Kelly: 5 RFT: 400m/box/wallball

Kelly

5 rounds for time
400 m run
30 box jumps (24/20)
30 wall balls (20/14)

If you really love your wife...

You get her a kettlebell...

And yes, it was a gift, and no, Caryl didn't know Mitch was getting it for her.

3 RFT: 10 OHS/20 Push ups/30 Sit ups

3 Rounds for time

10 overhead squats
20 push ups
30 sit ups

First student workout of the semester...

Great fun integrating study abroad and CrossFit!

This last Thursday we had our first WOD with our college and university students from the States.

A team workout for time!

In pairs, take one kettlebell and one medicine ball.
Sprint to corner #1 of the second set of tennis courts.
   Person A: put down the medicine ball and do a lap around the tennis courts.
   Peron B: swing the kettlebell until your partner returns.

Then switch.

When you're done, carry the kettlebell and the medicine ball to the next corner.

Corner #2: Burpees
Corner #3: Toss the medicine ball in the air
Corer #4: Push ups

After the last set, grab the kettlebell and medicine ball and sprint back to the gym.

4 rounds for reps: KB/Box

4 rounds for reps

1 minute kettlebell swing
1 minute box jumps
rest 1 minute

Count your total reps.

Saturday at the gym

Our new Saturday class (9-11 AM) is getting popular!  Great seeing a lot of folks there, working on skills, trying out new things, and running through a workout.

If you've not come yet on a Saturday, come on over!  If you're thinking of checking out CrossFit, the Saturday class is the one to come to.

Here are some photos from today...

Steve and Tirzah AFTER doing the baseline workout hitting the prowler...

Lydia and Josh doing crazy yoga handstands.

Matt playing with our newest toy -- the fat bar -- doing a Turkish get-up.

No excuses...

5 RFT: deadlifts/double unders

5 Rounds for time

10 deadlifts at about 50% of your max.  Keep perfect form.
20 double unders.

3 RFT: Box/Prowler

3 rounds for time

15 box jumps (18")
100 m prowler push (loaded with 70 for men, 50 for women)
REST 1 minute between rounds

We've been doing it all wrong...

New toys!!! Woohoo!!

Fun fun fun.  Today was like fitness Christmas early.

TWO new prowlers AND a fat bar. 

Yes.  Just as you think you're getting strong, a new barbell which is 2+ inches in diameter (actually a bit LARGER than where you load the plates -- the welder had to use a lathe to get the plates to fit).

And two more prowlers means we can have prowler races.  How cool is that going to be??

Fight Gone Bad!

Yes!

3 rounds:
1 minute each of the following, followed by a 1 minute rest between rounds:

Wall ball (20/14)
Sumodeadlift high pull (75/55)
Box jump (20")
Push press (75/55)
Row

Count each rep of each exercise, and calories for the row.

GREAT workouts today!  Awesome to see people already thinking about ways to increase their scores next time!

8 min AMRAP: HSPU/KB/GHD

Max rounds and reps in eight minutes of:

4 Handstand push-ups
2 pood Kettlebell swing, 8 reps
12 GHD situps

AMRAP 400m run/deadlift

Complete as many rounds as possible in 15 minutes of:

400 meter run
5 Deadlifts

Go heavy

Helen: 3 RFT run/KB/PU

“Helen”

Three rounds for time:
Run 400 meters
1 1/2 pood Kettlebell X 21 swings (or 55 pound dumbbell swing)
12 Pull-ups

Getting primal...

CFCNX has some folks interested in doing a 30 day paleo/primal challenge.

The basic idea is to follow a primal/paleo approach to nutrition for 30 days, and at the end of the 30 days see how you feel.

It is important to NOT cheat during the 30 days -- for some people they may undo all the benefits very quickly and end up "cheating" more than they realize.  Once you've done it for 30 days, then following a primal approach (like Mark Sisson's book Primal Blueprint), you can choose to add some foods back in (like dairy) to see how you do.

Adam is going to lead a discussion and offer some tips on Saturday after our open gym at 11 AM at Salad Concept. 

To get started, check out our nutrition page and follow the links to the articles. We've done a lot of research both on and off-line, sifted through dozens of websites and blogs, and find these are the best ones.

If you want to borrow a copy of The Primal Blueprint from the gym, grab one.  It is a great introduction to the science and approach of paleo/primal living!  If you want to get into the chemistry a bit more, grab The Paleo Solution and check it out.

Nicola's last day...

Here are a few photos from our "Nicola" workout from yesterday, as we bid farewell to Nicola Morely who is returning back to Australia.  We'll miss you!  Come back soon!

