How Do You Know It is Working?

“Give me your card,” the lady said. At first I wasn’t sure she was talking to me. My card?  “You are obviously a trainer; I need your card!” she said.  Wow! She thought I looked fit enough to be a personal trainer… WOO-HOO!!  

Affirmation; we all want a little bit of credit for the things we do. Sometimes it only takes a nod of the head or an “atta boy!” to give us the oomph! we need to keep going. Other times we’d like to hear or feel a little more appreciation. Looking in the mirror gives me that small affirmation—I do look better naked than I used to. 

For the bigger effect, all I have to do is go to my box and workout. The coaches and the other athletes are all positive and supportive. If the WOD is rough, there’s someone there to help you finish it. I watched one of the long-time members at CFC jump in and perform Slamballs with another member who was having a tough time finishing the metcon for the day. She had already finished her workout, but her comrade had not – so she jumped in to help. THAT is affirmation. 

As you know, my (80 year old) mother is working out now. She’s been at CFC for a little over a month and has felt like she is improving. Today, a new member showed up, younger than Mom but with less CrossFit experience. As they worked through the strength exercise and the metcon, Mom realized that she was performing better than this much younger woman. Affirmation.

The professionals who competed in the CrossFit Games this weekend, like other pro athletes, received monetary affirmation for their efforts. The audiences at the events also offered the athletes some appreciation with their cheers and applause. The athletes themselves affirmed their brothers and sisters with hugs and back-slaps, with high fives and handshakes. 

And while I will likely never reach that level of fitness and performance ability, the very existence of those super-fit, dedicated athletes AFFIRMED my commitment to the CrossFit life. When there is a life habit that, with work and long-term commitment, leads to literally super-human ability, you should try to fall into it! 

Thinking about making my card…

Leslie Sellers, CrossFitter

Not a personal trainer, just looks like one!

I won’t give it to anyone…but I might just pull it out and get a little affirmation every once in a while!

The Games

Awe inspiring…crazy strong…wow! 

The CrossFit Games are a sight to behold. Watching men and women perform amazing feats of fitness—swimming and trail running and weight lifting. Some of them are clearly hurting; others are sailing through with smiles on their faces. Workouts we’ve seen and done, performed at such a high level that we can only watch openmouthed and hearts pounding. 

Murph done in less than 37 minutes!! The 7km Trail Run—34 minutes!! These athletes are mind-blowing.

Don’t miss your chance to watch the world’s fittest people perform amazing feats of strength and endurance. Choose your favorite: individual men and women, teams or the teens or masters groups where, regardless of age, fitness is clearly on display. 

ESPN, YouTube, CrossFit Games site—watch! Be Amazed! Be Inspired!

10 months, 10 years: CrossFit Growth

I was considering my own fitness growth yesterday…incremental, but real. I did 3 real pull-ups this week, and performed the Hollow Rock RX for 4 30-second rounds. These are improvements for a woman who couldn’t actually do 10 sit-ups some 10 months ago.  CrossFit has finally taught me that real growth comes with deliberate work over a period of time.  The CrossFit movement can say the same thing.

CrossFit Journal just published their own articles regarding The CrossFit Games. This year’s games will mark 10 years of competition. There has been so much change since that first “backyard barbeque” version of the Games in 2007. 

2007 was all about meeting face-to-face with the original athletes of this fitness movement that was born in the ethersphere. CrossFit gained its popularity by publishing the WODs online and letting everyone get in on the action. In ’07, the real CrossFit movement began when those athletes got together in “Dave Castro’s mom’s back yard” to perform a tougher workout and see who did it best. 

By 2010, the Games had gained enough competitors and fans to move to a commercial venue: the (then) Home Depot Center in Carson California. The athletes remember it giving the Games a real feel of legitimacy that had not been present before. That ‘backyard bbq’ had grown into a stadium sport. It was ’10 when the Games added the Masters category to the regular Men, Women and Team competitions. The popularity of the sport, including with athletes 40+ years old, was really beginning to show. 

2013 was a year that really illustrated the growth and improvement in CrossFit as a fitness philosophy. Harkening back to the first competition, the Games did the first repeat workout in its history for the final day of competition: they called it the 2007. That original workout had literally been drawn out of a hopper—proving Glassman’s theory that the fittest athletes should be able to surpass others on any randomly drawn challenge.

The workout consisted of a 1000m row, 5 rounds of 25 pullups and 7 push jerks.  Here’s where we see the growth of the sport and the growth of the athletes who practice it. The women’s champion in 2007, Jolie Gentry, finished the workout in 16:22. In 2013, Val Voboril did it in 9:48.4—more than 6 minutes difference—and she was the 3^rd place winner overall. 

