8/31/10

-Sept. 1 is on Wednesday, if everyone could have their monthly dues in by Friday it would be greatly appreciated!

-I need to know if you are coming to the throwdown this weekend and what division you are competing in, let me know ASAP!  If you want to come to the throwdown, but do no wish to compete please still let me know and you can be a volunteer or a judge.

How often should you Train?

Warm Up

Part A:

Push Press

1-1-1-1-1

Part B:

Test 2

For time: (20 minute time limit)

-20 power cleans (135# males/95# females). Scaled- (95# males/65# females)

-40 sit ups

-40 double unders for Rx’d group. Scaled-(120 singles)

-40 sit ups

-80 any press from shoulder to shoulder (45# plate males/25# plate females). Scaled- (25# plate males/10# plate females)

-40 sit ups

-160 feet of an overhead walking lunge (45# plate males/25# plate females). Scaled- (25# plate males/10# plate females)

Bonus- Run to reduce your total time.  If you have time left on your 20 min limit run as far as you can.   The run will be a 50 meters turn around and your efforts will be stopped 3 mins after you finish the WOD or at the end of the 20 minutes-whichever comes first.  Every 50 meters you complete equals 10 seconds off your time.

8/12/10

There is only 6 am and 5:30 pm classes today!

Training vs Exercising

Warm Up

Part A:

2 min drill- work on whatever is the most sore

Part B:

AMRAP 12

10x Overhead Squat w/ 50% bw

10x Push Press w/ 50% bw

7/27/10

Brett showing his HSPU's in Spain

Who’s interested in the throwdown on Sept. 4th?  Let me know and we’ll start a sign up list

Warm Up

Part A:

Push Press

2-2-2-2-2

Part B:

Death by Pull ups

Part C:

500 meter Row

6/22/10 WOD

Top 10 Reasons Heavy Weights Don’t Bulk Up the Female Athlete

Rock solid information below ladies…..

Great article from EliteFTS…continue reading

1. Women do not have nearly as much testosterone as men.In fact, according to Bill Kreamer in Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning, women have about 15 to 20 times less testosterone than men.
2. The perception that women will bulk up when they begin a strength training program comes from the chemically-altered women on the covers of bodybuilding magazines.These “grocery stand models” are most likely pumped full of some extra juice. This is why they look like men.
3. For women, toning is what happens when the muscle is developed through training. This is essentially bodybuilding without testosterone. Since the testosterone is not present in sufficient amounts, the muscle will develop, but it won’t gain a large amount of mass.
4. Muscle bulk comes from a high volume of work.
5. Heavy weights will promote strength not size. This has been proven time and time again. When lifting weights over 85 percent, the primary stress imposed upon the body is placed on the nervous system, not on the muscles. Therefore, strength will improve by a neurological effect while not increasing the size of the muscles. And, according to Zatsiorsky and Kreamer, women need to train with heavy weights not only to strengthen the muscles but also to cause positive adaptations in the bones and connective tissues.
6. Bulking up is not an overnight process. Many women think they will start lifting weights, wake up one morning, and say “Holy sh__! I’m huge!” This doesn’t happen.   The men that you see who have more muscle than the average person have worked hard for a long time (years) to get that way.
7. What the personal trainer is prescribing is not working.Many female athletes come into a new program and say they want to do body weight step-ups, body weight lunges, and leg extensions because it’s what their personal trainer back home had them do. However, many of these girls need to look in a mirror and have a reality check because their trainer’s so-called magical toning exercises are not working. Trainers will hand out easy workouts and tell people they work because they know that if they make the program too hard the client will complain.
8. Bulking up is calorie dependant. This means if you eat more than you are burning, you will gain weight. If you eat less than you are burning, you will lose weight. Unfortunately, most female athletes perceive any weight gain as “bulking up” and do not give attention to the fact that they are simply getting fatter. As Todd Hamer, a strength and conditioning coach at George Mason University said, “Squats don’t bulk you up. It’s the ten beers a night that bulk you up.” This cannot be emphasized enough.  If you’re a female athlete and training with heavy weights (or not), you need to watch what you eat.
9. The freshman 15 is not caused by strength training. It is physiologically impossible to gain 15 lbs of muscle in only a few weeks unless you are on performance enhancing drugs. Yes the freshman 15 can come on in only a few weeks. This becomes more complex when an athlete comes to a new school, starts a new training program, and also  has a considerable change in her diet (i.e. only eating one or two times per day in addition to adding 6–8 beers per evening for 2–4 evenings per week). The fact that two meals per day has slowed the athlete’s metabolism down to almost zero and then the multiple beers added on top of that couldn’t have anything to do with weight gain…it must be the   lifting.
10. Most of the so-called experts are only experts on how to sound like they know what they are talking about.The people who “educate” female athletes on training and nutrition have no idea what they’re talking about. Let’s face it—how many people do you know who claim to “know a thing or two about lifting and nutrition?” Now, how many   people do you know who actually know what they’re talking about, have lived the life, dieted down to make a weight class requirement, or got on stage at single digit body fat?   Invariably, these so-called experts are also the people who blame their gut on poor genetics.

