Blog Archive

Our main focusses this month are threefold: One is for everyone, one is for newbies, and one is for veterans.

THEY ARE:

1). PACING: The morning crew hears my rants about this all the time, but now it’s going public. You would never run the first kilometer of a 10 km run the way you’d run a 100 meter sprint (I tried this once in a CrossFit competition, and it was the worst experience of my life). But for some reason, when it comes to CrossFit – to wall balls and pull-ups and overhead squats and deadlifts – athletes new and old often come out of the gates gunning hard only to find themselves writhing in pain and hating their lives as they hit the wall early in a devastating “fly and die” blow. Life is happier at CrossFit if you learn appropriate pacing for yourself. Now is the time to forget you ever learned the popular CrossFit catchphrase “UNBROKEN,” and learn to LIVE LIKE DEXTER - steady as he goes.

This doesn’t need to be you:

2). NEWBIES- KNOW THE MOVEMENTS: We’re going to burn all of the lifts into your mind over and over, so you’re not running around confused about the difference between a push press and a push jerk. This will ensure that you’re more confident showing up to classes and that classes are run smoothly.

3). VETERAN APPRECIATION WORKOUTS: Have you noticed the wall of fame? These are the veterans of the school, people who have been showing up and sweating with us for five years plus. This summer we’re going to induct another group of five-year vets onto our wall of fame. And this month, in honour of their commitment, we’ve passing the torch to a handful of these people, allowing them to program the workouts on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

TUESDAY

Allow 15-20 minutes for each part of the hour:

A). Continuum for lifting: Complete three of each of the following movements with an empty bar, moving swiftly from one movement to the next. If you’re a veteran and want to make this more challenging, add some weight. Repeat the continuum three times.

Deadlift
SDHP
Front Squat
Thruster
Shoulder Press
Push Press
Push Jerk
Split Jerk
Hang Power Clean
Power Clean
Hang Power Snatch
Squat Snatch
Overhead Squat

B). SIMON SAYS DRILL (10 minute AMRAP)

200 meter run
10 reps of a movement of the coach’s choice

IT WORKS LIKE THIS: As each athlete runs through the door after his 200 meter run, the coach will call out a movement – kind of like Simon Says. Any movement from the continuum is fair game. The athlete is to complete 10 reps of that movement and then resumes with a 200 meter run. Give different movements to different athletes, so everyone is doing different things in any given round. This will prevent those who are less familiar with the movements turning into “cheaters,” and looking over at what everyone else is doing in order to figure out their movement. Newbies use an empty bar – the point is just to become more familiar with all of the lifts.

If you’re a veteran and want to make this tougher, add a bit of weight to your bar and turn it into a gnarlier 12 minute met con.

C). Deadlifts (3, 3, 3, 3, 3)

- Eunice and Kermit

While watching the news the other day I came across this story that got me thinking about False Advertisements made by members of the Food Industry.

Kellogg was just fined $4 million in a class-action lawsuit over the marketing claims it made for their Frosted Mini-Wheat cereal.  The marketing claims were that the cereal improved children’s attentiveness, memory and other cognitive functions.  Pretty funny thinking anyone would believe such a claim!

Now if you did purchase a box of Mini-Wheats between Jan. 28^th, 2009 and Oct. 1^st not to worry, although your kids still might not listen to you and forget their jackets at school at least Kelloggs is giving you back your $5 per box (maximum 3 boxes)!!  The left over from the $4M will go to charity.

If you want to read more(http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/05/28/business-mini-wheats-lawsuit.html)

Apparently False Advertising claims are on the rise, especially when products feature hard-to-define claims such as “fresh” or “natural”.  Ask yourself how often you are attracted to something listed as “natural”.  Next time you are, flip over and take a look at the ingredients and investigate!

Here are a few other examples of some recent, big-name false advertising disputes to hit the news:

• Kellogg announced a settlement payment of $2.5 million in a class action filed against the company for false advertising arising out of its claim on boxes of Cocoa Krispies® that the product improves immunity for kids.
• Another recent settlement with the Wrigley Company over false advertising of its gums’ advertised germ-killing benefits resulted in the payment of $7 million.
• Four New Jersey women have sued Campbell’s claiming they were tricked into buying tomato soup labeled “25% less sodium” when it purportedly contained a comparable amount of salt to regular Campbell’s soup.
• A woman has sued General Mills after consuming 24 packs of YoPlus® yogurt and not seeing any improvement in her digestive health despite the company’s marketing of the yogurt on a digestive health platform.

(http://www.foodmanufacturing.com/articles/2012/06/false-advertising-claims-rise)

Some tips moving forward…don’t believe everything you read on food labels and try to keep your processed food to minimum!

Now everyone go to your cupboards or fridge and find one claim on a box of food that you find humorous or suspect and post to comments.

Happy Monday -Charlie

MONDAY:

WARM-UP:

3 Rounds:

5/5 Bulgarian Split Squats
Goblet Squat Hold (one minute)

PART 1: Second to last week of everyone’s favourite WIDOW MAKERS!

20 Back Squats (if this set isn’t taking you 2 plus minutes, you definitely have more in the tank!)

PART 2: 3 rounds of:

15 Wall Balls
10 Burpees

*Do this in two heats and have a partner check the clock and keep track of how long each round takes. Ideally we want three equally-paced rounds, as opposed to a one-minute round 1 and a four-minute round 3. One of this month’s themes is PACING! Flying and dying is less fun than smart pacing.

Audrey Tannant Business Development Manager Crossfit Vancouver / Madlab School of Fitness