Row/Front Squat

Every 5 minutes:
In 3 minutes…
20 Calorie Row
7 Front Squats, as heavy as possible

Row the 20 calories hard and get right to the Front Squats. Work up to a max 7-rep Front Squat for the day.

Post times and loads to comments..

Do you love veggies as much as Coach David does? Read on to find out how you can acquire the veggies!

• Did you catch Adrian Bozman repping CFSBK during 16.4?
  
• Schedule Change: This Saturday’s 11am Active Recovery class is cancelled, but you can still get your AR in on Sunday at 11am!

Common Hands Farm CSA: Sign Up Today!

Happy Spring! Getting fit and eating well starts now. We have your direct hook-up to fresh produce grown upstate, and its time to sign up to reserve your membership today!

In its fifth year, Common Hands will deliver CSA shares right next door to 575 Degraw (Brooklyn Boulders) on Tuesdays from 6 to 8:30pm.

What is a CSA Share?

It is a membership to a farm where you get an exclusive deal on fresh organically grown vegetables delivered straight from the farm to you! Once you pay the upfront membership fee (payment plans available) you receive a weekly delivery from the farm starting in June through November.

Why Should You Join?

Beyond receiving freshly harvested and health-giving food, grown cleanly with no pesticides or herbicides, you are also putting your money where your mouth is, and supporting the local food economy. This is food from real farmers, and by buying a share you are supporting small organic farms. We grow food for you, period. We are not a distributor or large conventional farm with lots of employees, but real down to earth people. On our farm, a team of less than ten people work to grow food for upwards of 200 members each year… and we care what you eat!

We offer Full and Half Vegetable Shares that can be paired with the optional Full or Half Fruit & Egg Share. A Full Share picks up weekly, while the Half Share picks up bi-weekly. Veg shares are $615 for a weekly (“full”) share or $375 for an every-other-week (“half”) share. Fruit and eggs can be purchased in addition to Veg Shares and are bundled together: a full share is $280 and a half share is $140. Pending interest, Flower Shares may be available as well.

Remember, your pick-up location is just down the block at Brooklyn Boulders!

Go to CommonHandsCSA.com for details or click here to sign up directly!  Questions? Email the farm at commonhandsfarm [at] gmail [dot] com, or the gym’s CSA coordinator, Michele, at mignyc [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Chris Spealler on the “Chest Up” Cue Instagram
The “Not Face” is a Universal Part of Language Science Daily

Video of the Week: A T-Rex did the Open. Hilarity ensued!

• Team Captains: please submit your team score to the intramural spreadsheet by 12pm tomorrow.

Chasing Rx: When To Scale and When To Go Heavier

An interview with David Osorio and Jess Fox, edited by Kate Reece

Editor’s Note: As we reflect on this year’s Open and approach the end of our current 8-week programming cycle, now is a good time to revisit this piece we published last year. It was originally posted on 3.17.15. Enjoy!

If you don’t know why workouts are named after women, Greg Glassman, the founder and President of CrossFit, explained it like this: “I thought that anything that left you flat on your back, looking up at the sky asking ‘What just happened to me?’ deserved a female’s name. Workouts are just like storms, they wreak havoc on towns.” 

Regardless of whether you welcome or abhor that feeling of being wrecked (particularly when it doesn’t happen in your bedroom), we all know what it’s like to approach a nasty WOD from the mindset of wanting it to be over before it even starts. But sometimes, the desire to cruise through a workout can cause us to take shortcuts, maybe not go as heavy as we could, and ultimately sacrifice our long-term strength goals on the altar of feeling like a beast in the moment. Hopefully, we all do want to get stronger. In that case, it’s important to realize that the lifting segments of group classes are not your only opportunities to achieve your goal. You should aim to get stronger through the conditioning portion of class as well.

Maintaining excellent technique should always be your priority, but if you want to close in on the Rx-ed loads for a WOD, you need to gradually increase your base numbers—which might involve surrendering a bit of the metabolic stimulus of some workouts. (“Rx” refers to the prescribed, standard weights for a workout, or those scary numbers written after each weighted movement on the blog and whiteboard.) Simply put: you need to lift heavier and go slower so that you can eventually lift heavier and go faster. 

