Barbara

5 rounds of:

20 Pullups

30 Pushups

40 Sit-ups

50 Squats

Rest exactly 3 minutes between rounds

FGBIV. Edging closer everyday to our goal . We still need your help.

9/11. Never forget those who gave their lives for our freedom.

"The workout of the day (WOD) represents a challenge that has been issued to the athlete; "Complete this task, if you can. Complete it better than anyone else and you win". Completing the challenge, and gaining respect for doing so, is only possible if all requirements of the challenge are met. Some requirements, such as the exercises, sets, reps and loads, are stated in writing. Other, often missed requirements, are implied, and assumed to be a standard set of requirements for all workouts. The implied considerations are accuracy (correctness of movement and range of motion) and honesty (completing all of the work and correctness of score). Failing to meet the implied requirements is a failure of no less magnitude than failing to complete the specified reps. Real progress comes when the athlete accepts the complete challenge and gives equal importance to both implied and stated requirements." -Crossfit Brisbane

Krissi making a 20lb. vest look easy.

Congrats to Big Mike P. on putting up 1005 on his total. This is 465. (make sure to watch the very end of the video)

Push Jerk

3-3-3-3-3

Fight Bone Bad IV. Thanks to everyone who's already donated, but we're not there yet. We're in the final stretch of funding now and still need everyone's support.

We've always been anti-glove in here. Simply the stated the glove is a hindrance to develop great grip strength. It changes the way your hands hold the bar( whether it be barbell or pull up bar) and it makes it harder to hold by increasing the effective thickness of the bar. What you can't hold you can't pick up. The only reason you should ever wear gloves is to cover an injury, which was probably caused by wearing the gloves, not developing calluses and then forgetting the gloves. If they have wrist straps it's even worse, because not only are you making your hands weak but also you're wrists weak as well. Some of you have suggested you want to avoid calluses. That's just not going to happen. Calluses protect your hands from everyday abuse and let you work harder in here, they are a natural by-product of barbell and gymnastic work. This doesn't mean you have to have hands like a longshoreman. Filing down and moisturizing your calluses keeps them smooth, supple and still helpful in the gym. A good way of easing into callus development is using gloves for half a workout, and gradually decreasing the amount of time spent in glove. Jonathan keeps a can of Burt's Bees Hand Balm in his car and uses it every time he drive anywhere. Just remember, If you're going to wear gloves make sure they match your purse.

Don hitting 1000 on his total.

"A Good Walk Spoiled"

4 rounds for time:

100ft Walking Lunges with 30 lb. Dumbbells

24" Box Jump 30 reps

30 lb. weighted pull ups 20 reps

FGB IV. If you don't want to donate online you can bring Chace, Jonathan, Nate or myself cash or check and we'll see that it gets in there.

I've mentioned foam rolling in passing, and showed a few of you how to do some of it. But today I want to talk more about it.

Technically speaking foam rolling full name is Self Myofascial Release. We can learn a lot from the name here. The important part is Myofascial. Muscle are made of fascia, individuals layer of muscle fibers that glide smoothly when working properly. Think of them as pages in a book or a ream of paper. When you damage your muscles they develop adhesions between the layers and as such don't work as optimally or efficiently. This damage can be felt as pain, soreness or tightness in some muscle and can be transmitted to joints. In worse cases these adhesions can develop in tendons and connective structures causing more pain.

What we want to do is release these adhesions, and we do this by rolling on the foam roller. Prescriptions vary but essentially you want to roll back forth ont the foam roll near a sore area. When you find a point of pain (and it will be excruciatingly painful) hang out there for as long as you can take, back off and then go into that area again. What's happening is that your releasing the adhesion's developed by working out, causing the muscle to work better by letting them slide more easily. If you start experience joint pain look up or downstream of the joint for tightness in muscles. When my knee acts up and it's not weather related I'll look for soreness in either the Quad, Hamstring, IT band or Soleus and Gastrocnemius. And then I'll go after them with the foam roller. Sometimes the foam roller isn't enough to really dig deep into the adhered muscles (or to get past the superficial muscle) so you'll need to move to the lacrosse ball, the ball is especially useful for places like the piriformis, the shoulder girdle, and hip musculature.

