Another way to use the wall ball racks in 597, from the Art Show last Saturday. We’re still digging the art of Inna Aizenshtein, a fellow CrossFitter from CrossFit Virtuosity (pictured above). Many of you already saw her work (and even bought some of her pieces!), but check out more of her stuff on her website.

Thanksgiving Schedule Changes 

Today, Friday (11/27): 
ON: 10am, 11am, 12pm, Open Gym 5:30-8pm
CANCELLED: 6am, 7am, 8am, CrossFit Kids

Saturday (11/28):
CANCELLED: 8am, Yoga for Athletes, Active Recovery

Sunday (11/29):
CANCELLED: Active Recovery

Join the Global Climate March this Sunday, November 29th at 2pm!

On Sunday, November 29th at 2pm, millions of people across the planet will take to the streets on the eve of the UN Climate Talks in Paris to demand bold, urgent action on the climate crisis. To support this massive mobilization, the People’s Climate Movement is hosting a virtual climate march where thousands will send in photos or messages about why they want action on climate to make sure world leaders hear us. 

Whether you’re able to join in the streets, or if you just want to support from home, we need your voice. Get more information about the March here, or check out the NYC Facebook page.

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Photographing Veterans Back From War The New York Times 

Clean and Jerk

Work up to something heavier than you’ll use for today’s metcon.

Exposure 7/8
Post loads to comments
_____________________

Partner WOD:
1000m Row
10 Rounds of “DT“
1000m Row

Partners can complete the rows however desired, but must alternate full rounds of “DT.”

One round of DT is:

15 Deadlifts 155/105
9 Hang Power Cleans
6 Jerks

Post time and Rx to comments.

Mirko and Ozzy wish you a Happy Turkey Day, or whatever holiday you happen to be celebrating!

• Constance’s segment on CBS News will re-air this morning around 8-8:30am! Tune in and show your friends and families the gym you work out in!

Thanksgiving Schedule Changes 

Thursday (11/26) THANKSGIVING: 
ON: 8am, 9am, 10am
CANCELLED: 6am, 7am, 12pm, 4:30pm, 5:30pm, 6:30pm, 7:30pm, 8:30pm, Active Recovery, Comp Class

Friday (11/27): 
ON: 10am, 11am, 12pm, Open Gym 5:30-8pm
CANCELLED: 6am, 7am, 8am, CrossFit Kids

Saturday (11/28):
CANCELLED: 8am, Yoga for Athletes, Active Recovery

Sunday (11/29):
CANCELLED: Active Recovery

CFSBK Is Thankful For You!

We’ve posted this as an Athlete of the Month article, however the language and sentiment keeps being appropriate. We coaches would like to honor you all, and this is the forum to do it in. You come to Degraw Street from near and far, even spending up to an hour on a bike or subway to train with us. You come to us early in the morning before work or school, you make time in your lunch hours to WOD with us, and you even make it in in the evening after a long day spent at a desk or caring for kids. You do “shifts” at the gym, caring for your children while your spouse gets their WOD on. You’re willing to hold someone else’s kid so that their mom or dad can finish up at the end of a class. You make time for not just the fitness aspect of CFSBK but you also put in hours and energy to volunteer at events both in-house and on the road. You do your best to learn the names of the people who are squatting and skipping rope next to you. You cheer, hoot, and holler encouragement at your people.

SBKers are YOUR people… You lift hard, you row hard, and you push yourself and everyone around you to be better. You are coachable. You are humble, and eager to help a new member feel right at home. You travel and visit CrossFit gyms around the country and world at large and represent South Brooklyn well. You are proud, if not even a little conceited, that you work out at CrossFit South Brooklyn. You bring your dogs into the gym so the dog-less among you can get a little canine love in the form of a belly rub or a lower leg tongue bath. You socialize outside of the gym with other SBKers and know how to show love the Brooklyn way, whether or not you were born here. Most of all, you “get it.” You are not selfish and you love to see people do well, which is a big part of why we do well.

Thanks to all you special people who make CFSBK what it is and are part of our team. It doesn’t exist without you. Happy Thanksgiving!

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We turned off the comments today so you can turn off your devices and spend time with people you love!

Back Squat

Performance: Low Intensity, 65-70% x 7 x 4 
Add a few pounds to the last low intensity exposure. 
Fitness: 3 x 3 Linear Progression 
Heavier than last week’s 3 x 5. Next week is a 1RM test.

Exposure 7/8
Post loads to comments.
_____________________ 

“Dumbbell Fran”

21-15-9 Reps for Time:
Dumbbell Thrusters
Pull-Ups

Suggested Rx load on the DBs is 45# for guys and 35# for gals. Scale as necessary so that the sets can be done largely unbroken. If large volume pull ups will slow you down to sets of 2-3 then consider the following version of today’s WOD…

5 Rounds for Time:
9 Dumbbell Thrusters
9 Pull-Ups

Sub bands or ring rows as necessary

Post time and Rx to comments.

