Who likes to be upside down? WE DO! Yesterday we started off with some press work: 5-5-5+ at 65-75-85% of your single rep max. The idea is that on your last set you should get as many reps as possible. It was great to see people getting 7-10 reps on their last set! You kids are so strong.

After the press work, we got to the upside down part.

Diane
21-15-9
Dead lifts (100/70kg)
Handstand Push-ups

Hooray for handstand push-ups! There are very few things at the Fort that people will flat out refuse to do, and these are one of them. Box jumps are the other.

There's no need to fear the handstand push-up! For those of you who are still using assistance bands for regular push-ups, there's absolutely no reason you'll need to be working on HSPU's yet. Just keep working on getting regular push-ups, and then we can discuss doing HSPU's. Mkay? Good.

For some people, RX'd isn't heavy enough. Without even knowing it, your brain makes you load the bar to 120kg's instead of 100kg's because YOU'RE JUST THAT STRONG. It's Pete's Greek blood. He just can't help it.

We had two travelling CrossFitters join our Guns 'n' Hoses class, and it was great to have you! Jeremiah and Stacey are from California, and they are looking to move out this way. Like any dedicated CrossFitters, they are scoping out the boxes in the area to see which one they like best. (Pick Me! Pick Me!) Jeremiah was eye-balling the record board, and thinks he's going to take a few of Pete's gold medals on the strength side of the board. OH SNAP! It's ON.

Due to the CrossFit sectionals this weekend, we have a change in our class schedule for Friday and Saturday. If you click on our schedule page you will see the class availability. This is a good time to get in the habit of registering for classes through Mind Body Online. Not only will this give coaches an idea of how many people to prepare for, it will also alert you guys to any changes in our schedule. We are not making it a requirement yet, but let's start making it a habit NOW before it's required.

It's absolutely wonderful to see our Better Body Challenge II participants really kicking the Paleo diet into full gear. Giving up grains is a big adjustment, and our participants are like...grain giving up Rock Stars! I have heard reports of people losing anywhere from 5-11 pounds in the last week alone.

FANTASTIC!

My only question is, why did it take so long for you guys to make the switch to Paleo? We've been talking about it FOREVER. Some of the participants in the challenge have been members of the Fort for over a year, and have never felt compelled to make the switch to Paleo.

WHY IS THAT?

My question is, what could we as trainers have done differently that would have compelled you to switch to Paleo sooner? How can we make Paleo "new and shiny" all the time, not just when there's cash on the line?

Fogo de Chao was AMAZINGLY FUN on Saturday night! Thank you to everyone who came out and helped us celebrate 2 years of CrossFitty goodness!

Was it just me, or was it really humid in the Fort yesterday? It was so humid that my hair started to get curly as I was watching the metcon. You guys must have been working THAT HARD!

In teams of 2 get as many reps as possible:
4:00  Sumo dead lift high pulls
4:00 Box Jumps (24/20")
4:00 Burpees
4:00 pull-ups
4:00 Row (calories)

*Each team must have a "pet rock". For the ladies, your "pet rock" is a 15kg plate, and for the men, a 25kg plate.

*One team member must be holding the "pet rock" while the other is working. You may not set down your pet, and you may not rest it on anything.

*There is a 5 burpee penalty for setting down your rock, or leaning against something while holding it.

All of our teams fell in love with their "pet rocks", and several of them asked if they could take them home. Alas, the pets had to stay at the Fort. Pete and Garth took the championship belt by accumulating an amazing 480 reps! Congrats you two! When everyone was adding up their scores, someone's comment to Garth and Pete was, "Wow, 480 reps? How many times did you guys go through it?"

Despite the big hole in the wall, we decided to do some more work with overhead squats (3-3-3+) yesterday. By getting stronger at overhead squats, we can get better at  so many other movements we do at the Fort! Think about how strong your snatch would be if you could overhead squat your body weight 10 times.

Fortunately we finished up our strength work, and the drywall stayed intact. The metcon yesterday was tough! Here is what the prescribed numbers were:

50 push-ups
10 sit-ups
40 push-ups
20 sit-ups
30 push-ups
30 sit-ups
20 push-ups
40 sit-ups
10 push-ups
50 sit-ups

That's 150 reps of each movement! Bill offered a few scaling options for this workout, so don't be worried if you can't do 150 push-ups.

Know what I love about this picture? I'll give you a hint...it isn't the fact that the plyo boxes are all stacked in the right spots. I love that this picture shows that our CrossFit workouts are for EVERYONE. You have Matty Lo in the foreground pounding through this workout Rx'd, and Wes in the background going through a scaled version. CrossFit is about doing a workout that is hard TO YOU. My "hard" is going to be different than your "hard", and both of our "hards" are going to be different than the next guy's "hard".

