Tempo Back Squat / Tempo Front Squat

Tempo Back Squat (41×1):
2 x 10

Tempo Front Squat (41×1):
1 x 10

Go heavier than last week, or find a good starting weight. The last few reps of each set should be tough, but the goal is no misses. Be true to the tempo work. This may mean eating some humble pie, starting with light weights, and trusting that it doesn’t have to be “heavy” to be effective.

Post loads to comments.
Exposure 2 of 8
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AMRAP 15 Minutes:
10 Burpees
15 Power Cleans 115/75
30 Double-Unders

The barbell should be on the light side. Scale the Doubles to 60 Singles or 15 attempts as needed.

Post rounds, reps, and Rx to comments.

Check out CFSBK front desker Greg C. in the trailer for VelociPastor! Warning: may contain images of Greg turning into a dinosaur…

Fit 55+: Staying Strong, Mobile, and Able

What is Fit 55+? 
Fit 55+ is a strength and conditioning class for older adults who want to move and use their bodies and are not content to simply sit on the couch getting older. Research points to development of chronic disease in older populations not as a consequence of aging alone, but as a product of decreased activity and less-than-healthy lifestyle choices. Strength training and conditioning can help both stave off, as well as reduce, the effects of many chronic diseases. As the old adage goes: “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

Fit 55+ will help you:

• Build muscular strength and joint integrity
• Increase and maintain bone density
• Improve cardiovascular function
• Improve pulmonary function
• Improve balance, coordination, and mobility
• Reduce your risk of falling (and be more resilient in case you do)
• Maintain independence and improve quality of life

Who is this class for?
Any older adult who wants to exercise in a fun, safe, and inclusive manner. Whether you’re a total newcomer to resistance training or more of a veteran, our classes will challenge you to become better.

What does a class look like?
A typical class will start with a series of light warm up movements to get your heart and joints ready for exercise.

From there we’ll move onto the strength training portion of class, using a variety of tools to help you develop strength. You’ll use both weight training and bodyweight exercises of the upper and lower body to develop and maintain muscular strength and joint integrity.

After the strength training portion of class we’ll move on to the conditioning portion. Here the goal is to get a bit sweaty and elevate your heart rate for a while to improve heart function and lung capacity. To this task we’ll use a variety of equipment and modes like: rowing machines, exercise bicycles, sled pushes, sandbag training, and bodyweight exercises, in addition to many others. The variety keeps it engaging and more fun (we think) than just walking on a treadmill for an hour.

Finally, we’ll end with a few cool down stretches to relax your heart rate and your mind before you head out of the gym.

When do Fit 55+ classes meet?
Mondays and Thursdays at 11am. Starting Monday, May 15th, we’re please to announce that we’ll be tweaking the schedule a bit and adding a third Fit 55+ class. The week of the 15th, Fit 55+ will start meeting Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 11am!

Pricing
Drop-In: $25
5-Class Card: $100
Monthly Unlimited (2x per week): $125

REGISTER HERE!

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Yesterday’s Whiteboard: Rest Day
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Here’s Part 1 of Mat Fraser: Making a Champion, a fascinating look at how an elite CrossFit athlete lives and trains. Part 2 and Part 3 are also up on YouTube!

This Week at CFSBK in Review

1. Sign ups for Murph Day 2017 are now open! See the event page for more details. This is a great community event where we perform this classic CrossFit benchmark workout followed by some grilling, side dishes, and beers. The workout is tough—very tough—but it can, of course, be scaled to meet everyone’s capacity. What’re waitin’ for? Sign up today!

2. Starting May 14th, we’ll be adding new Short Circuit and Fit 55+ classes to our schedule. Who doesn’t love more fitness? All the details can be found in Tuesday’s post. 

3. Here’s CFSBK OG Bethany E. at the South Brooklyn Weightlifting Club Spring Classic, where she placed 3rd in the 57kg weight class, PR’d her Deadlift at 296lbs, and scored a total of 628lbs. Congrats, Bethany!

4. On Wednesday, we got to know Kirby S. a little better. She had some great advice for new CFSBKers: “Sign up for stuff! I’m SO not a joiner by nature, nor am I an especially competitive person, but being part of the CFSBK community has helped me come out of my shell and say ‘yes’ more often…which is a highly transferrable life skill. There are so many ways to participate beyond simply coming to class, and it’s really fun to feel like a part of something. And you can take it as seriously as you want! The LFPB Challenge, Fight Gone Bad, the Open… do it!” You heard the woman: sign up for Murph Day!

5. We’ve accumulated approximately 3,000 pairs of unclaimed weightlifting shoes that were left at the gym over the past year. Please take a look here, here, here, and here. Let the front desk know if any of them belong to you!

