Minneapolis, Minnesota

In Greek mythology Sisyphus was a king who tried to trick the gods.  As punishment he was condemned to push a gigantic rock up the side of a mountain for eternity.  Every time he neared the summit, the rock would roll back down and he would have to start over from the bottom.

Sound familiar?  Like all Greek mythology, this story is a metaphor for life. Who hasn’t experienced frustration? If you haven’t been frustrated in life then you need to put more skin in the game.  For CrossFitters frustration is a familiar bogeyman lurking around every corner. You might be the man in your gym, but can you hang with Mikko?  On Monday you finally get that muscle-up, but then on Tuesday your coach programs a WOD with 30 muscle-ups. That’s the boulder rolling back down the mountain.

CrossFitters are elite in the sense that nobody else can do what we can do.  But we’re elite in another important sense: we’re never satisfied. We’re always trying to be better.  If we see an obstacle we have to overcome it. It’s in our nature. When the boulder rolls back down the mountain we may groan but secretly we’re pleased. When everyone else is feeling sorry for themselves, we roll up our sleeves and get back to work.

Like most CrossFitters I’m a willful technophobe when it comes to fitness equipment.  Imagine the “Dawn of Man” sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey where the apes are scrambling around the monolith, beating their chests in fear and bewilderment. Should we kill it?  Is it going to kill us? This is my internal dialogue whenever I see an elliptical or walk by the show room of a place like LA Fitness.

As much as I sneer at steppers and ellipticals I must admit that they serve a very important function.  Namely, they help to prevent injuries in untrained runners.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever gotten a shin splint, Plantar fasciitis or IT Band syndrome. I’m willing to bet that if you raised your hand you haven’t been trained by a real running coach recently, if ever.

If you love running but hate the elliptical, check out pose running.  The pose method is a running system that will increase your speed and efficiency while preventing overuse injuries.  It’s rather difficult to find certified pose instruction in Minnesota, but I’m pleased to announce that TwinTown CrossFit is hosting Level 2 pose coach Daniel Geilman for a pose running seminar on July 24th and 25th.  The seminar is open to the public, but spots are limited so act quickly if you are interested in attending.

I had an interesting conversation with one of our athletes the other day. She expressed frustration that she is usually the last person to finish the WOD and that she is so exhausted during the workouts.

This particular athlete is special in that her technique and range-of-motion is always above reproach.

If your last rep is as perfect as your first, and if you never cheat on range of motion, you are going to get pretty tired. In all likelihood you won’t be the top finisher.  But you’ve still achieved a more durable and meaningful victory than anything that can be expressed on a whiteboard.

We have another athlete who never cheats herself.  She is consistently a top-finisher and can hang with anyone, anywhere.

Both are exemplary CrossFitters. So what’s the difference between Athlete A and Athlete B?

Time.

My Wendler 5-3-1 spreadsheet

I’m sick of being such a weakling.  I want to be able to do King Kong as prescribed.  I can sort of do muscle-ups and hand-stand pushups but the thought of doing a 455lb deadlift or a 250lb squat clean makes my head hurt.

The problem is that I don’t really like weightlifting that much. When everyone else was lining up for the CrossFit barbell cert, I lay awake at night dreaming about the nutrition cert.  I’m a dork, what can I say.

When I do lift weights, it’s with the half-hearted, lackadaisical attitude of a teenager working the counter at McDonald’s. Would you like to supersize your shoulder press?  Sorry sir, I’m about take my break.  Sigh.

Anyway, if I’m ever going to finish King Kong I have to get stronger.  No more excuses.  Some of my friends are having great success with the Wendler 5-3-1 system so I thought I’d give it a try.

In a nutshell, 5-3-1 is a periodization system that is factored from 90% of your 1 rep max.  It’s an extremely organized and methodical approach to strength training.  Organized and methodical sounds really sexy right?  But it’s exactly what I need.

I just finished my first cycle and so far so good.  I’ll revisit this topic after I complete a few more cycles, but I want to just say a few things about 5-3-1 here:

• I think I already got stronger.  If you look at the spreadsheet, column M shows  a progression in estimated 1RM on the dead lift.  According to Excel, I added twenty+ pounds to my established 1RM of 345lb.  I don’t know if I could actually pull 373 pounds but in WOD’s with long, heavy dead lift segments, I don’t have to rest anymore.  Last week I did 21 DL’s at 225lbs without putting the bar down.  I never could have done that before.
• This system is great if you’re a dummy like me and you don’t like to think too hard about training.  With 5-3-1 your entire training program is spelled out, right down to the rep count and pound.  You literally just have to show up.
• You are always working at less than 90% of your 1RM which is great for me because I usually have to work out alone.  I don’t like to work close to my 1RM without a spotter.  The idea that I could get stronger without having to work at load that makes me puke in my mouth is very appealing.
• If you have ever had a job you know what it’s like to have your life run by a spreadsheet.  It will be ever so comforting to surrender to the steely embrace of a Wendler 5-3-1 spreadsheet like the one I show above.  Obey!