10 min AMRAP: 20 DU/20 PU/20 SU

10 minutes as many rounds as possible of

20 double unders
20 push ups
20 sit ups

Nicola: 3 rounds for time: 400 m/burpees/push press/box/kettlebell

"Nicola" for Nicola, who is going back to Australia today...

3 rounds for time
400 m run
20 burpees
20 push press 95/64
20 box jumps
20 kettlebell swings

Rest 2 minutes between rounds

Pulling heavy and surfing the pushup...

 Glad to be joined by Christine from CrossFit 760 in San Diego! Inspired no doubt by our heat and humidity, Christine got her first deadhang pull up and hit a PR on the deadlift.  Go!

Surfing the pushup!

Christine powering through the workout of the day...

Hitting a PR on the deadlift

FT: 21-15-9 deadlift/squats/push press

For time:
21 reps, deadlift
50 Squats
21 reps, push press

15 reps, deadlift
50 Squats
15 reps, push press

9 reps, deadlift
50 Squats
9 reps, push press

Scale weight as necessary to maintain correct form! This is a met con, don't go so heavy your form breaks down!

5 RFT: kettlebell/powerclean/box jump

Five rounds for time of:

1.5 pood Kettlebell swing, 15 reps
95 pound Power clean, 15 reps
15 Box jumps, 24" box

 2 minute rest between rounds

Relax and enjoy life

Mark Sisson with another great post this week, The Pleasure Principle.

Too often in our society we cultivate an antagonistic, dysfunctional relationship with our bodies. We joke about how little activity we can perform in a day or brag about how long we make ourselves run ragged on the treadmill...

Living Primally, after all, is rooted in the conditions of our ancestors’ existence. Theirs were lives of the physical (eventually) guided and enriched by the adaptations of reason and thought – adaptations that came into being to favor physical survival. The sensation of pleasure is inherently bound up in that process, at once a catalyst of our species’ evolutionary success and an essential principle behind our individual vitality.

Living a life rich with healthy pleasures (e.g. flavorful and satisfying food, vigorous play, luxurious sleep, etc.) continually reorients us in this relationship with our physical selves. What comes of it in time can be a kind of trust in the body, an intuition about what feels healthy for us, and perhaps a more open experience of pleasure. We taste our food more. We notice the subtler sensations during and after a sprint. Our senses become heightened with time outdoors. We reconnect with pleasure and reignite something in our humanity – a more elemental way of encountering both ourselves and the world.

Reebok

Great article in Competitor magazine about CrossFit -- Burning Runner: An Inside Look at CrossFit

The most powerful spokesperson on behalf of the authenticity of Reebok’s embrace of CrossFit, however, was Peggy Baker, 53, who has worked at the company for 27 years. A type-2 diabetic for 22 years, Baker says she’s needed pills and insulin shots for 18 years. When she was pressed to try a CrossFit workout, Baker said her goal was clear: “I would try it so that I could tell them I hate it. Seriously! I’m 53 years old. I haven’t run since high school. I said, ‘Listen, I’ll try it. But is my health insurance going to cover this? Will my husband get a double-payout on the life insurance?”

In telling the story Baker choked up. “It’s a community like I’ve never seen,” she said. In two months she’s lost 33 pounds and her insulin injections have been cut in half, and she’s been told that she may be able to go off insulin treatments completely by the end of the year. I asked her what she had to say to others struggling with adult-onset diabetes and weight problems. She replied, “If I can do it, you can do it.”

Jump over to read the article here!

Footsteps...

A new commercial from Under Armour shot at CrossFit LA.

Squat/Press/Power Clean & baseline

Warm up to working sets with the barbell.

Squat 3 x 5
Press 3 x 5
Power clean 5 x 3

Focus on good form!

And for an added bonus/alternate today, the baseline workout.  Happy to meet Melissa who lives in Bangkok and used to train with CrossFit Hollywood!

Health benfits of muscle mass

Good post from Mark's Daily Apple on how many calories muscle mass really burns at rest, and more importantly, how important muscle mass is for helping control insulin sensitivity, faster recovery from injury and other benefits.

Now that you’ve (hopefully) ceded the “idle muscle burns fat” idea, we need to go further. Let’s stop thinking of exercise and weight loss in mechanistic terms. Let’s not think of “burning” calories by subjecting our bodies to punishment. Sure, you could grind away and, with enough volume and intensity, “burn” off calories through sheer force of will. If your only concern is that you maintain low body fat, you could eat a bad diet and run fifteen miles a day. I did, and I was skinny. It “works.” But isn’t it much more freeing to realize that 80% of your body comp will come through proper diet, meaning you don’t have to grind on the treadmill and you can instead explore the joy of movement for its own sake? Isn’t it more elegant to imagine the hormonal cascade that heavy lifting jumpstarts and which gently nudges one’s physiology toward leanness and away from adiposity?

