Congrats to Coach Frank, who took home the gold medal in his weight class at last weekend’s USA Weightlifting American Open Series 2! Frank will now begin training to compete in the 89kg weight class at Series 3 in Las Vegas

This Week at CFSBK in Review

1. Come out tonight during Open Gym for our first-ever cornhole tournament. It’s super fun and easy to learn. The games begin at 6:30pm!

2. ALSO, we’ll be showing the final events of the CrossFit Games on our big screen at 597 during Open Gym hours (6 to 8pm) on Sunday night. Predictions for the top 3 women and men?

3. CFSBK’s resident anthropologist Katie H. is shipping out to India and Australia to find out more about their CrossFit cultures. On Monday, she told us about that work and what she hopes to learn overseas. It’s a great read!

4. This is our last Crush Week for the foreseeable future. Some of you will cheer. Some of you will cry. Some of you will cheer and cry. On Tuesday, Coach Fox explained the reasoning behind this decision and told us how CFSBK’s programming will and will not change.

5. Want to get better on the ol’ jump rope? On November 3rd, we’re hosting the CrossFit Workshop: Jump Rope. This is a hands-on, fast-paced, fun seminar at which participants learn how to use a simple and effective tool to energize their programming and workouts.

6. Our beloved, longtime Pilates teacher KH is leaving to open her own Pilates studio in Manhattan, but that doesn’t mean we’ll stop offering Pilates! Starting August 12th, Pilates will move to Sundays at 12pm and will be coached by Karina S.

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Yesterday’s Results Board: “DT” in a Boat
Poverty Isn’t a Lack of Character; It’s a Lack of Cash TED (video)
Obese to Beast CrossFit Journal (video)

“DT” in a Boat

3 Rounds for Time:
500m Row
2 Rounds of “DT” 155/105

“DT”= 12 Deadlifts + 9 Hang Power Cleans + 6 Push Jerks

The limiting factor determining load on the barbell will likely be the Jerks, which should be medium-heavy for you. Scale load as needed so that most sets of jerks can be done unbroken. Each round of “DT” should take around a minute, so considering scaling volume overall to 9 Deadlifts + 6 Hang Power Cleans + 3 Jerks if you can handle the load and want to bias more of a strength stimulus.

Pro Tip on breaking up “DT”: The final rep of each movement leads into the next, so instead of doing 12 Deadlifts and dropping the bar, do 11… break… then the 12th rep, putting you in a position to begin the 1st Hang Power Clean. Same for the Hang Power Cleans into the Push Jerks. Or you could just, ya know, do the whole thing unbroken.

Post time and Rx to comments.

“If a regular* Pilates practice doesn’t make you a better athlete, I will eat a Nike Metcon”—an actual quote from Karina 

Starting August 12th: Sunday Pilates with Karina!

Our beloved, longtime Pilates teacher KH is leaving to open her own Pilates studio in Manhattan, but that doesn’t mean we’ll stop offering Pilates. Starting August 12th, Pilates will move to Sundays at 12pm and will be coached by our own Karina S.!

Coming from a background of competitive cross country skiing, Karina saw the benefits of a regular Pilates practice immediately and signed up for teacher training after her first session. She believes Pilates allows us to regain the freedom of movement we enjoyed as children, and that transforming fitness into a form of play is essential to creating a life-long practice.

Her classes are vigorous and full of laughter with an emphasis on proper grounding and alignment.

Karina has trained everyone from Division 1 Linebackers to those barely able to walk into the studio. She completed her Balanced Body certification at Paragon Pilates & Physical Therapy studying under Cari Riis Stemmler, Tiza Wynn Riley, and Roger Gonzalez Hibner. She has completed continuing education in Hands on Cueing Techniques, Pre and Post Natal Pilates, Low Back Pain and many other topics. She has experience working with a wide range of spinal conditions as well as many other injuries and limitations.

*regular=at least once a week

Weekend Events

We’ve got some fun stuff going on at the gym this weekend, and you won’t wanna miss it! Here’s what’s happening:

• Friday night, during Open Gym, we’re running a cornhole tournament. It’s super fun and easy to learn. The games begin at 6:30pm!
• During Sunday’s Open Gym hours, we’ll be showing the final events of the CrossFit Games on our big screen at 597. 

