It started with the Crossfit Open and over 1500 teens girls aged 14 and 15 from around the world.  From there, the top 10% moved on to the Age Group Online Qualifiers (AGOQs).  If you were successful there, the top 30 in the world moved on to Age Group Semifinals.  After that, the top 10 head to Crossfit Games in Madison, Wisconsin - CrossFit’s World Championships.  Let me introduce you to 14 year old Trenna Gessell (she is actually not 14 until July; making her old enough to compete by only a few weeks!).

While I have yet to find that pot of gold under the rainbow to have a definitive answer to that question, there is a very simple place to start.  Buy yourself your own skipping rope!  Think about this. When you get in to any vehicle other than your own and start driving.  The vehicle feels different. The brake and gas pedal have a different feel. The controls are all in a different place. It shifts different. Sure, it drives down the road in the same manner and goes from point A to point B.  However, it feels totally different.  Now imagine you were just learning to drive.  Every time you went to drive, you had to do it in a different vehicle.  You certainly are not going to help your situation…

I had a new member a while back who was struggling to see improvements in their fitness.  They showed up three or four times a week, which is exactly what I had recommended for them.  After a few months, next to nothing had changed.  They were frustrated with their results…

We’re a couple weeks from the “Crossfit Open”, the official start of the competition season in Crossfit.  Here’s the thing though. Over 90% of the people who sign up to do The Open have any aspirations of ever competing in Crossfit (a local competition or fundraiser aside).  One of the most common things I hear as a coach when talking about it is “why”.  Here are three reasons to sign up, of which everyone can relate to at least one…

suc·cess

/səkˈses/

noun

noun: success; plural noun: successes
-the accomplishment of an aim or purpose."there is a thin line between success and failure"
-the attainment of fame, wealth, or social status."her success owed more to hard work than luck"
-a person or thing that achieves desired aims or attains fame, wealth, etc."overall the fair was a great success"

One of the most common cues you might hear in the gym, and one that I like to use often, is “drive the knees out” as we squat. This simple yet effective cue helps create stability in the knee and starts the hip moving in the correct way as we descend. If we aren’t actively driving the knees out as we squat, the connective tissue in the hips and the largest muscles in the body, our hamstrings and glutes, remain relatively inactive. We are “quad dominant” in our squat…

When we squat, it’s imperative that we use our core to brace the spine. The spine itself is nothing more than a stock of bones. There isn’t any strength associated there without recruiting all the connective tissues (muscle and fascial tissue) to support the structure. This bracing is done by breathing. ..

Building anything needs to start with a firm foundation. If the foundation is off, everything else above it will undoubtably be off. There are examples over of structures collapsing due to a poor foundation. This same principle applies to our squat…

I’m going to step out a little bit here and break a rule that I had set for myself when starting blogging; “no blogs on supplements”. I set that rule for myself as it’s far too large a field for any amount of blogging to cover. It is constantly changing as new research happens and as new products come on the market. One weeks fad is next weeks forgotten item sitting in a dusty corner of the shelf it once flew off of in the store. Also, each person is going to respond to each supplement differently. What works very well for someone might have no affect whatsoever for someone else. Just the way it goes. Then, I believe placebo plays a huge roll in supplementation. If you believe it works you will feel better while using it which will yield a little extra intensity in your workout regime and just like that, your new supplement that could very well have been flavoured baking flour produced some results. So, to that member who asked me after their class the other day, this one is for you. Let me add in here, that I do not claim to be any kind of expert on supplementation at all, nor am I going to try to offer any specific advise here. Just potentially shed some light in a simple way.

Ok. Here’s a really good one! I try to avoid direct linking in blogs too much. A lot of times things are overly-wordy and difficult to understand (maybe it’s just me! Ha). This article from Pat Sherwood in “The Morning Chalk Up” is super simple and offers some very black and white things to avoid in your fitness journey. I opened the link from them the other morning expecting to read it and get some good insight for a blog topic. The article was so good in itself that I wanted to share it directly with you. There are so many good points in it.

This past weekend the five fittest men and five fittest women in the world had an opportunity to compete against at the CrossFit Games. “The Games” essentially represent our sports world championships. It’s 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 it’s 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, “Benji”. Since that time I have grown closer to Chad and i am fortunate to call him a “friend”. I share this with his permission.

It’s 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 “not-so-good” from each of them and started brain storming.

The ring muscle up. It’s one of those movements that everyone in the gym looks at with awe and aspires to get. It’s 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. It’s 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 weren’t able to go out and play with friends and then most of their regular activities and sports were cancelled. They’re 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 haven’t. It’s 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 Invictus’ Jared Enderton on the “uppercutting the bar” 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 haven’t 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 don’t 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.

I wanted to kind of carry on from last blog where we talked about being “the competitive gym”. Before you go any further in this one, if you havent’ read that blog, please go back there first and give it a quick read so you know exactly where I am coming from.