I try not to foam roll till at least 4 hours after a workout, but I'll hit it before a workout and throughout the day especially if I'm really sore. And if I am immediately sore, than those 4 hours go out the window. If you cant get to your masseuse for some trigger point therapy or Active Release Technique, than take a roll on the foam roller. A good foam roller costs between $10-$30 and are available from numerous resources, lacrosse balls are available for around $3 at any sporting good store and last essentially forever. Make sure to get one that is fully 6" around and no more than 36" wide. Now, no one says you have to be foam rolling( not yet anyways), but you'll feel better, you'll move better and it'll increase your performance.

CFHQ

Rest Day

-or-

CFSS

"TOTAL"

Back Squat 1RM

Press 1RM

Deadlift 1RM

Best of 3 attempts in all lifts. Score is combined pounds for all 3 lifts.

Fight Gone Bad IV. 18 Days. $1205 to our goal.

Thanks for everyone who came and participated in yesterdays Labor Day Fun. Ya'll left everything out there on the track. Including some skin from your tail bone. Thanks to Jonathan for hosting the after party.

It's very easy to avoid the heavy days, just as it's easy to avoid the long grinders and steady state 5k's. But it's all a part of a whole. Everything you avoid, because you're afraid of putting weight on the bar, because you're afraid of a 5k is a detriment to your fitness. Ultimately the increased work capacity you develop in here will ward off the rest home down the line. You put in your pain and work now to keep you healthy and active later.

Kristen (on the L in the lower picture) and Ryan (on the R in the top picture) working through their last workout "The Chubby Ribeye". We'll miss you both so much and hope your travels are safe, the wind is always at your back and the road rises to meet you at ever step. Keep in touch and come back when you can.

Clean and Jerk

1-1-1-1-1-1-1

Fight Gone Bad IV. Donate. 22 days.

* The Gym will be closed Monday September 7, 2009. We'll be meeting at Dunwoody High School at Noon.*If you didn't get the email about the labor day fun leave a comment and we will get it to you.

" She's recently taken a part-time job teaching Crossfit, a strength and conditioning program that she does on her own and which she calls "her secret weapon" that helped her excel in the Olympic year. Cafaro loves lifting very heavy weights, something she attributes to the program. " I feel like a lot of rowers are scared to put a lot of weight on the bar and push themselves to their limit in the weight room," she says. "I felt like that was the enticing part about working out with this group. They encouraged me to open up my power output by just adding more weight to the bar, rather than just doing 4x40 reps of a lighter weight, which is the usually rowers workout." -Rowing News September 2009.

Erin Cafaro won gold in Beijing as bow seat (that's the very front of the boat) of the women's eight.

From Olympians to Kelly Clarkson to your Grandma, Crossfit is growing every day. Are we (ever) in danger of going mainstream? Is this growth good or bad?

*Class Tomorrow at 11 a.m.*

Mike notching a 15-second PR (and a gym record) on Elizabeth.

CFHQ

Rest Day

-or-

"Glass Menagerie"

Backwards Run 137m

3 rounds

21 DB Swing 55lbs/35lbx

Crab Walk 40ft.

33 Sit-ups

Bear Crawl 40ft

Backwards Run 137m

-or-

5 rounds

15 Power Snatch 95lbs.

Run 400m

Fight Gone Bad IV. We've raised $1005 so far which is great, but we've still got $995 to go. The clock doesn't stop until you cross the finish line. 23 days to go.

Discussion question ('cause it's Friday and we all need intellectual stimulation): Can you ever be strong enough? Is there a limit where you see that you don't need to be any stronger?

This post is about how to take your hands from the above, to the below.

Today will be a special post, separate from the everyday WOD stuff (if you'd like to see todays WOD stuff it's below this), on exactly how to tape your hands. Nothing like this really exists out there in the blogosphere, so pass it on to all your crossfit friends and acquaintances.

We've found a method that works for very well for protecting torn palm calluses and also for the prevention of tears. All you need for this is some 1.25" or 1.5" cloth athletic tape. Cloth tape is better than anything else we've found. It's cheap easily found and not slippery.

1. Measure with tape from the top of your longest finger to several inches past the base of your wrist.

Your going to then double this measurement in tape. We find that around 16"-18" works very well for even the largest of hands.

