Behind the Desk, and Introducing a CFSBK Woman of Many Talents: Janelle Barth
We are so excited to announce Janelle Barth’s new roles at CFSBK. Janelle was our Athlete of the Month last July, and she came on-board to work behind the desk in August, and took on a number of other roles in October. She is now our Front Desk Manager, Project Manager, and Director of Kids’ Club and CrossFit Kids. Janelle has plenty of experience in each of these roles, and her leadership and organizational skills have already helped make CFSBK an even better version of itself. You will also still see her behind the desk, so check out her interview below!
Two weeks ago, it was Camillionaire, and now, introducing…
Name: Janelle
Where were you born and where did you grow up: Born: Brooklyn, NY; Grew up: Wheatley Heights, NY
How long have you been CrossFitting, and how did you arrive at CFSBK? Three years. I was introduced to CrossFit by a personal trainer at 24 Hour Fitness and tested out of Foundations with Fox in December 2011. Took my first class on January 2, 2012 and the rest is history.
What are you up to when you’re not at 597 Degraw Street: I started graduate school at Bank Street this month! Before working at SBK, I worked extensively with kids as a camp counselor and program director, a swim instructor and swim team coach, and as the Director of Operations at an enrichment center for children newborn to 5-years-old in Manhattan. I also like long walks on the beach, baking, knitting, and Legos.
First album that you loved: The Dirty Dancing soundtrack
“Ask me about that time I…” watched the sunset on top of Mauna Kea
Favorite restaurant or bar in Brooklyn: Walter’s in Fort Greene
Favorite and least favorite lift: Favorite: deadlift; least favorite: deadlift
Any Front Desk PSAs you’d like to share? Please clean up after yourself!
News and Notes
- Jordan W. wrote a post about his journey with CrossFit at CFSBK on his blog, Caveat Lector. Check it out here!
- Lost and Found: Does any of this belong to you? Pick it up by 2/5 if so, or we’re giving it away.
- Have you signed up yet for the CFSBK Snowshoe Trip in the Catskills on January 31? There are still a couple spaces left, but your deadline to sign up is TODAY! Learn more here.
- DON’T FORGET TO RSVP FOR CLASS. The early morning folks are crushing the evening folks at RSVPing. Step up your game! Go to the CFSBK Online Store, log in, click “Calendar” from the left-hand column, select the class you plan on attending, press the blue “Reserve” button on the right-hand side of the screen, and voila! It’s that easy. Learn more on the RSVP to CFSBK page (located in the left-hand column under General Information).
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The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think The Huffington Post
Watch Tommy Caldwell Climb Pitch 15 on the Dawn Wall Patagonia
Airpnp: How Much Would You Pay to Use a Stranger’s Toilet? New York Post
Thread on Reddit’s swoleacceptance forum: “Goodbye, brothers. I am willingly trying to lose my gains.”
Saturday's Programming
Pause Front Squat: 1-1-1-1-1
Work up to a heavy single. Pause for 3 seconds at your absolute ROCK BOTTOM position before aggressively driving your legs to stand back up. The ideal bottom position is your hamstrings resting on your calves while maintaining an extended spine.
Post loads to comments.
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Not For Time:
50 Double Unders
25 Push Ups
40 Double Unders
20 Push Ups
30 Double Unders
15 Push Ups
20 Double Unders
10 Push Ups
10 Double Unders
5 Push Ups
Post about your experience to comments. And your time too, if you struggle with the concept of Back-Off Week.
The Tommy Caldwell climbing video is amaze-balls
Nice article about addiction…very overly simplistic views, however. It would be great if that were truly the cause of addiction, but it's not. It's most definitely a giant contributing factor, but, well, if you want a scientist's perspective, just ask me. I'll be happy to rant on for you 😉
@Lindstar, I have a number of friends and family members who are recovered alcoholics, and I was really moved by that article. I would love to hear share your perspective!
@KateR Happy to share. It's too much for a blog comment, but hit me up in teh emaliz and I can try and make a succinct case of it 🙂
Janelle! Love that SDHP face 🙂
Also, if you can convince the coaches to put the Dirty Dancing soundtrack on at 7 AM class sometime soon, you will be even more my hero than you are already.
This is my favorite pic of Janelle I have ever seen!!! I am so glad to be working with you! You are so awesome!!
Also hahaha best PSA
@Lindstar, done!
And hell yes, Janelle! I also love that picture. Janelle and I have been working together on her writing for over a year, and she is such a wonderful person. We're lucky to have her and I can't wait to see all the wonderful things she continues to do at the gym.