I sat down (i.e. emailed a lot) with Coach David and Coach Jess to ask them everything you wanted to know (but were too scared to ask) about chasing Rx in workouts. The bottom line: don’t be complacent about the weights you choose for any given workout. Getting stronger is a process. Here are David and Jess’s experiences with exactly that.

CFSBK: When did you start Rx-ing all the WODs? What did your journey look like to get there?

David: When I started CrossFit, I was self-teaching myself the movements, so I did what I could and then practiced the movements that I didn’t know how to do yet. It took me about a year before I was doing almost everything Rx-ed. I definitely was biasing a heavier weight and slower times in the beginning, which helped me develop the requisite strength to be able to eventually move the Rx-ed weights faster. I still occasionally scale some of the weightlifting loads in WODs when appropriate 

Jess: I’d say the first things I could Rx fairly quickly were workouts with deadlifts, double-unders, box jumps, and kettlebell swings. I knew my road to Rx-ing weights in the Olympic lifts would take some time, and honestly we weren’t doing as much of those when I started. So, I chose to target kipping pull-ups as my first big goal, since they tend to come up in so many WODs—and what girl doesn’t want to do pull-ups! My road to getting them meant practicing them EVERY time I was in the gym. I started out with thick green-band but over the course of a few months, I was able to get my rhythm down enough to get a few unassisted kipping pull-ups in spurts. They weren’t consistent enough though so I always resorted back to the band for workouts.  

However, that changed when I visited my other “home” CrossFit in Ohio. The WOD was “Cindy” and although I knew that I could get a few rounds Rx-ed, I still set up a band. During the workout, when I started to slow down on pull-ups, I reached for the band. The coach there stopped me and just told me it was okay to move a little slower. Sure, I didn’t get a high number of rounds but it allowed me to continue to work on that skill and it gave me a baseline for “Cindy” Rx-ed. After that experience, I got rid of the band. That didn’t mean I did every pull-up workout Rx-ed right away though. Until I got better at them, scaled volume was my friend. 

CFSBK: If I’m moving fast and getting a good workout in the WODs, why should I worry about what weight I’m doing? 

David: The balancing act between performing workouts with their intended metabolic stimulus, versus going heavier or sticking to a calisthenics version that slows you down considerably, can be somewhat nuanced. Ideally, you want to be able to keep moving at a somewhat reasonable pace. If you’re shuffling your feet, looking at the pull-up bar for a minute, you’re probably not getting the most out of your time on either end. But if you’re not at the Rx-ed weights and want to start pushing toward them, you’ll just have to accept that you’re going to be slower and the workout probably won’t be as spicy. In my opinion, that’s fine. Recently, I told a member that would have rather her go with a heavier dumbbell and get capped versus going lighter and getting a good time. As long as you can perform about 3/4 of the workout before getting capped, you should be fine. If you want to get stronger in the WODs, you’re always going to have to bias a little heavier and slower, technique permitting. 

Jess: As CrossFitters, we’re all a little Type A and want to move fast through workouts. However, our training should include different stimuli and heavier weights—higher skilled movements can provide that. As I mentioned before, it took a little nudging from coaches, and a little/lot of swallowing my WOD pride to not scale those pull-ups in “Cindy.” Looking back though, I’m so grateful for that intervention. Not just because it was my first Rx-ed “Cindy,” but because I didn’t really realize that I had the strength and skill to do it. I see this a lot with push-ups in workouts as well. Though I see many of you work your strict push-ups like a boss in our warm-ups and even start a workout with strict pushups, as soon as the going gets tough, the knees drop down. Sometimes you just have to gut it out (provided your movement is technically sound), knowing that you might need to scale volume and accepting that you might be the last person to finish.   

CFSBK: How do I know when to go heavier during WODs?

David: When you feel like you “own” a weight that is below Rx-ed, then it’s time to bump it up. Don’t get complacent with certain loads. For example, if you’re a guy and you always do 65-pound thrusters, even if it still feels difficult, you need to start gradually adding five to 10 pounds to push your strength and comfort level with the movement and load. If you always swing the 16 kg kettlebell, start voyaging out to heavier territory. As long as you feel confident in your technique, which might mean going a bit slower or breaking up reps more, then the weights or your modification should feel heavy.

