A big CONGRATS to our beloved intern, “Scotty the Intern” who dead-lifted 358lbs last night, setting a PR and shattering any existing intern gym record.

Considering that he’s 6’0″ and weighs 150lbs soaking wet in canvas clothes, that’s a bad ass dead lift!

W00t! I love to see my students kick butt like that!

Anyhoo, yesterday evening we had an avid CrossFitter, who is an agent for DHS drop by and train.

He’s one of those people that you read about in Clancy books. The complete badass. Chiseled. Athletic. Methodical (consulted his WOD notes frequently). I wish we could have talked more.

Here’s what he had to say…

Once again, thanks and I love what you are doing with young athletes.

Here’s how it works:

• Give us a shout. Phone us. Email Us.
• Show up fifteen minutes early.
• When you come in — we’ll do the whole meet and greet thing and get to know each other a little better.
• You’ll sign a waiver
• When class starts:
  • We’ll talk about CrossFit on a high level.
  • Warm up
  • One or Two foundational movements will be taught
  • You’ll get to do a CrossFit WOD (workout of the day) scaled to your ability.
• You get three free classes. After that you have to make a decision and get on a plan.

1. Hold a bounce resistant D-Ball with both hands overhead. Keep your feet hip-width apart, knees slightly bent and toes facing forwards. Try doing a slow, simulated version of the movement during which you keep your back straight and end up with your hand by your thighs.
2. Slam! In one explosive movement, drop from your hips and slight incline your trunk forward. Keep your back solid and your hands outstretched, and slam the ball against the ground. The inner edge of the ball should contact the ground right in line with your toes. Keeping your back solid with square shoulders, catch the ball as quickly as possible and stand up into the beginning position.
3. Add intensity once you’ve mastered the movement. Start by increasing the weight of the ball you’re using.

Here’s a quick comparison between two ball slams. The first is one of our great high school kids, Steph, going through the slams in “21 the Hard Way”. The second is a “this is the way to do it” ball slam sequence example from CrossFit.com. Lets take a look:

Steph in the middle of 21 Ball Slams during 21 the hard way

CrossFit.com Ball Slam example

Obviously there are a few differences here.

1. Overhead position: For the most part, new athletes tend to be a bit shallow with their extension overhead. More experienced folks get the ball overhead with full extension akin to a decent press. Very experienced CrossFitters will get to the “reverse C” extension shown in the bottom photo sequence above.

   Basic Goal: Strive for active shoulders at the top to start off the proper full range of motion execution of the exercise.

2. Stance / Posture: The proper stance is your air squat stance. The recommended stance is heels at about shoulder width apart, toes pointed out at about 30 degrees. Stance is a very individual thing, and will vary with hip width, hip ligament tightness, femur and tibia length and proportion, adductor and hamstring flexibility, knee joint alignment and ankle flexibility.

   Whew! A LOT comes into play! Who knew?

   In Steph’s sequence, she’s got a bit of a wider stance than the CrossFit.com model, and her toes are pointed out more. Tight hips are the issue here. However – the wider stance allows her to get to a wickedly deep squat. Nice!! This in itself will cause the problem to correct itself and allow her to, in short time, assume a more useful narrower stance like the model has. One minor cue would be for her to shove her knees out a little when she hits the bottom.

3. Bottom: The bottom position is a proper squat position with a straight back and squared shoulders.

   Steph has slammed her med-ball ball a bit in front of her. So she’s reaching for it. And since it’s a mushy med-ball with absolutely no bounce, she has to drop to a deeper squat to get it. It’s Oly Squat clean depth for sure! Huzzah!

   It’s also important to note that she decided to use a 30 lb medicine ball. That’s a lot of weight! Way to challenge yourself, Steph!

4. Final Thought: Naturally, with a larger load in an exercise smack in the middle of a long WOD, one can expect form to falter. In fact, we want it to. Accuracy goes to heck (ball winds up in front a little) and the upper body fatigues (extension at the top gets shallower.

