Posts Tagged ‘Training’

It was a pre-Super Bowl Workout today! Since the big game started at 4:30 local time, we wanted to make sure people had the chance to get home and get ready to watch. That meant having an early morning Sunday workout!

Mel, who joined the CrossFit Lakewood (CFLW) Family last week, came in for a skills class and then stayed for the workout at 10:00am. Two hours of CrossFit to start a Sunday… not bad!

The workout was a doozie, but the most impressive part was that Melissa and Jamie both came out in what was at least 4-6 inches of snow overnight. Many roads were not plowed, and we were the first three sets of tracks in CFLW parking lot! Thank you guys for coming out, but most importantly, glad you were both safe!

Workout of the Day:
4 rounds for time of-
15 Ball Tosses / 15 Kettlebell Swings / 15 Double-Unders / 15 Burpees Jumps (over Ab-Mat)

Congrats to Jamie for doing another workout with Double-Unders! He’s officially moved out of needing to scale for that movement!

Athlete results:
Melissa (30lb Ball / 8kg Kettlebell / 50 Single Jumps)- 23:13
Jamie (50lb Ball / 16kg Kettlebell)- 29:27

Clayton gave me a call today to ask me something about improving his grip strength, and whether or not he should buy a product to help. Grip strength is required for many movements in our type of training whether it’s to hold onto a barbell, pull-up bar, kettlebell, etc. the list goes on… My answer was that I didn’t think he needed to spend money on a specific item, and that there were other (cheaper) ways to improve grip strength.

This conversation made me think of a great series of posts here that I’m going to name: “CrossFit WOD Tips” These posts are going to include suggestions or ideas on how to improve different skill sets that will translate into more effective WODs (or Workouts of the Day).

Thanks for starting us off with the first topic, Clayton!

The video below comes from the “Baseball Performance” YouTube channel, and demonstrates a great circuit of movements anyone can do by simply working with rice. Many athletes from baseball players, to rock climbers, to martial artists use rice as a method to strengthen their grips, and it translates into more effective and more stabilized movements in almost any athletic endeavor! Enjoy.

LifeAsRx, (which means Life as Prescribed) in my opinion, is the premier site out there for CrossFit clothing (with funny and awesome t-shirts, sweatshirts and accessories), but they also have an awesome blog on the website!

A story they shared last week is going to be pasted in it’s entirety below, but check the main blog site of theirs for other great articles. The story is about the perseverance of the human spirit, and how fitness (and LifeAsRx the company) has helped many people bounce back from addictions to turn their lives around.

Jonathan Okinaga (the author) writes:

I just want to thank everyone at LifeAsRX, I realize that you’re a Crossfit clothing company but you’ve impacted lives. Yes, I said lives. Your banner is in my gym and its a daily reminder for my crew to be legit and live life right.

I hope you like the story as much as I do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Story time. Gotta love you crossfit athletes
January 25th, 2011

Close to fours years ago I returned from rehab close to 5’7, 210lbs with a body fat percentage that basically said I was morbidly obese. I was out of shape, barely breathing after walking up a set of stairs and couldn’t even do a single pullup. My first Crossfit workout left me gasping for air and wanting more. Now Im 160lbs, single digit body fat and can do things that I never thought possible.

My journey has taken me from a drug addict to public speaker/author who runs sober living homes utilizing my walk with God, the “program” and Crossfit to help others battling alcoholism/addiction. When I first came across LifeAsRX, I thought it was a cool looking product line that my friends who were associated with CFO were hyping. The more I scanned the shirts, hats & slogans…I fell in love.

For those of us in addiction, we HAVE to Live Life As Prescribed. One shortcut, a single moment of not doing things right, wanting to give up, etc. could ultimately lead to death. It is a sad reminder I see all the time. Every day I tell my crew that each day sober is their PR. Strive for excellence and do things to the best of their abilities.

Over the last year I build a garage gym that has seen dozens of newly sober men and women get a taste of what Crossfit is about. We don’t quit, push past the pain and always finish what we start. When they are literally flat on their backs barely breathing I tell them “Thats just like your recovery. You may want to quit but if you listen to your coach (sponsor) and trust what they are saying…you’ll succeed.”

I just want to thank everyone at LifeAsRX, I realize that you’re a Crossfit clothing company but you’ve impacted lives. Yes, I said lives. Your banner is in my gym and its a daily reminder for my crew to be legit and live life right. I also give away shirts, hats, stickers and sweaters as a reward for those I come across that are living life as prescribed. Thank you.