2016 marks a decade of finding the Fittest Athletes in the World. We’ve seen men and women compete and improve; we’ve seen the competition grow beyond the confines of even a professional stadium. We marveled at the prowess of athletes like 4-time Champion Rich Fronig Jr. and seen people from 14 to 60+ push themselves to the limits to prove their fitness and their dedication.  

Don’t miss it this year: July 19-24 streaming on YouTube and WatchESPN, with 10 hours of competition broadcast on the ESPN networks.  Read the articles too!  Decade of Dominance

Why we do the HeroWOD

Justin Schmalstieg, Marine Gunnery Sergeant, was killed in action serving his fourth tour of duty in an active warzone, Afghanistan 2011. He was an EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) Technician whose very job was as dangerous and as important as any MOS in the Marine Corps. He was also a CrossFit athlete and on July 4^th, the WOD at CrossFit Champions was in his honor: the Schmalls Hero WOD. 

As the mother of an active duty Marine, doing this WOD was not only a matter of respect, but pride. My son is currently deployed in the Pacific Theater of Operations and I know he is closer to the ‘action’ than he has ever been.  It is only right that I work my body as hard as possible, that I sweat and strain, that I finish something hard because my son, and many other mothers’ children, are out there doing the same for us, for the U.S.

CrossFit Champions was very full on Monday morning; it was heartening to see athletes pushing hard to honor a great American. The HeroWOD is a noble endeavor on the part of CrossFit. It may not be nationally recognized or even locally noticed, but every CrossFit athlete knows what it is and what it means.

It gives us just a little taste of what it means to make a personal sacrifice that may or may not ever be noticed or appreciated by others;  how it feels to work to the point of exhaustion without a single ‘atta boy’.  While our mere 1 hour “sacrifice” is nothing in comparison, we dedicate our sweat and tears to the members of the United States Military who willingly sacrifice for us every day. #HeroWOD

Why do you do a different workout every day?

This is the most common question I get from my “regular gym” friends. They are in the routine, no pun intended, of going to the gym and performing the same activity for the same amount of time everytime they go to the gym. Run 30 minutes on the treadmill, swim 20 laps, do 3 round of 5 reps of 4 different lifts…ROUTINE.

I always wonder, “why DON’T you do a different workout everyday?”  One of the fundamental  aspects of Crossfit is the promotion of complete fitness. This is partially achieved by the differing WODs assigned each day.

If an athlete practices on a specific skill or ability, he may become very good, even great, at that thing. However, if he is asked to do something else, then what?  If I am fast and super-efficient at running for 5 to 7 miles, I will necessarily be poor at running less than 5 or more than 7 miles. I have conditioned my body to specialize on a particular distance…anything else will not meet the needs of my specialty.

Interestingly, Life rarely  asks us to perform ONLY the thing we are best at. CrossFit promotes universal fitness because survival, professional endeavors, high adventure, or just life REQUIRE universal fitness. So the workouts are different everyday. How does that promote universal fitness, you ask?

The human body uses three metabolic pathways of energy for any action: phosphagen, glycolic, and oxidative. If the body needs HIGH POWER for a very short period of time, it uses the phosphagen pathway.  If MEDIUM POWER is required for a longer period—up to several minutes—the body uses the glycolic pathway. Finally, when long periods of time – more than several minutes – require low-power activity, the body chooses the oxidative pathway. In an article entitled “What is Fitness?” CrossFit Journal notes that  “Favoring one or two to the exclusion of the others and not recognizing the impact of excessive training in the oxidative pathway are arguably the two most common faults in fitness training.”

The ultimate goal of CrossFit is for its athletes to perform well at any and all possible tasks. If an athlete, a human body, is ready for whatever the gauntlet of life might throw at it, the goal is achieved.  

On any given day, we may have to burst into a run to keep the toddler out of the street, spend several minutes moving boxes and books from one location to another, then sitting for 30 minutes helping that toddler in the bath.   

OR hastily donning 40lb. of equipment and running to the truck, riding for 20 minutes to the site of the fire, then assisting another firefighter as he aims the water at the fire.  

OR hiking for an hour to the rockface, prepping ropes and carabiners for 20 minutes, then climbing hand over hand up the face of the rock.  All of these activites…and so many more…require the doer to be universally fit, to be able to access all three pathways of energy.

Today’s WOD called for running, lifting, squatting and crunching. Tomorrow I may have to pull up and push up and jump up…and each day, my body gets better at pulling energy from the best pathway to fulfill the power required so that I am ready for anything…

THAT is why I do a different workout everyday.