Bench/Row WOD

5 Rounds:
5 Bench Presses, as heavy as possible
250m Row for time

This is a slight variation on a WOD we’ve programmed a few times over the years. Work up to as heavy a load as possible on the Bench Press while still making all 5 reps. Your score for the Bench Press portion is the total poundage moved for all 5 work sets. However, if you miss a rep and only complete 4 then you score a 0 for the Bench Press for that round. There is no time component for the entire round, but you’ll score each 250m Erg sprint. The intent is to go all out on the row. Set the monitor up to count down 250m and score your time for that as well. Rest as needed (probably at least 3 minutes) between rounds. Score total pounds moved in sets of 5 and total time for the Erg sprints.

David G. working on his Handstand Push-Ups

• In case you missed it, check out Coach David‘s new post at Inside the Affiliate, “How To Give Newbies Their First Taste of CrossFit.” It’s a fun, interesting read!

The 2016 CFSBK CrossFit Open Intramural Team Competition

Morit (right) on the podium with Val and Ellie at Fight Gone Bad 2015

• The fourth LFPB Q&A Info Session, “Adjusting Nutrition to Meet Your Goals,” is this Thursday at 6:30pm.
• We have a ton of your stuff in our Lost and Found! Do any of these shoes belong to you? What about this other stuff? Please claim it before we donate it to CHIPS in two weeks!
  

The Iron Maidens of CFSBK: Morit Summers

The Iron Maidens Raw Open is fast approaching! Leading up to the event, we’ll be posting brief interviews with CFSBK lifters to help you get to know our team and give you a sense of what these women are doing to prepare. This year, through competitors’ fundraising efforts, Iron Maidens will create the inaugural annual Iron Maidens Stay Strong Scholarship. Our goal is to raise $20,000 to pay for 70% of college tuition for 10 women in the College Prep program at the Bronx-based Grace Outreach. Right now we’re at $17,335 donated. We’re so close, and we need your help to reach the finish line! You can donate to a lifters’ campaign by going here.

What’s your athletic background, Mo? When did you start barbell training?

I don’t really have an athletic background. I started lifting weights when I was 14. I was overweight and did not enjoy sports, so the gym became a part of my life. I went to SUNY Cortland for Exercise Science and Kinesiology, and that’s where I learned how to use the barbell. I really didn’t start working out with the barbell all the time until I joined CrossFit South Brooklyn a little over a year ago. Now I couldn’t live without it.  

How has lifting impacted you athletically and personally?

Lifting is really the only time I feel at my most confident. I am the strongest I have ever been and feel that I can always become better and that there is always room for improvement. I am excited to be at my most athletic in my 30s. I’ve always lifted, but Iron Maidens has given me something new and different to work towards. I’m at a crossroads in my life and career, and having this to focus on has been really amazing and empowering.

Have you competed in a powerlifting meet before?

No, this will be my first powerlifting competition. I am super excited to do this for the first time in a place I feel comfortable and surrounded by strong women! I work in the fitness industry, and for a lot of people it’s about aesthetics and the amount of weight you can lift (although I know that at a powerlifting meet we are trying lift a big number). To me the event means so much more than the numbers! 

So this is your first time competing in Iron Maidens! Anything in particular that you’re looking forward to or nervous about?

It is my first time, and I’m really looking forward to being surrounded by strong women! People have always told me I’m strong, but I’ve never been totally sure what that means. I really feel like training for this competition is a way of proving to myself what I am capable of. I’m not nervous now. I know I will be the day of, maybe even the week of. Usually before any competition I’m incredibly nervous until I get started.

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Yesterday’s Whiteboard: Clean | Front Squats, Toes-to-Bars
Is It Dangerous to Sleep with Your Smartphone? Hopes&Fears
CrossFit HQ Redesigns CrossFit.com

Power Clean

Every Minute on the Minute for 15 minutes:
3 Touch-and-Go Power Cleans
Start light and build to a max for the day.

Post loads to comments.

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5 Rounds For Time:
12 Front Squats 115/75
10 Toes-to-Bars
The Front Squat weight should be light enough to do unbroken and fast, even if you don’t really want to. Nowhere to hide on this one. Sub Hanging Leg Raises for Toes-to-Bars as necessary.

Manuel G. demonstrates an excellent front rack postition

• Over on Inside the Affiliate, Coach David just published an interesting new piece entitled “How To Give Newbies Their First Taste of CrossFit.” It’s an excellent reminder of how lucky we are to be part of a gym where the managment puts so much thought into programming and works so hard to create an inclusive environment. What was your first CrossFit workout? Tell us in the comments!
  

