Preaching to the inverted

Wise words from Lisbeth Darsh, despite coaching, goading and teasing, some people fear the inversion
http://www.crossfitwatertown.com/2009/07/31/the-importance-of-a-handstand/

3,6,9, for 12

Starter
Burgener warm up, focus on snatch balance progressions.

Main
3 pullups
6 dips
9 box jumps
amrap 12 minutes

Dessert
Tabata handstands.

Problems solved.

I spoke to various people, structural engineers and metal fabricators about hanging our gymnastic rings from the the girders in the ceiling, and we were unfortunately given lots of suggestions about beam drilling (a no no) beam clamp-ideal for hanging pipes-not people. I then spoke to a scaffolder and he provided the simplest method and the clamps necessary-they're not too pretty but will hold six and a half tons-ideal.

Height

Alex got his bar muscle up last night (putting that on my to do list)

Tuesday

Catching up on the main page wod's
10 wall ball
10 situps
10 good mornings

amrap for 20 minutes.

The good mornings were a suitable sub for the ghd back extension, using an olympic bar for boys and a lighter trainer bar for the girls.

DT

Benchmark bear complex
12 deadlifts
9 hang power cleans
6 push jerks
x 5

Apologies for the lack of blogs lately-we had a week in Devon, (and the weather was rubbish) but it was nice anyway, but good to be back too.

In case you're wondering what a bear complex is-this is a good example from CFHQ.

Jungle gym

30 Muscle ups for time is a little daunting, even more duanting is 120 pullups and 120 dips if you don't have the muscle up, and it takes a long time. It builds strength but we loose intensity, something which should always be present in the work that we do. If we scale this further and add a monostructural element we keep intensity high, yet allow the upper body a modicum of rest.

5 ring pullups, (ideally in the false grip, again a regular grip is also acceptable, especially is the scaling takes into account a jumping pullup)
5 ring dips, (again looking at scaling with either a banded or negative dip)
run 1 ramp (140m)
x7

It does also help if you have a few pairs of rings too.

Two Stroke

Hang power cleans
1,1,1,1,1,1,1.

Two stroke tabata,
I recently watched a video of Pat Sherwood, one of the programming directors at HQ, training at Tony Blauer's SPEAR compound in Virginia Beach. The wod split a tabata workout, (20 seconds on, 10 seconds rest, repeat through 4 movements, 8 worksets per movement-16 minutes in total) into just 2 movements, but placed them back to back, so Sherwood did hang power cleans and push jerks, alternating through the movements for 8 minutes. We adapted this with wall ball and burpees, it didn't prove overly popular.

Cash out
Static handstand hold.

Nancy

Run 400
15 overhead squats
x5
Scaled as we needed, following our mantra "mechanics, consistency, intensity, Jason did this as rx'd with 95, others with less.

Finally finished laying the floor today, have figured out an odd injury I've had, a sharp pain in the forearm just above the elbow, thought it might have been tendonitis from an old injury (we get injuries as the price we pay for not sitting around on our a$$es-Mark Rippetoe) it is in fact an entiely new condition called "Cuttingstablematswithastanleyknifeitis" and I think should now fade away.

P.S. Hello Sarah.

I dont like.

Some of you may recall I have a fear, possible phobia and general dislike of thrusters. A thruster is a movement entirely unique to CrossFit, it is the combination of a front squat into an overhead press, and is a great test of core strength and hip drive, pushing the weight into the locked out overhead position, with the arm behind the line of the ear, not in front. (this is important, range of movement is a CrossFit standard and needs to be adhered to)
They are uncomfortable, to say the least, however in our training we need to embrace our deficiencies, preparing our fitness so that we can possess a balanced fitness, not primarily focussing on our strengths and favourite bits.

The wod for today was 7 single thrusters, each escalating in weight, I got up to 65kg-Davie has an 80kg as does Karl-so I need to work on these, much as I don't want to.

To follow
Mini Fran
7 thrusters
7 pullups
x 5.

We all start somewhere....

Whenever a new client joins us, we start with the very basis of CrossFit, the key component of the foundation of athletic movement and fitness, the squat.
This movement and it's mastery denotes one of the many differences that Crossfit has as opposed to training in a "globo" gym. This term is a reference to the film Dodgeball, and adeptly describes gyms which favour machinery over coaches and mirrors instead of instruction. At a CrossFit Box (not gym) you should find knowledge, expertise and an ability to programme a workout to a client that is scaled if necessary, accounting for a lack of flexibility, injury or lack of conditioning.
Our new client here comes from an endurance background, and like many runners unfortunately suffers from a lack of flexibilty and core strength.
So how do we sove this problem? We educate the client in how to move in a functional way, training for a performance based fitness as opposed to an asthetic image which belies a true fitness.
A wise friend recently coined the phrase "go muscles, not show muscles". I think of what we do at CrossFit Hove as "Training for the athletic, not the asthetic".

