Partner = Hero

Today we hit a Hero WOD, one that you can tell from the name, “Nutts”, was going to be tough.  Know how we made it harder?  We did it as a partner workout.  Do the same workout, but split the reps between two people.  Wait, that’s harder?  Let me enlighten you.
Your standard CrossFit workout is damn hard.  You have to push yourself through a multitude of exercises, sometimes trying to beat a personal best time, most times just trying to push yourself to keep going when you don’t know if you have any left.  How would you make that harder?
Add some skills that are tough enough to accomplish when you’re not physically and mentally exhausted – communicating with someone intelligently (counting reps and strategizing on how to accomplish the rest of the objective/mission/workout), and motivating that same person to do their job, while you are also spending your entire energy motivating yourself to do your part.
What I love most about CrossFit as I mature in my contribution to the sport is the opportunity to help other people accomplish their goals, and there is no better way to do that than to invest in their fitness in a very direct way.  When you partner with someone for a workout, you are accountable to them for a good performance.  The WOD doesn’t even have to be set up as a “Partner WOD” for this to take place.  Next time you are in class, make an effort to “partner” with someone during the workout – encourage them, cheer for them, pick them up when their body language shows that they need it.  Be their partner for just a little bit, and next time, they will return the favor.

GoRuck Challenge

It’s been a week since I completed the GoRuck Challenge in Baltimore with Byron and Craig, as well as a bunch of other CrossFitters including Adam McConnell of CrossFit Nation in Easton and Sean McCullagh of South Baltimore CrossFit.  I think a week after completing the challenge is a good timeframe for writing about it, because I no longer have the physical ouchies reminding me how much it hurt, but the camaraderie of the class, the hilariousness of the instructors, and the feeling that I can overcome anything put in front of me is absolutely still there.  I also think I can still remember the whole night pretty clearly, after recounting it several times to friends and family, but I’m sure I’ve probably left something out.  If you were there, post a comment and check my details!
The night started at the USS Constellation in the Inner Harbor with a warning to take off any extra layers that we might need later – a sure sign we were about to get wet.  After a quick check with the harbor police about how deep the water was, we were instructed to lower each other into the water, to get completely submerged.  I’ve been cold and wet before – but maybe not exposed to as many diseases as the Inner Harbor has to offer – but immediately the fun continued.  We had 4 minutes to get our 40-lb rucks on and get to Federal Hill, and two of our teammates were identified by the instructors as “casualties”, meaning they had to be carried.  Probably about 10 minutes later we struggled up to the base of Federal Hill and were greeted with sprints up and down the hill, being punished with more if we did not complete the runs exactly as a team.  The GoRuck Challenge is all about acting as a team, which we were reminded throughout the night when we looked like we were too far from each other in our running formation, but it was also reinforced through exercises that could only be completed as a team.
Our Federal Hill experience culminated with low crawls up the 100-yard hill in a fire team assault, simulating the Vietnam War’s Battle of Hamburger Hill, a Marine battle commemorated on Veterans Day by our lead instructor Chris, a former Recon Marine.
We did a PT session of 32 burpees to guess our instructor’s age (got it right!) in a nearby sand volleyball court, where I noticed I was still a little bit wet – and now sandy!  Sweet.
Next was a run to Johns Hopkins Medical Center, a good run that we were given 45 minutes to complete with several new casualties.  This exercise was where we learned alot about leadership and how we were going to have to motivate each other to keep moving.  We learned that lesson because we didn’t get motivated on that run, and as a result we didn’t even come close to making our time.  Our collective sense of pride mustered up after that, and we never missed a timed challenge again.  I don’t know if that was a planned lesson all along, but I am still super proud of our progress working as a group after that very challenging evolution.
After a water and bathroom break at a ghetto 7-Eleven and adjoining abandoned lot, we made a break for it again, this time with less casualties and more speed.  Our mission at the park that ended our run was to locate and carry out a “nuclear weapon” that went down on a plane.  Thinking back on it now, I wish it was an actual nuke – we could have dropped it quickly and been out of our misery – but in reality it was a 40-foot telephone pole, which someone estimated at 2,000 lbs.  At this point I should point out that we had 17 teammates, so more than enough people to spread out on the log, but it wasn’t enough.  We could have used another 10 strong guys to help carry that thing the 2.5 miles that we humped over the next 4 hours, interrupted for one hour by another fire team exercise in Patterson Park.
I think I could write for hours about that log carry, but instead I’ll just be constructive and provide my advice for those who will attempt the GoRuck Challenge in the future.
1) Try to stay tall when carrying the log on your shoulders.  When we started to drop down and carry it on our upper backs instead of shoulders, that just meant we were spent and needed a break.
2) Switch shoulders alot.  When you get a break and the log for some reason isn’t bearing down on you, take the opportunity quickly to get out from underneath and get on the other side.  Your shoulders will thank you for staying as fresh as possible.
3) Not sure if this really needs to be said, but carry the log in height order, tall dudes up front and smurfs at the back.
We dropped the log in a third park off of Eastern Ave just before sunrise, and the challenge might have well been over as far as we were concerned.  We took a group pic, rested for a bit, and then were back on our feet for another exercise – but now they were starting to get fun.  We had to make a time to the Holocaust Memorial, and any white cabs or bike riders were to be considered hostile, getting a blast of fake gunfire from the whole group before we continued on our run.  We did a hilariously difficult team pushup, counting the terrible reps out as a team before our laughing instructors stopped the shenanigans.
I thought the next run back to the boat would be it, but instead it wasn’t a run – it was a mixture of bear crawls and lunges for 5 blocks – and it wasn’t “it”.  When we had exhausted ourselves for what we thought was the last time, we had one more challenge to complete – a final run with 50% casualties.  It was a 2-block run but at that point we were so mentally focused on finishing and being a cohesive team, it could have been a 2-mile run and we would have done it, I’m sure of it.
When we finally made it back to the massive anchor of the USS Constellation and Chris stood on top of it to announce we were done, I didn’t want to sit down.  It was a mix of feelings, really – I knew that I had just done something that I could lean back on as proof that I could make it through anything that life threw at me, physically or mentally.  The SEALs do it with “Hell Week”, the Rangers do it with “The Crucible”, but for the rest of us, the GoRuck Challenge is an awesomely terrible way to figure it out for yourself.  As for the other reason I didn’t want to sit down – I wasn’t sure I would be able to stand back up.
In the end, Class 320 travelled 13 miles in just under 10 hours, of which 2.5 miles was carrying a telephone pole (a Baltimore GoRuck record), and at no time were we less than an arm’s length from one of our teammates.  We all genuinely told each other and the instructors after the event, but just to put it on the record, I am damn proud to have been a part of this class, I think we killed it.