2. Double the tape over in half lengthwise


3. Smooth the tape out, smooth it over an edge or something sharp, try and get all the air bubbles out.

4. Double it over on itself so that the two ends meet. And the same side of tape is facing up. This will leave a loop for your finger to fit through.

5. Place another strip of tape on the bottom of the strap you made above, this holds it together and adds another layerof abrasion resistance. Fit it on the necessary finger above to cover your palm. Note how far past the wrist it goes. Before you tape it to your wrist, stretch your wrist out backwards so that there is enough slack in the strap. Now take one wrap around your wrist. Double the wrist strap back on itself and trap it with another loop of tape. We've found that only one loop around the wrist the strap will pull loose. If the strap pulls free it will still protect your hands but, it's annoying and not something we need.

Now get to work.

The straps are reusable just throw away the wrist loops and keep 'em in your notebook.

Run 5k

4, 5 and 6 p.m. will meet at Column's Drive (the official CFSS 5k and 10k route). Nate and I will be in the gym in the afternoon if you'd like to come on and try something else.

Directions From our current location:

Head up Roswell Road to Johnson's Ferry and take a left

Take Johnson's Ferry over the river

Columns Drive is on the left at the first light over the river

Head all the way down Columns til it dead ends in a gravel parking lot. (this will seem like a long ways).

Chace will be there with his shirt off.

Make sure to bring $3 dollars for parking.

Go for a new PR.

Fight Gone Bad IV.

It is for very good causes

Haiku is not easy.

No seriously, donate what you can when you can. We've passed our halfway mark, but we've still got pretty far to go.

Congrats to Karin, Jeff and Nina and everyone who competed on their great showing at Crossfit Woodstock's memorial WOD "Mr. Joshua".

Fran's Boat Race was a nasty little number

Elizabeth

21-15-9

135 lbs. Squat Cleans

Ring Dips

Fight Gone Bad IV. We're almost half way to our fundraising goal but we still need your help. Donate soon!

If you didn't get the email about the Labor Day fun leaves us a note in comments and we'll make sure you get the email.

Body weight movements are some of the biggest parts of what we do in here. Look at workouts Like Murph, Angie or Cindy these workouts are some of the hardest in crossfit and they are completely body weight. Improvements in body weight movements come very slowly if they are not worked constantly, so I'm going to talk today about two things you can do to improve your body weight movements.

Grease the Groove. Grease the Groove is a basic procedure first enumerated by Pavel Tsatsouline (incidentally the man who brought kettlebells to America) and used to great success in his program. What GtG says you should do is to increase the specificity and frequency with which you work body weight movements. The article specifically states pull ups, but you can also use this for push ups, squats and dips. Throughout the day when you think about you knock out small sets of 5 or 10. What has worked well for some is putting a pull up bar in your home and knocking out a few every time you pass under it. The amount of exposure to the movement forces a quicker adaption and an increase in the overall strength of the movement. Meaning that by doing more over a longer period, when you need to you can do more when you need to.

Negatives. This is another method that can be used to quickly build strength in body weight movements. Essentially what a negative means is forcing the body into a weighted eccentric movement, where a given muscle is forced to lengthen under tension. In plainer terms this means jumping up to the top of a pull up and lowering yourself slowly (3-6 seconds) to the bottom of the movement. The same can work for full push ups, dips and squats in some cases. I've used this method with ring dips to some small success. This is a very potent methodology ad should be used very carefully, start slowly with negatives and never use them during a workout. This is skill work for before or after a workout. Start out with 3 sets of 5 reps and work up to around 3x15, but never more than this. I'd be surprised if you'd weren't able to do a normal (non-negative) body weight movement before you got to 3x15.

Jared mid "Jarabeth"

Fran's Boat Race

1000m Row

21 95 lb. thruster

21 pullups

750m Row

15 95 lb. thruster

15 pullups

500m row

9 95 lb. thruster

9 pullups

If rowers are not available than the running sub is 1 mile, 800m and 400m.

Have you donated to Fight Gone Bad 4 yet? A prize package for the most money raised is still out there for the win. 26 days left.

Your brain thinks you can do less than your muscles actually can. Ignore your brain. Or, you know, try to. Thanks to Rob for sending this to Nate and for Nate bringing it to my attention. If you find an interesting article or topic you'd like covered post it to comments.