CrossFit East Sacramento

Annual Newbie Throwdown

5 Rounds For Time:
10 Ball Slams 40/30
Run 200m
3 Rope Climbs



Last year's throwdown was considered by many to be the event of the year. That speaks volumes considering we have a lot of fun around here and many of us attend great events. This event is what truly strengthens our community! It is great to see a new CrossFit members experience exactly what a competitor feels when they are in the throws of a competition. Nerves, anxiety, fear of failure, jubilation, victory and many other emotions are experienced by an athlete when competing.  It is the process itself that leads to improvement no matter the outcome! CrossFit East Sacramento to my knowledge is the originator of the Newbie Throwdown and many other facilities have since followed suit! WHY? (IT'S F'N FUN)

1. It builds community better than any other competition, it bridges the gap between new vs. experienced CrossFitters!

2. It allows new members to compete with like levels of experience!

3. It encourages members to step outside their comfort zone without feeling like they are competing against the best athletes in the world.

4. Veteran members meet new members and both grow from coaching and working together.

Rules:
Teams of 2 guys and 2 Girls with 1 Captain. The captain must have enough experience and or have competed in multiple competitions in order to lead a team.

Sign up on the board and fill out an athlete form to reserve a spot and you will then be placed on a team by Travis.

Captains will be required to contact athletes by e-mail and text in order to schedule team workout times! Team names will be required.

Expect an all day Saturday event that will be exciting and fun for all who participate!

WHERE- CrossFit East Sacramento
WHEN- June 30th from 8:30am until 5pm which includes the party and BBQ!
WHY - Because it is cool!
HOW - Justin pays for the whole event out of his bonus!
WHAT - Costumes last year were awesome... NO! There will not be a "skit" this year!
WHO - All you bad ass newbies and veteran's need to step up to ensure this event rocks!

Please download and fill out the following registration form. Bring it in to the gym and leave it on the pile on the front desk.
Download Registration Card for Newbie Throwdown

Grow Your Own

Snatch Balance 3-3-3

Overhead Squat 3-3-2-2-1-1-1

21-15-9 of:
Hang Squat Snatch 95/65
Pull Up

February 25th, 2012



March 28th, 2012

After the first Open WOD this year, back in February, I spent the remainder of the day building some planters for the back yard.  A trip to the Home Depot for some wood and dirt ended up running me about 400 bucks and an afternoon of building.  We used pressure treated redwood, and Mircale Grow vegetable and flower soil.  You could go cheaper on the wood, but it won't last as long, and you want to make sure you get good soil.  It was a pretty fun project, something I hadn't done before and here we are about 3 months later and we have a booming vegetable garden going.

Loren and I didn't really know what to plant or how things would go, so we just picked out some stuff and went for it.  From left to right we planted zucchinis, tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers, and two more varieties of tomatoes.  The zuccini plant looks like something form a rain forrest and has already produced a few zuchinnis bigger than we would know what to do with.  The tomato plants are growing over the fence and just starting to sprout little tomatoes all over. The cucumber vine is growing up the fence and we have got a couple very tasty cucumbers off of it with many more sprouting.  The red pepper plant took a long time to start growing and seems to be catching on now, but no fruit yet.

If you add up all the time and money spent on the project, it probably works out better to go down to the local grocer or farmers market.  On the other hand it was fun project that looks cool in the yard and we will be able to put new plant varieties in and try different things for years to come.  I suggest giving it a shot.  We had no idea really what we were doing and everything seems to be working out great.

Stranger's Rest Day Approach

WOD: Blake's Surprise (aka he didn't text me what the WOD was)



 Get on the Alan Strange rest day program. Beer, pool, and gigantic floating duck. The duck actually makes him look normal size.

Deadlift Coaching

Rest Day


Here is some video with coaching commentary from Mark Bell on our deadlifts.  We lifted with Ben Alderman of CF Gold in Natomas, who placed 9th at regionals last weekend. 

Thought I would throw it up to get your minds thinking about how to improve on deadlifts.  The weight here isn't too heavy, but the chains add a lot of force at the top.  Also give us a break on the soft backs, we were lifting from a 3 to 4 inch deficit.  None of these lifts had horrible form, and with such a sub-maximal load for us, nobody is in danger of dying here.

