8/28/10
Part A:
Press
9×3 @50% 1RM
Part B:
Heavier, Uglier, Jet Fuel
15- Power Snatch 135/85
Run 400 Meters
15-Overhead Squat
Run 400 Meters
15- Thrusters
Run 400 Meters
15- Clean and Jerks
Run 400 Meters
8/25/10
Part of the 6 am class going after wall balls
For everyone competing on Sept. 4th, if you plan on doing the workouts as RX’d there will be double unders. For the next week and a half I have proposed a challenge- perform 100 double-unders for time per day. There is a chart on the wall to record your time each day; let’s see how much progress we can make in 10 days. This challenge is optional, but will greatly improve your double-under ability.
Yannick
10x w/ 95/65- you can scale this up if you so desire
3 Snatch Grip Deadlifts
6 Power Snatches
9 Overhead squats
7/26/10
Going Overhead
Lately we have been doing a lot of two minute drills using lacrosse balls, bands, and rollers…all of this is to help get into a better overhead position. CrossFit Mission Gorge just wrote a great article on exactly what we are trying to accomplish, check it out here.
Part A:
Front Squats
1-1-1-1-1
90-90-100-100+- 100+%
Part B:
Run 800 meters
30 Power Snatch 115#/ 75#
Run 800 Meters
We’ve done this workout in the past, look up your last time so you know what to beat!
6/11/10 WOD
The gym will be closed this Sunday, enjoy a rest day!
What is holding you back? Now that you have thought about your goals, what is holding you back from reaching them? Is it your diet? Drinking alcohol? Not sleeping?
Think about all of the things that are standing in the way of your goals and what are you going to do about them. How are you going to eat better? Is it finally time to give in and eat organic and throw away all of your processed food? Do you really need those extra beers or wine? How can you get more sleep? All of these factors have a huge impact in the results you get from your hard work and how quickly you will obtain your goals.
Think about your goals, how much do they mean to you? If they are important, then what steps do we have to take to reach them?
Part A:
Power Snatch 8×2
Strict Chin Ups 3×15
Part B:
Randy
75 Snatches w/ 75#/55#
6/1/10 WOD
Aftermath of Murph
Membership Dues are due this week, it would be greatly appreciated if all dues can make it in this week.
Part A:
Power Snatch
2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2
Part B:
For time;
50 double unders
10 burpees
40 double unders
10 burpees
30 double unders
10 burpees
20 double unders
10 burpees
10 double unders
10 burpees
If you can’t do double unders you will be doing x5. Yes Tom, it is x5.
5/11/10 WOD
Some words from OPT
“The Couplet”
In CrossFit terms the couplet means a nasty combination of 2 modalities of exercise mixed together in one brief, exciting dance. The 2 alone are not enough to bring about an intense, worthwhile response, but when mixed, it’s lethal. The power of 2 has so many dyadic relationships worth speaking about. In any situation of 2′s, there are characteristics to it that make the 2 whole. There must be a relationship that allows one to build off the other, like yin/yang; where one needs another to survive.
In any human relationship, the same characteristics apply. There must be signs where one steps back in order to allow the other to move forward. Most times when one wants to partake in making change in their life through increased knowledge, fitness or better nutrition the other half MUST be supportive of this endeavour or consequences will arrive.
The practice of it occurs in daily situations. Did you ever have the feeling in your gut of fear when ready to explain to your partner that you wanted to create change to your fitness and life in general? What was the response? Was it an immediate “I think that is great” followed up by, “that’s going to require some hard work”…or “how much will that cost us”? Or was it “that’s cool, let me know what I can do to help?”
The latter response is what we are looking for. Conversations can start with this and become more relative in terms of cost and time associated with it later. The first thing is support from the home front. It is one of the top 5 questions I ask in the first assessment – “and do you have support of friends and family for these positive changes you want to make?” In most cases from the get go when the support is not there, the chances of them succeeding is on the lower half.
As everyone knows, I am the biggest fan of everyone controlling their own destiny and being 100% responsible for all of their happenings and actions but I want to set this person up to have the best chance of success when they leave my office amped about having a plan and vision.
So what to do when the support is stalled?
Well, just like making a flower grow, it starts by planting seeds first. The seed is the conversation around the emotions surrounding the choice of becoming more fit and the communication (from latin communicare – to make common) around it. Having the initial conversation may bring about change right away. The partner may be fully in support of it but may have not expressed it over time. If the lack of support is there from the get go, discuss the feelings each of you have towards it and why? After the seed is planted, make the situation of eating clean foods, taking time to do some burpees and chatting about broccoli completely open and honest. Do not hide the expression of what you are learning and are excited about, it’s your right. After caring for the plant for a period of time and watering it, you may see some nice growth; changes may occur that allow normalcy around the consistency you have shown; the next thing you know, doors are opening for you, opportunities for your partner to support you are occuring, resulting in enlightenment for both!