6. This Sunday’s 11am Active Recovery class is cancelled. Still want to do something other than group class this weekend? Don’t forget about Saturday’s 10am Yoga for Athletes and 11am Active Recovery classes, as well as Sunday’s 2pm Anti-Gravity class.

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Yesterday’s Whiteboard: Clean and Jerk | Box Jumps, C2B Pull-Ups, KB Swings
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Clean and Jerk Complex

Every 90 seconds for 8 rounds:
Clean High Pull + Mid-Hang Clean High Pull + Mid-Hang Clean + Push Jerk

Rest 2 minutes, then…

Every minute on the minute x 6:
Clean High Pull
105% x 2 x 6

The percentage is based on what you worked up to today. Focus on pulling off the floor exactly as you would for a full Clean: a smooth pull from the floor with weight balanced over the mid-foot and a vertical extension allowing the bar to stay close to the body.

Post loads to comments.

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Every minute on the minute x 15 (5ea):
1) 5 Box Jumps 30/24″
2) 10 Chest-to-Bar Pull-Ups
3) 15 Russian KB Swings 32/24kg

The Box Jumps should be higher than your usual Rx. Scale the Chest-to-Bar Pull-Ups to regular Pull-Ups, Jumping Chest-to-Bar Pull-Ups, or Ring Rows as needed, or scale volume to keep you moving. The KB swings should be on the heavy side for you. Aim to finish each minute’s work at consistent times.

Post work to comments.

Look at all those recent accomplishments and new leaderboard entries! Don’t forget to write your goals and accomplishments on the board!

Check Out Prefer

Emily W. recently joined a team building a new app called Prefer. Prefer aims to do something CrossFit athletes are already great at—connecting people in real life and growing community through trusted referrals. On Prefer you can discover, chat, book, pay, and refer your favorite pros, from dog walkers to handy guys and gals to accountants to business coaches to babysitters and more! Prefer is a great place to grow your business and a great place to find professionals trusted by friends. CFSBK athletes can try it with the invite code AMRAP.

News and Notes

• In case you missed it, sign ups for Murph Day 2017 are now open! See the event page for more details.
• Our friends and neighbors across the street at littlefield are relocating nearby and opening a sister bar and restaurant called Parklife. Back their Kickstarter campaign to help keep this awesome neighborhood institution going!
• Do you follow us on Facebook? How about Instagram? If not, you should! We’re always posting cool stuff there, and it’s an easy way to support the gym!
• Today’s 9am Yoga class is cancelled.
• This Sunday’s 11am Active Recovery class is cancelled.

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Yesterday’s Whiteboard: Back Rack Reverse Lunges | NFR Work
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Back Rack Reverse Lunges

3 x 10e

Go heavier than last week (or find a moderate starting weight). Perform 10 reps on one leg, rack the bar, then perform 10 reps on the other. You’re going to be sore after these the first few weeks so pay attention to good recovery practices (i.e., eat some food). The last few reps of each set should be tough.

Post loads to comments.
Exposure 2 of 8
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Performance
20 Minutes Not for Rounds:
270m Jog
3 Ring Muscle Ups

Scale to Jumping Muscle-Ups as needed if you can do a few strict Ring Dips and Pull-Ups and are stable in the catch.

Fitness
20 Minutes Not for Rounds:
6 L-Pull-Ups
6 Strict Ring Dips
270m Jog

Scale the L-Pull-Ups to regular or band-assisted as needed. Scale the Ring Dips to the Matador or to Tempo (31X1) Push-Ups as needed.

Post work to comments.

Better Know a Member: Kirby S.

For the past few weeks, we’ve been having fun with Better Know a Member, a blog-favorite in which we profile members from across the CFSBK community. Last week we spoke to Molly H. This week, let’s find out more about…

Name (and any nicknames):

Kirby Stirland. David calls me “Kirbasaurus Rex,” though I’m not entirely sure why!

Where were you born and where did you grow up? 

I was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, and I grew up in nearby Rowayton, which is a little beach town about an hour outside of NYC. 

How long have you been CrossFitting, and how did you arrive at CFSBK?

Officially, I’ve been CrossFitting since I joined CFSBK in January of 2016!

I was a dancer from age 3 through college, and fairly serious about it during high school, competing all around the country and performing several times a year. Dance was my passion, and a huge part of my life for a long time, but it’s a very high-pressure world in many ways, and at a certain point it just stopped being fun for me. My dance background is a big part of who I am today, though, as well as the kind of athlete I am now—it’s how I developed self-discipline and precision when it comes to form, both of which I use in the gym every day!

