Coach’s Blog

Supplementation is an often overlooked aspect of nutrition, but one that we should look more closely at as people that like to work hard in the gym and want to feel our best – recovered and ready for the next session.  A diet of whole foods (and avoiding processed foods) can cover most of your bases as far as getting the macro and micronutrients you need for general health, but recovery from hard CrossFit workouts might also require more help from supplements such as fish oil, creatine, and additional protein.

It’s hard to know what your body specifically needs, so it’s a good idea to work with a doctor to create a personalized supplementation plan.  Denee and I started working with Wild Health this year, where we have virtual meetings with a doctor (and a health coach) who review our bloodwork for genetic risk factors as well as missing nutrients, and recommend a supplementation regimen.  I encourage you to give them a try, or if you have a good relationship with your doctor, stick with that!  A quick blood draw can give you some answers that you might not be aware of yet.

After our Wild Health initial visit, I started working with Thorne.  They are a supplement company that has recently gotten into the CrossFit space, and they are known for very high-quality products.  They have everything that you would need from whey protein powder to vitamins to sleep aids.  Thorne is also offering discounted rates for CrossFit gyms, which we can then pass on to you!   I just invited you (check your email right before this one) to get a 20% discount from Thorne, if you shop on our CrossFit Kent Island dispensary.  I’ve added all the products in our list that I think you all would want, but you if there are any that we don’t have in our dispensary just let me know and I can add them so you get the 20% discount.

Denee and I have been using Thorne supplements for the past few months and I can say they have been very effective.  My knees have been doing great since taking the Glucosamine/Chondroitin as well as the Curcumin, and I can start to feel it if I don’t take them for a couple days!

My current regimen is:

• Collagen in my coffee in the morning
• Once daily with my first Yeti tumbler of water (you can take these more than once a day but I don’t):
  • Fish oil (heart and brain health)
  • Glucosamine/Chondroitin (joint health)
  • Curcumin (joint health)
  • “Basic B” vitamin (my body does not ingest this easily from food)
  • Vitamin D/K (same thing, I have a deficiency here)
  • Glutathione (workout recovery)
• A shake after my workout with
  • Chocolate whey protein (really good)
  • Creatine (maintain and build muscle)

Take advantage of this deal, unless you have a better one going on.  Supplements are not cheap but if you’re going to save 20% off of retail that you would buy at a store or from Amazon, that’s a huge savings!  Just make sure that you sign in with your email address and shop on the link that I sent so that you do get the 20% when you check out.  You’ll see all the products actually listed at full price when you’re selecting them, but then the discount will be applied at the end.  Also – any “bundles” of supplements will not get a discount because they are already discounted as part of the bundle.

Please let me know if you have any questions or issues with the site, or again if you’d like to see any other products that are not in our CFKI list.  We can make that happen!

Ryan

Last week we discussed CrossFit training for seniors as a viable – and necessary – option for improved functionality as we all age.  We started with the insightful quote from Greg Glassman, “The needs of the elderly and professional athletes differ by degree, not kind.”

We could also take this same idea and flip it to the other end of the spectrum – kids!  The physical training needs of kids and adults differ by degree, not kind.  The great thing is that kids, just like the rest of us, want to be fit.  They want to be fit so that they can grow up to have physical jobs – baseball player, firefighter, Army Ranger.  They just don’t know how to get there.  They don’t know the path to walk to get to Mount Olympus where their heroes live, but they know they want to be there.

We teach the squat to kids because their target is on higher-level “hero” skills, like a box jump, and then dunking a basketball.  We teach the deadlift to kids because they know their mom can deadlift 200 pounds, and she’s stronger than any of the other moms they know.

We keep the weights light and demand near-perfect execution, so that the movements are engrained properly in their muscle memory, and they don’t make all the same mistakes we did growing up.  I can still remember one of my high school football coaches telling us to “do 3 sets of 10 power cleans” and when we asked him how to do it, he said, “just freaking pull that thing up to your shoulders!”  Thanks to CrossFit and weightlifting coaching becoming more widespread, now we insist on proper technique before ever increasing in weight on our pull-ups, push-ups, squats, deadlifts, presses, clean and jerks, and snatches.  This is path toward functional competence and confidence as kids get older and get to test their skills on the playing field.

