Jason F. with Kelly Starrett, the mobility man himself

Notes from Jason Fidler, D.C.: Moving Smart and Increasing Performance

If the word “chiropractor” conjures for you images of the sedentary back cracking, once a week for the rest of your life, it’s because you haven’t met me. I am a chiropractor whose focus is on fixing biomechanics (the way you move), particularly in those who experience physical pain above and beyond the Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) associated with workout recovery. The benefits of a chiropractor are not just for those with back pain, but for anyone that has experienced a sports-related injury.

What differentiates me from typical chiropractors and physical therapists is my integration of Selective Functional Movement Assessment. The SFMA is a diagnostic tool that measures fundamental patterns of movement, such as squatting, bending, overhead positions, etc., in those with musculoskeletal pain. The screening teases out where you are not moving well and directs appropriate treatment towards that region. It is highly effective because it addresses the root of the problem: lack of mobility and/or dysfunctional motor patterns. Thus, I can craft the best personal treatment plan for each patient. Nothing here is cookie cutter. Because 90 percent of the treatment plan is reaching the right diagnosis, I’ll look at your life holistically: where and how you work, your at-rest posture, and everything in between. 

So what will treatments look like? The first appointment lasts about an hour, and gives me the chance to take a detailed medical history and perform a physical exam. Follow-up visits are normally 20-40 minutes. If we are dealing with a mobility issue, then the treatment is geared towards removing locked-up joints and tissues with gentle adjustments and manual therapies, and enhanced instruction on using mobility protocols you associate with active recovery class and MobilityWOD. When some people think of chiropractors, they think of bone popping and back pain, but motor control issues are different. Corrective exercises are utilized to restore functional movement patterns. After all appointments, you are given a report along with a set of home instructions, often supplemented with pictures and/or video, detailing how to perform the exercises. 

One of the great things about working out of CFSBK is that I can communicate with the coaches to co-manage your treatment. The quality of coaching at this CrossFit box is topnotch. Our coaches offer excellent instruction to help improve your performance, remove inefficiencies, and provide other helpful recommendations. What they can’t do is provide a diagnosis—something that falls within the scope of an orthopedist, physical therapist, or chiropractor. Should you present with something beyond the scope of my expertise, I can refer you to someone in my network of high-level practitioners (massage therapist, running coach, physiatrist, to name a few). After receiving a working diagnosis, you will spend less time in the doctor’s office and more in the gym, correcting the issue under supervision of an informed coach.

Remember: while some chiropractors want to see you endlessly, I work to see you less and teach you how to take care of your body. By unraveling subtle dysfunctions in how you move throughout the day, we will get you better and returned to play as fast as possible.

Visit me in CFSBK’s annex space during my office hours (by appointment only), on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 4-8pm and Saturday 1-4pm. Schedule an appointment at FidlerDC [at] gmail.com, or by calling 718.858.4360. Find more information, as well as rates and insurance, at MovementEqualsLife.com.

Let’s move better, and work this pain away!

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Tinkerers’ Workshop: Slow Furniture Recrafted from Trash Fair Companies
Dehydration Impacts Heart Rate and Performance Breaking Muscle
Training Weaknesses with Dumbbells Catalyst Athletics
Watercress Tops List of ‘Powerhouse Fruits and Vegetables.’ Who Knew? Washington Post 

Fitness
AMRAP 10 minutes:
5 Deadlift 225/155
5 Push Up
10 Deadlift
10 Push Up
15 Deadlift
15 Push Up
20 Deadlift
20 Push Up
25 Deadlift
25 Push Ups
Etc. Add 5 reps per round 

Performance
“Diane”
21-15-9 reps for time of:
Deadlift 225/155
Handstand Push Ups

Shaneve getting her squat on at “Murph”

Foraging in Prospect Park with “Wildman” Steve Brill

Let your natural hunter-gatherer come forth and take your Paleo diet to the next level as we join naturalist Steve Brill for one of his foraging tours right in our backyard in search of seasonal edible and medicinal wild plants and mushrooms. The tour will be on Sunday, June 22, meeting at Grand Army Plaza at 11:45am. $20 suggested donation for the four-hour tour. RSVP to Mare by Friday, June 20 at mare [at] crossfitsouthbrooklyn.com if you’d like to join.