Jonathan Okinaga

CrossFit has two types of workouts in particular that mean more to the “community” and the people who complete them. The first are the “Hero” workouts, which are in memory of some Service Personnel (Military, Police, Fire, First Responders, etc). The other are the “Girls” workouts, which take the same method of naming Hurricanes, and use women’s name to distinguish them from other workouts.

In my opinion, the most common of the “Girls” workouts is the “Cindy/Mary” day. On these days, athletes have the choice of two workouts to complete. Both of these require one to complete as many rounds as possible of the specific rep scheme in 20 minutes. Cindy is more basic movements, so the expected result is more rounds. Mary includes far more complex and skilled movements, so while much more taxing, fewer rounds are expected.

Workout of the Day:
Cindy
Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Squats
or
Mary
Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
5 Handstand Push-ups
10 One legged squats, alternating
15 Pull-ups

Jamie is very close to saying goodbye to bands to assist him on pull-ups! The next workout we do with a lower number of reps, we’re going to give it a shot. Great job making so much progress, so quickly Jamie!!

Athlete Results:
Cindy
Jamie (2 Banded Pull-Ups)- 10 Rounds + 5 Pull-Ups + 10 Push-Ups

It was the last day of January, and the weather was rough outside. Snow and ice always make getting to class an adventure, but we had four brave soldiers make it in safely!

The strength portion would consist of Back Squats, working up to three sets, and it seemed like almost everyone PR’d! Generally if we’re doing 5 sets of 3 reps, that final set will be written as “3+”. This means that the goal is to get those three reps, but IF the athlete can do more reps, they should continue on. Jamie got an awesome 6 full reps on his final set! You can see by the picture below that his range of motion was awesome even when he started to get tired. Well done, sir.

Jamie back squat, crossfit, smashby training, crossfit lakewood, crossfit in denver

Nice depth on that squat!

Workout of the Day:
21-18-15-12-9-6-3 of-
Power Cleans / Wall Ball

This means that the athlete completes 21 reps of power clean, then 21 wall balls. Next, 18 cleans and 18 wall balls, and so on, all the way down to 3 of each.

Athlete Results:
Back Squat – 5 sets of 3 (5×3)
Jamie- 175 (6 reps!)

WOD
Jamie (65lb Power Clean / 14lb Med Ball)- 18:28

Sunday Funday again! The weeks are going by fast, but I guess I can start viewing that as “it seems like there’s less time between CrossFit Classes! This week, Andy came back for another session, too, so I guess we didn’t scare him away last time!

To start off the day, we focused on a movement that is done very rarely in CrossFit, but one that I think is important to go back and hit every once and a while… The Bench Press! Check out Clayton, putting up 165 for 5 reps.

Once we finished the strength portion of the day, we hit a workout that I saw last year, and have wanted to try ever since. I’ll do this myself in the next few weeks, and maybe post a video of it, too. We’ll see.

Workout of the Day:
1 Clean and Jerk / 1 Round of Cindy / 2 Clean and Jerks / 1 Round of Cindy / etc. until / 10 Clean and Jerks / 1 Round of Cindy

The workout is 1 rep of a Ground to Overhead lift followed by 1 round of Cindy (which is 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 air squats). The most common and most efficient way to get something from the ground to over your head is generally going to be the Clean and Jerk. Once the athlete finishes one round of Cindy and one Clean and Jerk, then they complete one round of Cindy and then two Clean and Jerks. This pattern continues until the final round, which is 10 Ground to Overheads followed by the last round of Cindy.

Here are some clips of the guys doing work!

One of the highlights of today was watching Clayton crush the pull-ups with an awesome kip! We’ve talked for the last few months about how much his workout times will drop when he improves his kipping form. I’d say that’s pretty accurate watching this. Great Job!

Athlete Results:
Bench Press 5 Rep Max
Clayton- 165lbs
Jamie- 155lbs
Andy (performed Shoulder Press)- 65lbs

WOD
Clayton (75lb Clean and Jerk / Chest-to-Bar Pull-Ups)- 27:45
Jamie (65lb Clean and Jerk / 3 Banded Pull-Ups)- 32:18
Andy (45lb Push Press / 3 Banded Pull-Ups / Wall Push-Ups)- 19:40

Finally, as promised, here is the video of two CrossFit All-Stars completing the workout as prescribed. Both of these men are incredible athletes!