As our CrossFit Kids classes are populated with kids that want to have fun in the gym (and sometimes we get them to put their little foot on the gas and work hard for a few minutes), our CrossFit Teens classes are full of “kids” that are now engaged in sports and want to get better.  Practicing your sport is the highest priority of course, but strength and conditioning training is a close second for a teenager that honestly wants to improve – at any sport.  In the Teens class, you will find motivated boys and girls that are willing to work hard, both because of the opportunity for improvement but also because now they know that it’s fun!  We have lots of examples of teenagers that grew up in our Kids program and now enjoy the idea of pushing themselves and the camaraderie of the group.  Whether or not they realize it, CrossFit Teens is quite literally a sport that they get to compete at, sometimes win, mostly lose, and always be a good teammate.

Thanks to all of our CFKI parents that have entrusted us with the physical development of your kids.  It’s truly an honor and one that motivates us all the time.  If your kids haven’t given CrossFit a try yet, see if they want to come in and experience how fun and rewarding it can be.  I’ll go ahead and say what I’ve heard all of our coaches say before: “I wish we had this when I was a kid!”

 

Our CrossFit Kids class is Saturday at 10:15am.  You can purchase a class or a package of classes here, or just shoot us a message and let us know you’d like to try it out.  First class is free!

Our CrossFit Teens class is currently meeting on Mondays and Thursdays at 3:30pm.  This will change in the next few weeks as schools starts up again, and we will communicate that next schedule as it is solidified.  You can purchase a class here, or a monthly membership for your Teen here.  Or again, just give us a heads up and bring them on in to give it a free try.

The kids are our Future, and it’s going to be AWESOME.

Ryan

The 2022 CrossFit Games begin today, and the second workout includes progressively longer intervals of running and pressing 300 lbs overhead for maximum reps in a given time.  If that sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is.  The absolute strength required to even qualify for this annual event to crown The Fittest on Earth is amazing, and also non-negotiable.  If you can’t lift that weight, you can’t compete, and that’s it.  But while strength might be the most impressive athletic capacity on display at The Games, if you don’t also have world class speed, stamina, endurance, and the coordination to quickly learn and apply new physical skills (that are announced on the day of competition), you will not be competitive.  The eventual winners of the CrossFit Games this Sunday are not going to win every event over the course of the week, but they are going to be very good at everything.  They are the best athletes in the world, and while I no longer consider myself to be a competitive CrossFit athlete, I get so excited to see these guys throw down at the CrossFit Games each year.

On the other hand, the CrossFit Games have also become our biggest detriment as CrossFit affiliates to get new people into our gyms.  If my only interaction with CrossFit was The Games, I think I would be pretty wary of stepping into a CrossFit gym too!  We get messages from folks all the time who are interested in CrossFit because they have heard of its effectiveness from their friends and family, but feel that it might be too much for them, or maybe they are past the age where it would be a safe training program for them.

I went back to one of the first articles from the CrossFit Journal in 2003, searching for a succinct quote that I remembered from CrossFit’s founder, Greg Glassman on the broad effectiveness of CrossFit training with all age groups, and how to implement it.

“The needs of the elderly and professional athletes differ by degree, not kind.  Where one needs functional competency to maintain independence, the other needs functional mastery to maintain dominance.  Improved hip capacity will help a pro ball player’s throw to first; it will also reduce the chances of grandpa falling in the tub.  The squat is the perfect tool for both.”

What this quote means to me is that we all can benefit greatly from CrossFit training, as long as we understand that the program can and should be modified to match our current capacity.  While this might sound like an obvious exaggeration, an example would be that we would never expect a new CrossFit athlete – of any age – to attempt the above CrossFit Games workout of running and heavy overhead barbell lifts as written.  However, that workout, modified to include walking or jogging at a manageable pace and pressing lightweight dumbbells would be a great starting point.

To that extent, we would like to offer a few group “Introduction to CrossFit” classes in the near future for anyone who would like to see what we do and if it would be a good fit.  For our first class, we will focus on the squat – why it is important, how to do it safely and efficiently.  As Coach Glassman mentions in the quote above, we all need to be able to squat in order to maintain a full, independent lifestyle!

Feel free to pass this message along to anyone you know that might be interested or need to see this.

Happy CrossFit Games Week!

Ryan

Hi there teammates — a quick one this week, but one that has been percolating in my head after discussing motivation with a couple athletes in the gym.  We’re in the hot, sweaty center of summertime.  Kids’ schedules are all over the place, vacations and long weekends are popping up all the time, and it can be hard for all of us to stay motivated to get into the gym on a regular basis.