Clean Gym

This is what the gym looks like when it’s freshly clean, before all of your muddy feet and sweaty hands get all over it.  Why do you guys sweat so much, anyway?  I think we’re going to enact a “barefoot, no sweating” policy, enforced of course by burpees.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I enlisted the help of Everett’s new cleaning service – he’s not terribly efficient but damn does he get that 5-foot stretch of floor nice and wet!

Sandy

Alrighty folks – we’re going to have one class tomorrow at 6am, and that will be it.  We’ll do a workout called “Sandy”, which I have still to make up, but it will be awesome!
Come on by tomorrow and help invite in our new hurricane friend, and then go home and stay safe!

Heroes

Starting yesterday, each time we do a new Hero workout at CFKI we’ll do some redecorating.  Our blank walls desperately need some love, and what better commemoration to the hard work put in by everyone in the gym than to permanently dedicate a spot on the wall.
Yesterday we pushed through “Abbate”, which included 2.5 miles of running with 42 heavy clean & jerks shoved into the middle to make it a super-long interval workout.  As Craig said, who would have thought that an 800M run would feel like a recovery period?  Oh, but I think he was talking about an 800M run WITH A 40-lb RUCKSACK, since that is what Craig and Kenny scaled the runs up with.  WHAT????  Never seen anyone scale up a Hero WOD before… you guys are badass.
Finally, a huge congrats to Christine, who attended her first group class yesterday!  A long Hero with a bunch of guys lifting heavy and grunting all around her for her first class… if she comes back next week we’ll know she is dedicated!