If you are not getting support no matter what and this path of lifelong health means a lot to you, you might have to answer some big questions. Are you filling your schedules so tight with activities and running from here to there that your communication has broken down and not allowed this “fitness” conversation to occur? What are you running from, have you asked that question? When is the last time you spent a few hours exercising together – a walk is a nice start. Can you do something as simple as that?
Top 2 comments you might bang into showing lack of support:
The way most couples work it successfully at OPT has been like an army infiltration. The first partner comes into scope out the place. Then goes back home and yields results and the other partner then wants in. Then the kids at home are doing chin-ups and it all follows like that. How much energy and time is committed – less!
The recipe for success is honesty, communication of emotions and being able to let go of some things at present to allow progress in the future.
Part A:
Power Snatch 5, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1
Part B:
Helen
3x
400 Meter Run
21 KB Swings 24kg/16kg
12 pull ups
4/30/10 WOD
The date for the running clinic is May 16th, this is a FREE event for all members and will be very beneficial to your running. For any non members the rate is $50. This will be an awesome clinic, more details to come!
Check out the Freak Food website and menu. If we have enough people interested we will try to place an order next week. Let me know what you think and I will contact them and see what we can arrange.
NEW CLASS: Saturday from 1-2 we will now be offering a stretching class. This class is free to all members of the gym, so come in and learn how to stretch using a foam roller, trigger point, and bands. If anyone is interested in attending this class who is not a member, it will be $20 drop in fee.
Part A:
Power Snatch 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2
Part B:
15 min AMRAP
Max Rep Ring Push Ups
400 Meter Run
This workout is scored by the amount of pushups you are able to complete.
4/16/10 WOD
The Captain Pat Reeves Memorial Goal Tournament will take place on May 26th. This golf tournament is in memory of Kate’s dad who was the captain of the Manchester Police Department. All proceeds from the golf tournament go to a scholarship fund and to help families of public safety personnel who are in need. If you have any interest in playing in the tournament or making a donation, there will be registration and sponsor forms at the gym.
For the first week of May I will open the 5:30pm class to all public saftey and military personnel for FREE. If you are interested or know people who are, have them stop in for a week of training for free.
Paleo Kits are in! We are now selling XL Paleo Kits. These kits are an awesome on the run meal and taste good. For more information click on the Paleo Kit link on the side bar of the page.
Ready for strong man tonight? Bob with a 175# stone
Part A:
Power Cleans 3, 3, 3, 3, 3
Part B:
10 rounds
3x Power snatch (115#/95#)
15x med ball cleans (20#/14#)
4/6/10 WOD
We will be holding a new class on Fridays at 5:30 pm, called “Strong Fridays.” This class will be dedicated to a combination of Strongman movements, power lifting, and CrossFit. We will be lifting heavy weights and odd objects. Strong Fridays will be capped at 6 members, please let me know if you are interested to reserve your spot. If this class takes off we will look into offering it 3x per week and developing a heavy strength program for members who are interested.
All members please have your April dues in this week, if you haven’t already paid them. Thanks guys, I appreciate it.
New England Sectional Highlights- Check it out
How do you train for a 100 mile running race? Matt is doing it through CrossFit
Hank crushing the 130# stone
Kate pulling the stones with no problem
Sara making it look easy
Part A:
Power Snatch 8×2
Part B:
Complete as many rounds as possible in 15 minutes:
5 Deadlifts (315#, 225#)
10 Toes to the Bar
Post times to comments.
3/11/10 WOD
Remember you get a point for sleep!
Mark Sission
Most people are at least cursorily familiar with the concept of the circadian rhythm. For those who aren’t, the circadian rhythm refers to our internal, approximately 24-hour cycle of biochemical, physiological, and behavioral processes. Every living thing, from fungus to bacteria to plant to animal, has a circadian rhythm. External cues called zeitgebers (what a great word, huh?) help synchronize or alter our rhythms; they include temperature, nutrition, meal timing, social interactions pharmacological interventions (medicines, drugs), and, most prominently, the light/dark cycle of the earth.
Yes, light, or the lack thereof, plays an enormous role in the regulation of our cycles, especially our sleep cycle. For millions of years, light was an objective, exogenous measure by which organisms established behavioral patterns, hormonal fluctuations, and sleep cycles. Depending on the seasons, the position of the global axes, and the weather, you could pretty much count on light, bright days and deep, dark nights. Nocturnal hunters and scavengers took the lack of light to mean “eatin’ time,” while other animals (including humans) sought shelter and slumber when night fell. Daylight meant activity and safety (since we could, you know, see everything). Fire, then, wasn’t just about cooking and providing warmth; it also allowed humans a small sliver of daylight’s safety and security at night.