Here’s the thing – motivation is great.  When you’re motivated to achieve a goal, that can really drive you to push through a workout that an “unmotivated individual” wouldn’t even show up to.  If you’re signed up for a race or a competition, you have that goal on the horizon and if you’re really excited about it and want to do well, you can ride that motivation to achieve awesome results!
Sometimes motivation can be brought on externally as well – the push that you get in a workout by competing against someone else that is matching you rep-for-rep, or a coach that you respect telling you to “pick up the barbell and move” – thanks Jimmy for that during The Joe workout this week!

But what do we rely on when the motivation isn’t there?  I can think of a few scenarios where this might be the case.  You check out the workout online, and any motivation you were trying to muster fizzles away.  Or maybe it doesn’t even matter what the workout is, you just don’t feel like working out today – it’s been a tough week and you’d rather just relax at home.  When that motivation escapes you for a while – if you don’t have a goal to drive you or other priorities start taking hold, that is called a rut.  And it’s hard to get out of!

That’s where Discipline comes in.  Discipline means that you follow through with your plan even when you don’t want to, and it’s one important marker of mental toughness and a hell of a good value to internalize if you want results.  The good news is that discipline can be trained, and whenever you do, just like a muscle, you strengthen it.  It starts with waking up in the morning.  Wake up at the same time every day (alright, let’s start with every weekday), and be consistent in your morning routine including reviewing your plan of the day and solidifying what time you’re going to train.  Remember, if you don’t think your evening schedule will allow a workout to happen, we have some awesome 5am and 6am classes that are filled with disciplined people – and you might even find some extra motivation by surrounding yourself with them once in a while!
Practice discipline throughout your day by getting the things done on your workplan that you know you need to do, creating freedom later in the day to do what you want to do.  And when it’s time to workout, practice discipline by showing up ready to work hard.  You might not always have the physical energy to set new PRs every time you walk in the gym, but consistently getting the work in and building your strength and endurance will create the opportunities to break through barriers when you’re feeling at the top of your game.

Motivation won’t always be there for you.  Develop discipline in your fitness regimen and in your life, and that toughness and consistency will drive you to achieve great things.

Thanks for reading, and I will see you at the box.
Ryan

Kent Island is a small world.  We are connected by a major highway to Annapolis and the rest of the Eastern Shore, but it still feels like a little isolated world unto itself sometimes.  And it can definitely feel like you know everyone else and their business!  So, when I go to the grocery store and I see people I don’t know, I start to wonder why.  I mean, I own and operate a CrossFit gym, which is one of the most fun places in the world to be!  There are so many awesome people, awesome coaches, so much awesome equipment and awesome skills to learn.

So if someone lives on my tiny little island, and I don’t know them yet, that means they are not training with us.  And after each of these one-sided grocery interactions, I go through all the stages of grief, which I’m pretty sure are confusion, staring, paranoia, hiding, burpees, hunger, sweating, and back to confusion.  I might not have nailed all of those by the book, but I’m just going from experience.

As a bit of self-directed therapy, I wanted to put myself in someone’s shoes that hasn’t yet sprinted into CrossFit Kent Island and demanded a membership as soon as they move here.  There are a few common scenarios that come to mind.  From that exercise, I began pairing up these scenarios with some of the other non-traditional training programs that we offer.  Check this out and see if you can relate with any of these:

 

Remote Programming

Working out at home is now once again a thing. If the market for fitness equipment during the pandemic was an indicator, there are A LOT of guys and girls out there now that like to workout in their garage.  Maybe they used to like to go to the gym and workout, but – for good reason – they chose to make their home a personal workout space free of viruses and masks.  Now they have spent a good bit of money on their home gym, and don’t want to leave it behind for a membership at a gym with all the same stuff!!

Here’s the thing though…  if you are serious about achieving or maintaining a high level of fitness, you need a coach.  Why?  Because without a program that you didn’t design yourself, and someone to hold your feet to the fire once in a while, you will avoid the things that you don’t want to do.  Case-in-point:  ME.  When I started “doing CrossFit” on my own, I was a decent runner.  I hadn’t done a lot of weightlifting other than crushing my arms with bench presses and curls in high school and college (and avoiding squats), but now I was really getting into the weightlifting world.  So I started following CrossFit.com daily workouts, but any running workouts would be subbed out for more weightlifting.  Interestingly, I got really strong and my running and conditioning level for anything longer than 10 minutes suffered greatly!  The point is that we have to keep identifying and then working on our weaknesses if we want to avoid becoming one-sided from a fitness perspective.