Alec Hanson has done it. He promised an epic video when he reached his 50th Subscriber to his Drive Time with Alec Channel on Youtube, and he has not only delivered, but he has exceeded any and all expectations I had for it!

What is this “Smashby Training Challenge” you ask? Back on December 16th of last year, I wrote a post on Perfection. I discussed that “a lot of times perfection is something we think we need to reach. My goal is to always be: “Better than yesterday”. That means that you’ve worked hard, and improved an area of your life; hopefully helping to make you become a more well-rounded human being.”

Then I ended the post by challenging any reading my blog to attempt to recreate one of the closest things to “Perfect” I have ever experienced…. the DOUBLE DREAM HANDS VIDEO!!!

Well I won’t ruin the surprise, but let’s just say that even though the “video submission” is 31 days late, as the Competition Organizer, I have accepted a late entry.

ALEC HANSON WINS!! Congrats, Alec!! Your prize will be mailed to you by the end of the week!
If you haven’t subscribed to his channel yet, you really should by clicking here and then subscribing. His material is fun and he has some great opinions on topics that are relevant to either life, CrossFit or both!

Without further ado…. enjoy your Smashby Training Challenge’s first Winner’s video entry!!!:

I’ve talked to a lot of people who say they’ve seen or heard about crossFit, but won’t try it because they’re scared, or because it looks too intimidating. CrossFit Milford put together a really awesome video about “Fear”. I like it because I know a lot of CrossFitters will understand the message behind what fear was, and what fear has become.

At first we fear CrossFit because we don’t know if our bodies will physically be able to complete the work asked of us for the day’s workout. We don’t know if we’ll even be able to do it… or if we’ll fail. Once we experience the program, once we start to learn more about ourselves and what we are truly capable of, once we see how many areas of our lives improve through this enhanced fitness, we then begin to see the true realm of our own possibility. At that point, many of us no longer fear our ability levels at all… we just fear the workout of the day.

Given the choice of fearing failure in my life, or fearing a single day’s workout on a board… I think you know which I’d choose.

Have you wanted to give CrossFit a shot? Have you considered trying to do it more often? Let go of the fear… You just might become fitter/healthier/happier than you’ve ever imagined, so give it a shot. Just try.

Fear from Patrick Cummings on Vimeo.

Team, athletes and friends,

These last few weeks have brought a few instances where posts containing workout results (aka “The Numbers” posts) have been delayed by a few days.

The reason for that is the time it takes me to create the video masterpieces that are your workout movies.

I decided today that while that is hopefully a great perk to training with me, it’s also a “fluff” and “fun” benefit. At the end of the day, you’re training with me to increase your fitness level and become a better athlete and/or healthier person. In my opinion, your results (the numbers themselves) are priority number one.

What does that mean?
While I will continue to do my best to complete the videos as soon as possible following your workouts, starting this next week, I will try to have no more than a 1-day delay from at least posting the actual workout and it’s results.

I hope this more timely feedback will help keep the workouts fresher in your minds when you see your weights and times, and help you plan more effective improvement goals for the next time we see the lifts/movements!

Constantly striving to be “better than yesterday”, hope this helps!

-Tom

CrossFit Founder Greg Glassman took some time to speak with several people last week and share more information as to how the 2011 Sectional Qualifiers will look. He also shared his opinion as to why he thinks his “Open” structure (where literally anyone from anywhere in the world will be able to submit their times for the workouts) will work just fine.

Gym owners and athletes have surely been wondering how crazy these workouts are going to be for the athletes. Here’s a quote directly from Glassman:
“So I would expect that first round to have a very classic “CrossFit” flavor to it.”

Then he gives a clue that it will likely be at the next round of qualifiers, one of the 17 Regional Competitions around the planet, where he would expect there to be an “urge to get outside of the box.” Glassman jokes that we could expect “moats and alligators,” and everyone laughs. Let’s be honest, though… is it really even a joke? I wouldn’t put it past those guys!

Several times during the video (which can be seen here) he reiterates the two goals of this type of event (the Open Sectionals).

1- “To find, mine, develop, watch and point to the world’s fittest man and the world’s fittest woman.”
2- “… and along the way, we want the process to be as inclusive as possible. So even those that feel like they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, will play… to maximize participation.”

Here’s the entire post on the CrossFit Games’ web site! March will be here before we know it, guys and gals!