On Competition

I came across a great blog post on competition by Tommy Hackenbruck of Ute CrossFit in Salt Lake City, UT.  Coming off of our recent competition I am personally fired up to improve myself for the next one, but also just for the next workout – can I do better than my last one?  Can I compete with my own inner-voice that is telling me to stop, to rest for a few more seconds?
I hope you all find this as inspiring as I did.  Find a competition, whether it’s an actual event, a training partner, or within yourself, to keep the fire stoked!
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As the weekend approaches and a few of us trainers prepare for a CrossFit competition in Orange County, I want to share with everybody my reflections on why competition is not only an integral part of your development as an athlete, but also as a person.  First of all, we make great efforts at our gym and within our community to keep the CrossFit Games competition in perspective.  It is ONE competition that many of us get excited about, and train for, but it is not the only competition that our members take part in and certainly not the most important.  The most important competition at Ute CrossFit is EVERY competition that is entered by any one of our athletes.  The focus and goal of this gym is to help each person achieve and exceed their fitness goals, and to help create a culture that makes us better in every aspect of life.  We put tons of time and effort creating programs like kids camp and daycare classes so that you can be stronger families, just as we put effort into writing specialized programs so that you can be stronger athletes.  Just as competing in CrossFit Games is an important part of some of our lives, we feel that each and every client needs to find a competitive outlet in some way.  This can be a 5k run, the dirty dash, or simply competing against somebody else’s time on the whiteboard.  Competition builds character, pushes us to do our best, helps us achieve higher goals, and teaches us more about ourselves (good or bad) than we could learn otherwise.  In order to grow as a person or athlete, you need to compete at some level.  It is healthy, it is what you were made to do.
A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”  ~William Shedd
We understand that each person is different, and some of you may even claim, “I don’t like beating other people, I would rather them do well.”  (That’s a direct quote from my wonderful sister Jenny).  If you feel bad beating somebody, or claim you don’t like competing, you just need to change your perspective.  Competing doesn’t mean you want to see others fail.  When you work extremely hard in a workout, or on your mountain bike, and you barely beat the person next to you, chances are both of you are better because of it.  If you didn’t give your best effort, the other person wouldn’t have worked as hard to try to keep up with you.  Now the person next to you on the mountain bike isn’t mad because you beat them, they are happily thinking “wow, that was the hardest and fastest I’ve every ridden on my bike!”  By giving your best efforts, both people benefit.  We strongly believe that good healthy competition, with the right mindset and perspective, will always leave us better than if we had sat on the sidelines.  It not only teaches us to push a little harder, give a little extra effort, but it pushes those next to us (our teammates), inspires those watching us (our kids), and rewards those pulling for us (our coaches and friends).
Adversity causes some men to break, others to break records.”  ~William A. Ward
If you are a member at Ute CrossFit then you better have goals.  Hopefully those goals are achievable, measurable, and you have a timeline to accomplish them.  By competing daily, with yourself or with others, you will get closer to those goals.  As a Football Player at the University of Utah we had signs in the locker room that read: “compete every day”.  When we lifted we were paired with other guys that were the same strength as us, so we would compete to be stronger than them.  In warm-up and conditioning drills we were lined up with the other guys at our position so we could race them in every single drill.  By giving our best effort on EVERY SINGLE DRILL we grew and progressed into elite athletes.  Without the daily competition our progress would have slowed or stagnated.  Because of the competition, the fastest guy on the team constantly had someone right behind him about to catch him.  He gave his best effort to stay ahead.  On that same token the second fastest guy on the team was motivated each and every day to take over the top spot, his goal was to be the fastest.  Goals keep things in perspective, they remind us why we work hard, what’s important to us, and also let us know when we are making progress toward achieving success.
So remember to compete.  Compete with yourself and beat your old PR, compete with a friend and make each other better, or sign up for a race or an event and start training with a little more fire and a little more purpose.  Do it for yourself, you will be better for it!
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”  ~Theodore Roosevelt

Eastern Shore Affiliate Challenge

The Snatch Ladder event

The CFKI team at the Challenge!