Throwback Thursday

There wasn’t a blog post on this specific day in 2008 (gasp!) but around this time, the following fun things were happening: Coach Jeremy deadlifted 520# at the East Coast Challenge (swipe to 6:17 to see him stampin’ like a beast in his Converse). David traveled back to Colombia, his homeland, and enjoyed being Internet-less. In the comments, everyone was posting daily what they had for breakfast. And the Brooklyn Lyceum was temporarily closed for an event, so CFSBKers had to WOD back at St. Mary’s Playground, where everything started.

News and Notes

• Check out Yoga for Athletes with Coach Whitney at 7:30pm tonight, but remember that the next three sessions are canceled.
• ICYMI, our friends at CrossFit Virtuosity made it to the Crossfit Games. They placed third at the North East Regionals and now need help fundraising for their trip to Carson City. Head over here if you want to help!

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Regarding Bulk Iron Ethos 
Being Happy With Sugar The Atlantic
Colon Cancer Screening Saves Lives New York Times
More Office Workers Switching To Fetal Position Desks The Onion

Fitness: Spend 15 minutes working up to a moderate load on the complex of:
Halting Clean Deadlift + Clean + Jerk
Focus on having your weight over your mid foot at the mid-hang position. If you have a hard time organizing the pull off the floor, perform the clean from the mid-hang, after the clean halting deadlift. 

Performance:
1) Clean and Jerk 
1-1-1

2) High Hang Clean + Knee Hang Clean + Jerk 
70% x (1+1+1) x 2

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Front Squat

Fitness: 3 x 5 Linear Progression
Start at a weight that allows you to make jumps for the next 5 weeks.

Performance: 70% x 8 x 4
Rest two minutes between sets. Use 105% of the 1RM you used for last cycle. 

Post loads to comments.
e1/6

Ladies who make front squatting look fun

• Happy belated birthday, Pablo!

First Veg and Egg CSA Pickup Today PLUS Eggs for Sale

Today is the first pickup of the season for the Sol Flower Farm vegetable CSA as well as the Herondale egg CSA. Here’s what you need to know:

• Bring your own bags to carry your goodies home
• Pickup is 6-8:30pm; anything unclaimed by 8:30pm is given away
• When you arrive, see Michele with the clipboard to check your name off the list
• Questions or issues? Email mignyc [at] gmail.com

Still want to sign up to receive eggs every week? You can! Download this form and return it to Herondale Farm. 

Finally, have you been wondering how delicious a pastured, farm-raised egg could possibly be? It’s your lucky night! We will be offering eggs by the dozen for sale tonight to any member. They are $6.50, cash only. See Michele to purchase.

LAST CHANCE to join CFSBK’s Speed/Power Series 

And while you’re at it, you can train for a super fun track meet, old school style.

Where: the epic Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island
When: July 22, 2014

Michael O.’s Speed/Power Series crew is participating in a variety of events, from the 5000m, 1500m, 800m, and 4x400m relay. If you are interested in participating in any solo event or as part of a relay team, email michael.olzinski [at] gmail.com. To learn more about the event, click here.

QOD: What was your favorite outfit or article of clothing as a child?

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11 Sneaky Ways to Move Every Day Breaking Muscle
The Roughest, Toughest Race in the World The Atlantic
The Workout: Becoming Rocky Balboa New York Times
Veteran FDNY Firefighter Is In Serious Need Of A Marrow Donor

CFSBK’s Calaveras softball team after their win on Friday

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 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!

Reminders

• Come get mobile tonight with Coach Fox at 6:30pm for Active Recovery. Why do we run AR classes at CFSBK? Coach David wrote a whole article about it over on his blog, ITA. Check it out!
• Check out Pilates with KH at 7:30pm tonight, but remember that next week’s session is canceled. 

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Chad Vaughn, 315 pound Clean and Jerk in Slow Motion CrossFit
Why I Hate CrossFit The Box Magazine
Losing Weight May Require Some Serious Fun New York Times
Ballet Dancers’ Toughest Moves, Explained In Slow Motion The Hairpin 

Farmer Carries

Spend 20 minutes alternating 30m carries with a partner. Go heavy. 

20 Minutes Not for Rounds:
400m Row
30-50 Double Unders (about a minute) OR 10-20 Pull Ups. Choose which skill you need the most work on.
:20-:30 L-Sit

The pull ups can be strict or kipping, but should be sub max effort. 

Because at CFSBK, we’re inclusive of all ranges of skills, personalities, and ages

Still Interested in the Veggie CSA?