Rings True

5 Sets Of The Following:
1 Push Press + 2 Push Jerks for Max Load

Then 5 Rounds For Time:
250 Meter Row
21 Sledge Hammer Strikes 16/10
12 Toes To Bar

 

As you can see Matt sent me this lovely article (quite demandingly I might add) earlier in the week.  Ordinarily nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to make a post that is far longer to get the exact same point across (because that's what good writers do), but this post from Crossfit Lisbeth was quite eloquent.  Here it is.

It’s not all hugs and kumbaya.

CrossFit has a wonderful community component. A fantastic, supportive environment where people cheer each other on and the last place finisher gets applause too. That’s something that’s missing in our everyday lives and so we yearn for it, and we cling to it in CrossFit.

And sometimes we almost suffocate ourselves with that air. We forget that CrossFit has an overriding edge, a toughness, a “holy-shit-I’m-not-sure-I-can-do-this” soul.

See, CrossFit is not all hugs and kumbaya. It’s not all high fives and feel-good videos.

CrossFit is hard. CrossFit is painful. CrossFit — true CrossFit — is not something that any normal, well-balanced person would run towards.

“Pain? Yeah!” “Feeling like I’m going to throw up? Awesome!” “Torture myself for 20 minutes? Whoot! I’ve been wanting to do that ALL DAY LONG.”

If you met people who said those things on the street, you’d run. Or you should. Or else you’re just as fucked-up as the pain lovers.

And maybe we are fucked-up — I’m not discounting that possibility. But what I’m pretty darn sure of is that most of us go into that pain because we want, we need, we crave the results of that pain. We crave the physical effects and the emotional stability that results from CrossFit.

We may not really fully understand the why, but we know the what: after CrossFit, we feel better.

But don’t mistake that it’s all hugs and high fives. This is some crazy shit we put ourselves through. Some hard pain, some dark times. But the light at the end is amazing …

This post was stolen from Lisbeth Darsh who is the author of the cf.com Affiliate Blog and crossfitlisbeth.com.  Click Here for the original post.

Keep Your Head Up, Not Your Face

Deadlift 5-5-5-5-5

5 Rounds:
10 Deadlift @ 50% of 5RM
10 Air Squats


First thing first, I want to give new member Sharyn B. props for showing up consistently with a great attitude and strong work ethic.  Keep your eye on this one, she has serious potential to improve.

Now about the head position.  I walked out last week and witnessed Sharyn struggling a bit with the pull up.  I knew she could express more strenght instantly when I saw her head position.  She was throwing her head back and reaching up with her chin.  I stood back quietly and got a picture of her at the peak of her pull.

Next I stood right in front of Sharyn, told her to look directly at me and try again.  You can see the result.  She was able to express much more strength and explosiveness driving her higher above the bar and into a much better position.

Remember, the head and neck are part of the spine.  When we talk about midline stability, this includes stabilizing your head.  When the spine is not held tight, the nervous system will be down regulated and muscles will not produce as much force.  Also with a changing head position, you lose your point of reference which negatively effects coordination. 

So next time your doing pull ups, try keeping your eyes straight forward.  Pick a spot on the wall that is about level with the pull up bar and fix your gaze on it.  Do not throw your head for momentum and do not reach with your chin to get over the bar.  See what happens.  My guess is more pull ups faster.

Heck, you could even try keeping your head in line with the rest of your spine as you deadlift today.

Is This Chick For Real?

4 Rounds:
800m Run
Rest 2:00

For Time:
200ft Handstand Walk

*If your feet fall back, your hands start where your feet land.  You must progress on your hands, no falling forward progress allowed.

And if you think that is hard, check this out-

Practicing a CF Relic

Three rounds for time of:
50 Double-unders
40 Sit-ups
30 Medicine ball cleans, 20 pound ball
20 Pull-ups
10 Handstand push-ups

From crossfit.com-
WOD Demo with CrossFit Hampton Roads - video [wmv] [mov] [HD mov]

The Med Ball Clean has a somewhat contraversial history in the CF community.  Some say that it was invented due to a lack of ablility to coach the Olympic lifts, and some say it encourages bad habits that will later need to be un-taught when learning to lift barbells.  I say who cares.  We are all about doing as much work as we can, as many different ways as we can.  I do however want to make sure you are getting the most out of the movement and creating habits that will help your barbell cleans rather than make them worse.

