Warm up: 50 Weighted rope jump rope turns
10 honest push-ups.
I can only do 10 honest push-ups since surgery.So depending on the pain each day I try to do GTG push-ups.

Workout:
5 Back Squats
5 Med-ball cleans 20#- this is for form and to keep my moving and flexible.
10 GHD situps- these help that core to get stronger for the back squat and push press.
Round one
BS- the barx5
Round two
BS-95x5
Round 3
BS-135x3 which is a pound shy of Body weight.
Stopped so I don't spend 3 days recovering.

Cool down:
16k KB one arm High pulls 10 left 10 Right. Non stop 4 rounds.
Skill work- double KB swings 12k left 16k right.


The Potomac Crossfit Crew:
Dan:


Brian:

Ever have one of those workouts where you feel like shit? I did! Today at Crossfit Challenge.
Around 1am last night I woke up and thought "I'm not going". Maybe it's my allergies or the medicine I took for them. My legs ached and my shoulder felt like shit.
As I stepped out of bed, I said screw it just go and do what you can.
I sucked at, Squats, box jumps, wall ball sit ups and everything else I did. I just sucked! I felt like I had a bag of sand on my back, my head was cloudy with no chance of sun!
Ya gotta push through on days like today. Maybe I felt like shit but I gave what I had and walked away feeling like I was beating the forces that were driving me down.

Today was going to be a go heavy day. Instead it turned into take a trip to Arlington Hospital and make sure my friend Otto was OK. He's 83 and now has pneumonia. I've known Otto for about 7 years. I used to live in his house and help him take care of himself and the house. Otto loves my dog Sophie, that's all he really cared about today when I saw him. "Hows Sophie?" His family lives in the UK and in Germany. They have made me his Proxy, it kinda stresses me out but it's OK. I hope he gets better and can sit in the sun with Sophie this spring.

No workout today just a lot of running around!

"One of the questions I’m asked most frequently is how to integrate Olympic weightlifting with CrossFit training. This may strike many as an unnecessary inquiry considering the lifts are regularly programmed into the CrossFit WOD. At times, their appearance in this fashion will be inadequate or unsatisfactory for a particular athlete. In addition, I’ll be arguing here for learning of the lifts outside the WOD until a reasonable level of proficiency is reached.

Greg Glassman once (at least) commented that the Olympic lifts are not remarkably complex movements, making the comparison to a litany of gymnastic movements that far surpass the snatch and clean & jerk in technical complexity. There is no reasonable argument that the Olympic lifts are equal in terms of difficulty to the expansive collection of advanced gymnastics movements; but that comparison notwithstanding—because, while tapping into the gymnastics realm, CrossFit’s use of gymnastics movements remains confined to the extremely elementary—the lifts remain technically difficult relative to any other movement found in the CrossFit program. Understand that this is considering the development of what I would consider excellent technique, not just moving a barbell from the floor to overhead in any fashion (any CrossFitter can accomplish that day one). That being the case, the snatch, clean & jerk and their derivative lifts deserve their due in terms of technique development in order to deliver the expected training effects.

The CrossFit community is not short on athletes who quickly enough develop passable technique—passable meaning adequate to get them through the workout of the day without injury, death or irreconcilable embarrassment (at least among other CrossFitters). This, to many, is wholly sufficient, and no more consideration is given to the subject. This in fact is not sufficient, and I don’t say that simply because I have a particular affinity for the beauty of the lift’s technical precision at the elite level. Instead, my argument is based entirely on the intention of improving the potential training effects of the movements within the CrossFit framework. And before we proceed any further, consider one of Glassman’s oldest and truest maxims: The magic is in the movements. When and where in the CrossFit world has adequate ever been acceptable? It’s not a stretch to say, in fact, that the entire program arose from an unwillingness to accept the adequate as satisfactory."

-Greg Everett-
Read the rest of this Artical by following the below link.
Catalyst Athletics

New to the DC area is Crossfit Potomac! Owners Brian Wilson, Dan Hoffman and Head coach Jen Conlin(that's me!)
Talk about exciting and scary...Whew!
As it looks right now we may have a space in the Blagden Alley of DC. If any of my readers have ideas of how to get word out in the DC area I would love to hear your ideas.