Warm Up

Part A:

Push Press

1-1-1-1-1

Warm up with whatever weight you need.  The first two reps should be with 90% of your 1RM, on the third rep match your old PR.  Based on how you are feeling try setting a new PR on the remaining two sets.

Max Ring Push ups x 3

Part B:

3 rounds

400 meter run

10 Tire Flips w/ in out jump

20 ground to overhead w/ sandbag

6/8/10 WOD

Goals

Goals are important in every aspect of your life, from your workout to your personal life.  To be successful with CrossFit, you must have goals you want to achieve.  These goals can be anything, but there are some guidelines to help be successful  in reaching your goals.

1. Set realistic goals

2. Set measurable goals

3. Put a timeline on when you want to accomplish your goal

4. Do not only establish a goal, but a establish a plan on how you will achieve your goal

I want all of our members to think of their top three goals for one month, 6 months, and 1 year. Once you have established your goals, think about how you plan on accomplishing these goals.  Post your goals to the comments section and also post them on the goal board in the gym.  If you make your goals public, there will be a support group behind you that can help push you to your goals.  I look forward to seeing everyone’s goals and seeing everyone achieve them.

Warm Up

Part A:

Push Press 5, 5, 3, 3, 1, 1, 1
Ring Dips 3×15

Part B:

Nancy

Five rounds for time of:
400 meter run
15- 95/75 pound Overhead squat

5/28/10 WOD

This Saturday we will have have our condensed version of the running clinic.  This will run from 8:30am to 11am, if you are interested let me know.

Warm Up

Part A:

Press

8,8,8 @ 65% 1RM w/45 sec between sets

Part B:

Highway to Hell

5 Hang Power Cleans 185/125#
Run 400 Meters

10 Push Press 135/75#
Run 200 Meters

20 Kettle Bell Swings 2/1 Pood
Run 100 Meters

40 Ball Slams 30/20#
Run 50 Meters

5/17/10 WOD

For any member who has been working on a specific exercise for a long time and can’t understand the movement, a personal training session can help.  If you are interested, during these sessions we will video your movement and break it down piece by piece.  Video analysis is a great tool and can really help you understand a movement.  We can video any movement and make corrections, everything from running, kipping pull up, double unders, clean and jerks, snatches, to shouldering a stone.

Also during these session we can work one on one learning the POSE running method, break your running down, and teach you how to be more efficient.  To become proficient with the POSE running method it will take more than just one session and will require you to work on your own.  Personal training sessions are $55 per hour.

Warm Up

Part A:

Clean and Jerk (squat clean)

5-3-3-2-2-1

Part B:

Every minute on the minute for 10 minutes:

3 Push Presses @ 75%

6 Chest To Bar  Pull ups

Rest 5min

3 Rounds of:

1min Hollow Rocks

1min L-Sit hold  on Rings or Parallets

Rest 30sec Between Exercises

3/26/10 WOD

Getting after the stones

Bob says, "Put your Paleo points on the board!"

Warm up

Part A:

Power Cleans 5×3 (set new PR)
Strict Chin Ups 3 x max reps (3 min rest)

Part B:

The Bear Complex

7 rounds of 7, this workout is not timed.  Do not put the bar down mid round, you can rest between rounds

Power  Clean

Front Squat

Push Press

Back Squat

Push Press

3/10/10 WOD

A good article written by Jon Gilson of Again Faster:

You have no right to bitch.  Your sore hamstrings and screaming core are artifacts of high intensity compound movement, enabled by firm contact with Mother Earth and the primate’s gift of an opposable thumb.  The very fact that your arms feel like lead and your legs like the business end of a propane torch is a gift of inclusion, given only because you have legs and arms to hurt.

The men of the Warrior Transition Battalion at Brooke Army Medical Center don’t know your pain.  They brought guns to a bomb fight, and came home with fewer limbs than they packed, blown apart by the cowardice of other men.

Their pain is worse, one of exclusion, borne of wheelchairs and ramps, endless hours of physical therapy and prosthetic fittings, hobbled by the incessant need for painkillers.  You will never know the agony that they’ve endured, first physically mangled, and then pitied, seen as victims of a botched War.

Luckily, they don’t share the viewpoint.  An even twenty, enabled by the efforts of a young Lieutenant, are pursuing rehabilitation with revenge.

These men came to Alamo CrossFit to learn the tenets of CrossFit, supported by a crackerjack crew of trainers and an unrelenting need to go beyond the bounds of traditional recovery.