Jess: This is where logging your workouts comes into play. Early on in your CrossFit life, you will and should start lighter than you think. Use the warm-up time to pick a load that you know you’ll be able to move consistently well through. Then, take note of how that felt in your logbook so that you know what to aim for next time. Also, listen to the advice your coaches give you. I think we do a pretty good job of talking about the intention of the workout and providing scaling options or percentage markers to help guide you in determining an appropriate weight. If it’s ever not clear, just ask! 

CFSBK: If I want to set a goal to get to Rx or heavier weights (and I know I should!), what should my battle plan or strategy be?

David: As Jess mentioned, make sure you’re logging and writing down both qualitative and quantitative data! You’ll never remember to go heavier on that barbell if you can’t refer back to previous experiences. Focus on writing notes specific to how heavy things felt and if you think you could have gone a bit heavier and kept your technique together. You’ll have to dip into loads or movements that intimidate you a little if you want to get better.

Jess: Be consistent in your practice. If it’s barbell lifts, then aim to make each rep at lighter weights perfect and slowly increase the weights from week to week or from WOD to WOD.  If you did the past three thruster workouts at 75 pounds and flew through them, then go for 80 next time. If you’re training a skill, then lay out a specific plan to help you get there.  Also, tell a buddy and have them help keep you accountable, or better yet, have them join you! Note though, that skill is singular. Don’t be the person that has a list of 10 skillz and can never really devote enough time to any one of them. 

CFSBK: Any parting thoughts?

David: Use your coaches as a resource! We want you to improve and always will let you know how a movement looks and whether you should scale up or back down. Let us know you’re trying to get stronger and we can give you some thoughts about how to modify your workout intelligently.

Jess: Know that for most of us, this stuff doesn’t come naturally and that some of us might never hit Rx-ed weights. We’re now in the CrossFit Open season, so now you can compare your WOD scores to people around the world. But just remember that ultimately you’re competing with yourself. In the beginning, focus on establishing your baseline. Keep a good logbook, set realistic goals, set time aside to practice, and then use your training to beat yourself. 

(An important caveat: Rx is not an advisable goal for all athletes. It can serve as a point of reference to make the process of choosing your weights easier, and enables our coaches to help you scale appropriately at the whiteboard.)

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Yesterday’s Whiteboard: Rack Jerk | Split Squats, Ice Cream Makers, Run
In Everybody’s Corner, a Boxing Gym for All NY Times

Rack Jerk

1-1-1-1-1

Work up to a heavy single for the day.

Post loads to comments.

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5 RNFT or 20 Minutes:
5ea Split Squats (add weight with dumbbells as appropriate)
5 Ring or Bar Ice Cream Makers
270m Run

Post work to comments.  

Underneath the Hoodie: Whitney Hubbard

Vital Stats
Height: 5’5’’
Weight: 135 lbs
DOB: June 2, 1986
Born and raised: Born in Mississauga, Ontario, raised in Lake Forest, Illinois
Place of higher learning: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

By Kate Reece

Whitney Marie Hubbard has always needed to be moving. Not through states, though she has done that, but with her body. Over the years, that’s looked like dancing ballet at Miss Jenny’s studio in the suburbs of Chicago; flowing through sun salutations and breathing deeply in her decade-long yoga practice; rolling around on the floor during modern dance class warm-ups in college; and learning to gracefully heave a barbell over her head at CrossFit South Brooklyn, back in the days of the high-ceilinged, bare-bone concrete of The Lyceum. Whitney’s language is movement, and despite her bones literally being stacked against her, she speaks beautifully.*

Whitney was born on June 2, 1986 in Mississauga, a large city on Lake Ontario, next to Toronto. She spent the first five years of her life there before her father’s job as a financial executive moved them to Lake Forest, a small suburban city on the North Shore of Chicago, abundantly dotted with ponds and creeks and green grass. After a trip to Canada, she remembers coming home to Lake Forest and on one of those old-school radios built into the wall of her family’s new kitchen, Neil Diamond’s 1980 hit “Coming to America” was playing.