As the head coach I promise I will coach with passion and commitment to reach your goals. You'll have fun and be pushing your limits in a safe and form based environment. From my perspective Crossfit is for all types of people, athlete's, weekend warriors, folks trying to lose weight, kids and seniors. We will find a way to improve your functional fitness.

I will still be coaching for Tom Brose Owner of Crossfit DC. I've been apprenticing under him for about two years and will continue to learn from him.

Right now we don't have our space open but we are doing park workouts in DC,VA and MD. Military and EMS discounts are available.

Ewunike has been training with me for a few weeks. She's preparing for a 1/2 marathon and a fitness competition. Every time we train she gives 110%. This lady is no joke!

Ewunike is a trainer herself and works in the DC area. You can find her link on the right of this page.

One of the things I really dig about Ewunike is that she rides her bike all day long to everything she does, and let me tell you she covers the City of DC daily! Whoot to you Ewunike!


"I never met a truly strong person who didn't have self respect...Strength reveals itself through character"
-Henry Rollins-

Crossfit utilizes so many movements, exercises and modalities you need to spend time "playing" with each skill. I've been stressing lately the need to make sure that form is a priority. As a coach it's very important to me to stress it. It's needed to create safe functional movement that creates true fitness.
Oh the other hand. Trainees need times to explore and see how they do with movements that do not come naturally to them.
I had two conversations yesterday about this. One conversation where we talked about setting time aside for practicing lets say Handstand push-ups without getting the full ROM. Not being able to do something fully is what creates the challenge. When we are not doing benchmark workouts this is part of the process. When we are doing a benchmark workout and your unable to do a full ROM on a certain skill it should be scaled. No if ands or butts! If I was going to do todays WOD from CF main page I would have to drastically scale the Muscle ups and the Handstand push-ups if I wanted to create goals and use that workout as a benchmark or to see how I could improve on just that workout.
Other wise if your doing half a movement during a workout it seems some what useless. Lets say a dead-lift to my knee caps instead of all the way up to my waist...what the hell good would that be doing for me?
My point being....Play, work and play some more. It's what makes CF fun and interesting. We get to work on our ring dips, we get to fall out of handstands and laugh at ourself!
As a coach and a person who's in the process of learning all kinds of fun and exciting things this is also a goal...play with the skill!

Today's WOD:
X2
5 front squats @ 65#
5 back squats @ 65#
5 16k Oly lift style KB snatches standing on bummper plates(Right)
5 16k High pulls Left(standing on Bummper Plates). Each rep from a Dead stop off the floor to high pull.
5 GHD situps with 8K KB on chest.
Rest for 1 min
Repeat with increases on Front and Back squats to 75#s
X2
Rest one Min
I used 35# bummper plates to increase the height for my snatches and high pulls.
Also, I increased the weighted GHD situps to 12K.
Repeated the above for 4 more sets making the total 8 sets with resting 1 min in between.
I have to work on this style snatch. I realized after that i was not reciving this in a soft knee position. Which is what I mean when I say Oly style. If you want to see the kind of snatch watch the vid of Jason of Crossfit Philly.

Catalyst Athletics is a very good resource for Olympic lifting information. Not only that... But right now they have a kick ass deal on Olympic lifting shoes. I just got myself a pair! Woot! I don't do a lot of Oly lifting but they're also really useful for Kettlebell swinging and powerlifting. Right now I'm getting ready for a Crossfit Total competition in Albany, NY. Crossfit Total is three lifts, the deadlift, shoulder press and backsquat. My shoulder press is very week, the weakest of all three. The last time I did a CF Total I hit 500#. Most of those pounds came from the DL and Backsquat.
One new skill I'm working on since having my shoulder done is the sotts press. For some reason I really like this movement. I can't always do it with my left shoulder, but sometimes I can. Kettlebells seem to load the weight differently and make this movement smother for me.
One more thing about Catalyst Athletics, they have a few free articles that I highly recommend. Once you get into them you'll want to get the monthly journal!