6am. Olympic lifting homework. Front squats: 245x3x1, 245x2x6. Discovered a new muscle in my upper back which is incredibly sore right now. I think it was from keeping my whole hand on the bar and elbows up during the front squats. Seems to be getting easier, though. Cleans (1 clean pull + 1 clean): 135x3x5. More taxing than I expected. Legs felt a little rubbery after the front squats. Jerks: 125x3x5. Focused on extending my front foot. Video shows that even when I thought I was overextending I was barely getting far enough. Need to do a reset on the feel for proper foot positioning here. Shoulders were a bit tight today and I didn't give them enough mobility love which showed in the overhead positioning.
That climbing video is ridiculous. Looks like Tommy is holding on to nothing.
Check out this article on Matt Chan's near fatal mountain bike accident and subsequent recovery: After The Fall. Be warned, there is a pretty gruesome picture of his exposed thigh muscle.
6am with McDowell and Nick
All male class this morning. And I'm not going to lie, shit got weird. This can never happen again.
Joy, Dana, Lauren, Jill – this is on you.
Paired up with Roy on the Front Squats and worked up to 215#. I like the pause work we have been doing lately because I tend to go soft at the bottom of some of these movements and pausing forces you to stay tight. 3 second is a long time to stay on tension!
NFT WOD was fun. DUs were unbroken except for one silly trip up on the set of 30. PUs were not unbroken. They were mad broken. Like shattered. Couldn't help looking at the clock so I know my time but in the spirit of back off week I will keep it to myself.
Janelle's and Karl's face are the before and during face of Sumo DLs. Great to know just that much more about you Janelle.
@Stella, no, nono, no, no, No Dirty Dancing Soundtrack @7am.
the crazy part of the that Dawn Wall climb is that half way up – 1000+ft, its like that for hundreds of feet, that is with seemingly "nothing" to hold on to. Believe and trust. Did you notice how much "nothing" he was standing on too?
Great faces!
6 am w. McDowell and Nick doing yesterday's workout.
Linking longer sets of kipping pull ups is improving. Did 7 unbroken at best (new PR), but still averaged 3 – 5 per set over the entire workout. Key for me lately in getting longer sets has been 1) "taking my time" to actively/consciously push away from the bar to full arm extension while descending rather than just dropping down too quickly/loosely and 2) staying tight and engaged in my core at the top of my pull up so my kip doesn't throw my momentum too far forwards.
KB clean and jerk and windmill with 12 kg and 16 kg KBs.
I adore Janelle. If you've never hugged her before, I highly recommend it. Kind of makes the world a little brighter afterwards. Yeah Janelle Yeah!
6am gentlemen's hour with McDowell and Nick. I did tomorrow's paused front squats at 135, 155, 160, 165, 170. I may have been able to go a little heavier, but 185 being my front squat 1RM, this was just fine – and plenty heavy.
The NFT WOD was a total double under breakthrough for me. I think I did the round of 50 in about 6 sets with a few strings of 10-12, a few of 8 or so, and a couple of total whiffs in which I just basically whipped myself a bit. Business as usual, in other words. Then, I started the round of 40 with a string of 3 and another calf whipping. Then, BOOM 37 in a row. That's almost double my previous PR. Each of the remaining rounds were broken into 2 sets. Not sure exactly why, but my timing was just on point today. I'm unreasonably excited about it, because this kind of DU performance has simply eluded me for too damn long. The pushups got tough. I started with sets of 5, but by the end I was doing sets of 3 and 2. It's a large volume of pushups in a short period of time and I focused more on keeping a good position than speed. Definitely feeling it in the shoulders.
Yay for Janelle. And her PSA. There was one excellent related PSA at Brooklyn College's coffee cart: "Yo mama don't work at Brooklyn College; clean up after yourself."
Someone I know registered for 6am class on Thur but was not able to attend due to aggressive drinking tactics the prior evening. Now that individual has registered for his or her max classes per week and is unable to register for Sunday. What does he or she do to remedy this?
Perils,
I also registered for 7 AM and didn't come because I had a totally sleepless night and figured tomorrow morning would be a better idea. I emailed the front desk and they unchecked me.
That being said, not being able to "unreserve" yourself once it's an hour before the class is annoying to me. Seems like a fair amount of extra work for the front desk and also annoying to have to remember to do this every time you change your mind about coming in.
