By now, everyone should be familiar with our workout "goal times", right? These same goal times hold true for our Team Saturday workouts, only we don't usually write them on the board. We don't want Team Saturday to be a day when only the stud athletes have a chance to win. That's the beauty of Team Saturday - anybody can win! The scaling that we put on the whiteboard is supposed to level the playing field so that everyone gets an equal opportunity to win the belt. That's what makes Team Saturday so fun! Follow the same scaling options you normally follow, and the belt could be YOURS!

Yesterday was another super fun Saturday at the Fort. We had our 2nd Paleo Breakfast Bonanza, and it was bigger and better than the first one! I'm pretty sure we had about 40 hungry CrossForters! We had more bacon, eggs, fruit and paleo treats then we knew what to do with! A big thank you goes out to everyone who contributed to the feast, especially our Meat Goat. The Goat contributed those delicious eggs and breakfast links you were chowing down!

WOD:
3 rounds of
800m run
14 pull-ups (each partner does them)
30 burpees (each partner does them)

Our Birthday girl didn't win the "Going Green" Team Saturday Challenge, but Ivy didn't seem too upset. Mark and Brian were like silent assassins and called "TIME" out of nowhere! I wish I had my camera handy so you all could have seen Brian on his final run. He SPRINTED the whole last 100 meters!

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Not only did Wild Bill create an amazing workout for you guys, he also invented a completely new movement! The movement went unnamed until half way through the day when I decided to name them "squatches", or "squatch" as the singular version.

A squatch, when executed properly, is a snatch caught in a full squat. The "squatcher" will then stand up with the weight, and perform one additional overhead squat.

BRILLIANT!

The workout was 5 rounds of:

5 squatches
250m row

I'm glad to see that people are becoming good scalers! Almost everyone finished within the goal time. The scaling reduced the number of squatches, and the distance on the rower, but everyone got put through 5 rounds. Yesterday was Ryan the Lion's last day of ramp-up - Welcome to the Fort Family!

We had a visitor yesterday from CrossFit Avalanche. Mariah's brother, Myles, stopped in for a quick workout and he got to learn the beauty of working out in 887% humidity. As he strolled through the door he asked if he could just take a bath in chalk, or if we had a roller with which to apply the chalk!

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I'm sitting here trying to write the blog post about yesterday, but I have completely blocked the day from my memory. I actually have to go back to the picture of the whiteboard to see what the WOD was! Oh man....too many hours in a hot gym!

The temperature in the Fort reached 98 during yesterday's 5PM class. Does it go without saying that everyone should be drinking plenty of water?

Now that I have refreshed my memory, the workout was:

3 rounds for time of:
400m run
30 push press
20 pull-ups

Goal time? 10-12 minutes baby! Your coaches are here to help you scale appropriately, but sometimes people are hesitant to be scaled too much. I know everyone wants to go RX'd, but if you can't finish within the goal time, then you're missing the point.

Here's what I looked at when I was figuring out how to scale people:

How fast can you run 400m's?? About 2 minutes? Ok, cool. Then you're already at 6:00 for the workout. Now let's talk about push-press. Let's assume you'll need to break those in half, and that you can do 15 in 1:30. Add 3:00 a round for your push presses, and you are now at 15:00. Last but not least, how fast can you do 20 pull-ups? Do you need to break them into sets of 10? Let's say you break them into 2 sets, and it takes you 30 seconds each set because you have to use copious amounts of chalk. Add a minute per round for the pull-ups, and now you're at 18:00.

Think you should scale? Yes, yes you should. And the scaling options are listed on the board. GYG, you boys need to stop making up your own versions of the scaling! I don't want to see "RX'd but with 200m runs" on the whiteboard. That's NOT one of the scaling options. Maybe you should do the "b" scaling option, use the RX'd weights, and finish within the goal time, or slightly under.

The paleo breakfast is tomorrow! We need more BACON! The signup sheet has given some people a hard time, but really all we need is lots and lots of bacon! Cook it in advance please, and we can throw it into our warmer.

QUESTION: Who would be interested in attending a 6:30AM class?

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In honor of Stacy's birthday, she chose to put the gym through a little workout called "Nasty Girls". The only problem with that workout is...well....NOBODY CAN DO IT.

3 rounds
50 squats
7 muscle-ups
10 hang power cleans

The video from CrossFit HQ of Nicole, Annie and Eva all doing this workout reminds me of just how difficult this workout is. I think this one brought Nicole to tears, and she's a bajillion times more in shape than I'll ever be! The tricky part for everyone seems to be the muscle-ups. With yesterday being our Games hopeful's day off, there was a serious shortage of people on hand who could knock out 21 muscle ups.

I think everyone agrees that muscle-up progressions aren't all that fun. They leave your knees bruised, and your hands sore. But ya know what? Nobody ever got a muscle-up WITHOUT muscle-up progressions, so they're kind of important. You'll be thanking me in a year when you finally get your muscle-ups.