She began dancing when she was three, which mostly looked like romping around a room and tossing her hands theatrically in the air. When she found a song she liked (think Minnie Mouse cassette tapes), she would rewind the song repeatedly and choreograph routines to it. Her strongest memories of this are in her maternal grandmother Nana’s house. A wooded backyard extended far behind the house, which they called the Uppy Uppy Yongo because when you yelled that out, it would echo. After she choreographed the perfect dance, Whitney would assemble her family around to watch her perform. Not a naturally extroverted or outgoing kid by any means, this was where she shined—dancing was where she came alive. She took up ballet and jazz, then also gymnastics, until her mother, Roxanne, made her choose around the age of nine. “You’re good at both of these things, but what if you put your energy into one thing?” she asked, already noticing that her daughter’s young body was being put through a lot. And it wasn’t just the physical activity in-and-of-itself that was taxing.

As the story goes, when Whitney was a baby, she had three fat rolls on one leg and two fats rolls on the other. That’s how her mom first noticed. After a battery of tests and tracking her growth, Whitney was diagnosed with hemihypertrophy, a condition in which one side of the body grows larger than the other, to an extent considered greater than normal. Most of us are at least slightly uneven, but you could really notice the discrepancy between Whitney’s leg lengths. Her right side was clearly growing longer and larger than the other. After coming to America, Whitney traveled back to Toronto every six months to see her doctors, at a hospital unhelpfully named SickKids. By the time she was an adolescent, doctors predicted the final difference would end up around four to five centimeters, and to prevent that, they recommended surgery. Whitney’s parents agreed. The summer she turned 11, after a family trip to Australia, a surgeon made four incisions on her right leg and scraped the growth plates of her tibia and femur, telling the bones to stop growing. It worked—but then she had an unexpected growth spurt, and her left leg outgrew the right. Almost 30 now, Whitney’s right arm is slightly longer than the left, her left leg is about three-and-a-half centimeters longer than the right, and she has more muscle definition overall on her right side. “It makes things real interesting,” she says with a wry smile.

But if you know Whitney at all, you know she is rather competitive, and not one to make excuses, even when those excuses would be entirely justified. The girl wanted to dance and dance she did. “You grow up as a dancer, you grow up in a mirror,” she says, and for better or worse, she imbibed the subtle and not-so-subtle messages that perfection was the only option. Three to four hours a day, five days a week, she looked in a mirror and modeled her physical form after someone else—her teacher or the best student in class—and constantly worked to make her version match their version. In CrossFit or yoga, there are ways to mold or modify the movements to your body’s specific geometry but in studio dance, even if your right hip isn’t naturally as high as your left, it doesn’t matter. You get your leg up. You figure it out. And you don’t let anyone see you sweat.

Of course, Whitney did figure it out. She became one of the best dancers in the studio, figuring out how to pirouette or balançoire such that no one would notice she had a stronger side. Within a year of her surgery, she was dancing with the 16-year-olds and began performing in national competitions. She first experienced the nervous pees at one such competition, wearing a tiny crushed-velvet maroon dress, before going onstage to perform a dance called “Cherish,” set to a sultry Sade song. Being exposed to an older peer group roused Whitney’s desire for greater independence and she admits that she developed an attitude and experimented with being a bit stuck-up. She began assisting dance classes, demoing movement for younger girls and giving small movement corrections. By the time she was 16, she was spending her summers teaching and choreographing.

It was around this time that Miss Jenny, the owner of the dance studio Whitney grew up in and her beloved teacher, pulled Whitney into her office and said something along the lines of, “You’ve always had a great attitude, but lately that’s been changing. I know this isn’t who you are, and you can’t keep acting this way.” Whitney broke down in tears and apologized. It was complicated feedback for her to receive. While she changed her behavior in ways she sees as positive, yet again there was that insidious message: “Be perfect, little girl. Don’t mess up.”

Her teenage schedule looked like this: Wake up at 6 a.m., go to school, musical practice (yes, musical practice) from 4-6 p.m., slamming a roasted chicken breast Subway sandwich, dance from 6:30-9:30 p.m. at the studio, go home and do homework until 2 a.m. As you might expect, Whitney was a quiet, diligent student, and got straight A’s. She floated around on the fringes of friend groups and didn’t party. She has a somewhat photographic memory and liked school to what she says was probably “an annoying degree.” Also, that competitive side again: from a young age, she not-so-secretly tracked her hockey-playing smart older brother’s GPA, and constantly checked whether she was beating him (they were both eighth-grade valedictorians).