We did it!  Yesterday Andy, Alyssa, Athena, Chris, Craig, Heather, Kenny and myself competed in the 3rd annual Eastern Shore Affiilate Challenge and had an awesome time.  It was the first CrossFit competition for any of us, and so there was a lot to be experienced for the first time:  the adrenaline-fueled bug-eyed feeling before your heat of each WOD, the thrill of finishing a workout and reporting your time to the judges, and the disappointment of not winning the whole damn thing!
I think every one of our competitors got at least one new personal record in the individual WODs at the Challenge, too!  Personally, I hit a PR in the mile run (6:14) and was disappointed in my finish in the Snatch Ladder (135lbs).  If you got a new PR in the Mile or Snatch, post a comment- it’s not bragging, we all want to know!
After the Individual WODs were complete, we had two athletes in the top 10: Alyssa was the #3 Female and Andy was the #8 Male!  Woohoo!!
In the final portion of the Challenge, we were eliminated in the first round of three, and CF Salisbury (starring Alyssa’s sister Lisa) won for the second straight year.  Great job to Lisa, Adam, Cam and the CF Salisbury team!
Denee and the kids were along as cheerleaders and logistical officers, and got a couple sweet pics, check ’em out.
Overall, I can’t wait for next year’s ESAC, but I can’t wait that long to get another competition under my belt.  This experience has lit a fire in my belly again to reach the peak of my athleticism and compete to win these things.  I hope that some of you are with me in wanting to compete, and fully understand that some might not be.  Either way, we will continue to focus on getting work done at CFKI and making each other better every day!

Olympic Lifting Seminar with Reebok CrossFit!

Meredith coaching the Deadlift – the beginning movement of the Snatch and Clean

The group practicing the high pull!

Craig from CrossFit Frederick going overhead with the Snatch!

Thanks to everyone that came out to the Olympic Weightlifting technique seminar that Meredith Hamill from Reebok CrossFit led yesterday!  Meredith was such a great instructor given her many years of competitive experience in Oly lifting, and I’m quite sure there were a number of personal breakthroughs yesterday that will allow us all to be much more confident in the Snatch and the Clean.  I personally learned a ton, and also felt very proud of you guys for being willing to get back to the basics and spend your Saturday morning with a barbell in your hands (and over your heads!)
Huge thanks again to the following folks that made yesterday possible:
– Meredith Hamill, Reebok CrossFit Affiliate Relationship Manager for the Mid-Atlantic region, for travelling up from Richmond, planning out a great day of drills, and in general sharing her outstanding experience with us!  Thanks also for the Reebok CrossFit sign – can’t wait to get that up on the wall!
– Sharon and Ted Lapkoff of CrossFit Frederick, who contributed so much to yesterday’s great time – putting the word out to members at CF Frederick who came out for the day, bringing food and drinks for lunch, and bringing their amazing positive personalities into the gym once again!
– Megan, Craig, and Sasha who made the trek out from CrossFit Frederick, adding a great new dynamic to the day’s events and displaying some outstanding form!
– Finally, to all the members of CFKI that made it out for the morning.  I really appreciate you always putting forth the great effort that you do to continuously improve!
I hope everyone had as great of a time as I did, and to those from Frederick – you’re welcome back anytime!
Ryan

Welcome Visitors!

Brian from Chikara CrossFit

This weekend we had the pleasure of welcoming two visitors from other boxes!  Brian Minahan from Chikara CrossFit in Tokyo was here for an extended stay with his sister Colleen and came in for several WODs, performing beautifully especially in his first kipping pullups!
Dennis O’Connor from CrossFit Hershey was here on Saturday.  Dennis’ son Eric is a CrossFit Level 2 Trainer at CrossFit Park City with Chris Spealler, and along with Speal runs a lot of weekend certification seminars around the world.  Dennis, send us a picture when you get a chance – I didn’t get one with my camera!
Come back again soon, guys!
 

SEAL Team 21666

Navy SEALs are always laughing

Everyone forgot their uniforms

To quote the great Andy Booze, “someone needs to take Kenny’s internet access away”.  As previously noted, Kenny found a great workout to do if time is not a limiting factor on SEALFit.com, a gut-busting combination of 100 pullups, 200 pushups, 300 situps and 400 squats, followed by a 3-mile run.  Andy, Kenny, and Chris talked each other into it with a combination of trash talk and motivational speaking, and walked in the gym at 9am today with a steely look in their eyes.
While Brian (visiting from Japan) took down “Angie” in 38 minutes, Kent Island’s own SEAL Team got their workout done in 82:45 (Kenny), 92:32 (Andy) and 101:27 (Chris).  Once the clock started there was no mention of turning back, just alot of unkind words for Kenny’s first attempt at programming weekend workouts.
Congrats to these guys for an amazing challenge met head-on, and have a very restful Sunday!