Placed in an environment where pity was gone and intensity was the only goal, I watched men do handstand pushups, femurs balanced against their wheelchairs, no feet weighing them down.  I watched a Marine pull himself up a gymnastics ring, ripping as hard as he could while an unwieldy leg brace fought his every effort.  I watched a man with no patella tendon sit into a full-depth squat, and a man with no legs clean a medicine ball from the ground.

These men, broken in body, were impossible to stop.  The pain that we could inflict—jackhammering hearts, mental torment, and burning muscles—paled in comparison to the months of adversity that led them to our doorstep.  They deadlifted and squatted, ran and pressed, displaying a fortitude far beyond our capacity to keep up.

Every moment hammered home a single point:  You’ll be fine.

Remember that the pain is a gift, and men have overcome far worse.  When your training results in injury, remember that there are those whose injuries dwarf yours by degrees of magnitude, men who would kill for the right to feel a strained Achilles or a jammed thumb.  They will not quit regardless of the odds, and you will not disgrace their example.

The next time your muscles protest or you feel a callus give way, be thankful for the feeling, and the comparative ease with which you train every day.  Be thankful for the gift that is your body, and the pain that it brings.

In Northern Texas, there are twenty men battling to reclaim lost capacity, showing the world that injury is not an endpoint, that sacrifice does not end in martyrdom.  Their courage is physical and mental, and their lesson is one that will serve far beyond their lifetimes.

Their pain is unimaginable, but their message is easily understood:  the struggle to become a better human being ends only in death.  Don’t let them down.

Warm up

Part A:

5 min Double under practice

Part B:

Glen
Max rounds in 18 minutes
5x Hang power clean (95# 65#)
10x Front squat
15x Push-press

Dave, our newest graduate of the Elements Course!

Warm up

Part A:

Power Clean 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 (Find 3 RM)

Part B:

Complete 5 rounds of the following:

3 Clean Pulls
3 Power Cleans
3 Push Press
3 Push Jerks
3 Good Mornings

*Perform at 60%-70% of 3 RM Power Clean

*Rest 2 minutes between rounds

READ THIS ARTICLE

Wake Your Butt Up – Part One
Written by Mark Riebel

Most of us are aware of our rear ends — the two cheeks we walk around with filling out our jeans and giving us a comfortable area on which to sit every day at work.  But the attractive factor and a mobile seat are far from what your butt is actually for.  Your glutes (the gluteus maximus, medius, and minimus) don’t exist just to shake on the dance floor, they are prime movers of your hips and legs, and often a lot of athletes in our gym just plain don’t know how to use them to their advantage.  In this post I want to focus on your glute max, the big powerhouse that makes up most of the mass in your backside.

Your gluteus maximus is primarily an extender of the hip, a key piece of any clean, squat, jump or any other movement where you move from a flexed-hip position to a more open one.  But here’s the deal, while all of these movements require the glutes to really work, due to years of movement without proper recruitment of the those muscles, you can end up over-using some of your other muscles which severely limits your progress.  Think relying on your spinal erectors for a deadlift or heavily on your quads for a squat—your glute max is one of the strongest muscles in your body, so you’re doing yourself a disservice to not use both of them properly.  If you or any of your training partners have that little “butt shimmy” when they come up on a squat, poor glute recruitment could be to blame.  But fear not!  After a few sessions of some simple exercises, you can help your glutes to remember just what they are there to do.  These exercises are also easily increased in difficulty if you’re looking for a bit more of a challenge.

Your coaches will typically give you some glute activation exercises during warm-ups on days involving hip extension movements, but there’s a few that I recommend doing on a more regular basis, particularly if you think you may be suffering from “gluteal amnesia,” and especially in warm-ups on those days when you’ll need them in the workout.

Hip Bridges

We’ve done these weighted before, but for just patterning and learning how to get the hip extension down, go with un-weighted.  Lay on your back with your feet on the floor and knees bent at about 90 degrees.  (See photo above.)  Keeping your weight on your shoulders and feet, squeeze your glutes together to bridge up and extend your hip fully.  (See photo below.)  Hold for about a second and then relax.  Do three sets of ten to twenty reps on these.  This entry-level version isn’t to build strength, but to remind your glutes what they do for a living.

Fire Hydrants

Get on your hands and knees with a neutral spine.

Keeping the knee and hip flexed, raise your right knee out to the side of you, avoiding excessive twisting of the spine and pelvis to increase the range of motion.

From this position, fully extend the right leg behind you, raising it higher than the level of your back, and really feeling the squeeze in your glute.

Do three sets of ten to twenty on each leg in a slow and controlled manner.

Again, doing these on a regular basis will give the best benefit of retraining your glutes to do what they’re supposed to.  Next time, I’ll discuss some simple modifications to make these exercises more challenging to help further develop hip extension strength.