CrossFit South Brooklyn

Established 2007

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  1. Hey Everyone –

    Another plug for the Halloween Party I’m putting together to help raise some dough for the NY Rugby Club and nice new playing fields!

    Saturday, October 31stThe Australian20 W 38th Street (btwn 5th/6th)8PM – on$20 donation goes to NYRC

    There will be FREE Brooklyn Lager at the beginning of the shindig until its gone, so come early! Also, there will be Happy Hour drink specials all night and plenty of Halloween (non paleo) treats!

    Prizes for best and worst costumes (Amex Gift Cards!)

    It should be a good time!! Any questions let me know!

  4. Steph – I wish I could go, it sounds awesome! But I’ll be catching a 5 am bus to the marathon start the next morning.

    In elementary school we had phys Ed once a week or every other week; it may have rotated with art and music. I mostly remember dodgeball and the president physical fitness test, and being picked last for every team. (cue tiny violin!)

    High school gym I believe was a requirement for one year, though most people rarely took it as an elective after that. You didn’t want to get sweaty then have to go to class; no one used the showers. Being naked in front of your classmates was a fate worse than death!

  5. I always enjopyed PE as a young kid. In grade school I was fortunate to have a PE teacher who was a former gymnast and gymnastics instuctor, so in addition to dodgeball, relay races, basketball, and all that, we got to “play” on P bars, a pommel horse, this huge trampoline, tumbling mats…I remember really digging that stuff.

    Once I got to junior high and high school it changed. I stopped playing as much, but my voracious appetite didn’t get the messsage. I always chose the weight room for my PE period…as opposed to track or basketball or some other thing where there’d certainly be running involved. We were mostly unsupervised hoodlums in there, generally loading up cheap barbells with as many mixed-make plates as we could manage to pick up and put over our heads, making fun of the track kids, and sneaking cigarettes in between. It was the same 4 or 5 of us for a few years, and it was fun to compete in that arena.

    …Husky jeans from Sears…Oh yeah…I’ll have to post a photo one day of the little chunkster I turned out to be.

  6. Oh my god, husky jeans from Sears! I remember those Chris. Did yours have the reinforced knee patches?I LOVED elementary school gym class. Dodgeball (tore a big hole in my red tights), kickball, 50 yard dash, shuttle runs and a big parachute we used to oscillate and hide under.High school gym was, well, Chalky Wright. He was the gym teacher who wore the polyester shorts and a baseball cap askew and walked around with a golf club. Not much more to say about that. As long as you showed up he didn’t care what you did.

  7. Man! My husband’s making that hustle joke for years! When I showed him the picture of me rowing his reaction was “Nice hustle, Weston, nice hustle.”

  9. I imagine I had a relatively common PE experience. My educators were nice but not particularly influential. We played all sorts of different sports and apathy ran high.

    My first semester in University was really eye opening as a lot of my course load overlapped with the Physical Education curriculum. At least at West Chester, there was a huge push on PE reform to make the classes and teachers more accountable. The majority of US curriculums are hugely biased toward teaching sports, which has it merits, but often leaves out the larger picture of what it means to be fit and healthy. Topics more important for our youths than ever.Most schools across the US are suffering from huge budget cuts to PE programs in order to fiance more academic core classes like math and science. These “core” classes are pushed to the front since public schools often receive state funding based on students scores in standardized tests.

    My computer is at 3% battery life and I don’t have my charger on me.. more on this later..

  11. Seriously, the first thing I remember about PE was the paddle. The coaches had these freaking brutal wooden cricket bat looking things that they always carried around and used pretty liberally. I remember the two times I got a smack down. Once was for laughing in the weight room (which I think we were shown all of once). That one was pretty light (that coach was kind of cool). The other one was when we were all told to go outside, so we all went to the creek behind the school, not realizing that was off limits. The entire class was lined up and like an assembly line, we each got a smack. That one watered the eyes (that coach was a asshole). All in all, I got off really light.

    I also remember hating running and always battling the obese kids when distance was involved. I still hate running.

    That was junior high. I got it out of the way early and didn’t have to take it by the time I got to Senior High.

    It’s kind of weird I took to crossfit in such a big way so many years later.

  13. First of all – Husky jeans from Sears! My brother STILL brings up the fact that he had to wear them. He is now a very active, healthy, athletic young man but that will always be part of his psyche. I can’t believe that both Chris and Deb remember that, too.

    Growing up we had a pretty typical PE curriculum. I think in elementary school we had it 2 days a week (rotating with art, music, etc.) and then 2 or 3 times a week in 7th and 8th grade alternating with our language requirement. We did all the usual stuff in elementary school – a couple of weeks per unit of various and age-appropriate sports and games.