Jimin S. warming up his snatch. We loved all your comments on Monday! Track back there to read a bunch of members discuss their relationship to this oft-elusive/glorious/intricate lift. 

• Photos from the Art Show are up in our Flickr account. Check ’em out, and see what it looks like when a CrossFit gym is transformed into an art gallery/dance space!
• Constance’s segment on CBS News will re-air on Thanksgiving (tomorrow) around 8-8:30am! Tune in and show your friends and families the gym you work out in!

Thanksgiving Schedule Changes 

Wednesday (11/25): 
ON: 6am, 7am, 8am, 10am, 12pm 4:30pm, 5:30pm
CANCELLED: 6:30pm, 7:30pm, 8:30pm, CrossFit Kids

Thursday (11/26) THANKSGIVING: 
ON: 8am, 9am, 10am
CANCELLED: 6am, 7am, 12pm, 4:30pm, 5:30pm, 6:30pm, 7:30pm, 8:30pm, Active Recovery, Comp Class

Friday (11/27): 
ON: 10am, 11am, 12pm, Open Gym 5:30-8pm
CANCELLED: 6am, 7am, 8am, CrossFit Kids

Saturday (11/28):
CANCELLED: 8am, Yoga for Athletes, Active Recovery

Sunday (11/29):
CANCELLED: Active Recovery

Our Coat + Canned Food + Book Drive Ends Today! Bring Your Donations!

We’re combining our coat and can drive with a book drive this year. To keep it simple our collection dates for coats and cans and books (children, to be specific) are going to run from November 15 – 25. Please bring all donations to the Front Desk.

New York Cares Coat Drive 
Give the gift of warmth this holiday season. CFSBK is collecting new and gently used winter coats to help keep those in need warm during the winter season. New York Cares aims to collect 100,000 gently used winter coats each November and December and distributes them to thousands of men, women, and children who would otherwise go without them. They work hand-in-hand with a wide variety of Community Partners in New York City to make sure coats are distributed as quickly as possible. We are only collecting coats at this time.  

City Harvest Canned Food Drive 
CFSBK is collecting canned foods to help stock NYC’s food pantries and soup kitchens. City Harvest helps feed the more than 1.4 million New Yorkers facing hunger each year. They provide free deliveries of food to more than 500 emergency food programs throughout New York City. The most needed foods are canned fruit, canned vegetables, canned proteins (like fish and chicken), and peanut butter (plastic jars).

Reading Partners Children’s Book Drive
Reading Partners is a national nonprofit organization that trains students from low-income schools to be confident readers and they need more books! Bring your your gently used children’s books to CFSBK for the Reading Partners Book drive. These books benefit struggling readers from kindergarten to the 4th grade. We’ll post a flyer on the bulletin board with author and title suggestions, please donate new or gently used books only.

_____________________
This Woman Is Better Than You at Picking Up Chicks
How to Cook a Perfect Thanksgiving Turkey 

Snickers prepping her hip for the flexion and external rotation necessary to get deep into a squat. Check out some more hip flossing tricks from Kelly Starrett’s MobilityWOD. 

Thanksgiving Schedule Changes 

Wednesday (11/25): 
ON: 6am, 7am, 8am, 10am, 12pm 4:30pm, 5:30pm
CANCELLED: 6:30pm, 7:30pm, 8:30pm, CrossFit Kids

Thursday (11/26) THANKSGIVING: 
ON: 8am, 9am, 10am
CANCELLED: 6am, 7am, 12pm, 4:30pm, 5:30pm, 6:30pm, 7:30pm, 8:30pm, Active Recovery, Comp Class

Friday (11/27): 
ON: 10am, 11am, 12pm, Open Gym 5:30-8pm
CANCELLED: 6am, 7am, 8am, CrossFit Kids

Saturday (11/28):
CANCELLED: 8am, Yoga for Athletes, Active Recovery

Sunday (11/29):
CANCELLED: Active Recovery 

Our Coat + Canned Food + Book Drive Ends Tomorrow! Bring Your Donations!

We’re combining our coat and can drive with a book drive this year. To keep it simple our collection dates for coats and cans and books (children, to be specific) are going to run from November 15 – 25. Please bring all donations to the Front Desk.

New York Cares Coat Drive 
Give the gift of warmth this holiday season. CFSBK is collecting new and gently used winter coats to help keep those in need warm during the winter season. New York Cares aims to collect 100,000 gently used winter coats each November and December and distributes them to thousands of men, women, and children who would otherwise go without them. They work hand-in-hand with a wide variety of Community Partners in New York City to make sure coats are distributed as quickly as possible. We are only collecting coats at this time.  

City Harvest Canned Food Drive 
CFSBK is collecting canned foods to help stock NYC’s food pantries and soup kitchens. City Harvest helps feed the more than 1.4 million New Yorkers facing hunger each year. They provide free deliveries of food to more than 500 emergency food programs throughout New York City. The most needed foods are canned fruit, canned vegetables, canned proteins (like fish and chicken), and peanut butter (plastic jars).

