Ah, another fun Team Saturday.....man how I love Saturdays! It's always my favorite day of the week at the Fort because of all the fun we have! The workout was absolutely EPIC!

In teams of 3 (except Zachamole and Pete)
row 100m x 9
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 Thrusters
800m tandem run (everyone holds onto a jump rope)
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 Sumo deadlift high pulls
100 pull-ups

Occasionally Bill asks me what I think of these team workouts before he writes them on the board. As I was looking at this one I said "Wow, that's going to take FOREVER. And are those pull-ups necessary??" Bill's prediction was that our top team would take about 18 minutes to finish.....I think it's because he didn't have any coffee yet, because the top team finished in 25 minutes! Sheesh!

Zachamole and Pete had to be our lonely team of 2, and we were going to do everything in our power to make sure they didn't win...and they STILL managed to come in 2nd place! Not only did they have to wait to row until AFTER every other team was done, they also had to use heavier weights, and their reps started at 12. There were discussions about making them each wear a weight vest, but that would have been "too much".

We had 3 people come to our free intro class, and they all did GREAT! Cheryl, Jon and Cara all went through together and got a taste of what CrossFit is like. I wish Team Saturday wasn't so intimidating. Cheryl told me that she pulled into the parking lot, saw all these people "pumping iron" and she almost turned around and left. Guys....try to smile when you see new people pulling in, ok?

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Did you know that as part of your CrossFit training that you would have to get better at impersonating flamingos? It's true. All the top level athletes do it. You never know when you might be called upon to make like an animal, so you might as well prepare yourself!

The workout yesterday included something that was brand new to the Fort - single leg deadlifts. "Single leg??? Huh??" Yep. It's just like it sounds. You deadlift on one leg. As Jamie pointed out, this movement really woke up the hamstrings and glutes. Wowza!

We did 5 rounds of:
5 right leg deadlifts
5 left leg deadlifts
10 box jumps
10 knees to elbows

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Know what this is? This is Steph L and Kinsy during yesterday's pull-ups. Do you notice anything about these two lovely ladies? Hmmm? Look real close....

THEY'RE BOTH DOING PULL-UPS WITHOUT A BAND DURING A WORKOUT.

This is a HUGE accomplishment for anyone, and we have seen more than a few of our ladies ditch the band this week. Hannah ditched it during Jackie, and I might have failed to mention it. You ladies are doing an awesome job! Amanda also rocked her pull-ups last night. She's still on a band, but she finally figured out how to execute a perfect kip! Atta girl!

The workout yesterday was

:45 double unders
:15 rest
:30 burpees
:30 rest
:15 pull-ups
:45 rest

(5 amazing rounds for max reps)

We saw some pretty high scores yesterday. Steph L took the top spot for the ladies by double-unders-ing her way to 281 points, and  Zachamole blew this one out of the water with 521 reps! WOW!

Have you told everyone you know about the Fittest FireFigher Challenge? There are only a few more days to register - Sunday is the cutoff! Get registered! Stop waiting! Do it now!

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While "nobody puts Baby in the corner", we WILL put Ivy in the corner and make her do "Jackie".

While Ivy worked on making her way onto the record board for Jackie, the rest of the classes did the following:

21-15-9
Overhead squats
body rows
push-ups

In case you're on the shy side, Wednesday is a good day to be in our group classes. Wednesday is the official day of rest for anyone following our Games programming, so it's usually a nice quiet day at the Fort. And after a few hectic days of record attendance, the quiet evening at the Fort was well received.

We finally got to see Dr. Kathy at one of our evening classes, and she's sporting some SWEET shin bandaids to cover her box jump "oops" from the other day. She's a trooper though. She's back in the full swing of things like it never happened!

Got any brave friends? The next ramp-up has been scheduled, and the registration link is activated. Get your friends and family to the Fort this Saturday for their free intro class, and they can squeeze into the 8/16 ramp-up!

One last thing, I swear. We are going to be hosting a Paleo breakfast on 8/14. We'll be cooking eggs and sausage from the Meat Goat, and I hope we have as many people as last time! There is an event created(left hand column), and there you'll find all the info, including a sign-up sheet of stuff to bring. I hope to see you all there!

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We had another day over 50 people at the Fort! Woo Hoo! It was incredibly hot and humid, but we still managed to get 52 people through "Jackie".

1000m row
50 thrusters
30 pull-ups

We had a few people go through this rx'd for the first time, and you all did wonderful. This workout is easy to underestimate because the thrusters are with "just the bar". (Ok, raise your  hand if you're guilty of saying "Just the bar" at any point  yesterday) It's great to see so many of our ladies doing their pull-ups without a band! Does it suck, and make things slower? YES. But eventually, you have to give up that security blanket that is the assistance bands. It's ok if you're only getting 2-3 at a time...I promise.

With all the excitement, I didn't even take any pictures yesterday! Sheesh! I'm such a bad CrossFit Mommy. Here's an awesome picture of people doing pull-ups though....this is kind of what Jackie looks like.

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Yesterday was a record breaking day at the Fort! We welcomed 56 of our CrossForters to our group classes, and 2 future CrossForters to ramp-up, bringing our daily workout total to 58 people! I can remember a time not too long ago in a land not too far away when we didn't even have 58 members! With our ever growing class sizes, please make sure you register. Please register. Please register. Please register. Get the picture? Please register.

You might be wondering what kind of amazing workout could draw 58 people. Well, I'll tell ya:

400m run
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 of
box jumps
push press
ball slams
and then
400m run

As Brian would say, "yay running!" Our fastest time of the day came from Zachamole. He finished in 8:45, with Garth not too far behind him at 8:50. Great job you guys!

Have you told everyone you know about the FireFighter Challenge?? We have WAY too many open spots still available, and we want to make this as fun as possible. Your mission is to poke every FireFigher you know, and get them to register for the challenge!

The Better Body Challenge III is under way, and it's bigger and badder than the last challenge! I think the total participation count is over 35 people now! Can you do the math on that real fast? That means that each of the winners will take home $700 AND a free month of unlimited membership. WOWZA! With all that money on the line, the competition is really heating up. Sam Rosati has already threatened to have pizzas delivered daily to every participant in the challenge. As an added incentive, Sam and Kinsy brought in their autographed picture of the "Hoff" to watch over us as we WOD. Sam is DYING to win some "cop money", so he and Dad even have a side bet of $100 thrown in there. Let's not get too carried away though. As Dad would say, "It's a marathon, not a sprint!"

We will be hosting Fight Gone Bad 5 this year at our gym. This is open to ANYONE. Bring your friends, family, neighbors, dog groomers and hair dressers. September 25th is the date, and this will replace our regular workouts that Saturday, including the free intro. Remember that the annual FGB event is actually a fundraiser for the Wounded Warrior Program. This is a fantastic cause, and it deserves our support. If you'd like to donate, you can visit our team fundraising page and make a donation there. You can also help by registering to be part of our FGBV team, and collecting donations. Let's raise some money!

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Our July group outing to the Sox game was so much fun! We had a small-ish group of 10 people, but there was definitely big fun! A big thank you goes out to Steph for bringing her portable grill. Tailgating wouldn't have been the same if we had to eat our meat raw. Another big thanks goes to Zach for ensuring that we got our daily dose of "handstands in weird places". He did a handstand ON THE BACK OF HIS SEAT! That was scary, and it also got us a talking-to by security. As I saw security walking over I thought they were either coming over to tell us we looked cool, or to tell us "this isn't Wrigley". (And that's a direct quote)

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