Hi all,

just a quick note to wish our Crossfit  London throwdown team the very best at their 1st competition this coming weekend. I hope a lot of you are going to support them and meet other Crossfitters.

Colin, Me, kate and  Amelia  drew the short straw and are running  the gym this weekend, so for those who are not supporting, the schedule is the same on both days.

Good luck Tom. Alex, Paul, Katarina, Adrienne and  Pat

We’ve had a few requests recently for a monthly membership “somewhere in between” the 3x/week and the 6x/week. The rationale being that the 3-4 sessions per week on the former aren’t alway enough, and the 23 sessions in one month of the latter is too many.

After trying to palm this troublemakers off with the usual “buy a carnet” approach, I thought I would do a little more investigation…

We have offered a 6x/week membership pretty much since we opened in 2009. It’s never been our most popular option, but has its fans nonetheless. However when I did some analysis on the actual usage, an interesting theme emerged: on average only 18-19 of the 23 available sessions tend to ever get used – the rest simply expire, unused at the end of the month.

This seems a little wasteful to me. As Andrew and I have often (usually loudly and unprompted) said: if you (our lovely clients) are paying us good money to train, then we’d like you to actually…you know…train! We don’t want you to pay and not turn up. This is why we don’t offer 12 month contracts, for example.

So we’ve taken the decision to trim down the 6x/week membership slightly. Instead of 23 sessions per month, it is now 20 sessions. We have also reduced the price to £125 (down from £140).

This means that it can now be used as a 5x/week membership with the added flexibility of booking up to 6 sessions per week if needed.

Note: The product has been updated on the booking system and will take effect from the next purchase i.e., if you have a current 6x/week membership this won’t impact you.

Saturday 4th February 2012

Wow where has January gone?

Strength

3-5 Plyo press ups on the minute every minute for 10 minutes. With lots of scaled options.

WOD

For those who are my regulars you will know we have been experimenting with structured rest intervals. Aside from the physical benefits there is also a psychological aspect.  I am trying to build a capacity to work hard, fast and safe for at least three minutes.  There are lots of reasons for this time frame which I will write about another time.

So today 50 40 30 20 10 KBS and Squats.

Other things I am excited about. I have been selected from a cast of thousands to represent CrossfitLondonUK at Tony Blauers Be Your Own Body Guard seminar in March. Being from a law enforcment back ground and former Officer Safety Instructor I will be viewing and reviewing this from a number of angles. Check out the future post.

We have now decided to stock PurePharma fish oil. It is a leading high dose fish oil. Loads of top Crossfitters use it, perhaps you should too?

120 capsules for £24

Pay on line, pick it up from the gym (we won’t post it out)

Click here to go to the online store

According to the  blurb:

Each PurePharma fish oil batch is tested by the most reputable and stringent third party testing lab, IFOS (International Fish Oil Standards), to ensure the highest purity, safety, cleanliness, concentration and stability.

IFOS tests Omega-3 products for PCB, mercury, heavy metals, and oxidation levels in accordance with Council for Responsible Nutrition’s voluntary monograph on Omega-3 products and safety standards for human consumption. Dioxin and furan levels are tested against the World Health Organization’s standard and Omega-3 concentration is tested and compared with the product label claim.

The 5 stars are only given for a product in compliance with all five points listed below, and PurePharma guarantees 5 stars on every batch

Another cracking day in the gym. Colin, Alex and I were joined by 15 enthusiastic trainees from all over the country. We kicked off the the famous CrossFit London Squat Workshop, and followed up by going through the snatch, clean and split jerk progressions.

Good times, and a great start to the year.

Well done everyone!

A packed class today with lots of new faces and some old friends too back in from the cold.

We looked at the Burgener warm up.  It is a warm but also a muscle memory drill. I use it a lot and it really helped with my first pull phases. We worked with PVC and then onto Oly bars.

The WOD another interval session. We will be sticking with these for a while during this period.

5 rounds of 3 minute AMRAP of 7 Burpees 7 Kettle Bell Swings and 7 Box Jumps with 1 minute rest between rounds. Just keep working its only 3 minutes!

Watch out for some future posts about my attendance at the the Tony Blauer Be Your Own Bodyguard seminar in March. As a serving officer and former safety instructor I will be interested see what we could use.

Seni is a massive martial arts and fitness event held at the Excel Centre ( Docklands) . This year, Crossfit london has been invited to run an area with the aim of giving both the public, and pre vetted  competitors, the opportunity of “Strutting their Stuff”.

For the “passing public”  we will have lots of easy to join in challenges: max pull ups challenge, max ring dips, fastest 500m row, even a  250m row, 10 pull ups (as many rounds as possible in 5 minutes) mini wod. As you can see, these are fairly “safe”  moves that we dont have to teach in advance. Obviously we will  attempt to arrange as many Crossfit friendly sponsors as possible so we can give prizes to the top scorers ( this is work in progress).