Samantha Keough, Of Crossfit Boston and Again Faster is my next guest. If you stop by CF Boston or the Again faster blogs you'll she her there. This chick can really put forth some amazing efforts. Sometimes with all these blogs you see people pushing limits and you wonder what their story is. I'm glad Sam said yes to being a guest, her store is one I think a lot of women can relate to.
Thanks for doing this Sam! Thanks for being a women who's not scared to be strong!



Playing three sports per year through out high school and continuing field hockey into college, I’ve always considered myself in decent shape. It wasn’t until my junior year of college that something happened to challenge this notion. My Mom convinced me to try out a class she took at her gym. It was called Crossfit. “You’ll love it,” she said. “I’m still sore from a work out we did four days ago!”


I have to admit I was intimidated. After weeks of her prodding, I finally got up the courage to try it out. I forget what my first workout was. All I remember was that it involved lots of sweating, panting, and pain. I finished a good fifteen minutes behind the room full of men and women ranging from 35-55 years old. I couldn’t walk for the next week. Slightly embarrassed, but not yet discouraged, I made myself go again. The next workout was Tabatas. During the eighth set of the final exercise the rest of the room faded as I felt the burning feeling of competition rising in my chest. This competition had nothing to do with anyone else in the room; it was an internal battle that drove me through fatigue to beat my last number. When the twenty seconds were over I was left with a lasting feeling of accomplishment.


I quickly became addicted to the sensation of forcing my body beyond what my mind thought it was capable of. With each athletic achievement: kipping pull-ups, dips, muscle-ups, and bodyweight-plus overhead squats, my confidence grew and spilled over into all aspects of my life. I started truly believing that through hard work and dedication, nearly anything was possible. I realized that because of a fear of failure, I had been living most of my life within my comfort zone, and that without taking chances I could never reach my true potential. With that newfound confidence and enthusiasm, I was able to tackle not only physically demanding tasks such as rock climbing and whitewater kayaking, but also the emotional challenges of a new job and life after college.


For the better part of my life, I’ve struggled with poor body image and constantly fought to lose weight--often to the detriment of my health. In high school I would work out up to seven hours a day while eating a very minimal caloric load. I tried diet pills and crash diets, but even when I lost weight I still wasn’t happy with the way I looked and always wanted to lose more. A funny thing happened when I started Crossfitting: for the first time in my life I stopped caring about my weight. I started valuing what my body was capable of doing rather than numbers on the scale. I became more concerned with getting a 4-minute Fran than with having a size-4 waist. And two and a half years later, that hasn’t changed.

I’m looking forward to 2008 bringing more challenges and a new set of PRs: a 3-minute Fran, Linda completed Rx’d, Grace in under 3 minutes. I’ve resolved never to settle for less simply because it seems easy, but to continue evolving and pushing the envelope in fitness and in life.

Over the past week I've been working out one day on one day off. It works best for my shoulder and work schedule.
Last week:
I think it was Wednesday I went to CF Challenge and did some crazy ass minuet on the min workout.
KB swings 45#
push Press 14#
squats.
I don't remember the numbers, but it was a kicker!

Friday:
2000 meter Row 9:35

Saturday trail run and fun.

Sunday:
Dead lift: Back Squat:
90X5 40X5
110X5 65X5
135X5 90X5
155X5 115X5
180X3 135X3
In-between sets I would do 10 GultHam Sit ups and five 20# Medball cleans just to keep my blood pumping.
Today was shoulder PT and Squat therapy.
Now looking back I see that I did not do on a day off a day....Humm? Well the fun run didn't count and the Row day that was all I did since it was before work.

.

World-Class Fitness
in 100 Words:
"Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports."
-Crossfit-

You can make it more difficult you can argue the finer points....but you don't have too.
It's modifiable and scalable. You don't have to get involved with the politics or you can. I like to keep it simple.
Read that last line
"Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports"
That's what pulled me in.

I'll add my own line or two.
Try not to be a dick and don't take yourself to seriously! Nit picking is important but complimenting is vital!