At CrossFit Kent Island, we have several coaches who have become very skilled at assessing where you are right now and then creating a program that you can follow along at home.  This program will be tailored to your goals, and the equipment you have access to. We are currently programming for at-home fitness enthusiasts with access to barbells and weights, as well as newcomers to the fitness space with access to nothing more than a single dumbbell.  You don’t need much at all to get a great workout in at home – just a fun, creative program that will keep you moving toward your goals!

 

Remote Coaching

There are some folks out there that do not necessarily want to join a CrossFit gym and attend group classes, not because there is a lack of value, but a lack of time.  They are the obstacle course racers.  The trail ultra-runners.  The teenagers looking to serve in the military.  The amateur swimmers vying for a chance to swim the Chesapeake Bay 4.4-miler (PS – that’s me!).  Many understand the value of CrossFit training to achieve the best overall fitness level for their sport.  But then again, attending group CrossFit classes 5x per week is probably not what they need, given their already demanding training schedule.  So they have written off CrossFit as a training option and instead do some “cross training” that may or may not be effective at building strength, stamina, work capacity, and flexibility that will help tremendously on race day.

Here’s the thing though…  Attending group classes is not the only option in a CrossFit gym!  In fact, the way that CrossFit started was not giant groups of people working out in sync, but one or two people with a coach.  As the coach got to know them and their goals he would send them on their way with a program to follow, checking in regularly so that they could monitor progress and make adjustments.

Remote Coaching is a step up from Remote Programming in that it also includes regular email/phone check-ins with your coach.  “How are you enjoying your training?  How are you feeling?  Here is how you can approach the tough part of this workout.  Let’s retest your baseline strength numbers to see how this is working.”

Because you and your coach are not meeting at the gym on a regular basis, this is a more economical option vs. onsite personal coaching.  And guess what – I bet we have a coach who has done what you want to do and knows what works and what doesn’t.  They know how to fully prepare you for your event or big goal and they want to see you succeed too!  In addition to being accomplished CrossFit athletes, our coaches that are available for Remote Coaching include a champion obstacle course racer, a DC-area police special operator, a Division 1 gymnast, and coaches that have trained for and successfully completed 50-hour endurance events, not to mention doing “Murph” every day for a year.  If you want to do it, we have done it, and we can guide you along the path.

 

Onsite Personal Coaching

What we’ve traditionally called “Personal Training” we now want to differentiate as Onsite Personal Coaching.  You and your CFKI coach are working together in the gym.  And you are receiving coaching on all the physical aspects of training, but also on the mental strategies associated with training, and the nutritional and other lifestyle habits that will allow you to achieve your optimal results.

You might be a great candidate for this option if you’ve ever said…

“I’ve had a couple knee surgeries from high school lacrosse.  I obviously can’t do CrossFit.”

“I’m 70 years old.  I obviously can’t do CrossFit.”

“I just had a baby 3 months ago.  I obviously can’t do CrossFit.”

“I was injured in combat and have a prosthetic leg.  I obviously can’t do CrossFit.”

Here’s the thing though… I could keep going with these examples but I wanted to clarify something.  These are all stories of real CrossFit Kent Island athletes!  And so now you know the negative ending that I tacked on to each story is false.  They may have thought or said these things in the past.  But they are doing CrossFit!  Some of them have enjoyed coming to some group classes because they are motivated to train with a team.  Many of them have continued to do personal training with me or one of our other talented and creative coaches.  We know how to work around injuries, and how to adapt movements so that anyone with any condition or body type can safely benefit from them.  And if we don’t yet, we love a challenge!

If you think you have a reason that you can’t train and get functionally fit, we want to know it.  We invite you to come check out the gym and see what we have to offer.  We have a 4-session On-Ramp program for all new athletes to learn the fundamentals of movement, and let our coaches get to know you.  During the On-Ramp you’ll likely get a chance to see a group CrossFit class in action, and you might want to become a member and attend classes!  If you would rather stay with a program that is completely tailored to you – what you like to do and what you need to be able to do – then our Onsite Personal Coaching program is your best fit.

