OHS and Kelly

The fine weather has brought some outside strength training and it had been a while since we'd gone over head with our squats-for some of our newer clients the only OHS work they had experienced was with PVC so for them it was was an opportunity to increase their ability to stabilise their midline.
We continued this theme on saturday morning and followed it with a mini Kelly.
run 170m
10 wall ball
10 box jumps
AMRAP 10 mins.

Here we go again

Found this whilst looking at Crossfit Centurion-droppin props there!

It's not as bad as it looks

We went over to the new site yesterday, and it looked a little cluttered(!)-but still great, a lot needs to be done-but it is no where near as bad as Ham rd was-and what else do you do on the weekend? It's so kind as well that I have my clients using up there holiday time to come and help with the work-a big thank you for that.

Thursday

5 thrusters
10 pressups
run 170 m
as many rounds as possible in 5 minutes-1 minutes rest,3 rounds.
I think Jamie's(at the front) facial expression vividly describes the workout.
Best we saw yesterday was 10 2/3 rounds.

And so it begins.

Well, we've found a space to move to-much bigger than we're used to as well so it's all be very exciting.
There's still lots of work to do-maybe a month's worth, what with putting in the showers, painting, setting up the pullup rigs, laying the floor, as well as buying more bumper plates, bars, kettlebells and rings.
We're planning to open in the begining of July-can't wait!

Wednesday

Deadlifts
5 sets of 3

fry up.
3 burpees
6 swings
9 lunges
5 rounds

I'm aware that it being 9 lunges and five rounds is 45-an odd number of lunges-so be it, I think if you're worried about one leg being slightly more "lunged" than the other-you really need more to worry about.

Tuesday

Run 400m
then as many sit ups as possible in 3 minutes
rest 2 minutes
x5
This looked deceptively pleasant, it was scored on the number of situps performed-best we saw was 245!

Still one of my favourites

Early morning

5 hang power cleans
10 ring pressups
x 10

Flat out.

Run 400
50 squats
x4.

I think the difference between what we do and what people do in normal gyms is really encapsulated in this shot. If you train as we do, you're a focussed person, you bring all you have and you try your hardest to better yourself, to grow, not just as an athlete but as a person. I think the competition in the workouts aids this as you strive to beat or keep up with your peers-but really you're here to compete with who you used to be and aim to be who you want to be.

Look after them

Speaking of CFLA-here is a very useful video for looking after your hands-you guys are doing very well on your kipping but you need to look after your hands. Andy Petranek shows us how.

How to take care of calluses on your hands from CrossFit Los Angeles on Vimeo.

Baseline

This originally hailed from CFLA as their fitness test, we tweaked it to suit our needs, last seen back in March.
row 500
40 squats
30 situps
20 pressups
10 pullups
x3

Good to see so many of our athletes improving their performance from March.

Monday

7 deadlifts-bw
25 situps
run 170 m
x 5
These short runs are proving very popular-I like them too as a workout tool, keeping the intensity high is key in what we do-when we see workouts that are long grinding affairs and kit heavy they detract from the purity of the CrossFit-although I'd hate to induce a comfort zone of just short runs.

Woking Weightlifting Centre of Excellence

We took a little drive up to Woking on saturday to meet the guys that train under Brian Hamill-from all reports Brian's knowledge of the sport is encyclopdic and the quality of his athletes and their coaching ability reflects this.
I was coached by Chris Chea and his brother Koing who kept the session lighthearted yet highly motivated-and both displayed a passion for their sport as well as an impressive technical knowledge and ability-many thanks for your time and hospitality at the weekend guys-it's much appreciated.
The video attached is a slightly older workout from you tube-it may contain bad words!

A Davie special

My good friend Davie http://whatdaviedid.blogspot.com/ is a big fan of the Kettlebell (and competed in the Kettlebell games this weekend-came 2nd-well done dood) so this little wod was dedicated to him.
150 swings
This is of course not as straight forward as it sounds-when you need to rest, I need 10 burpees. Rest was classified as putting the KB down-so in theory-you could chalk up and change hands as long as the KB didn't touch the ground.
This allowance further brought on the "don't drop the baby" technique-whereby resting without the need to do burpees as the KB was still held was used-I think in all honesty it's just better to do the burpees and get it done-instead of taking 25 minutes to do a wod-but hey-it's your call!

