The 2015 CrossFit Games

This was my 3rd year to go to the ultimate test of fitness in California and it was impressive to say the least!

The athletes were amazing, the wods ridiculous and the crowd was outright energetic beyond measure! Was it motivating? Totally! Was it humbling? Most definitely! The athletes on the competition floor were flat out amazing to watch as they completed tasks that nobody can fathom. Peg boards, pig flips, lengthy swims, 100lb DB squat snatches, 205lb KB carries, and the list goes on and on. But for most of them, this does not come without a constly price tag of being beat to all hell for 4 days. The list of injured athletes during the games was larger than I have ever seen. Broken bones, torn ligaments, heat exhaustion, and complete muscle failure to mention a few. They were absolutely laying it all on the line at the biggest stage there is.

Worth it?

Only they can answer that.

Plenty of people around the world are buzzing about trying out the wods. Absurd. Those wods are built for those athletes. Would you suit up against JJ Watt? Didn't think so.

So be smart about what you do with your wods. The hard truth is we are not games athletes. Work to your fitness level and push the limits but keep it safe!

Congrats to all of the 2015 games winners!

The Power of Choice

A long time ago, probably close to 15 years, I was sitting in a church listening to a sermon about happiness. About what it takes to be happy. Points made during that sermon were about things that can stray people away from being happy. 

Most think of wealth and prosperity as a means to being happy. Health is usually close to the top of the list. We all have our things that make us happy but most of Jose things aren't achieved overnight. So what are the those things? For me I look at the other side of the equation. What are the things on a daily basis that deter me from happiness? These things are countless. Maybe a flat tire. Running late. Someone cuts you off while driving. You spill your coffee. A case of the Mondays perhaps. Anything can light the fuse and steer in the wrong direction......if you allow it to. 

The whole point to the sermon I was listening to was that we have the power to change these situations. In that split second crossroads of life when you are thrown into a situation where life could spiral downhill, what choice will you make? Will choose to let it swallow you whole and beat you up. Turn your mood from high to low or will you make the choice to not let it throw you off the track you are on. This ability to be able to make these choices is powerful beyond measure. I take this power for grants everyday. I let others impact my choices and happiness on a daily basis. Some days I am strong willed and choose to be above it. Other days I allow myself to be sucked into the dark depths of others and my mood totally changes for the worse. 

Stand up and be strong in your choices. Choose to be happy. The benefits are countless. 

Why am I Getting so Tight!!!

How much mobility am I supposed to do?

Is my pre and post workout mobility at the gym enough mobility for me? 

Excellent question and for the most part, the answer to this question is no. 

Mobility is not a quick thing and it certainly cannot be attacked by just going through the motions. 

At CFRR, the post wod mobility is put in place to allow the body to remain loose immediately following an intense strength session and or metcon. 

As the time after a training session goes on, the body tightens up more and more and the only thing we can do to combat that is to continue to mobilize throughout the day. As little as 20 extra minutes a day can do wonders for soreness and your range of motion for the next few days. 2-10 minute sessions is all it takes! Everyone take note of the stretches we do after class and try to squeeze in an extra mobility session or two throughout the day!

Personally, I do about 15-20 minutes of ore and post workout mobility and another 15-20 immediately before I go to bed at night. 

When the body is least active is when we tend to tighten up the most so right before bed is a great time for me to extend the muscle and try to fight that feeling of DOMS, or delayed onset muse soreness. 

Another huge reason mobility is important is the range of motion is severely compromised when we are sore. Doing the extra mobility drastically decreases the chances of injury in the gym! 

When we come in for a workout and are really tight, we tend to force the range of motion and then we ask the muscle to produce force under a load so it's doubly bad for us. We can't produce the necessary force when are bodies are tight and the range of motion is compromised. 

A few really solid sources for extra mobility are: 

-Becoming a Supple Leopard 

By: Dr. Kelly Starrett

-www.mobilitywod.com

-www.romwod.com

A group of 1

It takes us all to overcome obstacles and situations that will try to knock us down or take us out of the fight we call life. It takes a team working as 1 to truly know what that 1 unit is capable of.

Just a tad bit of teamwork....

This past weekend was a proud moment for me as a large group of CFRR athletes grouped up into teams of 4 to tear up the Garage Gym Throwdown competition. 

To see teams of athletes working together to attack and strategize 3 similar but different wods was awesome and inspiring. Some teams were comprised of members who had known each other for years and others had just met prior to 3,2,1...Go! 

All in all, it was a huge win for athletes all around and CFRR as a whole! To say in proud would be an understatement. Way to go out and represent CFRR! 

Don't forget to sign up for the Free For All this Saturday! It is sure to be a blast! 

The CFRR Team

Just a quick note about how things come together at the gym.....

To most athletes, there's a coach and wod. Familiar equipment lining the walls and inviting faces and smiles. 

There are 6 people plus myself that come together each and every day to make this all happen. 

