A quick post to try and obtain some opinions on future programming.  Those who are Saturday regulars will know we used to run two classes on a Saturday these were regularly over subscribed and so after listening to you all we brought in a third class.  This was mostly successful until a few months ago when the numbers dropped off.  Quite rightly Andrew pointed out we cannot justify opening a class up for 8 to 10 clients for only 1 or 2 to attend.  Its simply not cost affective.

We made the decision to cut a class. Guess what? Yes, now I am getting up to 15 booked into a class. Now I recognise I add you in from the waiting list, factoring in “Friday Night Syndrome” I anticipate you won’t all make it.  However I have been getting consistent numbers of over 10 (my maximum).  Not a massive deal it can all be managed. But it reduces the available program and constricts program flexibility.

So after a bit of a ramble would you be interested in a third class coming back?

If yes, would you prefer a 0930 0r 1230 class?

Answers on a postcard or if you prefer post below.

Looking forward to your replies.

Saturday afternoon saw a new high-water mark for Crossfit London. We kicked out the smelly boys, shut the doors, and then fifteen women and 4 trainers had a fantastic girl party of strength and fun.

WonderBar! is all about skills: squatting, deadlifting, pressing and pulling up, and top it all off with a good few rounds of “Cindy”.(That’s an AMRAP of 5 pullups, 10 pushups and 15 squats)

Oh, and because we are still ladies, we learned to curtsey properly. Hey, you don’t get etiquette drills down Fitness First!

All the ladies were new to Crossfit, and it was great to see slightly nervous smiles at the beginning transform into broad grins of achievement (and a fair amount of shrieking during the workout) This is the kind of training that really empowers women: the sort that gets you sweaty, covered in chalk, makes you strain and gasp and eventually, cheer.

A huge thanks to trainers Sally Dixey, Sally Moss and first-time helper Adrienne Gin for some wonderful coaching, patience and skill on the day (and for a lot of pre-preparation) Well done everyone!

Due to the roaring success (and over-subscription) of this event, look out for another WonderBar! pretty soon!

Check out the pictures on facebook here

Andrew and I have been very busy this weekend on our continuing drive to continuously improve all aspects of your experience at CrossFit London.

The main gym has seen the bulk of the work so far, but next week we’ll get on to the back room. We apologise for the temporary inconvenience.

The improvement checklist:

1. Re-mat the main gym and install five solid lifting platforms (done)
2. Install four new heavyweight squat racks (on order, should be with us in a couple of days)
3. Move cage to increase floorspace (done)
4. Re-mat the back room wall-to-wall (on order, should be with us in a couple of days)
5. Clad the wet walls in the back room (very soon)
6. 6. Move pull-up rack in back room to more secure location (done)

We have a few more surprises up our sleeves…watch this space!

I Love Animals by Jim Benton

The clever folks at Skilled Athlete have devised a way of allowing you to book and manage your class and personal training appointments using only your smartphone (are they still called that?)

We have decided to give this new fangled technology a trial run at CrossFit London and would love for you wonderful people to help us test it out. As we understand it, this app will run on any smartphone with an HTML5 compliant web browser.

Which is nice.

It will also free you from the rigmarole of muddling through MBO to get anything done.

Which is also nice.

The only downside that I can see is that it requires you to sign in via Facebook in order to use it.

Amongst the digital witchcraft that this app is capable of is:

I am relatively confident that no harm will come of this, but if – for any reason – things should go pear-shaped please let me know.

If you want to give this a punt, head to the Skilled Athlete site and click on the ‘Client login’ tab at the top right.

Edit: having just tried it (it works nicely, actually) I would recommend hitting up that link using your mobile device. There is a cheeky ‘hidden’ menu on the top right of the mobile version (grey square with three horizontally stacked white lines). You can find the ‘Client login’ in this menu.

Edit 2: Clearly I should have tried this with another account just to be sure. You may have more luck if you use the following web address: http://crossfit-london-uk.skilledathlete.com Unless you already log in to MBO using your Facebook credentials, you will need to ask the app to ‘invite’ you by supplying it with the email that you use in MBO.

Due to overwhelming demand we have added more beginners classes to the schedule.