Whitney knew she would study dance after high school. What else would I do? she thought. This is what I’m doing, this is what I love. Despite getting a full-ride to the University of Arizona’s prestigious dance program, she picked the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, whose dance program was smaller and had a heavier emphasis on modern dance. She joined a sorority and lived in the house, which on a 4,552-acre campus, was fortunately only a short walk to the dance department. Convenient, given her penchant for waking up at the absolute last minute. Also convenient given that in college, along with learning how to dance in a new style, she learned how to party. (Additionally, she learned things in college that led her to surrender chicken breast sandwiches and become a pescetarian, which we’ve talked to her about here and here.)

Whitney now says that her BFA in dance taught her how to be uncomfortable, how to be creative and express herself, and how to work with people—things that are different than sitting in a statistics class day after day—and that aligned with the kind of person she wanted to be in the world. She also found yoga her junior year when she took an 8am class three days a week as part of the dance program. She loved the disciplined process of repeating the same movements over and over. Her daily hours of dancing had birthed knee problems, bad plantar fasciitis, and arthritis in her big toe, and yoga helped temper those injuries.

After graduating from college in 2008, Whitney moved to New York. Why New York? She was scared of the city and figured that meant she should go there. Her boyfriend, who was living in California at the time, joined her and they found an apartment the South Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. When the boyfriend moved out a couple years later, Whitney walked over to her landlord and his wife’s apartment and asked them to lower the rent so she could still afford it. They said yes, and she told them she’d probably be here forever. She just signed her lease for her eighth year.

Also in 2008, the yoga-inspired athletic apparel company Lululemon only had one store in the entire city, on the Upper West Side. They were about to open three more stores and Whitney got hired to work at the SoHo location. A big component of her job was to take an unlimited amount of classes throughout the city, in which she would wear the clothes, talk about the clothes, and give instructors or the person on the next yoga mat over the clothes. She took all the dance and yoga classes she wanted for free, and in her free time, went to dance auditions. She got certified as a yoga instructor in 2010.

Lululemon soon hired her to open a mini showroom in Brooklyn, and with her team, she began exploring the community—which would lead her to CrossFit South Brooklyn. “I found this weird thing called CrossFit,” one of her colleagues said. “We should go check it out.” It was late 2009, and Whitney emailed David and told her they were interested. David wrote back and offered to set up a teaser class. Whitney forgot to write back, and a few weeks later, she got an email that said, “I saaaaaaiiiiiiiddddddd, let’s set up a free teaser class. Thanks, David.” When they walked into the The Lyceum for the class, a 24-year-old David—donning a thick beard and flannel button-up—was sitting with his feet up on a desk. “We were all simultaneously like, ‘Who is this cute guy?’ and also, ‘Is he for real?’” Whitney says, laughing. She was taking at least one or two dance or yoga classes each day and though she’d never set foot in a gym, she certainly didn’t think she was out of shape. It only took a few CrossFit classes for her to realize that there might be more to fitness than she’d realized. After a longer conditioning workout, she even asked David if it was possible for her heart to explode. “No,” he said. “Take a break, but you’re fine.”

When Whitney was fired from Lululemon in December of 2012, she’d begun attending CFSBK classes more regularly. CrossFit had unexpectedly become important to her. She loved the absence of mirrors, and along with picking up the movements relatively easily, something clicked and she learned, yet again, how to be uncomfortable.

Losing her job would give her a new opportunity to practice that skill. “It was a shock, but a necessary push off a cliff,” Whitney says now, and she began to shed the parts of her identify that were tied up in her job. At CFSBK, David approached her and asked her to staff the new Front Desk, which replaced the old envelope that used to sit on a table at the entryway. Whitney accepted, and also began teaching a few regular yoga classes.

