Thursday 100609

Skill

Rope Climbs, 3 assents

WOD

Deadlift

1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1

Today's the day to establish your 1 rep max!

Post 1RM and number of rope burns to comments.

The aftermath of a hard won fight!

Why do we choose a workout program that's constantly varied? That gets us good at all aspects of fitness? Check out what CrossFit 801 (www.crossfit801.com) says about it:

WHAT IS CROSSFIT?

CONSTANTLY VARIED!

So we have talked about the movements and what we mean when we say functional.  We also talked about intensity, how we define it and why it's important.  The last piece of the puzzle is explaining why we need to constantly vary our training and how we want you do to it.

CrossFit is a General Physical Preparedness program.  What I mean by this is that the goal of CrossFit is prepare you for life…the unknown and the unknowable.  Training with CrossFit isn't like training for a specific sport or specific event (like a bodybuilding competition).  In sport specific training you know exactly the skills and drills you need.  You know what day you will be playing and how long the game will last.  You will probably have a pretty good guess as to what the weather will be like and what the terrain or field is like.  In a lot of cases you may even know what your opponent is like and what you will need to do to compete with them.

Life is not this way.  This is why CrossFit is so popular among military, law enforcement officers and first responders.  This is a group of individuals who most definitely need to be fit across broad time and modal domains.  They do not know if they need to be ready to lift something heavy or run up 30 floors worth of stairs…or both!  In reality, those of us that are not athletes in a specific sport have more in common with the men and women in these military positions.  Our lives are unpredictable and CrossFits aim is to prepare us for whatever we may come across.

WE DON'T WANT YOU TO BE GREAT IN THE GYM…WE WANT YOU TO EXCEL AT LIFE!!

WE SPECIALIZE IN NOT SPECIALIZING!!

This is not to say there is anything wrong with choosing to specialize.  Athletes that can hold a 4 minute mile for an entire marathon, or that can back squat 700 lbs are amazing and we would never claim any different.  It's just that this specifically is not the aim of CrossFit.  As a matter of fact, we don't want you to have that 4 minute mile or that 700 lb back squat because if you had either one of those we know you would be deficient in other areas.

WE WILL FAIL AT THE MARGINS OF OUR EXPERIENCE!

What does this mean?  This means you need to expand what you have been exposed to as much as we possibly can.  Those that are used to 8-12 reps in the gym will not do so well when they try to hit a 1 rep max or even go for a set of 50.

Think about what you like most.  What workouts do you typically excel at?  For me…I like workouts that are under 10 minutes.  I like to listen to Rihanna or Lady Gaga.  I like there to be a heavy barbell involved…power cleans maybe..Grace?  I like it if I have gotten 9 hrs or so of sleep the night before and if it is around 5 pm.  I don't like it to be too hot, but I also don't want it cold.  I like being with my friends at 801 and I like having a long time to warm up.  I can't have eaten in the past 3 hrs…but I also don't want to be hungry.  There absolutely cannot be 400 m runs in this workout.  I am wearing my lulu shorts and sports bra, my DC shoes and my purple bandana and socks.  This workout is going to be bad ass!!

What happens when it is 90 degrees and 90% humidity?  What happens when the workout is not Grace but a 5.3 mile run early in the morning (you all know how that went)?  What happens when someone takes away my sleep, food, ipod??  Do you see where this is headed? 

THIS IS LIFE!!  And, we need to train and vary things as often as possible so that we increase the margins of our experience.  Life and nature do not care that you are used to the pec deck machine at 8-12 reps.  Life will present you with something that needs to be done…and based on your experience you can either do it or you can't.  Many of you know that a lot of this is mental..something else CrossFit is great at improving.

CrossFit is often criticized for never repeating anything enough to illicit an adaptation.  Like I said before…we specialize in not specializing.  Our goal is not to make you the 700 lb squatter or 4 min miler.  Our goal is to make you better at CONSTANTLY VARIED FUNCTIONAL MOVEMENTS AT HIGH INTENSITY…AND WE DO THIS BY TRAINING CONSTANTLY VARIED FUNCTIONAL MOVEMENTS AT HIGH INTENSITY!!