    It seems like in high school, though, we were required to do more than at most schools. It was very difficult to be exempt from PE. By this point things were more specific-sports oriented. By 11th grade we got an Outward Bound type course so that was a little more interesting in terms of focusing on real teamwork, physical problem solving, and overcoming obstacles in a way that we wouldn’t get in other units.

    I have to admit that I always loved PE class. (So not cool, right?) I don’t think there was anything I dreaded or didn’t like.The only annoying part was when we were in high school and we occasionally had swimming. Even the teachers tried to avoid it because NO ONE wanted to do it – especially the girls. Besides the obvious teenage angst and body-image issues, we had barely enough time to shower and change after class. Too stressful. And who wants to smell like chlorine all day? It was amazing how many people were suddenly ill and had notes from their parents during that time.

    And one of the best days of the year was always Field Day!

  15. In brief:

    My PE in American:Grade school and middle school was awesome: run laps, do max pushups, situps, pullups, broadjump etc.

    High School PE was wear your gym clothes, you got credit. Didn’t matter if you sat on your ass or if you ran a 5K.

    PE in Israel:0 hour (6AM) was PE every morning. Wake up by 5AM, eat, get your ass to PE.It was all body weight exercises for the most part, save for the runs and the carries which were often weighted either by a person or a sandbag, and usually in the sand.

  18. I came from a small public school system in Ohio and we clearly didn’t have any cool toys or equipment to play with. I’m so envious of Chris when he tells me about what was available to him. And Becca, you had a pool? That’s just crazy to me!

    My PE classes as a kid were always fun though. Elementary school had a fairly large gym where we played a lot of dodgeball, kickball, bowling and wiffleball. If the weather was nice, we got to move outdoors to play on the football/soccer field. During Intermediate school (5th/6th grade) we had a tiny square gym, where the most we did was run endless laps. That blew. High school PE was pretty generic. I can only ever remember shooting free throws. What I do clearly remember is the PE coach flirting like crazy with the “popular” girls. I was, of course, working on my free throw.

    Luckily, I played team sports to keep myself very active. My first exposure to the weight room was in high school during basketball season. That was always fun, but I never received any instruction. And I also remember the Presidential Physical Fitness Tests. I remember that girls were able to sub dead hangs for pullups. It seemed so much easier back then! I wore my patches so proudly on my school jackets. God, I was (still am?) such a jock.

    And finally, I also loved field day. I only got to compete one year though (sick alot as a kid) but placed in the top 3 for nearly every event. My proudest moment was getting 2nd in the high jump. I couldn’t believe I was able to beat out girls taller than me (which was nearly everyone), especially never having practiced that movement ever. Yeah, going back to the blog post from the other day…I’m pretty competitive:).

  19. Wow, the paddle, field day, parachute, obstacle course… this is a run down PE memory lane!I used to love PE in middle school – I was always very active (we call it ADHD these days) and craved getting out of class and running around. My best memory was this crazy huge obstacle course they would set up in our gym with spring boards, bars, horses and all sorts of stuff. I always came in second or third. Junior high and high school I was super skinny (you wouldn’t believe it) and I started being picked last for sports. I still enjoyed being active but those high school year insecurities were brutal and it just wasn’t as much fun. I actually don’t remember what the hell we did in PE in those years and how often we had it.

    My kids have never had school PE. Very sad.

  20. Growing up in Ohio we TOTALLY had the huge parachute too!!! It was so fun. And we had crab scooter soccer with those jai alai catcher things. Unfortunately and illogically we also had SQUARE DANCING! WTF!?!? It was a horrible and ridiculous rite of passage that we knew was ironic and sad even as 8-year-olds. Clearly the 1950s PE curriculum was being forced upon us well into the early ’80s. Like Margie, I DETESTED the mile run and would also find ways to be conveniently sick, but I got my name up on the board for being the best at sit and reach and sometimes for situps. For some strange reason, I was one of the tallest and skinniest girls in school when I was a kid! WTF!? Oh, and I LOVED and was a straight beast at indoor floor hockey. Against all odds, I actually was a team captain and won a ribbon (!? who gives RIBBONS for sports?) for that. I think the big problem, as David said, is that healthiness isn’t taught, nor is CHOICE. After elementary school, we had to do sports that clearly not everyone was interested in nor excelled in. As a teenager, I might’ve loved to have an academic OPTION to learn pilates or dance or swim or learn how to run BETTER instead of loathing it, instead of being forced to “learn” to play football — Here girls! Stand out in the sun and catch this hard-ass ball with your already-painfully developing CHEST… when you’re 14! Grr! The WORST. There was never any technique. They literally just tossed a ball at us and I ran in the other direction. (Where I worked on my apathy for the next 20 years…)

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