I am going to be very real with you here - November is a tough month in our house. Every year, it seems to get a little harder. Why? Well, because Jason and I suffer from seasonal affective disorder or SAD. It's not ideal to have 2 people in the same house struggle, but we know that it happens so we plan for it and can support each other, taking turns being the "rock" for the other person.
I saw this quote in a meme and I said to myself, "OMG, YES!"
Sometimes, I think back to when I was a kid. You know, when all you worried about was what game you were going to play at recess or if you can play at your friends house after school. I never thought about what was for dinner, how bills were going to be paid or how my clothes looked. Seriously, I would forget to brush my hair some days and it didn't phase me at allđ¤Ł
This past weekend the five fittest men and five fittest women in the world had an opportunity to compete against at the CrossFit Games. âThe Gamesâ essentially represent our sports world championships. Itâs an opportunity for the rest of us in watch the very best in the sport do their thing. Other than watching some real good fitness and spending some time on the couch, why do we really need the Games? After all, Crossfit is for everyone!
During our daily wods at 306, we do all kinds of movements. We do all kinds of time frames, rep schemes, intervals and domains. That is Crossfit at itâs essence. Jason does an amazing job of programming and our coaches do an amazing job adjusting so every single person who comes in to the gym gets the desired stimulus.
Approaching two years ago our community gained an angel. Benjamin Sawatzky passed away from cancer and the loss to Chad, Carla and the rest of the Sawatzky family was, and continues to be, unimaginable. As our community does when members are in pain or in need, we rallied around them for support. We created a hero WOD for Ben and had a completely packed house to perform his workout, âBenjiâ. Since that time I have grown closer to Chad and i am fortunate to call him a âfriendâ. I share this with his permission.
Itâs coming! Throughout all of the CoVid shut down and limitations there have been quite a few online competitions announced and ran by different facilities around the world. Some of the athletes at 306 have competed in several different competitions during this time and had great success. Jay and myself have had the opportunity to both participate in and watch other athletes partake and we have took the good and the ânot-so-goodâ from each of them and started brain storming.
The ring muscle up. Itâs one of those movements that everyone in the gym looks at with awe and aspires to get. Itâs a beautiful display of strength, skill and technique. It requires all three of those in order to execute. There are all kinds of drills out there to help you build the strength and/or awareness of being on the rings in order to work towards the end result.
CoVid. Itâs been a real bummer on everyone. As much as it has been a bummer on all of us adults, i think it has been more of a bummer on the kids. Their school stopped suddenly (probably not the worst thing in the world to most of them but...), they werenât able to go out and play with friends and then most of their regular activities and sports were cancelled. Theyâre left with empty pop bottles and rocks to play with! Ok. Well maybe not quite but if your kids are anything like mine, they need something to do!
I had to scroll back through my list of blog titles to see if I had shared this before. I was looking for a simple nutrition tip to write a blog on for tonight and thought I had for sure already covered this. Turns out, I havenât. Itâs the most simple, basic nutrition tip I give to just about anyone I do personal training or goal setting with. It is one that is easy to follow, easy to understand and ease to execute. No fancy measuring. No reading labels. No counting calories.
In our last blog I shared a video from CrossFit Invictusâ Jared Enderton on the âuppercutting the barâ as we perform a snatch. It was a good, simple video with great instruction and break down of exactly what he means and why to do it. If you havenât already, go back to the last blog and give the attached video a watch.
Tomorrow is Wednesday and (spoiler alert so stop right here if you donât want to know what the WOD is going to be) we are returning to Weightlifting Wednesday this week. We have spent the last couple months of lifting days going through and testing our deadlift and then our squat clean. Progressing on, next up is the snatch.
Today after a class at the gym I had a conversation with a member who kind of laughed off the comment of âI heard 306 was the âcompetitiveâ gymâ. I want to take a quick second and address that comment and answer the question of:
Is 306 a competitive gym?
In one word; yes. 306 is a competitive gym but not in the way you may think.
In every class at 306, you will hear a coach talk about movement patterns. How to move safely, effectively and efficiently through range of motion for a particular movement. As the points are listed there, is a hierarchy. First, we need to make sure you move safely. You canât keep coming in to train if you are hurt. Second is effectively. You need to be effective in reaching a given standard (hip crease the knee in bottom of a squat for example) so you can repeat your efforts in the future and see progress. Then we want to improve the efficiency of our movement so we can do it faster, longer, further, etc; depending on the desired outcome.
I wanted to make a real quick blog post about my friend Shelley. Shelley came to me with a specific goal a couple of months ago. She knew what she wanted to accomplish and she had set herself a timeline to achieve it by. From the very start of her journey towards her goal, she was set up for success.
You start Crossfit on a journey to get more healthy. You start training three times a week. You start watching what you eat. You start sleeping better. The number on the scale is getting smaller and smaller. Your waist line is getting smaller and smaller. Youâre killing it! You are encouraged to be able to see your progress in those numbers each day. Life is good. One day after a workout you step on the scale and the number didnât change. You go back to the gym the next day and train some more. The number staring you in the face on the scale still didnât change. Over the course of a few days you start to get discouraged, motivation drops and you feel like what you are doing isnât working.
Mobility. I feel it gets blamed for a lot of issues in the gym before we even give it a chance to redeem itself. Someone cannot get in to a certain position, so right away we cry âpoor mobilityâ and place the blame solely there.
While that answer may not be entirely wrong in a lot of cases, it almost always is not the sole perpetrator. Mobility might stop of reaching a perfect position, but we can often get in to a much better position with a little bit of work while not addressing mobility at all. Let me just throw in a disclaimer that I am not saying mobility is not an important part of a healthy and successful training regime. It is.
Every 6 minutes x 6
4 Bench press at 85%
4 deadlifts at 85%
One set of strict pull ups (please use a band if set is less than 8)
