February Schedule Changes

Beginning this month, you will have four workouts a week prescribed for you. Three of the four will occur from Tuesday to Thursday. The fourth workout will be posted on Friday for you to do on your own or in small groups between Friday and Monday, but without formal coaching.

Scheduled class times, for now, will be 6AM and 5:30PM on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Class structure is as follows:

1. Tuesday and Thursday will typically focus on strength development.

2. Wednesday will be a typical CrossFit style: Load/Intensity Combined Regimen (LICR)

3. Weekend "self serve" workout will be a MetCon, high pace, low load, much like the previous post. It is a great "weekend workout" and schedules a few days of rest, or of trying out the many other classes offered at Summit. Remember, variety is a key variable for Broad, Inclusive, General (BIG) fitness.

As the class size grows, we'll alter the schedule and offerings to accommodate the needs of the group. This is an evolving experiment, looking to offer the best value for solid fitness gains under a CrossFit style training approach, altered inside the large "self serve" and class offering structure we call Summit Fitness. Appreciate your flexibility and feedback that permits us to mold and shape this into the best bang for the fitness buck.

I posted a workout for Monday, Feb 1 (previous post) in case I missed letting everyone know of the new schedule - I'll be there in the morning and afternoon tomorrow just to be safe.

Monday: Super Burpee 50/Run 1.5 - 10.02.01

For Time:

Run 3/4 mile

25 Super Burpees

Run 1/2 mile

15 Super Burpees

Run 1/4 mile

10 Super Burpees

Super Burpees: Add 10% of Body Weight by grabbing 2 dumbbells - hold throughout Burpees.

(for instance, a 200# man uses a pair of 10# DBs)

Post your time and total weight used.

Press and Knees High

Not for time: 40/30/20/10 reps of

1. Push press with 1/3 body weight

2. Knees to elbows

No posting required.

Lunge, Clean, Press

2 rounds for time

1. 70 yards, lunges, men use 45 # plate, women use 25# plate

2. DB Clean and press, R arm, 10 reps, then L arm, 10 reps

Men use 20#, women use 15#

Front Squat & Pushups

Today's WOD

First:

Front Squat 75% BW - 20/16/12/8/4 superset with

Pushups: 40/32/24/16/8

Then, max reps of 1 set of front squats, same weight. Record reps.

Monday's Child

Full of woe.

Up on the upper deck for a miracle mile on your own. The following workout for time, please post your time on the website.

4 Rounds for time

Run 1/4 mile or Row 500 meters or Bike .75 miles

25 1 Arm KB swings, R arm, 16KG KB for men, 12KG KB for women

25 1 Arm KB swings, L arm, 16KG KB for men, 12KG KB for women

10 Burpees

Dessert after the main course (untimed):

100 Tossing Italian Twists, 20# DB for men, 15# DB for women.

I'll see all of you Tuesday morning.

Outside the box and under my skin

Had a chance to visit the Fraziers at CrossFit Clarksville this weekend, where Rick took me through today's posted WOD on the main page: 15/12/9/6/3 Deadlifts with 225 lbs superset against 50/40/30/20/10 pullups. I walked into the workout with two mistakes: calluses that were not groomed down with the Dremel tool (yup, they ripped open) and also got greedy and didn't scale the deadlifts. Probably should have stuck with bodyweight instead of 225 lbs. I wound up paying the price in terms of ripped calluses and a very, very long performance time: 40 mins, 10 secs.

Couple of lessons I'm taking away from this:

1. Use the dang Dremel tool or don a pair of gloves when the workout calls for constant gripping on over 150 pullups and heavy deadlifts. Tough to grip and zoom along on every rep with ripped hands. You won't hear me harassing you ever again about wearing gloves on the workouts. Never.

2. Follow my own advice to never ever hesitate to scale the workout when it makes sense. I lifted the 225 lbs a couple of times and knew it was heavy, but didn't do the math on a total of 45 lifts.

Having said all that.....I did finish the workout - had to go with jumping pullups (from the ground, no box) after the second bout, but force times distance still holds, so with that one modification, I did finish the workout. Even if my workout clothes almost went out of style by the time the workout concluded!

Snow Days: Thursday and Friday

We are about to be hammered by snowfall on Thursday and Friday. Flagstaff first responders had a meeting this week for contingency disaster planning, with estimates running between as much as 3 to 5 feet of snow end of this week.

I've made the decision to cancel classes on Thursday evening and Friday morning, as the majority of the snow and rain looks like it starts mid morning on Thursday. Wednesday (today) will meet as usual in the morning and evening, and Thursday will meet in the morning only. The next scheduled class after Thursday morning will occur next Monday morning. I'll post an independent metcon workout for over the weekend for you to conduct on your own - or carpool with a few cohorts into Summit if road conditions permit. If roads are hazardous, for goodness sake, let your workout go for a day or two. We're all about variety in training - count this as a random and varied approach to training this week and enjoy the snow.

Good chance you'll be able to Tabata snow shovel without leaving home! Multiple rounds, too!

Wednesday: Press Pull Squat and Run

For Time:

First,

21/15/9 of:

Dumbell Push Press, 1/4 Bodyweight

Pullups

Squat 1/2 Bodyweight, Front or Back Squat - your choice

Then,

Run 1 mile or Row 2K or Bike 3 miles

Post your times

Dessert: 3 laps (210 yds) Farmers Carry, 20KG KB or 35 lb Kettlebags

Form Day: Clean and Jerk

Can you ever really say you don't need to fine tune your lifting form?