However, the focus of the weekend will be to discover who has the fastest Fran. For those who dont know, Fran is a classical Crossfit couplet which combines , for men, a 42.5kg (30kg for women) thruster and pull ups in the following rounds: 21, 15, 9.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVBgKB4Gnsw

However, bearing in mind our love of comparing like for like, we will have 3 sub categories

Fastest Butterfly kipped Fran

Fastest “normal” kipping Fran

Fastest strict pull up  Fran.

Obviously there will be a categories for women, and older folks

To decide the competitors for the weekend, we will run an on line competition, and probably charge a modest £5 to enter. ( you’ll need to submit a video for verification or be signed off  by a Crossfit affiliate)

Importantly, this isnt just about a small group of tough people, we will also be giving prizes for the biggest improvement in  your Fran time between mid Feb, when the on line qualifiers begin, and mid May when the final comnpetitors will be invited to take part. Everyone is welcome to enter.

Each month we  will encourage competitors  to re submit their score ( you dont have to, you can keep it quiet and play your cards close to your chest) and we will delight in any improvements. If you try Fran out and it takes you 15 minutes, well done. Hopefully, we can get you down to 9 minutes. Obviously, as in real life, the limelight of the day belongs with the “sub 4 minuters”, but, what if you can get the biggest improvement….

We will get around to  publishing how you can get involved, be it as a competitor, a supporter, or a sponsor in a few weeks time

For now, if you want to pre  register your interest in competing, drop me an email on Andrew@crossfitlondonuk.com

As if thats not enough, the Crossfit London coaching team will be delivering some elements of their  REPS CPD workshops, so if you are an exercise professional and you want to get some extra  CPD points, this will be the place to come.

Steven and I have dreaded this day: it was the one where we began setting about creating a team and a competitive wing to Crossfit London, with all the problems that involves. We have gamed nightmare scenarios where team members roam around the corridors of Crossfit London, throwing slushies in  the face of  the “yet to achieve team status” members.

Obviously we have taken all the proper precautions: We removed the slushie machine…

As you can imagine, for an affiliate run by a leading business consultant and a 50 year old (51 year old), we don’t go leaping and prancing at every passing whim. We sit down,consider, plan, consult etc etc:

So we had been laying the foundations for a (and this is an exciting sexy, work in progress title)  ”Level 2″. The idea being to push those people who who have reached a certain standard, and/or create a controlled competitive environment, while at the same time supporting the development of all, including the whole of our diverse coaching team. More of this in the weeks to come (although your feedback is, as always, welcome).

Like all plans of mice and men, something happens to “stuff them up” (here I’m playing to our Aussie members… thats colonial slang that is: I’m bonding here). At very short notice the SICFIT London Throwdown was announced and enough of our  members scored high enough to form a team, and go along and compete in February (well done, clap clap!)

Obviously we have  to throw some more opportunities to support them, so for the next  4/5 weeks Tuesdays at 19:30 and Saturday at 13:30 are going to be experimental competition sessions: All who can do RX workouts will be welcome, (we need you to push the others along) but we will need to give priority to those who are competing, so if you sign up but one of  the team cannot get in to those 2 sessions, we may ask you to go for another class. We will have to play it by ear.

At this stage I have no idea what the atmosphere of these next few  sessions will be: but they could be aggressively different from normal classes: Certainly I can imagine that there wont be much “teaching”. I can clearly see that there may be a need to try and do two WODS in the same session. So be warned.

So that’s “sort of ” whats going on. This is our first foray into the world of Crossfit competition, and I think the guys and girls who qualified have done fantastically. As a target, I’d like them to aim for this: a 5% improvement in their personal performances. In other words, I don’t care where they come in the rankings, simply giving it a go is fine. We all know that most of us are only just getting RX weights across the board, and we all have “goats”. So we can only pray for our team that their goats are away on the day, and that the event organisers send only nice things to our lovely team members.

So that’s the short term : you’ll hear more of the long term plans over the next month, including how we plan to individualise goals, set targets and support everyone at Crossfit London…exciting times ahead!

I turned up early today to ease out the stiff legs from yesterdays run I found the beginers class jam packed and our very own Crossfit London team training in the back room.  Fantastic! This year is going to be even better.  I was even more heartened to hear some of the great improvements that have been made by the Crossfit London regulars over the last year.

So on with today.  We started with a strength WOD of 10 minutes. 3-5 strict pullups every minute on the minute.  We played with different versions and discussed why strict pullups are so important.  Simply put they make you stronger and this translates into so many other things.

The main WOD was a barbell complex

5 minutes of dead lifts

4 minutes of hang power cleans

3 minutes of front squats

2 minutes of push jerk

1 minute of  full squat clean and jerks

The suggested weight was 40-50kg/20-30kg

A fantastic effort all round.

We discussed some future goals and challenges.

Feel free to make suggestions here on the Facebook page

Not long now for the big weekend of festive feeding. Work hard now so you can enjoy guilt free gorging!
Strength 3 Strict Shoulder Press every minute on the minute with a weight close to your 5 rep max.
WOD
A bit different this one.
5 times 2 minute rounds of 15 dumbell thrusters 30kg/20kg 10 burpees and maximum dumbbell cleans. One minute rest. Score the number of dumbbell cleans.
It is my last Saturday before Crimbo so all have a really great time with your loved ones. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.