October 2006

Here we have video of Justin push-jerking 183 pounds, which is a 1x bodyweight single for him. He actually did it better right after this (full lockout) but I did not get it on video. OK so it is more of a push-jerky press: did I mention this was the first time he did this lift? Someone's gonna be a monster...

I got 180, a PR for me by 20 pounds. Next target is 200 pounds, any challengers?

On a related note, we are keeping track of various records on the white board in the back room. Check it out, and feel free to suggest any records we should be keeping track of.

Put an empty bar onto a pair of support racks and load the required amount of resistance. Stand behind the bar and take a grip just wider then shoulder width. Rotate your arms under the bar and up, so that your elbows point forward with the bar resting on your anterior deltoids and clavicle bones. Take a 3/4 breath. Hold your head erect and tighten your spinal muscles, raising the barbell up off the support racks. Step forward and plant your feet at hip width. Point your toes slightly out. Release and take another breath. Contract your deltoid muscles and take a short quarter squat dip while maintaining an upright spine. Now explode upward, pushing off the floor and driving the barbell with your arms. At the top of the extension, go up on your toes and quickly jump your feet out to the sides and back down into a quarter squat. Your stance should be shoulder width or a little wider. The bar should lock out overhead on or before your feet land. Secure and center the bar behind your head in line with your ears. Return to an upright position.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

The CrossFit Journal is now offering some articles for FREE online! I urge all CFO members (and others) to check it out here:

http://www.crossfit.com/journal/

Here is a scaled-down version of one of the Mothers of all Metabolic Workouts, "Nasty Girls". (right side of page: last "WOD video")

We call this "Slightly Naughty Girl" AKA "Sharon".

3 rounds for time:
50 squats
7 kipping pull-ups
14 jumping ring dips
7 65# Hang Power Clean

Sharon's time: 10:11, which is mighty speedy.

There is a six week Danzan-Ryu Jujitsu-Inspired Women's Self-Defense class at Suigetsukan Dojo. Information at Girl Army. Classes start October 8th.

Strong Women Are Beautiful: excellent article on women's body image by a teammate of our very own Candace Hamilton, center for the Berkeley All Blues Rugby Club. That's her in the second photo from the left.

<rant>While I cannot fully advocate the ultra-high calorie and rather carb-heavy diet described in the above article, it is a hell of a lot better than the salad and low-fat cookie diet which has been foisted upon our nation's women ("Snackwells" are the devil) by so-called "Women's Magazines". Real women need fat and protein in their diet and muscle on their bodies. We sometimes hear women say they don't want to "have big muscles" or "get bigger". Well we are not in the business of making you weak, and we refuse to buy into the idea that women should be weak! Perhaps you have some metabolically inert material you can remove so that you can gain muscle with no net displacement of body mass. Women need muscle mass to avoid osteoporosis, not to mention the fact that in the absence of quality muscle anyone, male or female, looks, well, weak. Is that really what you want? If so I suggest you avoid CrossFit, which will make you strong, and get a membership to a big-box, McDonald's-ish chain gym and take some bouncy-ball arm curl and cable-leg spasm classes. You will be nice and weak even after years of it.</rant>

Ugly day at CFO. Not one of us had good push-jerk. I failed at 175, even though I got 180 just a few days ago. Megan's were more like dip-press (topped out at 95) and Carlo while he did get 145 overhead had a few spectacular crashes.

Lessons learned: Focus on form first, then weight. Don't try to put 125 pounds down with your arms (use your legs). A six-pack is not an ergogenic aid. Roll the tape...

Both the Men's and Women's Push-Jerk Records at CrossFit Oakland fell today. You will have to watch to video to find out who generated the most power.

Also on the table is the Bodyweight Push-Jerk record. So far Justin has it at 1x bodyweight (183), but a certain super-hero like CF'r can probably beat it...

Healthy competition is a hallmark of well-rounded athletes. If you can wrap your mind around the concept of being goal-oriented without attachment to results you will be most of the way there. You can compete in many sectors: against yourself, against others, against others in your age group, against the clock, against a fraction of a world record (for example can you get within 1.5x of the world record for the mile; about 5:50?), etc.

Competition is important because it shows us what is possible: before Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1946 it was thought to be "impossible". Once he broke it the record only stood for 26 days! Admittedly there is a bit of hype in this example, but the logic is sound. There are many other examples of this type of athletic achievement being inspired by competition.

You can be notified when new videos are posted by subscribing at YouTube (assuming you have an account). There are lots of other good CrossFit, Oly, powerlifting videos, etc.

Interesting article on gender differences in competitive urge:

http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/people/hal/NYTimes/2006-03-09.html

Oh yeah baby: CrossFit Oakland is featured on the top page of CrossFit.com!

CrossFit Oakland will be offering our first annual seminar on using nutrition as fuel to drive athletic performance on Sunday October 22, 2006 from 10AM to 1PM for CrossFit Oakland athletes at CrossFit Oakland, 3300 Broadway, Oakland Ca. The cost will be $50.00 and an RSVP is required as we will be providing a meal for everyone who attends and need to know how many people we are cooking for. All affiliate athletes may attend for $50.00. CrossFit Affilates and Trainers may attend for $25.00. Non-athletes may attend at a cost of $75.00.

We will be offering information on changing body composition (both weight gain and loss) and the appropriate micronutrient and macronutrient ratios to facilitate increased athletic performance.

There will be no “diet” or faddish ideas discussed: we will provide you with sensible, balanced and scientifically sound concepts for lifetime fitness and health. However, as you might expect from CrossFit, there will be some ideas that fly in the face of conventional wisdom, and are light-years ahead of conventional thinking about food.