New Programming Cycle Starts Today!

This next 8-week Group Programming Cycle, running from 2/15/16 until 4/10/16, will take a different approach than our previous cycles. Instead of programming the same lifts on the same days of the week for the entirety of the cycle, we’re going to rotate through different movement variations across 3 categories in the strength/skill portion of each class. These 3 categories are: Olympic WeightlIfting (the Snatch, the Clean and Jerk, and all their variations), Powerlifting (Squats, Presses, and Pulls), and Gymnastics Skill Work (Ring and Bar Muscle-Ups, Inversions, etc). This will provide broader exposure to a wider pool of movements and allow for the daily programming to look much like a class that’s prepping for an Open Workout. Since we’re running right through the Open this cycle, it’s perfect timing! Here’s the basic structure:

Monday – Olympic lift + Metcon
Tuesday – Rest
Wednesday – Powerlift + Metcon
Thursday – Olympic lift + Metcon
Friday – Rest
Saturday – Skill (or Open Workout prep) + Metcon (or Open Workout)
Sunday – Powerlift + Metcon

We’ll continue to throw in some Not For Time assistance/accessory work and will vary the mode and time domains of the metcons, so you can expect to see some Olympic lifting variants in the metcon on powerlifting day and vice-versa.

During the CrossFit Open, we’ll be programming Open Workouts on Saturdays. This means you’ll have several opportunities to complete them and get your scores in. You’ll be able to do Open Workouts at the following classes:

Friday – All morning classes (following Saturday programming), plus Friday evening Open Gym
Saturday – All classes, plus Saturday afternoon OG
Sunday – Evening OG

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Yesterday’s Whiteboard: Handstand Walking | Chipper WOD
How Steph Curry Got the Best Worst Ankles in Sports ESPN
CrossFit Teens: Competing at Wodapalooza and More Fitness HQ

Handstand Walking

Choose one of the following scaling options and spend 12 minutes developing your hand balancing:
A) Hand Walking (free or 2′ from wall)
B) Wall Inverted Hip Shifts with Hand Release (from a kick up)
C) Box Piked Hip Shifts with Hand Release
D) Floor Piked Hip Shifts with Hand Release

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For Time:
50 Double-Unders
50 Pull-Ups
50 Double-Unders
50 Burpees
50 Double-Unders
50 Squats
50 Double-Unders
50 AbMat Sit-Ups
50 Double-Unders
Aim to stay below redline on this chipper. Break the sets up as needed to stay fresh throughout. Smooth and steady is the goal. 

Remember summer? Dan G. and Greg C. do 

Editor’s Note: Tomorrow we’ll be posting the template for the upcoming group programming cycle, which will be quite different from the way we’ve organized mesocycles in the past. Our basic programming philosophy will, however, remain the same. Now’s a good time to revisit it! The article below was orginally posted on 6.10.2014. Enjoy! 

The Underlying Philosophy Behind Programming at CFSBK

By Chris Fox 

At CFSBK, we program for long-term health and fitness utilizing strength training, Olympic lifting, gymnastics, and mostly CrossFit-style couplet and triplet conditioning work. While some days look a bit different, a routine day at CrossFit South Brooklyn looks like this: DROMs, Warm Ups, Lifting, WOD prep, followed by a WOD. Let’s look at some of the reasons why we structure and program this way in terms of what each segment offers. 

DROMs: A general, light, dynamic warm up of joints and soft tissue will get your heart rate up a bit and help you enter a training mindset. It starts to get the sleep out of your eyes or the emails in your inbox out of your head. It also offers time for the QOD [LINK], which can lighten the mood and let you get to know a bit about the people you’ll be working hard with. 

Warm Ups: You need to be warmed up properly to move well and help prevent injury. Standardized warm ups move you through a wide range of motion, get you sweaty, and give you an opportunity to develop some strength in basic gymnastics and barbell movements you’ll regularly see in classes. Focused barbell drills review the positions and intentions of the lift you’ll be working on that day. We structure the drills so that you also get warm as you’re doing them.

Lifts: You need to be stronger, as strength is the physical adaptation with the greatest carryover to the rest of your training and to life in general. You may have noticed that we often squat twice each week. We’ve been programming this way for years and for good reason. I can’t say it any better than Mark Rippetoe so here’s a quote from the man himself:

“There is simply no other exercise, and certainly no machine, that provides the level of central nervous activity, improved balance and coordination, skeletal loading and bone density enhancement, muscular stimulation and growth, connective tissue stress and strength, psychological demand and toughness, and overall systemic conditioning than the correctly performed full squat.” 