We are now running four morning sessions for the early risers amongst you:

• Monday 0730
• Wednesday 0730
• Thursday 0800
• Friday 0730

Additionally we have also added a few more morning Foundations sessions:

• Monday 0630*
• Tuesday 0800
• Wednesday 0630*
• Friday 0630*

* These appear as full CrossFit classes on the schedule but are ‘Foundations Friendly’

CrossFit Powerlifting Certification, CrossFit South Brooklyn, March 31-April 1

Chris, Alex and I have just finished the two powerlifting certification in New York, and are bringing the knowledge back to London!

The cert was hosted by the incredibly friendly and nice folks at CrossFit South Brooklyn in their amazing gym (seriously – worth a visit just to see it!). Along with roughly 50 others, we spent two days with Shane and Laura Sweatt learning about the Westside Barbell conjugate method of strength training, and how this can be adapted to work with CrossFit.

Want to know more about accommodating resistance? We can help you there!

Chris: band resisted floor press from pins...(harder than it looks)

Accessory movements? We’ve got you covered!

Alex: band resisted walking (don't ask)

Dynamic effort days? Just ask!

For those of you who aren’t aware, Westside Barbell is run by strength training legend, Louie Simmons. He has made extensive study of the methods of the old Soviet Union weightlifting teams along with many experiments of his own. His gym has the highest proportion of world class powerlifters in the world (as we were frequently reminded during the course of our two days…). Laura – one of those lifters – has broken over 40 world records in her 8 year (!) career and is regarded as one of the best pound-for-pound lifters of all time (male and female!)

Needless to say, in our quest to ensure that we continue to deliver the best strength and conditioning coaching in London we will be working to filter some of these methods into our schedule soon!

Ive given everyone the day off, but does anyone fancy an awful wod?

Kate and I will be running the wod from hell on Monday 9  10am

The Olympic Lifts ( the snatch and and the clean and jerk) are easy peezy to learn. However,  its still quite a difficult  skill to access quality tuition. Crossfit london is one of the few olympic weightlifting clubs that actively accepts non-lifters and teaches them to snatch from  Scratch (and clean and jerk).

However, even though we run classes in the evening and weekends, not everyone is free then ( some prefer cuddling their partners!) Hence we have decided to run one of our world famous REPS accredited masterclasses in a week day time slot ( 2 to 5 to be exact). For some personal trainers, thursday is a quiet afternoon so its great to be able to pop off and get some extra skills in.

Our next session is Thursday 19 April  2 pm to 5pm

I mention personal trainers and fitness instructors as this 3 hour course has 4 reps CPD points, so you not only get great extra skills, but you prove to your governing body that you are keeping up to date!

This course is open to anyone who is apparently  well. ( normal people, soldiers, mums, sports people, anyone over the age of 18)  If you are very inflexible and very un coordinated ( and not easy to teach!) We will do our best to help you.

For us its essential to teach you  that the lifts are based on a series of easy to learn, progressive drills. Even if you dont get the whole  move, there are still “bits” of the move you can practise on your own. If your squat is lousy, our squat drills will really hep you.

Our coaching is patient, funny and kind.

We only get people  to teach, who can teach and who want to teach.   You get to do all the drills and learn all the skills you need, and you get to practice with a variety of weights. Our bars go from  1 kilo,  7 kilo, 15 kilo 20 kilo ( and there is a stack of weight as well!), so somewhere there is a bar for you.

As always, hit the  “book now” button to book now. (once there look at the tabs on the top and hit the workshop and seminar button)

You get a super ebook to help you learn as well!

Crossfit London was the 1st ever Crossfit affiliate in the UK, is affiliated to BWLA and  holds a  licence from REPS to deliver CPD events to fitness instructors

I am currently making a few minor changes to the evening schedule on the booking system. We are working to align the start times of the evening classes in order to give us more flexibility to switch rooms between the WOD class and Foundations ‘on the fly’.

As a result of this, I have to ‘cancel’ some classes on the schedule and recreate new ones. The classes affected are:

• Monday & Tuesday Beginners (1830 from next week)
• Monday & Tuesday Foundations (1930 from next week)
• Wednesday 1800 and 1900 WODs (both 30mins later from next week)

Please do not be alarmed if you receive a class cancellation notice: you have been rebooked on to the new class.