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

Warm up in kettlebell style:

15 goblet squats

10 KB snatches each side

5 TGUs each side

Strength: Front squat and throughout we have found the regression for HSPUs that will be used in the main WOD.

WOD for tonight was taken from yesterday’s CF main site as it looked quite interesting:

30 HSPUs (or regression)

40 pull ups

50 KB swings (24kg/16kg)

60 sit ups

70 burpees

cut off time 25mins

Results:

Well done everybody who came in this freezing evening and I will see you all next week!

Strength: sumo deadlift 5-5-5-3-3-3

Strength: weighted pull up with hang 1-1-1-1-1 (30 second hang following immediately afterwards)

Finisher: in teams of 2 both row 750m in turns, then 500m, then 250m.

Post loads and row times to comments.

You maybe asking yourself “What is Sally’s way?”

With Kettlebells of course!!!

After a quick warm up of high knees and stare outs. I hit you with a mini wod or extended warm up as I am calling it.

In pairs we were looking for the Last Dudes Standing out of squats and push ups, ring dips and swings and finally tuck jumps and burpees.

With the cockles warm the next section was working on comfort zones or rather out of the comfort zone with a spot of KB snatching.

We had Pb’s in every class. I was well impressed.

Mentions go out to Kate P. who snatched a 20Kg.

Kate C. who smashed it with a 16Kg

Adrienne and her awesome 24Kg.

Yuri attempting 32 after much persuasion.

Janis throwing about the 40 like it was jelly.

Finally a tidy little WOD of 3 rounds

3 min amrap with 40 sec rest

20 P Press

10 Ring dips

20 Squats

Go team Whoop

Strength: overhead press 5-5 (77.5% of new 1RM goal)

Strength/assistance: 3 x 10 hip extensions, 3 x 10 back extensions

Metcon: 10 rounds of 5 deadlifts (100/65) and 5 dips

Something I’ve been meaning to do for a while is to put togther a rule or guidace pack for beginners. The lovely Stephanie started the ball rolling with some great observations, but im thinking that some of our “obvious rules” are not so obvious to new people, or  those unfamiliar with our gym.

Obviously we need to link to articles about Rhabdo.

The Crossfit Foundations document

Warnings

1) carry the  bars upright

2) when putting bars away, make sure  you don’t trap your fingers between the upper edges

3) the loo doors open outward so stay off the red area in front of the changing rooms, and dont open the doors aggressively

4) when running out of the gym, watch for idiots in cars who mount the pavement. perhaps pause and check.

5) kettlebell facing a wall

6) put any chalk you use, back in the bucket.

7) when using a band, make sure the box you are using gets you high enough to safely get into the band

The Phil Rolling Statement.

On one 0f our many chats, I remember Phil coming up with this statement ” Our standards are more important than your ego” . We didn’t use it because it sounded too aggressive. But as more and more people come  into Crossfit  we are confronted with potential athletes who have been sabotaged by the fitness industry . Some people believe that prancing around a dance studio or sitting in a machine  is sufficient preparation for a crossfit session. Once a month, a personal trainer books in to our main class  and cannot perform a deadlift, or a pull up, but still defines themselves as fit. The funny thing is a  teeny pinch of humility, 7 hours on our beginners sessions, 7 to 12 foundation sessions could prepare you.

The goals of beginners.

At “proper” trainer school,  you are taught to  discover trainees goal. Guess what, when confronted by a personal trainer, most people say  ”get fitter” “loose weight” “tone up”. What we have found in Crossfit london is that most peoples initial goals are meaningless. Most  dont realise what real fitness standards  are. You need us to teach you some skills before you formulate proper goals.

What prepares you for Crossfit.

This is an interesting one: I’ve spent some time recently chatting to our faster  members, and have tried to workout what prepares them for the Crossfit London experience. What I think we have discovered is that a history of being coached and taught a physical skill  and /or some experience of competition.

In other words can you learn and accept feedback, or do you need to be told you are perfect. So, what else do you think prepared you for your early crossfit sessions

So, what else should we tell new people? Tell us below

A) Squat Cleans
B) Handstands
C) Wod

In teams of 3:
1 athlete does Squat Clean
1 athlete Holds a hand stand
1 athlete does situps
Clock stops when the team reaches 100 cleans.
The catch: the athlete who is squat cleaning can not start until the athlete doing the handstand is up, and has to stop every time the athlete doing the sit-ups stops. The team switches positions when the person doing the hand stand has come down.

Since the 1st of  January, my inbox has been filled with emails from direct marketing companies about diet regimes and annual gym memberships.

Early January, so it seems , is the time to “snare” the unsuspecting would be weight loser and would be gym goer. This for many gyms is their financial motor: sign up loads of people,  and get their money upfront for services they will never use.

Frankly, I think its an unethical disgrace and a stain on the fitness industry.

Partly for this reason we steer clear of any new member offers and any diet challenges in January. We dont want that type of  money. We focus on training people who want to train. The other reason is that unless you are quite experienced, training in january can be difficult. When it cold and dark, weight loss, especially  for the emotionally vulnerable can be  daunting task.

Maybe there is a better chance if that 1st serious  weight loss attempt is postponed a bit, and  comes with a “history” of success.

For thousands of years, people  have decided to give something up for Lent, so I thought, this year we would play with a 40 days  strict zone/paleo challenge starting on Ash Wednesday (22 Feb) and ending 8 April, mirroring the Lent period.

Ive stereed clear of diet challenges before, for a couple of reasons. The most important being that I could never effectively workout how to measure success: We need to look at  weight loss, fat loss, muscle gain, quality of diet, quality of sleep, quality of training and improvement in blood chemistry.

For various reasons,  I now feel we are near to having an effective ( or much better) assessment  package. Steven has invested in a  sonic body fat measure,  Katarina often uses fat calipers, so can read them well. We are also developing an effective relationship with blood test agencies who can  help us with the chemistry . Perhaps we could  test blood pressure?

What im trying to say is that  a  Zone /Paleo challenge is, of course, about weight, but, its more about how it underpins a better life. How it moves blood chemistry , how it helps you train. How it helps you sleep and recover. Above all, its about what you learn about food, both quantity and quality.

So let me make this the 1st call for interested people. who would like to  get involved in this challenge.

It could  involve body fat measurements, before and after pictures, weekly weighing, and encouragement to get some blood tests done.  You will need to keep a food diary,a training and sleep diary. It will be quite public.

We are open to any ideas: should it be  done  it for charity, should we monitor “other stuff”. But for now, could I have expressions of interest

From a marketing point of view, it may be  as well to book yourself into this sundays Zone masterclass so you can learn how to  Zone properly. I was chatting to a paleo expert on Friday so we may also be able to come up with some effective how to do paleo, while crossfitting,  ideas.