 

If you’ve seen me lurking around the grocery store, squinting and staring with a puzzled look on my face, now you know why!  In addition to trying to find my favorite peanut butter, I’m also wondering why I haven’t met you yet!  We want you to train with us, whether it’s remotely or onsite.  Wherever you are in your fitness journey, you are at the perfect place to start at CrossFit Kent Island!

Ryan

I’m writing this blog post a day late because I’ve been super busy this week and the last few weeks with lots of new folks that we’re “On-Ramping” into our CrossFit program.  Which is awesome!  That takes a lot of time as I try to get to know each individual that requests access into the CFKI community, to understand your strengths and weaknesses as well as your goals that will define success.  Then I communicate those to our outstanding coaching staff as you transition into our group classes for continued development.  I find a lot of joy in these individual sessions as that is why I started coaching in the first place – to witness the beginning of a new development process that can be very challenging and then to teach and encourage you to stay on the path and continue to get incrementally better each day!

In Year Nine, it wasn’t always like that.  In late 2020 and into 2021, the pandemic persisted and while the state regulations allowed us to gradually move back to our regular training model and have max capacity back in the gym, many people were not quite ready for it.  Our members that many times in the beginning of the lockdown said “keep my membership going, I want to support the community” started to fade a bit.  Some transitioned to full-time at-home training.  Quite a few people moved during the pandemic or changed jobs, bringing their focus away from regular training in the gym.  And not that many people outside of the CrossFit world wanted to get started.  In a word, our community shrunk.  For the first time in our history, we decreased in membership from a high of 203 active members to a 3-year low of 149.

In our classes, you might not have felt it.  The energy that everyone brings to a CrossFit class continued to be high, and those that stayed the course were still improving and felt the strong pull of the community.  But questions of “where did Steve go?” were sometimes met with a shrug and “they decided to take a break.”  Alicia and I spent a lot of time reaching back out to former members, staying in touch and reminding them of the good old days and their training goals.  But it was tough sledding to regain old members as the natural tendency toward safety and health prevented many from re-engaging with the group.
As our membership shrunk, our costs continued to rise, as our cleaning and maintenance budget increased and everything just seemed to cost more!  We went from a pre-pandemic high to a “this has gone on for so long now” low, and like many small businesses, were forced to take steps to stay in business and be able to make rent and payroll, like SBA loans and second- and third-guessing every expenditure.  From a business perspective, it was scary, as we now knew what we didn’t know – how long the pandemic and this downturn in revenue would continue.

I’m sharing this now in order to be real about our CFKI history – this is what Year Nine at CFKI was like for Denee and I as we tried to batten down the hatches and withstand the storm.  And as always, reliving that experience is a bit cathartic and therapeutic for me as I internalize the lessons.  The first lesson, and what I think we did a good job on right away, was to double-down on our members’ experience in the gym and make sure that we didn’t lose anyone for the nebulous reason of “it’s just not for me.”  If anyone leaves that way, we have failed them and we need to learn why and fix it.
The second lesson, which took me a while to execute on, was to find other ways of conducting our core business of coaching and developing people.  To that extent, I refocused on my Unbeatable Mind coaching training in 2021, and looked to find new people to train one-on-one and in small groups, both physically and mentally.  I freed myself up for more available time to coach individuals, and let our coaching staff take on more of our group classes as they were available.  This additional revenue stream, as well as the recent resurgence of new blood into our group classes, has us now back on track and looking forward to continued growth once again.

There are so many case studies out there of businesses that were not structured to be able to pivot and find new ways to serve their community, and they failed.  Hopefully they can rise up soon and continue their mission.  There are others that, like us, were able to take some hard knocks but come out of the fight stronger and even more resilient, with more tools in their kit.  Looking back to Year Seven, after the tornado that ravaged the island and our members’ lives, we made a shirt for our fundraising event that said:

“Fate Whispers to the Warrior, You Cannot Withstand The Storm.
The Warrior Whispers Back, I AM the Storm.”

We can all take this approach to big challenges in our lives, whether they are brought on from outside us like a pandemic, or something brewing within that is keeping us down.  If you would respond to a storm that is wreaking havoc on things that you hold dear, you must become an even more powerful storm and take back control.  Year Nine is in our rear-view mirror now.  Let’s continue to grow and become stronger and more resilient in the gym and within our lives.  We are the storm.