Also, how's the RSVPing working out on weekends? Quite honestly, when I come in on Sundays, what class I go to is entirely determined by what time I wake up in the morning. So I'm not going to have made that decision by the time an hour before class rolls around. Am I going to get socked with a Karen penalty if I do that enough times?
Sorry to be such a curmudgeon about this, but I feel like there are still enough issues with the way Zen Planner has things set up that RSVPing feels, well, not Zen. I feel like decreasing the time window at which you cannot change your RSVP would go a long way toward easing that, if we could work with Zen Planner to improve the system.
Management: Can we expand how far in advance we can reserve a class. I'm trying to reserve for 1/28 at 6 a.m., and there is no "reserve" button. Thanks.
Question and a comment –
Question – any update on when new hoodies, tshirts,etc might be in stock. I need/want really bad a new hoodie.
Comment – Agree w/ Stella about weekends. Tomorrow morning I plan to come in, but it may be 8 a.m. and may be 11:00 a.m. I can reserve now but won't know until tomorrow morning based on the kids and what they have going on. I want to play nice with the reservation policy…better to reserve now and have it be wrong in the a.m.?
Janelle is always a friendly face in the morning – glad to read a Behind the Desk about her!
6am. Worked on kipping pull-ups with Nick. I feel pretty good about them but got some good help from Nick to make them even better. All of the pull-up work we did in Nashville the day before made these harder than they should have been but I was happy with the tweaks from Nick.
KB C&J windmill – weird. Finished at 20kg. Tested my balance. I'd be fine never doing those again.
Janelle,
Please see my comment on July 15, 2014.
Just to piggyback on Stella and Ryan – is it better to reserve and not show up or not reserve and make it if you can?
Generally, yes I know I can always make my weekday am classes (which are never crowded anyway) but on the weekend, with the kids, I may intend to go to 8 but can't get out the door in time and have to come to 9. Or last night, I optimistically signed up for 7:30 p.m. AR, kids didn't get to bed in time, cancelled…a lot of on and off zen planner…
Thanks.
Trust me, nobody knows how un-Zen Zen Planner can be more than me. We've definitely struggled with the 'ease' of doing/not doing things and are just working with what we have. The RSVP system is not perfect and we know that there will be some headaches with implementation. Having said that, here's some responses to your questions from today and the past couple days:
1) I've updated the settings so that you can now reserve a class 1 week ahead.
2) The shortest time frame that ZP will allow us for late registrations is 1hr. Ideally we'd like a 30min window and I'll reach out to them to request this. For now though, I've removed the timeframe for reserving a class. We would however prefer you to register as soon as you know/have decided which class you'll attend.
3) If you've rsvp'd for a class and didn't attend, then please email/call the front desk so that they can uncheck you. HOWEVER, please be responsible adults and don't abuse this system (unless you want FD to hate you.) You have up to one hour before class to cancel an RSVP yourself by logging into the system. This I won't change because we do have limits on classes such as yoga/pilates.
4) Because yoga/pilates classes are capped at 12, any missed class that is at capacity will be at the loss of the member.
5) Anyone with a membership on hold, cannot currently RSVP for any class. Yes, even if you have an active punch card or have the added 2x/week Add-on for Strength/Oly. I've reached out to ZP and they've put in a feature request to change this. Who knows how long this will actually take them to update though. So for now, just show up as usual.
6) If you RSVP'd for an earlier/later class than you're attending, please let FD know when you check in so that they can make the adjustment.
Keep your questions/comments coming and I'll do my best to answer along the way. Thanks to everyone who has played along so far!
Got 2 unexpected hours this morning where I got in my training…and a meal!
LBBS:
(45×5, 135×5, 185×3, 210×1, 225×1)
240x5x3
-first set unbelted. I was moving really slow on the descent because I wasn't confident that I'd get them up. Though I made all my reps, I caved and decided to use my belt for the last 2 sets. They felt so much better! Fox suggested that I still try to do my first set next week without the belt so I guess I'll give that a shot. #unchartedterritory
Bench Press:
(45×5, 75×5, 95×3, 115×1)
127.5×3
-2.5# more than last week. paused the first one which felt good. #weakestlift
Deadlift:
(135×5, 185×5, 225×3, 250×1)
265×5
-still all hookgrip and touch and go. #mythumbshurt
Cashed out with some deadbugs and foam rolling then ate an amazing beef shank roast that Fox made the other night. #TGIF.
Oh boy…I'm glad I'm not part of the team that handles the reservation stuff.
All the lifts today.
8am
Bench
210x2x6
Sore from the volume on Wednesday and these didn't feel great.