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Born to Be Mild CrossFit Journal
Parenting Against the Grain: Going Furniture-Free SlowMama

• Happy birthday, Roosevelt M.!

Bend, Stretch, Mobilize, and Flip

• Yoga for Athletes with Coach Whitney at 10am
• Active Recovery at 11am and 12pm with Coach David
• If you signed up for Ken H.’s back flip class, remember that you’re meeting today from 2-3:30pm

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An Open Letter to the Songwriters of “Let It Go” McSweeney’s
Subway Hero Rescues Wedding Ring New York Times
The Scientific Reason Why Tetris Is So Addicting Shape

Performance
20 minutes Not for Rounds:
1-3 Strict Muscle Ups
3-6 Strict Handstand Push Ups (deficit if you can)
6-10 Pistols

Rest as needed between movements. 

Fitness
20 Minutes Not for Rounds:
1 Wall Walk with a :10 hold
5 Ring Dips or Push Ups
10e Goblet Deficit Lunges

Rest as needed between movements. 

Elijah Muhammad crushing it at the South East Regionals last weekend 

Join Keith F. at the Out Fit Challenge 

Keith F. is running in the Out Fit Challenge on Saturday, June 21st, in Tuxedo, NY. This is a LGBT 5K mud-run with post-race free beer, and Keith is looking for more teammates! If you want to join, you can sign up for his team by viewing his team page here. It’s about $60.00, with processing fees and insurance included. He’s got a team of seven now, and would love to add more CFSBKers! Feel free to email Keith for more info at keithrfr [at] gmail.com. 

Upcoming Programming Cycle

Our next cycle starts on Monday! In case you missed it last time, there is a new link in the new left-hand column, called Current Programming Cycle. The page includes the dates of each component of the cycle, the template, the programming plan per movement (such as the percentages or whether fitness is doing a linear progression), and any competitions or athletic events happening during the cycle. Many of you requested that the information on that page be more readily available and here it is!  

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Health Experts See Benefits in Push to Cut Pollution New York Times
Are You Addicted to Dining Out? GQ
Some Surprising Things VSauce
Sleeping: Neck, Shoulders, and Pillows mobility|WOD

A: Turkish Get-Up 101

B: TGU/Swing Partner Couplet
With a partner, alternate the following work for 15 Minutes:
3 Turkish get-ups, right arm
30 Kettlebell Swings
3 Turkish get-ups, left arm

Go heavy on this. One person should always be working.

C: Chin-Up/Weighted Plank Couplet
With a partner, alternate the following work for 15 Minutes:
:45 Weighted Forearm Plank
6 Strict chest to bar Chin-Ups with a :02 hold at the top

Focus on a mature finish position on your chin-ups.

Foraging in Prospect Park with “Wildman” Steve Brill

Let your natural hunter-gatherer come forth and take your Paleo diet to the next level as we join naturalist Steve Brill for one of his foraging tours right in our backyard in search of seasonal edible and medicinal wild plants and mushrooms. The tour will be on Sunday, June 22, meeting at Grand Army Plaza at 11:45am. $20 suggested donation for the four-hour tour. RSVP to Mare by Friday, June 20 at mare [at] crossfitsouthbrooklyn.com if you’d like to join.

Have you ever wanted to learn to do a standing back flip? 

Now is your chance. Join guest gymnastics coach Ken H. THIS SATURDAY as he takes you through various progressions leading up to doing standing back flips.

Buy-in: Power clean your body weight
Time: Saturday, June 7th, 2-3:30pm
Cost: $20 

The class is capped at 8 participants, so don’t think twice! Register Here! 

Ken Haller’s Bio
Ken was a nationally competitive gymnast in Newton, MA and at the University of Michigan. After graduating, Ken coached for eight years at Capital Gymnastics in Northern Virginia where he coached regional and national champions. His students have gone on to be NCAA champions and members of Cirque du Soliel. In searching for an activity to replace gymnastics, Ken filled the void with rock climbing and yoga for the past ten years and recently found CrossFit to round out his training.

Meat and Fish CSA Pickup Today

Pickup is 6-8:30pm! Be there or be square. (Note that the vegetable CSA will be next Wednesday, June 11.)

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The American Dream Is Alive—and It’s Really, Really Tiny The Atlantic
Running Streak of 16,438 Days Will Set American Record Los Angeles Times
Do Things You Can Sustain James Clear
A Tattoo That Completes a New Breast New York Times