Ryan

“What are we going to do?”
— CFKI community sentiment, March 2020

These “year in review” blog posts have been fun for me to write, both because I can reminisce on good times and great pictures of smiling faces and hard work, and because I get a chance to contemplate and reinforce the lessons learned.  They are re-instructional for me, if you will.
Writing about Year Eight feels different… maybe due to the global pandemic that ground the world to a halt in the beginning of 2020.  But yet looking through the pictures, it looks almost the same.  Still lots of smiles and hard work, just a smaller cast of characters being tagged on Instagram.  Our social media feed throughout the spring was devoid of “gym pics,” but they were replaced with driveway workouts, muddy backyard family fitness adventures, and biking/running/rucking – anything to reduce the symptoms of cabin fever we were all acutely feeling as social fitness animals!

The Wolf family was featured prominently as the online face of CFKI, but I know you were all staying active and eager to remain part of the community.  I know this because so many conversations I had with you all individually as we would catch up on the phone or via email during the initial lockdown revolved around this question:

“What are we going to do?”

Initially, I didn’t have the answer to that question, and Denee and I and our coaches spent two weeks thinking and planning.  But I was overwhelmingly encouraged by the fact that you were asking, and I want to pick apart the language to explain why.

“WHAT are we GOING TO DO?”
The tone of this question implies that we are GOING TO DO something.  We are going to respond to this situation with a positive move forward, rather than doing nothing.  The person asking the question assumes that the CFKI leadership and community is not going to sit idly by and wait for further instructions that could come tomorrow or in a year.  We would be proactive and do SOMETHING.  This was your expectation, and I love you all for that.

“What are WE going to do?”
Think about the implication of the word “WE” chosen by the speaker.  I believe “we” in this sense means the CFKI community.  “We” is the team of CFKI members, coaches, and owners that need to come together at this time to act.  If I ask, “what are WE going to do?”, I am including myself in that community and holding myself accountable for leading and acting to pull us out of this hole.  You, as a community of “WE”, took responsibility for helping to craft the best plan and then supporting it wholeheartedly.

You all know the rest of the story.  After our two-week hiatus, we took the approach of providing the most benefit to our members as we could, giving away our equipment and remotely training everyone that wanted to at home.  We all started with a workout-of-the-day template and an assigned coach modified the workout for the equipment we had access to, as well as our ability level.  This remote coaching idea was a success, and at least kept our conditioning level up (maintaining strength was an issue).  We still have several members that are training with this model now, with Alyssa as their coach!
Eventually we were allowed to return to the gym premises and train outside, which produced some awesome tans in the heat of summer and maybe some low-grade hand burns from those black mats!  I got burnt to a crisp during our Burpee Hour (as many burpees as you can do in an hour, then order takeout food from a local restaurant).  I was super confused until I realized I was facing the same way under direct sunlight and soaked in sweat for an hour straight!

We are fortunate that regulations were lifted and we were gradually able to return to “normal operations.”  But I think we are even more fortunate to have experienced this pandemic and that we were able to stress-test our operations and make our business, and our community, stronger from it.  I am confident now that whatever disruptive challenge comes our way next – and there will be one! – we will come out the other side even smarter, more prepared, and more resilient.  Bring it on!

Ryan

In September of 2018, a young couple from Florida joined the gym.  They had recently moved up from Daytona Beach where she was a kindergarten teacher and he did what I assume all guys in Daytona do… he drove race cars.  They were very friendly and had experience with CrossFit in Florida, so they fit in immediately.  Remember:  Your coaches don’t have favorite athletes to have in class… but if they did, it would be the Higginbothams.

A couple weeks later, Alicia Higginbotham came to some Open Gym time, and did what all good CrossFit coaches hate – she started coaching the other members.  She fixed someone’s overhead squat as other people looked on, and then they started asking her for pointers on their kipping pull-ups.  I watched, and tried to hate it, tried to be a good CrossFit coach and assert my dominance, but alas I couldn’t.  She was good!  At the end of Open Gym, I let her know that I saw what she was doing.  Sensing that the stern message of “you’re not a coach, you can’t do that” was coming, she started to apologize.  I stopped her and said, “no, sorry, that’s not what I meant.  I mean… umm… do you want to coach here?”  It was then that she let on that she had just recently achieved her CrossFit Level 1 Trainer status before leaving Florida and had coached a little bit, and really enjoyed it.  We put together a plan for her to shadow me for a while, so that she could learn how we coach at CFKI and get some practice reps in.  After 3 or 4 classes when I realized I was learning more from her than she was from me, we took off the training wheels.