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I think the title of this post sums up yesterday pretty nicely. It was HOT. And not even just a little hot either...it was crazy humid! Poor Renee from CrossFit Las Vegas came back for some more fun at the Fort and she was greeted with an unpleasant surprise. The surprise was that it was 6 degrees cooler than the day before, yet it felt 100 TIMES HOTTER.

Wild Bill designed another doozey of a workout for us, and only two of our members did it RX'd under his goal time. All the rest of us who tried to go through rx'd were grinding through this bad boy for 13-16 minutes, and that isn't at ALL what we are looking for. Let's all try and keep our workouts within the goal time so that we're training in the intended pathways. At times, this will require you to scale, and that's ok.

3 rounds
30 unbroken wall ball shots
30 unbroken ball slams
30 unbroken box jumps

Goal time: sub 9 minutes

Bill put some scaling options on the board, but it was easy to underestimate this workout. On any given day could you do 30 unbroken wall ball shots? Probably. But on a 93 degree day with 877% humidity after doing high rep deadlifts? Mmmmmmmm probably not. When we have a goal time on the board, scale appropriately so you stay within that time. This will allow you to get Wild Bill's desired results from the workout, but most importantly, it will allow you to walk away from the workout without your brain melting.

Know what I love about our new CrossForter, John? I love his go-get-er-ness. He is only a couple weeks old in "Fort years", and yet he has shown us that he is a highly motivated, driven guy. In a completely unrelated wake-boarding accident, he tore something in his ankle, and needs surgery this Friday. Did he choose to take this opportunity to sit on the couch and eat Swedish Fish? Nope! He's at the Fort in his air cast, and we are modifying workouts for him so he can keep coming!

Ok guys.....for REAL this time. You all need to start registering for classes. Yesterday there were 17 people at the 5PM class, and 4 people at the 6PM. Do you see the problem here? It isn't that I don't love you guys....because you KNOW I do. I just want to be able to give each and every one of you the coaching you deserve. I know it isn't always possible to register ahead of time due to your schedule, but at least take a peek and see if there is room in the class. August is the absolute LAST MONTH that we will allow over 12 people to participate in a class. September will be the month that I get MEAN. In our full classes, Bill and I have been marking people who registered with a star next to their names. If you don't register YOU DON'T GET A STAR. I'm serious. No star for you. So start registering. Go do it. Right now.

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After yesterday's heat and humidity, is anyone feeling a little thirsty? Some of you may have finished your workout, staggered over to the refrigerator only to find that the only thing in there are 3 bottles of champagne and condiments. Yep. There is no water left. Any water that is at the Fort is provided by members - Bill and I don't provide it. If you are consuming water regularly, be kind and bring in a case of water to share. Others have done it for you, and now it's your turn to share the love.

The workout yesterday was an old time favorite - Fran. 21-15-9 of thrusters and pull-ups. It doesn't SOUND that hard, but it's a very very hard workout. Bill and I were talking at dinner (no, not about YOU Sam) and we were marveling at how many people we had go through it as prescribed. Guys, I'm not kidding. I can remember a time not too long ago when we only had 2 girls going through rx'd, and about half a dozen men. Yesterday we had 20 people do Fran as rx'd! Whether or not your time made the record board, you still tackled one of the hardest workouts CrossFit has ever created! Great job you guys!

We had a visitor from CrossFit Las Vegas - Welcome Renee! We're sorry that it was Fran day when you were traveling in our area. Please come back any time! It was a pleasure having you! PS - how'd you like the humidity??? I think you made a comment that it's like "trying to breathe pudding".

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I'm not gonna bullshit you, CrossFit is HARD. It's about as physically demanding as anything else you could ever be expected to do your entire life. As a matter of fact, most people will go their entire life without ever having to do anything as hard as CrossFit. Sissies.

On any given day, you'll find people at the Fort laying down breathless in their own puddles of sweat, snipping away their torn callouses, bandaging their bleeding shins and foam rolling aching muscles. You might wonder, why do you do this to yourself?

I get asked that a lot by my Mother. "Why do you do this to yourself, Jennifer?" (yes, she calls me Jennifer when she's lecturing me). It's hard to explain to people on the outside in a way that makes sense. I always start to explain the health benefits, the way I'm going to live to be 108, and the pride in doing something at a competitive level...but all I get in return is a blank stare and an eye roll.

Maybe I don't explain it well enough. Or maybe you just need to try it for a month so you know what I'm talking about. We do CrossFit not only to make our bodies faster, stronger and healthier, but also for an intangible benefit that can't be explained. The intangible lives somewhere between pride and self-esteem, and it's a little different for every member at the Fort. It goes beyond writing your score on the board, and setting a new PR...it's....something else.

Mom, I CrossFit because I like to lift heavy stuff. I like to run, sweat, lift and row until my muscles ache and my lungs burn. I like the weight of the bar on my hands when I pull it off the floor. I like the sound the jump rope makes. I like the intensity I feel the split second before I set my back and take a big breath. I like the intangible that comes with CrossFit, and it can't be explained, it has to be experienced.

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