Today is a workout with relatively light weight, working on "cleaning up" form in the clean and jerk.

Jump, shrug, rack. Pause. Dip, drive, lock overhead. What could be so hard about that?

We'll work together to make the C&J even better. Here's a link to someone going through a little form practice on his clean with a split jerk under the watchful eye of Coach Mike Burgener.

Miracle Mile Pain in the Butt

Crank it up for a snowy week. Let's target the gluteals......

Main Course:

Miracle Mile Pain in the Butt.

For time:

1/4 mile run

70 yards (1 deck lap): Lunges with body weight only

1/4 mile run

70 KB swings: 20KG for men, 16KG for women

1/4 mile run

70 yards: Lunges with body weight only

1/4 mile run

70 KB swings: 20 KG for men, 16 KG for women

Note: 1/4 mile run can be substituted with 3/4 mile bike or 1 KM row

Dessert: 70 pushups, focused on form, not for time, but do as many as you can consecutively for the first, second, third, etc round.

Post your time for the Miracle Mile pain in the butt.

Post how many rounds it took you to finish 70 pushups with the reps per round.

Conditioning

When "strength and conditioning" is mentioned, a natural interpretation is that the term refers to muscular strength and cardiovascular conditioning. This is only part of the larger definition that credits important factors such as the contribution from proper neural recruitment and sufficient stability from ligaments and bones. Proper recruitment of motor units and coordinated nervous control is usually understood, but bony and ligament support is often taken for granted. Taken for granted until a video of catastrophic failure occurs, like this elbow dislocation from the Beijing Olympics: warning - pretty graphic: video here. Take home message is that supporting tissues such as ligaments and bones are also conditioned by training, becoming better able to sustain load without failure.

When it comes to bone, conditioning flows from a concept called "Wolff's Law" which states that bone will adapt to the right kind of loads by remodeling to become better accustomed to handling load. The negative adaptation related to Wolff's Law is osteoporosis, and strength training helps to prevent this condition.

Scott Going, a PhD at University of Arizona, in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine article published in 2009, states what so much of the exercise physiology and medical literature strongly supports, that strength-trained athletes have significantly higher bone mass and density than athletes and nonathletes who do not engage in similar training.

One more reason to train with an emphasis on developing strength as well as endurance/stamina: strong bones!

Squat Push Swing

1. Back Squats: 10,9,8,7,6......1

2. Pushups: 20,18,16,14,12....2

3. KB Swings: 10 sets of 5 reps (20kg men, 16kg women)

Post last Squat weight.

Mixed Metcon with KTEs

The term MetCon gets tossed around in the CrossFit community to mean different things - here are CF Summit the term denotes low load/high speed work. Today's workout in the big group room was all about MetCon:

AMRAP 20 Mix

As Many Rounds As Possible in 20 mins of:

5 Burpees

10 Knees to Elbows

15 Box Jumps, 12 inch box

20 Push Press - 15 # empty bars

Video of Knees to Elbows - a beautiful way to attack Abs/Lats/Arms

Deads and Dips

5 rounds not for time

10 Deadlifts

10 Ring dips

Post last 10RM Deadlift weight

Run to Fran, Euro style

First, timed 1 mile run or 2K row or 3 mile bike. Record time.

10 min break

Then, Euro Fran, 21/15/9 of

Thrusters, 45K for men, 35K for women

Pullups

Record both times with any modification and scaling.

Here's a look at Rob G on the final last 9 pullups....

Longest Mile

1/4 mile run/500 m row/.75 mile bike

15 KB swings - male 20Kg, female 16Kg

15 Pushups

15/15 Scissor situps - 1 leg straight - thanks Carl! see photo below

Dessert: 350 yards farmer carries self selected weight

Clean Progressions

Reps: 5,5,3,3,1 of

1. Hang Power Clean

2. Power Clean

3. Hang Clean

4. Clean.

Post 1RM Clean weight.

AMRAP 15 with KB PCP

Today's Metcon A$$ Sandwich:

In 15 minutes, complete as many rounds as possible of:

10 Pullups

10 MB Slams (8-10# for women, 10-20# for men)

10 short box jumps

10 kettlebell power clean and press (KB PCP)

1 Cart Dog

Thanks to Carl for the KB PCP exercise. The entire group thanks you - what a nice little stretch of intensity and load.

Post your number of rounds.

FS & KTE

Front Squat & Knees To Elbows

Front Squat: 10/20/30/20/10

KTE: 30/20/10/20/30

Front Squat: Use 1/2 BW on first three sets, 3/4 BW on 20 count, 10 RM on last 10 lifts.

Post 10RM Front Squat weight.

Done right, looks something like this:

Dessert: Carl's 2 handed KB Deadlift High Press - sets of 5 sets of 5 reps. Morning and Evening groups completed 5 x 5 before calling it tough enough.

Baseline 2010

Age Adjusted Physical Performance Test (for time)

x=100 minus age (I am 52, so my value for "x" is 48)

x overhead dumbbell squats using > or= 10% body weight total

x pushups

x situps

1/2 x pullups

x KB swings > or = 1/4 bodyweight

1 mile run or 2K row

Post your time and any modifications/scaling