Before I go on, I need to make something clear. My regular readers will have already grasped this concept, but I think it’s a good idea to reiterate it. Though it’s tempting to place us humans on another plane of existence, apart from the mindless flora and fauna that share this world, we are animals. Sure, we’re smarter and more complex than the others, but we’re still subject to these exogenous zeitgebers worming their influential fingers into our subconscious and fiddling with our circadian rhythms. Our tendency to get sleepy when night falls isn’t a cultural relic; we didn’t consciously decide to start sleeping at night because it was too dangerous to be out in the dark. The culture of standard bedtimes arose organically, if you can even call it culture. Does the chirping of birds in the morning reflect cultural tendencies? Is “the early bird gets the worm” a standard axiom in avian academia? No – the early bird’s evolutionary niche decrees that it wake up bright and early in order to get food. It’s basic natural selection, and humans are the same way. We don’t decide to get up early. We get up early because of a complex pattern of environmental cues telling us to get up. Throughout our evolutionary development, handling business during the daytime was simply how we survived. We can’t escape nature.
But boy do we try.
The zeitgeber (can’t get enough of that word) with the biggest impact on our sleep cycle is light. Period. And it’s not just natural light that affects our sleep cycle, but also unnatural, manmade lights. That’s kinda how we operate, actually, as instinctual beings who often misinterpret “unnatural” because, well, our physiology isn’t exactly intelligent. It’s not sentient. It’s purely reactive. Blue light from a 10:00 AM sky, blue light from your computer screen at midnight – it makes no difference to our circadian rhythms. It’s all the same to our bodies, because for millions of years blue light meant daylight, not a late night blog comment section or reruns of The Daily Show. And it’s the blue light specifically that appears to monitor our sleep patterns the most.
Like insulin and inflammation, blue light is integral to our health – in the correct amounts. When we’re exposed to levels of anything in excess (or too little) of what we would have experienced for the bulk of our evolutionary history, problems arise. Blue light regulates our secretion of melatonin, the sleep hormone. Exposed to blue light, we limit the production of melatonin, and we stay alert and awake; in the absence of blue light, melatonin production ramps up, and we get sleepy. This system worked quite well for a long time. Reddish light from fire (our formerly primary source of nighttime illumination) has little to no effect on melatonin production, so sleep wasn’t disrupted when we relied on fire. These days, though, we’re subject to a steady barrage of blue light. During the day, blue light (natural or unnatural) isn’t much of a problem because we’re supposed to be awake, but at night, when we’re “supposed” to be getting ready to sleep, we tend to sit in front of blue light-emanating appliances, and our sleep suffers for it.
(An interesting note on how we respond to blue light. For years, scientists assumed circadian rhythm was set by sight (of light) alone. Person sees sky/LCD screen and the same visual system that allows colored vision determines the hormonal, behavioral, or other physical reactions to the light. It makes sense, but that’s not how it works. It turns out that there exists a second, more dominant system responsible for setting circadian rhythm based on light input. If a person’s sleep cycle depended purely on traditional color vision, we’d expect the blind to universally suffer from disrupted sleep. They do not, however, and this is explained by optical cells that express a photopigment called melanopsin. Unlike the standard rod and cone opsins, melanopsin doesn’t help us see. Instead, it reacts most strongly to blue light, and scientists think it’s the primary regulator of the biological clock and production of melatonin. In otherwise blind patients with intact melanopsin systems, blue light has a strong effect on their sleep cycles.)
Blue light has its place, of course. A British study found that blue light-enhanced white lights in the workplace improved alertness, performance, and even nighttime sleep quality in employees. That’s during the day, though, when blue light exposure is normal and expected. Nighttime exposure to blue light disrupts our sleep hormones. Television, computer screens, even digital clocks with blue numbers – they’re all common sources of late night blue light that can affect our production of melatonin.
Is blue light the only issue? It certainly appears to be the primary driver of circadian rhythm, but it’s not the only one. In a recent study, researchers found that while monochromatic blue light suppressed melatonin production via melanopsin stimulation, polychromatic white light (which includes blue light) stimulated melanopsin equally while suppressing melatonin to an even greater degree. Clearly, it’s not just blue light’s effect on melanopsin affecting our sleep cycles.
Still, blue light is the low-hanging fruit, and there are some simple steps you can take to mitigate its late-night effect on your sleep.
(Thanks to this thread on PaleoHacks for the last two tips.) Also, don’t forget to expose yourself to blue light during the day so that your cycle normalizes – it goes both ways, you know.
Part A:
Amateur
Power Snatch 5×3 (set new PR)
Part B:
Death by Pull ups
Death by Burpees