Happy hour!

So I was chatting to Jacob http://crossfitmonterey.wordpress.com/ the other day about his training and our training and mentioned the the use of medicine balls and Olympic lifts-I'd done a 5 snatch 10 wall ball X5-and he mentioned it was like Karabel (Isabel 30 snatches and Karen 150 wall ball)-although obviously not quite as brutal.
Paul came in friday afternoon and mentioned a little discomfort in his lower back and wanted to avoid the Davie special we were doing (if ever you want to be a guinea pig to a new wod come friday afternoons-it's like happy hour!)

So-we threw together Grace and Karen, 3 clean and jerk, 15 wall ball, x10. Well done Paul-it looked brutal :)

Power cleans

Keeping with the singles theme we've followed MP and pulled 7 power cleans, interestingly enough Jason managed a 77.5kg lift which was better than when he was exclusively Olympic lifting-the joys of the black box.

Paul is seen here-although not with his heaviest lift-it's tricky to "motivate" my atheletes and take pictures at the same time. Then we had a quick Percy too.

Push jerk

Seven singles-either kept light to work on the mechanics of the lift-as we did previously with our newbie on the back squats (she also admitted to having broken both shoulders) so our Texas style squat where we lift our elbows behind and clamp the arms in tight to ensure thorasic curve is kept in its normal position proved slightly uncomfortable-sorry bout that.

In the picture we see Law giving it large overhead! PB!

Backsquats and burpees

Thursday saw 5 x 5 for backsquats, we've delved into brand X territory this week as well as following main site, so friday was deadlifts in the same 5 x 5 structure followed by again a brief metcon (fry up)

Thursdays blast was a scaled version of a new Heroes Wod "Hansen" (30 kettlebell swings, 30 burpees, 30 GHD sit-ups-five rounds) This had a whiff of painstorm about it, and I'd done it on the tuesday and to put it mildly it sucked-even with subbed regular situps as opposed to using a GHD.

Thursday's version was
10 kb swings
10 burpees
10 situps
5 rounds

A third of the workload of the Rx'd workout-and apparently "the worst thing I've ever done"-I guess its time for this client of mine to do Murph!

Tabata

Tabata
4 movements
20 seconds work-10 seconds rest, 8 rounds of each movement, normally done with pullups, pressups, sit ups and squats, originally done by speed skaters just as sprints.
We played around with the movements and added a weight element-as is expertly demonstrated by the Law :), which as we can see from the gentleman in our second picture was particularly unpleasant-although those who are still nursing a sore shoulder sore this as a scaled version.

Heroes

I'm fortunate enough to have met many of the best CrossFit trainers in our travels whether in this country (Coach , Nicole, Jimi, Todd, Andrew, Karl, Mark,Davie, Kempie, Leon, Jacob) on our numerous roadtrips or in the States, (Robb Wolf, Tony Budding, Jimi-again-Cj Martin, Rachel Medina, Pat Barber, Andy Petranek, Cilla, Allison Nyc, Mylee (Greg Amundsen's wife) and meeting all of these people has helped shape me as a better trainer, made me think more about how we programme and how to help you guys to get better at what we do.
I still have a few people I look up to and want to meet-this guy (Freddy C at CrossFit OneWorld) is one of them.

Crossfit One World pull-ups from crossfitoneworld on Vimeo.

Anchored

Davie sent me a text on thursday night asking for a bodyweight workout that can be done without equipment-I suggested,

run 400
30 squats
30 pressups
X 4

This was actually "Bjorn again" a wod we did between christmas and new year for a visitor from CF Victoria, one of the trainers there, Bjorn Walker (who incidentally came seventh in the CF games qualifiers in Australia-I feel partly responsable for his excellent performance :) )

So for friday my gang did the same wod but substituted situps for the pressups-following yesterday ringdips I thought this wise.

In the photo we see Amanda who-as one of our newbies is still scaling her workouts-and in this case is using an small anchor to help with the situps.

Dips and Sumo's

Thursday we covered the WOD from HQ from tuesday
21 ring dips
21 sumo deadlift hi pulls
X 5

The rings are always a great tool to have in our workouts due to the sheer adjustability and thus scalability of the work and movements that we use-whether working the full dip-and trying to induce a kip into this, through negative dips, banded dips or scaling the height and weight supported by the rings.