-Clean offices and bathrooms

-Stocked retail

-Whiteboard wods cleaned and wods written 

-Paper products stocked

-Gym floors cleaned

-Retail purchases charged

-Memberships and class schedules handled

-Elements athletes guided in the proper directions

-trash taken out

-Equipment maintained and cleaned

-Shirts designed

-checks and balances on coaching

-program design for all programs

-hand towels washed and cleaned

-chalk stocked

-constant work on staff/self improvement 

-blogs completed

-FFA, challenges and competition planning

These are just a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes on a DAILY basis at CFRR. And to some, these thing may go unnoticed, but I see it on a daily basis and couldn't be more thankful for our team that makes CFRR happen for me and all of you. 

Let me also, touch on the wonderful volunteers we get from our community. Usually all it takes is a simple Facebook post or email and we have numerous members asking to help is whatever situation we have going. Most recently, Mr. Ross Breaux and Sid Bergeron spent their entire Saturday helping to build and install the walls and TV's for the soon to be in place, Wodify system. What appears to be a a wall with two TV's in them was an 8 hour day of sweaty man time. Haha! If you aren't familiar with Wodify, then check out their website and prepare to be excited for what we have coming very soon! 

As you can see, the project turned out awesome and another big thanks to Ross and Sid for their help. 

Side note: Here at CFRR we love having drop-ins from out of town and we definitely encourage our own to plan drop ins while they are traveling for work or pleasure. Below is a pic of Paul B. dropping in to a CrossFit gym in Huntington Beach while on a vacation to visit family in California. 

Make it happen on your next vacation guys! It's always fun to grab a T-Shirt from the gyms you visit also!

Guess what, you are not invincible.

The next few paragraphs have been on my mind for a few weeks, months, and even years. They come and go but over the last few months I'm finding myself more and more frustrated with what I am about to dive into. When I say frustrated, by no means do I mean I am frustrated with a certain person or group of people or anything like that. More so, by the idea that we as humans have adopted and the egotistical view we have of ourselves.

I'll be the first to admit that I used to be the mayor of invincible-ville and that I never believed that I needed outside help to attack the muscular tissue that I was working every day. Long story short, once I began buying in to the idea that this was necessary, EVERY area of fitness progressed for me. Strength, conditioning, gymnastics, cardiovascular, etc. all improved and i began to feel less and less aches and pains from previous workouts. Not only, did my fitness level increase but my desire to be fit did as well. My nutrition went from good to on point and I began to notice muscle definition more so than before. And amidst all of this, I was/am getting older.....wait, WTF?!?!? Stronger, faster, leaner and getting older all at the same time. Yes, it's true.

So why bring all of this up when I've blogged about mobility before? The answer is I've been enlightened. I've seen first hand plenty of people ignore and over look pain hoping it just goes away. It very well may go away. For a day or week or month. But, it will come back. A pain can be completely non-existent one day and then overwhelming the next day. Nothing is worse than this and more mind blowing but that's the way our bodies work.

A lot of aches that people have from CrossFit are because of forced range of motion. The flexibility or mobility isn't there to hit the desired range of motion, but we force it anyway and then what happens. We feel a pain. We deal with it for 6 months, most definitely making it worse and then we go to the doctor and by this time it's too late. More serious damage has been done. Sometimes to the extent that surgery is required. So then we go in, have the surgery and then we come back a few months later. Come back to what though? We come back to the same lack of flexibility/mobility that we had before and we go right back to forcing a range of motion that isn't there. So we begin tearing down what we just had repaired. Then you get pissed at your doctor and think he didn't repair what was wrong the right way. Wrong. Orthopedic Surgeons repair what's broken. They do not attack the flexibility issues that are underlying. Unfortunately, this is the truth whether you want to accept it or not.

Getting back to movement basics and perfecting what we think are the simplest of movements can make all of the difference in the world. For the last 6 week so I have been working on my squat. Following the freestyle gymnastics as defined by Carl Paoli. Yes my squat has gotten cleaner and feels much more stable but the real difference is in my snatch. 6 weeks ago anything above 95lbs felt miserable on my entire body. My shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees. Yesterday, again after about 6 weeks of working my body weight squat and breaking it down piece by piece, I snatched 185lbs and had zero issues anywhere. Perfecting the bottom position can only decrease compensation from the upper body and for me it most definitely has.

So what does it take to prevent this? Very easy answer. A couple of hours a month and a few dollars. The frustrating thing for me is that I will hear every excuse in the world not to take the time or spend the money. With the rise of functional fitness over the last 10 years or so, there are new school chiropractors and tissue specialists all around. Some credible, some not. If you haven't found one, then just ask your coach and I guarantee you will be pointed in the right direction. I promise you that every coach at CFRR has someone that they have to keep themselves maintained. And no, they dont need it just because they are coaches. They need it because they workout hard just like every one of you. If anything, they need it less because they are more flexible and mobile than the 2-3x a week CrossFitter.

 "I have to spend more money because of fitness????"

Weird because when you have to spend money to buy new clothes because your fitness program has been working so well it doesn't seem to be a problem. Or when you want a new supplement that possibly expedites your results, that's never an issue. We have to look at our bodies like any other object that has to be kept up with and that requires responsibility. We keep up with our homes, our cars, our bills, our social status, etc. You name it and i guarantee that it requires dollars and responsibility to maintain. Our bodies are no different. In fact, why in the hell is this not higher on the list, if not first?

Face it. We are not invincible and we need help with this part of our fitness journey. Neglect this now, and pay the price later. It's just that simple.