The women of CFCNX!

Some of the women of CFCNX with the new t-shirt.  Go grrrl power!

Dana, Christa, Monica, Nicola and Shelly

Tabata 4 rounds: burpees/situps/push ups/squats

4 Tabata rounds (20 seconds of work, 10 seconds of rest) each of:

burpees
situps
push ups
squats

Complete 4 rounds of each movement then rest one minute!

Score is the lowest number of reps per set.

Prowler & rope climbing

Today's workout was a 100 meter prowler push (50 meters out and back).

Then, skills work on rope climbing -- vertical and our "sloth" rope at an angle.

3 RFT: 200 m with WB/20 WB/20 Burpees/20 KB/rest

3 rounds for time

200 m run carrying a wall ball
20 wall balls
20 burpees
20 kettlebell swings
Rest 2 minutes between rounds.

Paleo in Thailand...

Yes, there is grass fed beef (and not just those leathery white village cows), you can get coconut oil cheap, and as long as you stay away from trying to make fake neolithic foods with paleo ingredients (e.g. heaps of almond and coconut flour), it isn't that difficult.

Besides, any country with easily available grilled meat on a stick can't be that bad!

So here is what I got in a noodle shop the other day:

From the left, clockwise.  

• Pad-see-euw "gao lao" (at least this is what they call it at Yui's): Lots of pak kanat (dark green leafy veg), pork and egg.
• Pumpkin curry with egg and chicken
• Omelet with "cha om" (acacia leaves)
• Duck (the gravy probably has gluten in it, so if you remember tell them no gravy) 

 Yes, they probably cook with seed oils, and may use some sugar to help get the spices right, but not bad for cheap food (well, the duck isn't so cheap, but it was Sunday...).

Row 5 k for time

Row 5 km for time.

Good work all! And welcome to Aoife from CrossFit Ireland!

Getting ready for the row

Tomorrow we'll be doing a 5 K row.

Here is a good video on the "mental game" of rowing...

The failure of low-fat diets...

A couple of great posts from gnolls.org The Lipid Hypothesis Has Officially Failed (Part 1 of many).

Be sure to click through and read part II, as well as the links embedded in the article.

New hours!

CFCNX is going to have new hours starting Monday, August 8th!

We will be bringing back the 7 AM class, M-F and adding an open gym Saturday, 9 to 11.

The purpose of the open gym is to catch up on a WOD you've missed during the week (that will start at 9:3), to practice technique, and to give people another day when they can get into the gym.

So our hours will be:

7-8 AM M-F
8-9 AM M-F
5-6 PM T/T
9-11 Saturday

We're getting more members all the time, and classes are starting to get crowded!  No worries, we will add classes as we need to.  Just let a trainer know when you'd like to work out.

See you in the gym!

Fran

Today is Fran Friday!

21-15-9
Thrusters
Pull ups

Load heavy enough for a challenge, but not so much that your form breaks down!

Functional Paleo

Great post up about optimal nutrition and diet "Functional Paleo: A Definition and Short Manifesto."

A paleo diet is:

• Eating foods that best support the biochemistry of human animals with a multi-million year history of hunting and foraging, primarily on the African savanna.
• Avoiding foods, such as grains, grain oils, and refined sweeteners, that actively disrupt the biochemistry of these human animals.

In other words, “functional paleo” is based on the biochemical function of food within the human body. It is informed by evolutionary context, but not limited by it.

Jump over and read the whole thing.  He's got lots of great links to more information, and for anyone concerned about health and fitness his blog is a must-read.

10 min AMRAP: bar facing burpees/snatch

Today's workout:

10 minutes as many rounds as possible (AMRAP)

6 bar facing burpees -- do a burpee facing the barbell then jump over the bar and repeat
6 snatches

5 RFT: run/push press/box jumps/SDHP

5 rounds for time

400 meter run
95 pound Push press, 12 reps
12 Box jumps, 24 inch box
95 pound Sumo deadlift high-pull, 12 reps

Scale as appropriate to maintain perfect form.

Jackie: 1 k row/thruster/pull ups

“Jackie”

1000 meter row
45 pound Thruster, 50 reps
30 pull-ups

 Welcome to Teddy from Korea!  Moving so fast we couldn't get a good photo...

CrossFit Total

Today we did the CrossFit total.

Best of three attempts of backsquat, press and deadlift.

If you come on Tuesday/Thursday, we will repeat this Tuesday afternoon.