as a kid, gets his first coach certification in 2006, while studying for his Bachelor’s Degree. He immediately starts working part time jobs at local gyms to make some cash. He’ll travel, for work and study, across Italy and France, and finally to China.

In Shanghai he finds some stability and, after 2 years without coaching, he picks it up again, learning about Functional Fitness, Bootcamp Training and CrossFit, coaching outdoor sessions and gym classes.

He goes back to studying, earning a Personal Trainer Certificate from ACE (American Council on Exercise) and builds up a clientele among the Shanghai expat crowd. In the meantime he works as an athletic coach for young boxers at Aboro Academy and keeps coaching Functional Fitness classes at Iron Dragon CrossFit.

Since 2015 Andrea is a box owner and personal trainer alongside Anna at Move! CrossFit.

We offer personalized plans, tailored for you, designed with specific objectives in mind, navigating around the obstacles such as time constraints, space limits and lack of equipment.

Anna Bassini

CrossFit, Functional training, Pilates

Italian, class 1988.

Former synchronized swimmer and free diver, with a passion for trekking and open spaces, Anna gets in touch with traditional indoor fitness after her Bachelor’s Degree. In 2012 she starts training following the CrossFit methodology along with Pilates and Boxing, with great results.

In the following years she hits the books and gets certified first as Fitness instructor and Pilates Instructor, and later as CrossFit and CrossFit Kids coach.

After 5 years spent living in Shanghai, she comes back to Italy, where, alongside Andrea, she would reap the fruits of the experience accumulated in the previous years and open their box, Move! CrossFit.

Box owner and top athlete for the newly formed Move! CrossFit, she starts competing in a variety of CrossFit competitions, earning medals in most of them. She focuses on coaching Functional Fitness with a very personal approach, and lately she focused on pre- and post-natal training and kids/teen coaching.

We met abroad, where we both realized the challenges that people face as foreigners during fitness and sport activities: the issues lie not simply in the language barrier, but also and foremost in hardwired habits and cultural background. This realization helped us to create a hybrid coaching style, a melting pot of US, Chinese and Italian influences, that still resonates in our live classes.

In 2015 we opened our CrossFit box, and after 5 years of hard work we still get a lot of satisfaction out of it: we met strangers who built strong friendship bonds, both with us and with each other; clients never missing a workout after 5 years from their free trial; people who moved away who still come and visit every time they are back. We had clients lose a lot of weight, others gaining a lot of muscle. Some people finally quit smoking, or adjusted their diet for good. All in all, we managed everything you’d expect from a proper gym and then some.

crossfit competitor

After years working in the field, both as freelancers and box owners, we learned that most issues that people have with fitness are the result of very specific problems: firstly, a lack of real knowledge among the general population, often swamped in click-bait articles and marketing schemes; secondly, a lack of long term programming and planning, replaced by easily accessible one-size-fits-all programs and meaningless workout lists; finally, poor movement standards, allowing newfound athletes to learn poor mechanics and stunting their growth.

The more generalized the wellness program, the more issues you may find with it: lack of a personal approach and tailoring makes for good passive revenues, but is not a victimless crime. Those who will eventually pay the price are the final clients, less and less able to navigate the market and choose wisely. Most of them will probably give up on their goals without having been able to find the right approach to get them there.

That is why this project started: to offer high quality content, customized and tailored, planned thinking of the person behind the program; simple and clear explanations, to better understand exercises, programs, and reasons behind them; constant feedback between athlete and coach, for faster improvements and better motivation.