Monday

Overhead squats
3,3,3,3,3.

wod
7 deadlifts
21 situps
7 ring dips
x5

Cartwheel practice.

Sunday

Sunday morning saw a little Olympic lifting-and a bit of a tidy up.

Saturday

Although we've been training in the new box since the begining of the month, Saturday saw our official opening, and we were joined by friends from both near and far, special thanks go to those from CrossFit Central Scotland, CrossFit North East, Crossfit Manchester and CrossFit London, Chet from Funckey and Stephen from SPQR. Extra special thanks goes to my parents for working so hard with me on this project, and of course to Christine for everything.

Teapot, Popeye and Triple extension.

The happy hour Wod looked at power cleans, striving for focus on the triple extension on the lift, ( by this we mean the ankles open, so the lifter will be on their toes, the hips open and the shoulders pulled high) aiming to maximise the power on the bar.

5 sets of 3

Wod
15 power cleans
15 box jumps
x5

We love davie day

Push Jerks
5 sets of 3

Death by pullup.

We're lucky enough to have a guest affiliate with us for this weekend. Davie Easton and his wife Jax have travelled down from Motherwell, Scotland. Davie was the second UK CrossFit affiliate (CrossFit Central Scotland) and the 42nd in total (CrossFit now has more than 1200 globally now). His depth of knowledge and experience amazes me, the front squat situp wod we did earlier in the week first came up on main page back in 2005, Davie was able to tell me how long it took him, and with what weight.( I didn't discover CrossFit until 2006, and was the seventh affiliate back in 2007)

In mid December of 07 I travelled up to Glasgow via Motherwell and met Davie at his Box, his facility was the first CrossFit facility I'd seen in the flesh and it was great spending time with him there-even with the language barrier!

Pullups

CrossFit without pullups is like strawberries without cream, or maybe Bo without luke, R2 without C3Po, Butch without Sundance, Starsky without Hutch, anyway, you get the picture.
The pullup rig is up-and it should take 6 at a time, and we still have space for another smaller one too.
We're aiming to get another length of steel to attach to the main Girder which crosses the box, from this we'll just hang rings so would be to pullups and ringwork in the same workouts as well. :)

Nate

Possibly one of the barriers that CrossFit faces is that people look at the workouts and cannot begin to fathom actually how to do the workouts. We look here at "Nate" a heroes wod, and see 2 muscle ups, 4 handstand pressups, and 8 32 kg kettlebell swings for as many rounds as possible for twenty minutes.
The issues we face with the wod is what elements of the workout to scale, according to the ability of the client whilst still maintaining the intensity.
The further issue is that the muscle up is a major gymnastic movement, comprising of a pullup and a dip performed on the rings, and is, in itself a major achievement for most CrossFitters.
We would scale this, ordinarily with a ratio of 4 to 1. 4 pullups and 4 dips as the equilavalent to 1 muscle up.
Using this theory we would see the the wod as:
4 pullups
4 dips
4 handstand pressups, again scaled, as we see in the first and second pictures, using a box or walking up the wall to aid the movement.
8 swings.
The question that this form of scaling raises is that is the intensity of the wod comprised, would it be better to drop a movement of the wod and introduce a monostrutural element in order to maintain intensity, again this depends on the abilities of the client and the level of intensity we wish for.
For some it would prove constructive, for other less so.
Alex did it pretty much as RX'd.

DL and FS

Deadlifts
3,3,3,3,3

Main page Wod
front squats and situps
21,18,15,12,9,6,3
Recommended weight for this was 195 pounds for boys and 135 for girls-scaling was in evidence needless to say.

100's

100 wallball
100 pressups
100 situps.

In a way this has a similar feel to Angie (100x pullups, pressups, situps and squats) and looks to have a similar challenge to it, which it does-but then it doesn't, all of the workouts that we do are scalable, this means that we can dilute the intensity, thus making the wod more doable for "normal" people. CrossFit is often seen as hard-maybe too hard for people who don't understand how we scale out workouts, the scaling is the key, the 100 is easily divided into rounds, whether,10x10 or 5x20, 25 x4-or simply by dropping the numbers-you get the idea-this is how we scale, the intensity is relative to the individual's abilities and the clients workouts should be programmed as such.