Now Alicia is a recent CrossFit Level 2 Trainer, and an experienced and accomplished coach.  She holds certificates in Pregnancy and Postpartum training, and Adaptive Athlete training.  After playing college basketball, her new athletic pursuit is obstacle course racing, and she has coached up groups of CFKI athletes to race with her, which is a blast!  She is constantly learning and applying her skills to her coaching of groups and individuals, and we are proud to have her as a coach.  She also brought a skillset of organization and planning that I was severely lacking, and our events and social media have benefitted immensely from her involvement.  Thanks to Alicia for seeing a fault and correcting it during Open Gym in September 2018, and changing the trajectory of CrossFit Kent Island because of it.

Ryan

If we start our yearly lookbacks in the late spring when the original gym first opened, then a recap of Year Six starts on the wrong foot.  On July 24, 2017, an F2 tornado tore through Kent Island destroying homes, cars, churches, and everything else in its path.  I was in California at a SEALFIT event, and when Denee called me early in the morning and said that she thought a tornado just touched down, I have to admit my first reaction was, “we don’t get tornados on Kent Island, it was probably just a bad storm.”  I headed to the San Diego airport to fly home and the TV at the gate tuned to CNN was reporting about the devastation!  I came back to no power for a few days, but no damage to our house.  One of the hardest hit neighborhoods though was Ellendale, where many of our members and good friends lived, and most of them had to find other places to stay – their homes were absolutely destroyed.
Everyone in the CFKI community was helping each other out as best as we could, but we felt like we could do more for the entire Kent Island community.  We banded together with two CrossFit gyms in Annapolis to create a fundraising workout event and less than a month later we presented a check for $4,100 to the Kent Island United Methodist Church, who had been organizing donations as residents came to them in need.

In the fall of 2017 we began our second annual campaign to raise money for breast cancer screenings with Barbells for Boobs.  Coach Jason and I both have loved ones that are breast cancer survivors, and so this has always been a special cause for us.  This year we decided to up the ante a bit and threw out a little challenge to the group.  If we beat our previous year’s fundraising total and broke $5,000, then Coach Jason would have to shave his head.  Who knew shaving your head was considered a bad thing?  By the time we hosted our Barbells for Boobs workout event in October, we had already surpassed that mark!  There’s a pretty good picture floating around out there of me shaving Jason’s head.  My face had a big smile on it, Jason’s not so much.
A second bet was thrown out which I laughingly accepted because I thought it was ridiculous: if we made it to $7,500 by the end of the year, I would get a CFKI tattoo.  I guess we figured out how to motivate people to donate, because a few months later after several reminders, I walked into an Annapolis tattoo parlor with our logo in hand.  I said I wanted it on my right shoulder, and to make it “this big” with my fingers so close they were just about touching.  The artist said no, and made it six inches wide across my whole delt.  What a jerk.

In a year full of heroic gestures by our members, there was also time to celebrate our athletic accomplishments and begin a new chapter of embracing technology more advanced than a dry-erase marker.  We had previously been tracking our workout results on gigantic whiteboards that originated at “the old gym” and got bigger as we added more members.  On the vertical axis were listed all of the major lifts and benchmark workouts that we wanted to track, and then member names were written across the top.  If you got a new PR, you got to physically erase your old score and add the new one to the board!  It was a fun tradition and started us on the path of measuring our improved fitness over time, but the two major drawbacks were that it had no history, and kids loved to erase the numbers.  Those rascals!!
We implemented our Wodify system in 2017 that we now use to both track workout results and house membership information.  It has its little bugs and quirks but after five years I have to say I’m happy about that decision!

Year Six started with a bang and proved once again that CrossFit Kent Island members are strong, resilient, and generous with their time and money.  What an absolute privilege it is to be a part of this community.

Ryan

Memorial Day is now just days away, and that means Murph!  Many of you reading have completed Murph before… one of you has been doing it for almost a full year now… and so you might not need all the RAH-RAH pump-up speech that you think is coming.  But what I’d actually like to do is remind us all what this is about, how to get physically and mentally ready for the experience, how to stay in the game once the clock starts, and a couple pointers on how to best recover afterwards.  Hint… a cold beer should be involved if you’re of age, preferably hoisted tall and clinked against others out in the glorious sun, but maybe not LOTS of beers.  More on that later.