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Yesterday’s Results Board: Front Squats, Burpees, Toes-to-Bars
2018 Instagames: Day 1 CrossFit Games
What Do 90-Somethings Regret Most? Medium

WOD 8.1.18

AMRAP 15 Minutes:
5 Front Squats 185/125
10 Lateral Bar Burpees
15 Toes-to-Bars

The Front Squats come off the floor. The first rep can be a full Clean, and they should be on the medium-heavy side for you for 5 reps. The Burpees are Rx’d as a two-foot take off and landing. Stepping over is a scaling option. Scale range of motion on the Toes-to-Bars to Hanging Leg or Knee Raises as needed.

Post rounds, reps, and Rx to comments.

November 3rd: CrossFit Jump Rope Workshop at CFSBK

Want to get better on the rope? On November 3rd, we’re hosting the CrossFit Workshop: Jump Rope. This is a hands-on, fast-paced, fun seminar at which participants learn how to use a simple and effective tool to energize their programming and workouts. The workshop features longtime CrossFit proponent and 1992 U.S. Olympian Buddy Lee, who is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost jump-rope authorities. Participants will leave the workshop with clear paths to elusive jump-rope skills such as double-unders, triple-unders and more.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

The CrossFit Workshop: Jump Rope teaches participants how to:

• Use optimal biomechanics for jump-rope mastery.
• Properly set up jump-rope equipment.
• Correctly adjust the jump rope for optimal results.
• Use progressions that form the base of jump-rope techniques: basic jumping, speed jumping, power jumping (double-/triple-unders).
• Use visualization, imagery, breathing and relaxation techniques in combination with dynamic jump-rope path patterns (forward, backward, sideways, crossover, infinity).
• Program various jump-rope techniques into CrossFit workouts—beyond single-/double-/triple-unders.

What are you waiting for?

Register Here!

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Yesterday’s Results Board: Rest Day
Dial in the Phases of the Snatch and Clean Catalyst Athletics
Myles Turner: In the Flow The Players’ Tribune (video)

The whole crew from the Barbell Medicine seminar we hosted over the weekend. Thanks for stopping in, gang! | Photo courtesy of Leah from BBM

On Crush Week

By Chris Fox

In the coming cycle, you’ll notice the conspicuous absence of “Crush Week,” the week of programming that has served as an end cap to programming cycles for over 5 years now. The initial intention of Crush Week was to throw down a bit, get outside our comfort zones, and have some fun with longer “Hero-“type WODs that at the time we didn’t really have the resources to run on a regular basis. In many ways it would also serve as a “testing” week, where we’d use these longer-heavier-higher skill metcons to measure improvement of particular movements that we’d trained for the weeks leading up to it. It’s generally always been a week of high volume and intensity, sort of like our own little CrossFit Games, but has presented a challenge for us regular Janes and Joes to properly recover from. You can probably get away with going from doing “Morrison” at 6am directly into sitting at a desk for 6+ hours and be just fine within a day or so. Doing that for 5 days in a row, however… not so much.

While many of you vocally supported Crush Week and looked forward to it, we realize that as many of you silently (and some not so silently) dreaded it and would regularly find reasons to miss those weeks. We get it, Crush Week was brutal. As we ask all of you to do day in and day out, we’re constantly learning, evolving, and changing. In terms of our group class programming, we’ve become increasingly suspicious of the actual training value of Crush Week (as opposed to the perceived value) and feel it’s time to experiment with leaving it out for a while. While lots of people do find a 5-day beatdown “fun,” we feel we can be smarter and space out “crushing” workouts more evenly rather than save them all up for one full week.

The nuts and bolts of a group class programming cycle will look pretty much the same, and if you’re a bit newer to CFSBK, or generally just show up and take each day as it comes, you may not even notice a difference. Most classes will follow the general template of:

DROMS/Warm-Up > Strength/Skill Training > Metcon Prep + Metcon

We’ll still program in mesocycles, using those 6-10 weeks to practice and build strength, skill, and competency in a few chosen movements. We’ll still program regular metcons and not-for-time work of varied mode and time domains to improve conditioning and recovery. The removal of an entire week of Crush Week workouts allows us to now pepper in some of them throughout the cycle while giving space in the preceding and following days to better accommodate for them. This is to say that programming at CFSBK is not about to get easier, just a bit smarter.

