Strength: overhead squats 5-5, front squat 5-5, high bar back squat 5-5

Skill: planche drills

Finisher: hanging L-sit tabata

An unusual lesson tonight with some double unders to start. After this we rolled out the spiritual aspects of Crossfit London Yoga. Using sacred asanas revealed exclusively to “Swami” Andrew by mystic beings, the class were able to gather prana and chi energy.

After that spiritual enlightenment  PCT (Prana collecting for time) it was on to : toes through rings, or “TTR”, in a workout that combined 7 squat clean thruster, with 7 TTR’s amrap 15 minutes

Marvellous

The results are in. I was tested by Medichecks for allergy/intolerance on 200 foods, and I now have a better idea of what my body is sensitive to.

This is a quote from the covering letter:

“The occurrence of raised levels of IgG in food sensitive individuals, and their decrease when the offending food is removed from the diet, provides strong circumstantial evidence for the involvement of IgG in food sensitivities. This view is further supported when the elimination of offending foods also results in symptomatic improvement.”

I only have 3 allergies. These are:
Plums (never liked them anyway)
Brazil nuts (oh no, my favourites!)
Gliadin (this is, to all intents and purposes, gluten)

I am borderline on red kidney beans. Although still in the normal range, I scored fairly high on cranberries, egg white, wheat, soya bean, cashews and pistachios. Interestingly, I scored a big fat zero on all the dairy stuff (and meat and fish.)

So, even though I have fantasies about being locked overnight in Greggs bakery, gluten will have to go. This isn’t the end of the world – I’ve already more or less eradicated it from my diet, and only “cheat” with it here and there.

My previous health scan also showed that I was not dealing to well with my “high” levels of protein intake. I have the liver function of someone who binge drinks. A sobering thought, so beware all Paleo meat-troughers – moderation is the thing.

With the 40 day diet chellenge coming up in Lent, I now have some firm dietary markers to go by. I will follow Zone, but swap out some of the protein for favourable carbs. I’ll eliminate gluten, and dodge sugar and alcohol. Although I’m pleased to discover no intolerance to dairy, I would like to find alternative calcium sources as it’s crucial at this stage in my life to maintain good bone health. Any and all ideas welcome, folks.

Good luck to everyone on the challenge!

Warm up: 50 wall ball pass overs in pairs, squat clean drills

Skill/strength: squat clean, handstand drills

WOD: 3 rounds

5 push ups

10 DB shoulders to overhead

15 KB swings

20 burpees

25 sit ups

Results:

Well done everybody and see you all next week!

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.

Warm up: 10 wall walks

Strength: overhead press 3-3 (at 82.5% of target goal)

Skill: front squat depth and chest to bar pull ups

Metcon: 5 rounds of 8 front squats, 10 chest to bar pull ups and 200m row

Strength: Press 3-3-3

Skill: Pull Ups
WOD:
Tabata Something Else

Fight Gone Bad. Why is this classic Crossfit workout called that? Well, it’s like a fight outside the pub on a Saturday night – that goes bad!

Five more newcomers to Crossfit got their first beasting, and first score, in this WOD. Quite a few used RX weights on the bars, while scaling elsewhere. All good for strengthening, and a pressure test of form, endurance and sheer grit.

Almost as important as the WOD is the ability to learn to encourage a fellow athlete, while tactfully correcting lapses in form. Five words of praise for every one of criticism

Great work guys – here are your scores:

Lee (Queen of SDHP) 184
Brian (Great wallballer) 243
Michael (King of wall ball) 254
Marco (a ton of box jumps and long on rows!) 258
Adam (blistering numbers of great push presses) 269

See you next week xx

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.

It was all fun at Crossfit london Uk today, as double unders and ring dips merged with the olympic lifts in a power clean and push press fusion: all under the watchful eyes of “snoppy”, the latest addition to the Dixey household.

So we had a quick mini tutorial on double unders followed by 200 of them ( for the better skippers), or try , and end up in  a tangle for the ” double unders are work in progress” brigade.

This was followed by 3 x 5 front squats ” cleaned” as opposed to lifted off the racks.

Then it was wod time

5 x power clean/push press

5 x ring dip

Amrap 8 minutes.  This does not sound too long, but with weights of 60/70 kilos, thats long enough.

Some great performances from the bigger boys