Some of our newbs hanging with Becky. From left to right- Ryan, Jon and Amber.
Carol rockin' her own Sandy Springs CrossFit apparel.

Three rounds for time of:

50m walking lunge
100m Standing Broad Jump

200m Run

We are Proudly Announcing

First Annual Crossfit Sandy Springs Gut Check Challenge!

Starts on Feb. 1st through March 13th

The challenge will have three winners: One overall winner, one winner in most body fat lost and one winner in most performance gained

The performance segment will start on the week of January 25 and will consist of 4 workouts. One will be a heavy lift or lifts, one will be an endurance workout, two will be metcons: one mixed domain and one body weight. We will re-test these the week of March 8th.

For the fat loss challenge we have the Bod pod coming out on January 30th and again on the 13th. The winner here is simply the person who loses the most percentage of body fat as measured by the Bod pod. For those of you concerned with what too eat, and you should be, Jonathan will be giving a lecture on January 27th at 7 p.m., we'll record it and post that here.

The overall winner will be the person with the best combined placing in both the fat lost and performance improvements. For example if a person gets fifth in fat loss and forth in performance than their score will be 9, if this is the lowest score they win the overall prize.

There will be a fee for the Bod pod and a mandatory ante of $20 out of which the winners' prize will come. You don't have to have your body fat taken, but we would highly recommend it, and if you don't you won't be in contention for either the overall or fat loss prize.

We'll have more details in the coming days, if you have questions ask any of us or post to comments.

Nara and Jason finishing up the On-Ramp with style.
Isa on thrusters.

CFHQ

Rest Day

-or-

CFSS

75 Squats

400m. Run

3 rounds of:

25 hip Extensions

15 Knees to Elbows

10 Burpees

400.m Run

75 Squats

We've talked to most of you about the Paleo diet promoted by Loren Cordain. For your rest day reading take a gander at this article from Emory's own Dr. S. Boyd Eaton which inspired the whole Paleo diet. Dr. Cordain also has a book about Paleo, called aptly enough "The Paleo Diet". If neither of those options look at all appealing check out this blog post. Prepare to need this information in the coming weeks.

Some of our 10 o'clockers after Fran yesterday.
The aftermath of Fran. Great job everyone.

Push Jerk

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

"Fran"

21-15-9

95 lbs. Thruster

Pull ups

Life is about progression; advancement from one moment to the next. We must always move forward. This is also true in Crossfit.

Most everyone has some scaling when they first start, I know I did and still do! However the very term "scaling" implies that there are places to advance and skills to be gained. These advances aren't easy. That first workout when you switch from a green band to a blue band is tough. And you will be sore. But it is an advancement.

The goal is ultimately to be able to do everything as prescribed by CFHQ. But this is an arbitrary standard, your goal should be self created. Whether it's your first strict pullup ('cause we want to have one of those before we get into kipping pullups) or push-ups off your knees or a full depth Overhead Squat. You need to be advancing, however slowly, towards that goal. As always ask any of us how to get there.

-Paul Siegel

Sunday class is at 11:00

Mother and son team, Kat and Jon, racing through the first 500m. of the "Chubby Ribeye".
Chad on the back end of the same workout. Great job everyone.

Power Clean

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

Let's talk about muted hip function, particularly relevant for today's movement: Power Clean. Muted hip becomes important in the landing position of the power clean. Ideally that position would look like an above parallel air or front squat. A solid and significantly stable position from which to stand all the way up. However what often goes wrong in this is that the hip shoots forward so that a straight line drawn from the knee goes through the hip and to the shoulders. This puts in an inordinate amount of stress on the knees particular the bottom of the patella. How to fix this? Make sure when you land you land on your heels. And stick your butt out. This position strikes a great balance between the anterior and posterior chain as well as being safe for all your joints. Add a stable midline into the equation and you're golden.

Atlanta Renegades rugby player Blake Johnson hitting (D-4) of the CFSS onramp program.

Pauly messin up "Elizabeth" yesterday.

Chad crushing through the last peice of "Chubby Ribeye"

CFHQ

Rest Day

-or-

CFSS

"The Chubby Ribeye"

Row 500 meters

30 burpees

30 DB push press (80lbs.)

30 goblet squats (70lbs.)

30 pullups

30 box jumps (20 in.)

200 ft. overhead walking lunges (45lbs.)

Scaling is an alchemical science. By that I mean that it is more of an art than a science. In scaling there are ultimately only two variables we can work with: reps and weight. Take yesterdays WOD for example. Total reps for that is 250 wallballs at 20 lbs. and 125 pullups. Anyway you slice its a lot of reps. The goal with this workout was muscular fatigue, shown by having to break up the wallball, and around a 20-25 minute time to completion.

To scale this we'll pick a number of reps based primarily on a given person's perceived abilities and strength. After this we'll look at the intent of the workout, whether the point is to power through or to reach muscular exhaustion and have to rest. Since we don't design the workouts we often have to guess at the intent, something we're pretty good at. So yesterdays WOD could have been scaled to around 150-175 reps of 14 or 20 lbs. Wallball with 100-75 pullups depending of course on the individual. Ideally this scaling would enable an average crossfitter to achieve the same time as a fire breather who does it as prescribed (RX).

However there is one variable which we have no control over is your intensity. You can go as hard or as easy as you want, truly. We'd obviously prefer if you went as hard as you could. That's the whole key to the system, that's the whole point. Can you be going faster with the workouts we give you?