As always, we deeply appreciate your trust and commitment to being a part of the process here and value your feedback. If you have any thoughts you’d like to offer on either programming or other aspects of the gym in general, please take a few moments to do so by clicking the link below. Thank you!

CFSBK Feedback Form

Upcoming Events

We’ve got some fun stuff going on at the gym this weekend, and you don’t wanna miss it! Here’s what’s happening:

• Friday night, during Open Gym, we’re running a cornhole tournament. It’s super fun and easy to learn. The fun starts at 6:30pm!
• During Sunday’s Open Gym hours, we’ll be showing the final events of the CrossFit Games on our big screen at 597. 

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Yesterday’s Results Board: “Run, Cindy, Run!”
Teen Loses Half His Body Weight, Offers Advice to Peers CrossFit Journal
Emotions of the 2018 Regionals CrossFit Games (video)

“Run, Cindy, Run!”

3 Rounds for Time:
800m Run
5 Rounds of “Cindy”

Cindy = 5 Pull-Ups + 10 Push-Ups + 15 Squats

Scale the runs to 550m as needed of you can’t complete the 800s under 5 minutes. Scaling for Pull-Ups is Ring Rows or Jumping Pull-Ups, and Push-Ups is Knee Push-Ups. The “Cind”y rounds should take about a minute. Scale volume to 3-4 rounds per set if you want to work on a more challenging pull/push version that ends up taking much longer than that.

Post time and Rx to comments.

Katie H. racks the bar after a successful lift at Iron Maidens 2018

An Update from CFSBK’s Resident Anthropologist

By Katie Rose Hejtmanek

Hi CFSBKers! Your local anthropologist here. I want to give you all a quick update. I’m winding down my US-based research and heading overseas this fall for preliminary investigations into CrossFit in Australia and India. Why Australia and India? In both India and Australia, I am interested in what happens in the CrossFit gym–what parts of CrossFit travel well and which parts are made more local. For example, on international yoga day, the Indian CrossFit gym included yoga in their WOD. So the fact of a WOD and the idea of making a WOD culturally meaningful traveled, but that it was yoga, one of India’s most famous physical practices, seems uniquely Indian. My question is, essentially, how do these gyms add to the basic recipe that is CrossFit to make it their own?

CrossFit is not, however, just the daily practice that happens in the gym. This daily work is in conversation with CrossFit writ large, including who trains for and makes it to Regionals and the Games. It means something for individuals to go to and gyms to send people to these elite CrossFit competitions. Therefore, I chose Australia because Australian women dominate CrossFit at the international level (along with Iceland) and many Australian men make it to the Games. Does gym culture get shaped by the fact that Australians are some of the best CrossFitters? If so, in what ways? What is the relationship between the everyday WODs and the fact that Australians are crowned fittest on earth?

I chose India because it has a long tradition of physical culture and is becoming an important market for CrossFit, but so far no one has made it to the Games. India is known for other physical practices and sports–yoga and wrestling–and is home to world champion cricketers (check out CFSBKer Samir Chopra’s book Eye on Cricket). The gym where I will be, which has been going strong for 8 years, just won a national-level award–an ICON award–for being the most innovative health and fitness brand in India. But Indian CrossFitters don’t see themselves represented at the elite competitions. Does that matter in the gym? What relationship does the everyday WOD in India have with elite competition?

I will be doing this work during my fall sabbatical, staying about 2-3 months in each place. Like with my research here, I’m sure new questions and insights will emerge as I stay for a while, listen to people, and learn. If you were doing this project, what would you want to know? What would you ask?

Before I head out, I will be having a little bon voyage party at Pig Beach on Saturday August 11, after Open Gym. Please come by!

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Powerlifting Doesn’t Care What I Look Like The Nib
This Is What 6 CrossFit Games Athletes Eat for Breakfast Reebok