Reading Partners Children’s Book Drive
Reading Partners is a national nonprofit organization that trains students from low-income schools to be confident readers and they need more books! Bring your your gently used children’s books to CFSBK for the Reading Partners Book drive. These books benefit struggling readers from kindergarten to the 4th grade. We’ll post a flyer on the bulletin board with author and title suggestions, please donate new or gently used books only.

_____________________ 
Adele goes undercover as Adele impersonator, pranks actual Adele impersonators Mashable 

Press

Performance: Low Intensity, 65-70% x 7 x 4 
Add a few pounds to your last low intensity exposure. 
Fitness: 3 x 5 Linear Progression 
Add a few pounds to last week. If you’re missing reps, move to a 3×3 this week.

Exposure 7/8
_____________________ 

Deadlift

Work up to a max triple
Go heavier than last week. 

Exposure 7/8
Post loads to comments.
_____________________ 

AMRAP 7 Minutes:
Burpees

Today’s burpees are to a 4″ height (Old 45# bumper or new 45+35# Rogue bumps). Two foot hop on to the plate is Rx. The jump is to the target, and you must come to full stand on top of the plate. Aim to maintain a steady even pace and not red line until the last 30-60 seconds. 

Post reps and Rx to comments.

Coach Whitney dancing to to Nina Simone’s song “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” at the Art Show on Saturday night

I Don’t Wanna Snatch

By Chris Fox

Your flexibility sucks, you don’t move a lot of weight, it bothers your wrists, even the kids in CrossFit Teens snatch more than you… should you even show up on a snatch day? I’d argue an emphatic YES.

The snatch not only displays athleticism arguably better than anything else, it also develops it better than anything you can do—certainly anything with a barbell. You need to be powerful and flexible to move big weight in the snatch, but of course, you also need to be powerful and flexible to do a back handspring. The thing that makes the snatch a better developer of displaying those qualities is that you can start light and add weight as you develop proficiency.

In CrossFit, we work on the stuff we suck at. We become better, more well-rounded athletes when we develop our weaknesses. It’s fine if you want to specialize and become really be good at X, Y, or Z, but if your goal is to be stronger and fitter overall, then the snatch will help you tremendously. 

You should work on developing a mature overhead squat. That might mean that on snatch days you power snatch and ride down to your best bottom position and hold in a more controlled manner than in a full snatch. It’s still a position worth working on. I always tell my Foundations groups on Overhead Squat/Snatch day (where the majority of people have a hard time, by the way), that if you can sit in the bottom of a mature overhead squat (feet flat, knees out, torso neutral and upright, arms locked out overhead) then there’s almost no other thing in the gym we can’t teach you over time. You’ll still need requisite strength, power, and skill to do stuff but your flexibility will be sufficient. 

Snatching can be fun! It can also be frustrating because there are so many aspects of the lift that can go right or wrong, but I think it’s the most fun you can have with a barbell for exactly that reason. There’s nothing more rewarding in the gym than a hard-earned snatch PR. Truthfully, I hated the lift when I first started because I was bad at it. If you stick with it you’ll develop proficiency in time and be mediocre like me. 😉 Let’s face it, you or I will never snatch like Liu Xiaojun (holy shit! And don’t forget the ladies) but we can still improve. Before CrossFit I had practiced cleans but not snatches. The snatch had to play catch-up for quite some time. I could clean around 200 pounds but struggled to snatch just over 100 pounds. I finally put my pride in my back pocket and decided that I would work on it. Over the last few years, my snatch has just about doubled while my clean has gone up by a comparably meager 25%, but I’m a much more balanced weightlifter. 

Need to work on your flexibility for the overhead squat? Do them all the damned time. Seriously, make them part of your warm up ALL THE TIME. Active Recovery is also always a good place to learn new tricks but here are a few oldies and goodies that you can explore on your own time. Happy Snatching!

More Resources:
Kelly Starrett (Mobility WOD) Snatch Prep
Greg Everett (Catalyst) on Flexibility for the Overhead Squat
Colin Burns (Juggernaut) on the Snatch and Overhead Squat

Thanksgiving Schedule Changes 

Wednesday (11/25): 
ON: 6am, 7am, 8am, 10am, 12pm 4:30pm, 5:30pm
CANCELLED: 6:30pm, 7:30pm, 8:30pm, CrossFit Kids

Thursday (11/26) THANKSGIVING: 
ON: 8am, 9am, 10am
CANCELLED: 6am, 7am, 12pm, 4:30pm, 5:30pm, 6:30pm, 7:30pm, 8:30pm, Active Recovery, Comp Class

Friday (11/27): 
ON: 10am, 11am, 12pm, Open Gym 5:30-8pm
CANCELLED: 6am, 7am, 8am, CrossFit Kids

Saturday (11/28):
CANCELLED: 8am, Yoga for Athletes, Active Recovery

Sunday (11/29):
CANCELLED: Active Recovery 

_____________________
Describe your relationship to the snatch.