   Steph’s form was solid and admirable throughout the WOD and she attacked it with good intensity. The camera happened to catch a few reps that weren’t 100% perfect, but provided a good “teaching moment”

   Good effort Steph! CrossFit Sacramento says “Keep It Up!”

BTW – did you know that fifty percent of your athletic performance is based on your nutrition?

Met-Con is hard. Met-Con can suck, especially when you start to explore your limits. At that point you either wade out deeper and deeper and get comfortable with being uncomfortable or you back off and, as Jon Gilson from Again Faster has said, train yourself into mediocrity.

The choice is yours. It’s always there.

This is Chelsea starting the swings in the 3rd round of Helen.

Chelsea getting after Helen - Two Rounds In.

Excellent work! No doubt she’s not training for mediocrity. Performance gains in the gym, in sport and in life are headed her way.

How can I say that? Simple enough — the metabolic duress a typical CF workout can put you through is character building. Every WOD gives you the opportunity to push yourself. You make that choice. You keep making the right one and the hard work translates itself into all other facets of life: work, family, loss, play, sport.

A CrossFit you is a you ready for anything.

A CrossFit you is a you who won’t pack it in when the chips are down.

A CrossFit you is a you that embraces challenges and new experiences.

A CrossFit you is a you that realizes it doesn’t have to be fun to be fun.

Nice Turnout For Frelen!

Just finished “Frelen” on a Sunday morning with the Boston Red Sox #1 Prospect Lars Anderson (center, blue shorts)

If you’re not squatting you need to. If you are squatting, you need to focus on full depth. If you can’t hit full depth, keep squatting and fighting for the proper position until you get to it.

ALWAYS DO FULL SQUATS

Partial squats are never good. They neglect the hips and hamstrings. When an athlete stops above parallel his knee joints are forced to halt the downward momentum.

But once the athlete goes below parallel that stress is transferred to the more powerful groups in the hips, hamstrings and adductors.

Full squats keep all these muscle groups proportionately strong.

Bill Starr
Strength Coach
John Hopkins University
Sept. 1997

The Seated Twist

Here at CrossFit Sacramento we do seated twists most days.

We sub these in for sit ups all the time and most of you feel guilty leaving without doing some no matter what we tell you about mid-line stabilization and talk about how the WOD exercises almost all work your from your core to extremity.

Gluttons for punishment!

Anyhow…to do them -

Sit down on the floor (you might want to experiment with pads of varying thickness) with your legs out in front of you and bent at a 90° angle with your feet on the floor. Lean back to a 45° angle, raise your feet up a 3-6 inches and touch the med ball to the floor. Bang out reps in a 1-1, 2-2, 3-3 count. Maintain the back angle, keep your legs up and keep up what is a brisk pace for you. Your long term goal is to the reps assigned unbroken (all in a row)

Note- If you’re coming back off a layoff or this is a new movement for you, you are going to want to scale the reps back from the normal 50 to 25-30 lest you have a hard time rolling over in bed 48 hours or so later.

For Time

• 5 rounds of:
  • 1 power clean
  • 3 hang squat cleans
  • 2 jerks
  • run 200 ft.
  • rest two minutes (your “defense” against a visit from the Clown)
• Go again for 5 rounds.

While everyone from every class gets major props for tackling this beastie — the 6pm class gets a special mention.

After twenty minutes on the track and a brief review of hang cleans and jerks, weights were assigned and off they went.

This group shows up all the time. Not afraid of hard work by any means and motivated all the time. We even had a special guest – CFS Trainer Jay Nacionales (ATC, CSCS).

Jenna, Levi, Tristan — You guys are a pleasure to train. I look forward to every Tuesday / Weds evening and seeing you bounce through the door raring to go. You make me happy! Keep up the good work.

You need to be deadlifting if you aren’t.

Here’s a great video of good deadlifting form you can emulate with a super voice over by CrossFit Founder Greg Glassman that explains all the juicy goodness of it.