2/07/2009

"28 Days Later" The Foundation Has Been Laid


Headlines
I. Graduation Notice
II. Jefe and Enrique take some extra rest and then set new PR's for Fran, score excellent times on the Valentine's Day WOD
III. We get a little high tech with our training training tools

*Welcome to the Family: I want to thank Lance for coming by yesterday to check out the garage and hang out with me while we ran some of the guys through Fran. It was his first experience being around other CrossFitters in a place where we don't get arrested for training and we all remember how exciting that day was for us. 
Can't wait to have ya back to tear it up, dude.


I. Graduation Notice
Chalupa has officially passed beyond the realm of "Hellishly Endless Repetitions of the 9 Fundamental Movements" and today reached an exciting milestone as he took on his first CrossFit Mainsite WOD.
Taco isn't far behind and these two Squires of the 99cent menu have put an awe inspiring amount of work into preparing themselves for full throttle CrossFit Training.
28 days have passed since Training Day Uno (remember that 4:00 WOD called "Bottom-2-Bottom Tabata Squats"?), over which thousands of repetitions have been meticulously executed with no "performance point" left behind.   I am humbled and honored to have been able to help these work horses out in whatever small capacity I could, however, the true lessons learned came over the course of each rep in it's three-faceted objective of moving a large load over a long distance as quickly as possible.  The lessons didn't stop there either, and once the movements were being executed efficiently, safely, and consistently we began to slowly pour on the intensity... and that topping comes in many flavors.  The evolution from novice to fire-breather was fun as hell for me to witness and it helped me remember exactly how basic an evolution it should be.  There is nothing complex or difficult in the this foundation we are trying to lay, and over the last 28 dayI often found myself thinking back to the words of a top CrossFit Trainer named Chuck"The Magic is in the Movements." 
Taco and Chalupa can definitely agree with that statement.

CrossFit HQ WOD Scaled (02.14.2009)
Ten rounds for time of:
7 x Sumo-Deadlift High-Pull(75lbs)
3 x Ring dips x10 reps

Notes on Scaling: Ring dips are brutal, plain and simple... just ask Kevin D.  The scaling in this WOD took into account a brand spankin' new pack of skill sets surrounding the use of rings.  We switched around the rounds, reps, and load a little bit so that the same types of metabolism could be thrashed while taking care not to overtrain (and potentially injure) areas of the body that would be taxed heavily by the new movement.
Score
Chalupa 11:33*

II. CrossFit HQ WOD RX'd (Sat 02.14.2009)
Seven rounds for time of:
10 x Sumo-Deadlift High-Pull(95lbs)
10 x Ring dips

Notes on Warm-ups: Today we really made it a point to use a solid warm-up and skill/ability development portion to practice for the WOD and prime each athlete physically for performance. 
Most of the warm-up sessions now contain hip and shoulder mobility drills, timed support holds and inversion intervals for rings and paralettes, as well as a specific skill that gets highlighted and worked on. The rower has also taken a front seat in letting the guys work up a light sweat and truly elevate their body temps prior to whatever gauntlet Coach Glassman has in store for them. 
I always write it out for the fighters, from now on I will do the same for all the groups so everyone has some options to use for actual warm-up routines, your longevity as an athlete and a human will depend on it more than you think.

Scores
Jefe 8:22* 
(Yesterdays Fran time Jefe 4:22*)
Enrique 10:40 
(Yesterdays Fran time Enrique 6:00)

Jefe and Enrique are both back at it after a few extra days off to rest and recover. The times and scores these guys (and their comrades) have been tossing around are nothing short of top tier performances which makes the rest and recovery part of training that much more important.
Everyone already knows that rest and recovery are critical to your success (even survival) in continuing to forge elite fitness through CrossFit's Methods. There are too many CrossFitters that merely pay this fact lip service and end up injured or over-trained because an unchecked enthusiasm fuels their mental belligerence (this was a lesson I learned the hard way).

The scores might have still been awesome to witness around here but it was obvious on the faces of the guys that there was some serious downtime needed. When everyone came down with the same kind of cold on the same day really there was a real awakening around here.  After some nice rest Jefe and Mike are frothing at the mouth again and there is no stopping them as they drive towards their next set of CrossFit Benchmarks, the times from today and their Fran workouts definitely underline that fact (poor hore-hay is still somewhere between the land of the living dead and purgatory).

Part of the reason I post all the pics and scores here is to encourage the kind of nail digging, teeth-sinking competition that CrossFitters thrive on, my other goal is to help show what we are all going through so that every athlete doesn't have to suffer the same suck-fest in order to learn some very useful lessons. Smarter not harder (never thought I would say that with any note of seriousness ...).
 
III. Tools of the Trade
Below is a cursory breakdown of how we can use the "time-lapse" and "sport shot" settings on our camera to capture different points in a the total range of motion for whatever movement an athlete is executing. This will prove to be a potent tool for us to use in educating ourselves and each other as we can now observe ourselves from a whole new dimension.  Sometimes an athlete already knows everything they need to learn and can complete a movement flawlessly if not for the warped vision they have of themselves in their mind's eye, images like the ones below can help alleviate this issue by providing a non-biased perspective after the fact for analysis.
Not only will this help all the athletes we currently have training here but it will make the learning curve steeper for those that are just now enlisting in the fundamentals development class...Every day gets a bit more exciting around here.


6 comments:

Kevin Daigle said...

Awesome work guys, that WOD looks brutal.

Yes Samy....Ring dips are dangerous. My collar bone still doesnt feel right sometimes....gotta be careful with those haha.

BamBam said...

I put the MMA guys through my own wod today.

They have been practicing olympic and powerlifting for a while. So I let them use some actual weight today.

They did 5-4-3-2-1 for the power clean.

Then we went to the cardio room and did burpie broad jumps across the gym with clap push ups and sit ups on the ends for 10 min strait.

I agree on the ring dips... I did one arm ring dips last week and my collar bone feels like a noodle

BamBam said...

The comments just die right down if I'm not on here talking to my self...

Ross, do you think you could start a daily WOD post that has strictly the daily work out for those who can't make it down to one of the gyms? Even if its just a quick copy paste of the main site WOD. That way we could post scores here instead of the main site and start a real NH community. I have a feeling that may drum up more traffic on the site and get people coming back daily.

BamBam said...
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BamBam said...
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SRD said...

Kevin, get your ass up here.

Ben, yeah you need to entertain the masses with your rediculous comments. I will start putting up the wod like that for you guys and if there are people posting scores in the comments then I will also rank them in short lists for the following days post so everyone can see their scores up there. Great idea... baby face.