Some of the topics we will cover:

Strategies for healthy eating in the real world
Foraging in the urban jungle
How to eat “in the Zone”
Fat is not the enemy
The real deal on carbs
Real women eat real food
Top Fuel eating for serious athletes
Adult Beverages 101
Paleo/Zone (the ultimate fuel for athletes)
Hormonal effects of food
Disease prevention with food

RSVP HERE

CrossFit is getting a huge bump into prime time due to the following upcoming blockbuster movies featuring CrossFit protocols either as training methods, or actual plot elements:

"ROCKY BALBOA"





"FRANK MILLER'S THE 300"





I'm not exactly sure what I think about this. While It is great to get more people to do effective workouts, I do like the "undergound" aspect of CrossFit. Paradoxically, I am annoyed with Mark Twight, the "300" trainer, who is doing straight CrossFit, and makes it seem, by omission, that he made it all up on his own.

Here are Mark's "stats"

Deadlift: 365#
Clean & Jerk: 165#
Snatch: 115#
Overhead Squat: 155#
Front Squat: 195#
Pull-Ups: 40
Weighted Pull-Ups: +106#
500m Row: 1:28:2
2000m Row: 7:05
5000m row 18:51

Pretty sweet: I'm hoping to beat these times/scores within the next year (as far as Mr. Twight's Alpine times all I have to say is: whoa.).

Please post your opinions to comments, we are interested to know what you think!

This weekend there are several special events, and schedule changes: please pass this on to anyone who you think might not have read this.

Saturday: Class will be at 8AM instead of 9AM. There will be no 10AM session because we are going to Treasure Island (middle of Bay Bridge) to watch Candace and and the #1 ranked Berkeley All Blues rugby team play at 10AM. Everyone is invited to caravan with us. Bring a camera and a sweater. Directions are HERE.

Sunday: Class will be from 8:45 to 9:45. At 10:00 we are offering our Nutrition Seminar (FUEL). You must RSVP in advance if you want to attend because we are providing a meal and if people don't let us know in advance we won't know how much food to get!

Please let us know here if you will attend.

Cost is $50.00

Maybe if Jamie Sommers had some of Shira's skills those pesky fembots would not have given her so much trouble!

We call this a muscle-up by the way. Not easy.

We've recently had a few of our athletes (we consider all of our clients athletes) share with us how pleased they are with our style of training and the results they're getting.

During this conversation, they'll share with us a particular outcome that has led them to the conclusion that their level of fitness has improved. In so doing, they share with us their criteria for evaluating their own level of fitness (although they may not think of it in those terms).

Almost always, the outcome will be something along the lines of dropping down to X pounds for the first time in Y number of years, or being paid flirtatious compliments by relative youngsters, etc. In short, the outcomes that resonate with them are almost always tied to a qualitative end.

What's interesting to us as trainers is that almost all of these qualitative outcomes can be seen coming a mile away, so to speak. Is this because we possess some sort of weird psychic ability? Absolutely not. We know that our athletes are getting results because we measure them. And it's been our experience that the quantitative measures we do daily (and the results tied to those measures) usually precede the qualitative outcomes that clients are looking for.

So the next time you see us walking around with dry-erase markers or poring over the workout journals we keep, understand this: there's a method to our madness.

While we take great pride in--and love to hear--qualitative endorsements of our training, it's nothing that we can hang our hats on. We need data, and we need to be able to quantify, analyze, and compare said data. The bottom line is that if we're not measuring, we're not doing our job.

With that in mind, we'd like to give you a sneak peek at our new CFO Skill Assessment Guidelines.

All of our athletes will become familiar (probably more familiar than they'd like) with this document--and the standards it defines--in the very near future.

Those of you who are familiar with the national CrossFit site (and the discussions that ensue there) will see that our guidelines are based in large part on the guidelines that CrossFit North put together (we've changed a few things here and there). We owe them a huge debt of gratitude for the work they did in creating the original assessment document.

CrossFit Toronto has created a neat little graphic test based on the standards; you can take it HERE.

For those of you who don't know newly minted trainer Nicole O., she started CrossFit (and the Zone) last year. Since that time she has made amazing gains: She has two children under three years old, and at 35, she has reconfigured her body and is in the best shape of her life. Nicole has radically changed her body composition, flensing 50-60 pounds of inert metabolic material and gaining at least 10 pounds of lean muscle.

Here we see her doing 50 free squats in 55 seconds with perfect form (full ROM, full extension at the top, toes off the floor). She is a metabolic monster and this was too easy: we should have had her do 100. She also deadlifts 145, a PR and a huge increase from where she started last year.

When Nicole started CrossFit, she literally could not jump up 3 inches. She could not jump onto the curb! Here we see she has overcome her fear of heights, as she jumps onto a 24-inch box, climbs a 15 foot rope and jumps to a high bar from the top of the box.

Bonus: one sweet chin-over-bar kipping pull-up!

Inspiring!

Zounds! We are featured on the top page of the CrossFit Affiliate Blog!

CrossFit Oakland athlete and Berkeley All Blues Wing Candace Hamilton helps her team, crush, crush, I say, Boston last Saturday.

Rest of Photos are HERE.

Please join us this Sunday, October 29, 2006 at 10 AM for our monthly workout in the park. We will be across from Gold's Gym, 600 Grand Ave, Oakland CA, at the pull-up bars pictured above. The workout is free for everyone, so bring friends and family. We can scale the workout for anyone of any age or physical condition.

DIRECTIONS

CrossFit Oakland Athlete and Jujitsu Instructor Sam Larson will be testing for his Sandan (3rd degree black belt) in Danzan Ryu Jujitsu tomorrow, Monday October 30, 2006 at Suigetsukan Dojo. All CrossFit members are invited to observe.

Rest of pictures are Here.

Directions are Here.