More soon.  In the meantime, if you’re interested in 5-3-1 the book is available here.

A few years ago I popped my MCL during a Jiu-Jitsu practice and had to go to the hospital.  The doctor told me not to bend my knee past 90 degrees and prescribed physical therapy.  Physical therapy consisted of lying on my back while a nice lady bent my knee far past 90 degrees over and over.  After about ten minutes of that I would ride on a stationary bike for about ten minutes, again bending my knee far past 90 degrees.

So was the doctor a fool or was the therapist a sadist?  I guess the recollection of all of those agonizing knee bends is making me uncharitable.  The truth is, the doctor and therapist have very conflicting goals.  The doctor is all about avoiding trauma.  The therapist is all about getting you moving again.

Knee replacements can't stop her!

As a CrossFit coach you have to serve both goals.  For athletes rebounding from injury this can be tricky.  But the beauty of functional movements is that they can be scaled easily and safely.  The key-and-plate machines that you get at the big gyms cannot be scaled safely, because the loaded range-of-motion is engineered into the machine.

The picture shows Jennifer doing a scaled deadlift.  She just had knee replacements but she never misses class and is making awesome progress towards her goals.

By popular demand we will be open on Sunday, the 4th of July!

Inchworm soccer, sit-up practice, obstacle course, and cartwheels!

My drawing skills never progressed much beyond the stick-figure stage, and I’m embarrassed to admit that even my stick figures sometimes look like mutant lollipops.  Drawing the whiteboards for the CrossFit Kids progam is an agonizing ordeal in concentration with countless erasures and touchups.  Any normal person could have done the whiteboard above in about 3 minutes but it took me about 45.

As crude as these are, I’ve been really enjoying drawing kids whiteboards.  I’ve discovered that trying to communicate in pictures forces me to break down a technique into its most elemental form.  Being able to “draw” a good position is a lot different than just being able to “feel it”.  Part of being an effective coach is being able to communicate technical subject matter to all different types of learners, including young people.  As a coach, you’re only finished growing when you lose interest in learning.

Beginning on Sunday June 27 we will begin our new Q3 Schedule.  A downloadable PDF of our schedule is here.

Here is some important information about class levels:

All Levels: All ability levels are welcome.

Beginners: Scaling is enforced.  Lots of drilling.

Intermediate: Scaling is optional.  Some drilling.

Advanced: Scaling is discouraged.  Little drilling.

CrossFit Mom: Specialized programming for pregnant and post-partum women.

CrossFit Kids: Specialized programming for children 3-17.

Strength: A strength-focused workout programmed on a six week cycle designed to demonstrate linear progress in one lifting modality.  Athletes interested in the strength class are strongly encouraged to attend every Friday.

Open Gym: A lightly coached environment where you can work on skills or make up a WOD.

While I was packing boxes for a recent move I ran across my old copy of Thorstein Veblen’s, “The Theory of the Leisure Class”.  While idly thumbing through it I ran across this passage in which Veblen talks about the ideal of feminine beauty.

“The ideal requires delicate and diminutive hands and feet and a slender waist.  These features, together with other related faults of structure that commonly go with them, go to show that the person so affected is incapable of useful effort and must therefore be supported in idleness by her owner.  She is useless and expensive, and she is consequently valuable evidence of pecuniary strength.”

Although Veblen wrote this in the 1890’s, he may as well be describing the trophy wife and super model of today.  One needs only five minutes in front of the television to see that our society’s feminine beauty ideal seems to  promote smallness, softness, and weakness.  How sad that our society still infantilizes women this way.

One of the things I love about CrossFit is that our culture holds everyone to the same high standards. Women are expected to do pull-ups, push-ups and muscle-ups.  Women are expected to lift heavy things and to run fast.  We don’t subvert women’s potential by holding them to a lower standard.

Regardless of gender, to CrossFitters, weakness is repellent.  Strength is beautiful.

The feminine beauty ideal of the future? CrossFit games finalists Annie Thorisdottir and Lindsey Smith. Image courtesy of CrossFit

I must say, I had no idea that paleo nutrition would resonate with so many people.

I’m really excited that so many people will be attending TwinTown CrossFit’s Paleo 101 seminar.

If you’re interested in attending, the seminar is free, and open to the public. Our address is 723 West 26th Street Minneapolis, MN 55408.

We’ll be starting at 6:00PM on Wednesday June 23.

Come and see what the cool kids are eating