The Setup-
Make sure you start in a sumo-deadlift position with feet straddling the ball and your hips relatively high.  BACK STRAIGHT!  The laces on the ball should be facing straight forward and your hands squeeze directly on the sides of the ball.  Weight in the heels.

Execution-
Slowly start the lift and accelerate into a jump as the ball passes knee height.  Be sure to fully open the hip at the top of the movement.  At that instant you will begin the shrug which will begin your movement back under the ball.  Remember, you do not shrug the ball up, you shrug yourself down against the weight of the ball.  As you jump off the floor, your feet should move out slightly and in a perfect squat stance with weight distributed to the heels.

The shrug is initiated with straight elbows.  As you feel yourself starting to move back under the ball, release your hands from the sides of the ball and turn them all the way around to re-grip the ball.  The ball should not rotate at all as your hands change position.  Laces out Ray Finkel.  Also notice the ball height does not move higher than the postion it reaches at full hip extension.  Pull yourself to the ball, not the ball to yourself.

Receive the ball in a front squat position and descend into a below parallel squat position.  Now stand all the way up holding the ball at chin level.  BOOM!

Common faults include:
Rounded back
Early shrug or early arm pull
Failure to reach full hip extension
Failure to reach full squat depth
Dropping ball before standing all the way up
Rotation on the ball ie. med ball curls
Bad footwork landing too wide in the squat
Weight on toes

If you get all that right, you will be looking just like the slide show here except with smaller arms.  Failure to open the hips fully, reach full squat depth, or stand all the way up before lowering the ball will all result in a  "No Rep."

If Regionals Wasn't Inspiring Enough...

5 Rounds For Time:
10 Cleans 135#/95#
15 Wall Balls 20/14

 

 Here is some motivation for your week. I saw this on Facebook the other day. It's always cool seeing someone beat all the odds and do something amazing. This shows that no excuse is big enough to give up. When you are faced with adversity in life or simply in a WOD, remember this man and your problem might seem a little easier to deal with. 

5th Most Badass CF Team in NorCal!

Pause Bench Press 3-3-3-3-3

Bench 15 Rep max (no pause)

"Annie"
50-40-30-20-10 of:
AbMat Sit Ups
Double Unders



This past weekend at the CF NorCal Regional was a ton of fun, a grueling task, a ball of emotions, and a ton of excitement all at once.  Although our team fell a bit short of our goal of qualifying, we walked off the field with our heads held high knowing that the only teams who beat us were a bunch of bad ass mofos.

The girls struggled a bit on the Snatch Ladder, but they all made the first lift which was crucial for our teams score on the event.  Hats off to Cori P who's max snatch was less than 90# just weeks before the competition.  She rose to the occasion making the 105# lift when we needed it most.  Blake had a solid lift at 225 and nearly pulled off 235, Travis tied his PR set just 1 week earlier of 215, and I hit a new PR of 235 giving us a 1000# total and a 7th place finish in the event.

The last event was awesome as it turned out to be decided by the women's muscle up ability.  It turns our CFES women are dominant on muscle ups and we finished the final event just seconds behind the leader Diablo CF.  The whole stadium was watching the final team WOD and they all got to see how our women can rock it.  It was awesome to come back on the last day and show NorCal that our team is no joke and we are ready to take a high skill level WOD and smash it.

Here is the final scoreboard for the weekend:

Our team finished every event in the top 10 of the 30 qualified teams!

I want to give a shout out to everyone who was a part of this team.  You all put in a solid years worth of training and steady improvement.  It was a pleasure to coach you all, and the performances you all put out there made all the year's effort more than worth the while.  Many of the teams we edged out this weekend are full squads of fitness warriors and you all should be as proud as ever.  Although it was a tough blow to fall short of our games goal, the effort we all put in trying to achieve that goal made us all better athletes and stronger people.  This was the strongest team we have ever put out there and I couldn't have asked you all for more.  Take a few days off, enjoy your accomplishment, and them let's start formulating a plan to beat a few more teams next year.