10am
Front Squat
245×3
245x2x6
Frank has me pausing the first rep of each set to strengthen my front squat and not rely so much on a bounce. 3 seconds in the hole sucks ass and the ride back up takes a lot of work. Onward.
1pm
Oly Class homework
Clean
50% x3x5 (132)
Jerk
50% x3x5 (137)
Clean Pulls
95% x3x3 (250)
I didn't plan well and the 50% cleans felt like 99% cleans after the squats. Also too much caffeine had me feeling AMAZING at around 12 but craaaashiiiinnnng by 1. Pulls felt heavy as all hell. McD gave me a good plan for hitting all my lifts throughout the week.
PS – My wife is a total fucking bad ass.
Yoga and Pilates (pilates?) for regular members, is a huge win. I especially hated my first ever Pilates class, which is a good thing, I suppose.
That said, we need more classes if it's going to work. It's already turning into a 'who could register first?' race. For example, tomorrow's yoga class is already full. There's also no penalty to block a slot; members will naturally game the system and block the slot
3 days1 week in advance and then cancel early enough if they aren't able to make it.Janelley Furtado is the best, and that face is awesome!
LBBS
45 x 5, 95 x 5, 135 x 4, 185 x 3, 205 x 1, 215 x 5 x 3
This would be a PR except there were some shallow reps. It's not that I am not strong enough to get back up; more that I am not entirely sure where the bottom is. Thanks Fox for the feedback. I had just had a conversation with Jason about perhaps squatting too low on the box squats the other day so this was in my head a bit too. Anyway, that is the end of my LP for now. Very happy with how this went and quite surprised I was able to keep adding 5# each time.
Bench Press
45 x 5, 75 x 4, 95 x 3, 105 x 1, 117.5 x 5 x 3 (PR)
David spotted my last set and told me I need to engage my lats more, which is a new one for me. Interested to see how that changes things.
Deadlift (top set of 6, drop set)
135 x 6, 185 x 6, 215 x 6, 245 x 6, 265 x 6, 250 x 6.
First exposure of Margie's programming. This felt like a lot! I'm tired!
@Fox- that, she is.
@Manu- see Jess' point 4 re: yoga and Pilates- looks like we already have a solution 🙂
@manu, yes you are right that people could block a spot now up to a week in advance. We do have a waitlist though and the idea is that if someone cancels their RSVP, the next person on the waitlist will get an email telling them they're in. Again, I have to trust that everyone handles this like adults and doesn't RSVP if they don't truly plan to attend.
Regardless, I'd also love to see more of these types of classes in the future! It's just a matter of space constraints and the fact that Whit and Kristen each have other coaching/teaching responsibilities. Keep your fingers crossed though. 😉
Thanks for the responses, Jess. I know there's a real scheduling issue y'all are trying to solve with this imperfect system, so I respect that even as I complain about the imperfections of said system. 🙂
That being said, I have one more question, just to be clear — is it that you now can RESERVE a class at any time, even less than 1 hour before, but you cannot CANCEL less than 1 hour before? I think that's what your points #2 and #3 above mean, but was a little confused and wanted to clarify. (I need to know the answer to decide what to do about registering my husband for AR — if the reservation limit is gone, I will take advantage of that, because he changes his mind sometimes and if he does, I get charged since he's not a member.)
So, so grateful to be un-sick and make it in to OG today. Haven't worked out in almost two weeks & just wanted to not go crazy and do a million things tonight. Been thinking about working out for days now.
Did Wednesday's work more or less: hbbs 3-count pause squats up to 245×3. This was just entering 'heavy' so a good welcome-back.
Then tabata american KB swings at 24kg, 9 per round for a total of 72. Definitely felt like work by the end w/o getting too rough. Looking forward to tomorrow's NFT!
@stella, yes that's correct. You *could reserve as you're walking into the gym but any cancellations have to be at least 1hr in advance. We just ask you to reserve as soon as possible.
OG
HBBS, 5RM, -5%, -10%x5
405×5
385×5
365×5
Behind the neck Push Press, 5rm, -5%, -10%x5
275×5
255×5
285×2, f3rd *it was on the bar so I just went for it…
OG tonight again
worked up to 3×5 at 155# on the back squat. The last two reps were shallow but I'm happy this is still moving- definitely a big improvement.
Bench was..challenging 🙂 4 reps at 89#, and 2×4 at 88#. I got frustrated here for no reason. I hate benching haha.
DL worked up to 1×5 at 180#. Another PR. The hook grip is starting to fail here- I dropped 1 rep when I got to the top..oops.