Don't be turned away from CrossFit  because of the workouts I post on this website. The prescribed workouts are THE MOST I would want anyone to do. Everything we do at the Fort is infinitely scalable, and I promise you can do it!

Not every day at the Fort makes people excited. There are some days that people come in the door, look at the white board and groan. Or curse.

Yesterday the strength work made people do both: Thrusters 3-3-3+. Now really guys...what could the problem be with heavy thrusters? Are you guys sore from Fran? Tee hee.

After we got some work with our thrusters, here was our little metcon:

3 rounds of

500m row
10 hang power cleans (50/35kg)
15 pull-ups

To see this workout on the board, one cannot even begin to comprehend the agony they are about to experience. Round one is a piece of cake. No big deal right? Well hop on that rower at the beginning of round 2, and you'll know you're in trouble. By the 3rd round, I actually considered duct taping my hands to the handle of the rower because I RAN OUT OF GRIP.

Congrats to you guys for gutting it out and making it through this workout!

I've heard a bunch of feedback from my Better Body Challenge II participants. The feedback is that you all feel like a bunch of sleepy heads. Know what that tells me? That you're doing it right! Giving up grains and refined sugars puts your body into a little bit of an adjustment phase. From this point forward, I'm going to call it the "Sleepy Peasant Uprising" phase. This is the part of making the switch to Paleo that will leave you opening and closing cabinets randomly, staring longingly into the refrigerator, banging your heads against vending machines and not knowing what to eat.

Switching to Paleo is essentially re-learning to eat, and it's HARD. I've never sugar coated it, and I'm certainly not going to start now. It's frigging HARD to undo 20, 30 or sometimes 40 years of bad eating habits. There's a world full of sugar, grains, drive thrus and processed foods that are all waiting to sabotage your progress. Make it past these first two weeks, and I promise your life will be changed for the better.

I have already heard from a few participants that they have shed anywhere from 5-13 pounds in the last week! Hmm....do you think grains make you bloated? Great job you guys! Keep it up!

Carpool for Fogo De Chao should "meat" at the Fort tomorrow at 4:30PM! If you're driving on your own, don't worry about meeting up - we'll see you at Fogo!

We started our workout yesterday with some dead lifting. Our classes did 5-5-5+ at 65%, 75%, and 85% of their single rep max. It was pretty cool to see some of our ladies getting 5+ reps at almost 1.5 times their body weight!

Sometimes parts of the workout are designed to make it SUCK more. Tommy Mo calls this "the suck factor". Yesterday's metcon included a little dash of suck factor.

12:00 AMRAP of:
20 wall ball shots (20/14lb)
15 kettle bell swings (24/16kg)

*ALL REPS MUST BE UNBROKEN

That last part in all caps there....that's the suck factor in case you didn't guess. If you stopped to rest at wall ball shot number 17, when you picked up your ball again you were back at zero for that round. Ouch! The key was to rest just enough so that you were able to go through all the reps unbroken, but not so long that you ate up all the time for the workout. Some of our beginners scaled this to 10 reps of wall ball shots, and 7 reps of kettle bell swings, and they did GREAT!

I would like to welcome two of our newest members, Wes and Kristin!

If you would like to join us this Saturday for our Fogo De Chao celebration, it's not too late. Shoot me a quick email and let me know if you'd like to join in the fun!

The Better Body Challenge II is in full swing, and our participants are all doing GREAT! Bill and I have been reviewing food logs daily, and it's inspiring to see people giving up their beloved grains. The competition is fierce this time around, and I can't wait to see what the next 90 days brings!

The strength work yesterday started with push jerks 1-1-1+. The only people who wrote "PR" after their last attempts were Jelli, Audra and McKenzie, but I have a feeling we had a few more PR's than that yesterday. Make sure you write it on the white board if you PR so I can give you props!

After jerking, we moved on to the dreaded Fran.

21-15-9
thrusters (40/30kg)
pull-ups

There are few workouts that inspire as much fear as CrossFit's Fran. It's a short blasty workout, and it will leave you breathless! There's a weird phenomenon that happens with this workout, and it's called the "Fran Cough". For some reason, after you finish this workout, you'll have a temporary cough. Weird, I know....but it's just part of the coolness!

Great job for everyone who set Fran PR's yesterday! I know Garth and Matty Lo set PR's, but so did Beth! She beat her old time by 4 or 5 minutes AND she used a smaller pull-up band! Great job girlfriend!

Our "Pants Progress Bin" has grown substantially! Thanks to Steph L for bringing in all her progress pants. If I had to guess, I'd say she donated close to 40 pairs of pants! Your shopping addiction is going to make some ladies VERY happy Steph!! Ladies, if you need new pants, shorts or capris, make sure you check out BOTH progress bins and take home some new pants!

Matty Lo and Bethy lock out their thrusters