The reason we do the “Murph” workout every Memorial Day is because Michael Murphy very honorably represents all of our fallen heroes that have died in service to the United States.  Lieutenant Murphy died while knowingly exposing himself to direct enemy gunfire so that he could find a radio signal to call for help and get his team out of a dire situation, one that would be fatal for himself and two teammates, but it eventually saved the life of “Lone Survivor” Marcus Luttrell.  Because of his heroic and selfless actions, Murphy was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor – the highest military honor.
When we workout and remember Murph, we also remember all of the other brave soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen that have laid down their lives in less publicized battles but fought and died just as valiantly.
I wanted to also share this essay that was written by Andy Stumpf in 2018 in memory of one of his Navy SEAL teammates.  It’s a powerful reminder of what Memorial Day is really about.

How to get ready for Murph.  Jimmy and I were just talking about this and the plethora of “Murph Prep” programs out there.  Guess what – if you’ve been doing CrossFit consistently, you are ready!  We run, we do pull-ups, and push-ups, and squats.  We do long workouts, with high reps.  And we have been doing a lot of workouts, especially during Hero Month and on Saturdays in April and May, that are very “Murphy”.  And yet the workout still seems physically daunting because of the way it’s laid out.  But that’s the point!  It’s supposed to be hard, and it will be.  You are physically prepared now, there is nothing more that you can do other than to come into the gym on Monday feeling rested and ready.  You wouldn’t prepare for a big presentation at work by getting hammered on a boat in the sun the day before, so don’t do that here either.  You wouldn’t pre-game a big race by getting goaded into a monster workout the day before.  Have a nice, relaxing weekend – you deserve it.  But if this is important to you, be smart.
To prepare mentally, what we need is a plan.  Step one of the plan is to determine how you will attack the workout.  How fast are you going to run the miles in the beginning and the end?  How are you going to partition the pull-ups, push-ups and squats?  Hint: This workout should involve continuous movement, not a lot of standing around, so plan your partitions based on how many of your weakest movement you can do in one set.
Have a solid plan in mind, and then start to visualize success based on that plan.  Incorporate into that visualization when you might need to interject a dose of positivity and courage into your workout.  I can imagine myself cruising through the first 5 sets of 5 pull-ups/10 push-ups/15 squats, and then starting to mentally drift into thinking how many more sets I have to do.  I’ll plan to look at someone else close to me with a smile and say, “We’ve got this!” and I can see my pace picking back up as my positive attitude comes back online.  After that, with every round I check off on my whiteboard I’ll say, “Easy Day, Hooyah Murph,” and keep channeling those positive vibes.

When the clock stops and the high-fives and war stories commence, it’s easy to get right back into Memorial Day festivities, and we should absolutely make time for that.  However, with a long and intense workout like Murph, we should also discuss some positive steps we can take for recovery.

First, what to do:  HYDRATE!  We are lucky to have Noude Aesthetics joining us immediately after the workout to provide IV hydration and supplementation.  IV therapy is super-beneficial because the liquids bypass your GI tract and are absorbed 100% into your bloodstream.  They’ll have a few different combinations of vitamins and other supplements you can add to your treatment as well!
And then, what not to do… dehydrate.  Murph is notorious for producing symptoms of rhabdomyolysis, or “rhabdo”, which is essentially a failure of your muscle cells to repair due to acute overtraining, and instead they release protein into your bloodstream, resulting in kidney damage.  Think, going “zero to hero” with way too many pull-ups in one session, to the point where you can’t pull any more but you’re still trying.  If I’m being very specific here it’s because I’ve been there, and it makes for a less-than-awesome week and potentially a hospital visit.  So when your coach gives you a scaling protocol for Murph that is within your physical capacity and not beyond, this is for your safety.  And, one thing that can drastically amplify the effects of rhabdo is dehydration.  Crushing your body with a hard workout and then continuing to stress it out with alcohol is not a smart move in general, so let’s be smart on both fronts:  train hard but safely, and stay on the positive side of hydration during your post-Murph festivities.

Can’t wait to get together and honor Michael Murphy and all of our fallen heroes with a great workout and some food and fellowship afterwards.  And can’t wait to be a part of Jimmy’s final Murph of his quest for 365 straight days!  Even if you’re not going to do the workout, I hope you can come celebrate with us.

Ryan