Post-college I got more into fitness and tried a lot of different things (boxing, spinning, etc.), eventually discovering that I loved strength training. A few years ago I stumbled on a small group training class led by a CrossFit trainer at the New York Sports Club in Park Slope, and I got really into it. I tend to like the most intense version of anything (i.e. yoga is ok…but yoga in a 100-degree room? Sign me up) so those workouts really spoke to me. I always felt like I wanted to commit more seriously by joining an actual CrossFit gym, but I felt a little intimidated by it all. My New Year’s resolution in 2016 was to be brave, so I finally bit the bullet and I haven’t looked back. I’m not exaggerating when I say that CFSBK has changed my life. The members, the coaches, the workouts…I love this place sooo much!!

Ask me about that time I…

Lived with rock stars. My fiancé is a musician and used to tour with a pretty well known band. I moved out to LA with him right after we met and lived with him and some of his bandmates in a glorified bachelor pad in Malibu. It had no furniture aside from a sectional sofa and a giant television, and the only food in the kitchen was whiskey and a drawer filled with Halloween candy. Obviously, my parents were thrilled with THAT life choice. It worked out somehow, though! 

If you had to switch careers today, what would you choose to do?

I’m weirdly obsessed with true crime and serial killers, so I’d probably want to do something in forensics. That, or I’d be a music supervisor choosing songs for movies and TV shows.

What are you up to when you’re not at 597 Degraw Street?

I’m the brand copywriter at an amazing wellness startup called Sakara Life that does organic, plant-based meal delivery… but our mission is really to change the way people think about food. The way you eat really can change your life! (And, at very least, your athletic performance, as we well know.) It’s cool to work for a company that is truly improving people’s lives every day by helping them eat better.

I’m a homebody, so if I’m not at work or the gym, I’m probably at home snuggling with my dog (a rescue terrier named Jackson…as in Michael, as in the King of Pop), cooking, drinking wine, listening to NPR, doing a face mask… maybe even all of those things at once if I’m getting really wild. These days I’m also doing lots of wedding planning tasks in my free time, because I’m getting married in September. Also, I volunteer at Planned Parenthood as a health center escort, so you can find me there some early Saturday mornings. And now that it’s almost summer, I’ll hopefully be spending as many weekends as possible at the beach…it’s my happy place.

Favorite and least favorite lift:

Favorite: Increasingly, Cleans! Also Back Squats and Deadlifts.

Least favorite: Snatch or Overhead Squat. But I’m determined to learn to love them both.

Any advice for new CFSBKers? 

Sign up for stuff! I’m SO not a joiner by nature, nor am I an especially competitive person, but being part of the CFSBK community has helped me come out of my shell and say “yes” more often…which is a highly transferrable life skill. There are so many ways to participate beyond simply coming to class, and it’s really fun to feel like a part of something. And you can take it as seriously as you want! The LFPB Challenge, Fight Gone Bad, the Open… do it!

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Here’s CFSBK OG Bethany E. at the South Brooklyn Weightlifting Club Spring Classic, where she placed 3rd in the 57kg weight class, PR’d her Deadlift at 296lbs, and scored a total of 628lbs. Bethany also recently celebrated her 9th anniversary as a CFSBK member (hence the OG). Congrats, Bethany!

New Short Circuit and Fit 55+ Classes at CFSBK

In our neverending quest to bring you more and better fitness, we’re pleased to announce that we’ll be offering new Short Circuit and Fit 55+ classes in a couple of weeks!

Starting May 14th, we’ll be offering another Short Circuit class at 8am on Sunday. Short Circuit uses some of the best training methods to give you a great total body workout in just one hour. Each class includes two circuits programmed specifically to help you shed pounds while increasing your strength, stamina, and flexibility. At Short Circuit, we want you to get sweaty, have fun, and build confidence, one workout at a time. We create an inclusive space where people can feel comfortable exactly where they are in their fitness journeys and, more importantly, challenge themselves to get better. Visit SHORTCIRCUIT.FIT for more info and the full schedule!

Starting May 15th, we’ll be adding a third Fit 55+ class each week and tweaking the schedule a bit. Fit 55+ will now meet Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 11am. This is a strength and conditioning class for older adults who want to move and use their bodies and are not content to simply sit on the couch getting older. Strength training and conditioning can help both stave off, as well as reduce, the effects of many chronic diseases. As the old adage goes, “If you don’t move it, you lose it.” Know someone who might benefit from this class? Send them over to the Fit 55+ program page!

Summer just got a whole lot more, uh… fitnessy! (Yes, that’s a word. No, please do not look it up.)

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Yesterday’s Whiteboard: Push Press | Row, KB Swings, Burpees
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