Becky and Carl. We're never really sure how Becky gets so much chalk on her during a WOD. An impressive performance none the less.
Coach J, muscle up badass

5 rounds for time of:

50 Wallball Shots 20 lbs/14 lbs.

25 Pullups

Just a quick reminder We're trying to do a family style dinner on Thursdays at one of Sandy Springs many fine establishments. This week is Teela Taqueria, home to delicious Taco's and cheap margarita's (which can be made Paleo!) we'll leave at 7 p.m. sharp from the gym. So come to Thursday six o'clock class if you'd like or meet us there.

Which brings me to today's discussion point: Crossfit is Community. Our particular brand of fitness attracts a certain sort of person and these people inevitably enjoy much the same type of things and enjoy talking about them. And community grows from there. What other gym have you been to where people hang out and actually talk after their workouts are done? Where else can you proudly display Noah's hand print on Karin's butt? Certainly not at your local globo-gym. Nor much of anywhere else I imagine.

Perhaps it is not that we are like minded in our pursuit of fitness but rather it is the camaraderie that only shared suffering can build and foster. It might be the respect that this camaraderie engenders. Or it might be because y'all are just so cool. Either way come meet and eat this Thursday. Even if you haven't been in in a long while.

-Paul Siegel

Mackenzie doing jumping muscle ups on the first day she attempts them?!??
Whose hand print is on Karin's butt?

Speaking of mature squats. Nate's daughter Ashley(7) and Christopher(3) hitting a fun workout yesterday.

Clay (consistent)Crim doing a true muscle up on his first introduction to the movement!??!?!

5 rounds for time of:

400m

25 GHD Situps

25 Back Extensions

I mentioned a mature squat yesterday. That was not to imply that y'all had an immature squat, far from it. Practically no one walks in the door (or after a few months) and knows everything about the squat. But it's such a foundational movement (try getting off the toilet without) that we're going to discuss the idiosyncrasies of the movement.

The primary difference between an immature squat and a mature squat can be seen in two areas. The first is depth. A mature squat is Ass to Grass or as deep as possible. The second is in posture. A mature squat is presented with an upright torso which becomes beneficial in lifts like the front squat and overhead squat or the High Bar Back Squat. These are good indicators, however a mature squat is best judged as an overall look of technical superb movement with proper mechanics that never change. Someone with a decent flexibility can be put into this position relatively easily but have them do it a 100 times and see if the mechanics break down.

H0w do you get there? Practice, Practice, Practice. Always endeavour to use correct movement in practice and workouts. Athletes (that's all of you) that take the time to do these movement correctly rather than blowing through them or not caring hold a special place in a coaches heart. Address the areas where you lack. If you're not strong enough to keep your knees out than you need to make sure your working to strengthen this link, same goes for flexibility, proprioception and other faculties. As always we're here to help; if you'd like some pointers ask any of your coaches.

-Paul Siegel

John and Kiersten hitting kips.

Guess who.

3 rounds for time of:

12 Muscle-ups

75 squats

One of the many cues we use in the gym is "Knees out". We say this because you need to get your knees out, but more exactly we are asking that you push your femur in line with your feet. If you can imagine a straight line running from your heel through your middle toe and a similar from your hip joint and out through the center of your knee cap. Ideally when viewed from above we want these lines to be right on top of each other. If theses lines are not in positions, than we as coaches know that something has gone awry.

One of the problems we see all to often that violate this ideal is feet turned out to much. We only want around 30 degrees splayed out from perpendicular to your body. This is simply a placement problem and easily fixable: know where you're feet are pointing when your squatting. The other problem is knees caving in. The knee coming in stems from other problems. it can be cause by weak adductors and abductors muscles, these control the movement and position of the femur . It can also be evidence of an immature squat (something we'll discuss later this week). Both of these are cured with use and experience in the squat. As you get stronger and more experienced with this movement you can begin to "see" what your knees are doing in the squat. Forcing them out re-enforces ideal movement patterns and strengthens all those little (and big) muscles as well as preventing injury.
-Paul Siegel

10 am with nine people kipping into Barbara

From L to R (Carl, Cannon, Krissi, Chris L., Becky, Karin, Joanna, Jordan, Eric)

A.J. crushin ring dips
Jordon did "Vermont Smorgasboard" 41 degrees -no shirt/no shoes?!!? Badass bro!


M More Alliance Jiu Jitsu rollers starting this week (Jason and Nara), might have to rename CFSS to Alliance CrossFit.

Barbara

Five rounds, each for time:

20 Pull-ups

30 Push-ups

40 Sit-ups

50 Squats

Rest precisely 3 minutes between rounds

Congrats to Joanna for getting the "Vermont Smorgasbord" quote! You get a gold star on the next workout.

It seems often enough that that rest is more of a curse than a blessing. What it let's you do is to recover almost fully before starting the next round. Over 5 rounds this metabolic debt increases until that 5 round is hard. Nate considers this to be one of the hardest Crossfit workouts. Go through each round as quickly as you can. You can't avoid the pain, might as well embrace it.

Many of you have mentioned starting a Paleo diet come the new year, you might want to hold off on that till we iron a few details out on a project we've been working on. But if you'd really like to start here is a great resources for Comsumer Supported Agriculture. CSA's are a weekly box of delicious local organic food, the one my family buys cost $20 and is full of delicious vegetables. Most you have to pick up at a designated location, some require some labor on the farm. Andy mentioned one that includes Local meat as well, maybe he'll chime in with some info in comments. The reason I mention this is because in Paleo it is the quality of the food, less than the macronutrient content. The better the quality of the food the better it is for you.

*No Sunday Class*

-Paul Siegel