We agree. 

The Olympic lifts train power, strength, coordination, flexibility, and overall athleticism. If you can throw a heavy weight overhead, catch it in a rock bottom overhead squat, then stand it up (PR bar slam optional), almost all of the other things we do will be easier. As far as the other lifts go, the bench is the best upper body strength developer and is simply fun. The press is another great upper body strength developer—it keeps the shoulder girdle healthy and works the muscles that stabilize your trunk extremely well. Every few cycles we’ll program an upper body gymnastics movement as a strength developer, as this allows us to have some fun and vary the stimulus a bit. The deadlift will get your back stronger like no other exercise can, and it’s almost always the lift where you’ll be able to move the most weight, automatically making it pretty cool. The average lifter should be able to deadlift more than they can squat. If that’s not the case for you, we recommend coming in on days when we’re pulling weights off the floor. 

WOD Prep and WOD: We discuss the intent of the WOD at the whiteboard, along with scaling options and strategies. The WOD is where we get our conditioning and develop the ability to work at high intensities for longer than a set of squats can take us. As stated above, we use mostly mixed modal couplets and triplets. Our conditioning tends to range from short, high intensity three- to seven-minute efforts, to medium intensity eight- 15-minute efforts on most days, with a lower intensity 20-minute-plus WOD thrown in once a week or so. 

Even when the total time is above 15 minutes, we’ll often use interval work so that intensity stays high, given that high intensity (anaerobic) training has positive carryovers to low intensity (aerobic) training and offers other benefits. High intensity training can develop and preserve muscle mass, whereas long slow distance training can cause you to lose it if used exclusively. High intensity training creates EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption), which sets your metabolism up to burn slightly more fat after exercise compared to endurance-type training—a boon if you’re looking to lose extra fat. Plus it’s time effective. If you can get the same or better benefit metabolically with shorter high intensity training, then the only reason to do the long slow stuff is if you don’t want to work that hard. 

Consider that maybe you don’t need more “cardio,” but actually need to work harder. I’d argue that hard work will also make you stronger in non-physical ways. We throw something like “Murph” at you a few times each year since we know you secretly love it and it’s cool to see that you haven’t lost your ability to go that long in spite of all your gainz. If we programmed hero type WODs all the time however, we’d likely have an oft-injured population with a narrow scope of fitness. Time and intensity have an inverse relationship in that the longer you work, the lower the intensity must be. By intensity, I mean power output. I know a marathon can be an intense experience, but you’re not working as hard on those miles as you would be while doing 800m repeats. Furthermore, the longer you go, the more reps you’re going to be doing and the more fatigued you’ll be. You don’t move better on the 69th deadlift compared to the 9th, trust me. Remember: we’re programming for our general population to be fit for the long term—not to crush a week’s worth of hero WODs followed by six weeks of PT. 

Cool Down: This portion is largely up to you, but you really don’t need us to babysit while you run, row an easy 1000 meters, or spend some quality time with a foam roller. 

To wrap up, CFSBK’s programming is designed to give you the most training value. We do these things because they are effective, not because they are in vogue or even because our members demand that we do things a certain way. We’ve withstood a few silly fitness trends in favor of what science and experience says works and will continue to do so, evolving as we learn. Training here is hard, it’s consistent, and it isn’t always exciting or sexy, but it works. We’re lucky to have so many of you who seem to agree and are willing to put in the hard work!

What, in your opinion, was the most difficult workout of this Crush Week? 

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Yesterday’s Whiteboard: Partner WOD
Donald J. Trump State Park Atlas Obscura 
Streetcar Desired The Awl 

Partner WOD

With one partner working at a time, partners alternate full rounds in this workout to complete 10 total rounds for time of:
8 Hang Squat Clean Thrusters 135/95
270m Run or 300m Row
First partner completes a full round, then second partner starts on the Hang Squat Clean Thrusters when they finish the run or row.

Post time and Rx to comments. 

Griselle O. and Jason M. were all matchy on Wednesday night. Get it? Because their shirts match and also it’s called a rugby match. I’m sorry

Interested in Working Among CFSBKers at a Part-Time Workspace?

Brooklyn Creative League offers part-time workspace to independent workers, creative freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small-shop companies across Brooklyn and NYC. Several CFSBKers, including Richard G., Rob U., and Joe M., work there and can attest to the great environment. Get the details about availability and amenities over at brooklyncreativeleague.com.

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Yesterday’s Whiteboard: Rest Day
What I Paid To Be A Division I Athlete Vice 
13-Year-Old Maryana Naumova Benches 240lbs Raw YouTube