At a certain point, she began realizing a couple things: One, that CrossFit South Brooklyn was really a special place, and two, that she couldn’t help but see things. She’d be foam-rolling on the mat before class and see a person from preceding class doing a lift, and she’d wonder to herself, What would I say to them to make that lift better? What cue would I give them? Occasionally she’d share her thoughts with her bar partners, but she mostly kept her mouth shut, and trained hard.

Toward the end of 2013, apropos of nothing but her own initiative, Whitney got her Level 1 certification. She casually mentioned it to David, though she was committed to becoming a CrossFit coach regardless of whether he would hire her—which he did, in January of 2014. It was around that time that a few other big things happened. She picked up more consistent work as a yoga instructor. She adopted her dog, Penny, who watches over the meat CSA pick-ups and is almost as big a part of the community as Whitney (and certainly oft-photographed). And she started to realize that her skills had changed in the gym. She knew how to push.

“What’s so wonderful about CrossFit is that you can only work against your own edge,” she says. “You could try to work against someone else’s edge, but you’ll end up hurting yourself or underserving yourself. The best thing you can do is work against your own edge consistently, while also having the perspective of other people. It’s important to see, for me especially, other women in the gym whose strength you admire—and to say, ‘Damn, okay… let’s go.’” 2015 was the first year she didn’t dance, but everything is a compromise of some kind, she says. Training and coaching CrossFit happen to be what she loves the most.

*She’s had her fair share of wipeouts, of course. Ask her about a tuna fish sandwich and red grapes in grade school, or about her recently deceased toenail.

Parting Shots
How she likes her eggs: Either scrambled or over-medium. Three eggs a day!
Favorite book: Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections
Favorite lift: Snatch
Something she’d like CFSBK members to know: She really, really likes coaching, and when you tell her that something she said or did made a difference for you, it makes her heart swell with joy and contentment.

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Yesterday’s Whiteboard: Sumo Deadlift | Kettlebell Swings, Box Jumps
The Accidental Powerlifting World Record Holder The New Yorker

Sumo Deadlift

3-3-3-3-3

Work up to a heavy triple for the day. No failing. No loss of neutral spine.

Post loads to comments.

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5 rounds for reps:
1 Minute Russian KB Swings 53/35
1 Minute Box Jumps 24/20″
1 Minute Rest

Post reps and Rx to comments.

These CrossFit Kids are off and running under the watchful eye of Coach David

• Reminder: We’re running on our regular schedule today. Hop on over and get your fitness on!

Catching Up with the CFSBK Classifieds 

Did you know that we offer a classifieds section of the website for our members? Well, we do! Here are a few examples of goods and services up for grabs at the moment:

• Stella Z. is giving away two free(!) tickets to an April 17th performance of Mozart, Bach, and Mendelssohn by the Calidore String Quartet.
• Actually, that’s it for now. Nothing else has been posted recently! Get on there and post some more! CFSBK members have advertised everything from juicers to furniture to cars (no illegal exotic pets, please).

We hope you’ll take advantage of this fun feature. Many people have found roommates there. Why deal with Craigslist when you can live with your workout partner?

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Getting Rid of the “Butt Wink”  All Hands on Fitness
How Running and Meditation Change the Brains of the Depressed NYMag

Open Workout 16.5

21-18-15-12-9-6-3 reps for time of:
Thrusters 95/65
Bar-Facing Burpees

This workout begins with the barbell on the floor and the athlete standing tall. At the call of “3, 2, 1 … go,” the athlete will perform 21 Thrusters, then 21 Burpees, jumping over the barbell for each rep of the Burpees. They will then perform 18 of each, then 15 of each, etc., until the last round of 3 of each. Every second counts in this workout. Your score will be the time it takes to complete all 168 repetitions. There is no time cap for this workout.

This workout ends when the feet land on the other side of the bar on the final rep. Time will be recorded in full seconds. Do not round up. If you finish in 7:49.8, your score is 7:49.

If you do not use standard-sized bumper plates on the barbell, you will also need a second barbell set with standard plates to jump over for the burpees, unless you are Scaled Masters. Scaled Masters will be permitted to jump over an empty barbell on the Burpees.

Post times to comments.

Exactly one year ago: Steph M. at the top of a Thruster in Open Workout 15.5. Good luck to everyone doing 16.5 today!

Supergirl Documentary Kickstarter Campaign