Spencer Takes A Moment To Recoup Mid-Murph

• There are no AM classes this Sunday while we host Kelly Starrett for the CrossFit Movement and Mobility Trainer Course. Open Gym from 6-8 is on as usual.

Get Hella Strong!

There are still spots left in all of Coach Jeremy’s upcoming Strength Cycles! If you want to get so strong you have to buy new pants, sign up!

A Cycle–Novice Cycle 
Jun 3rd – July 19th
Monday, Wednesday at 7pm, Friday at 6pm
Register Here!

Monday and Wednesday at 6pm
Register Here!

Programming Notes

Here are some upcoming dates of note
5/27-6/2 – last week of regular programming
6/3-6/8 – Deload week
6/9 – CrossFit Total !!!
6/10-6/16 – Crush Week
6/17-6/23 – Back Off Week

Malcolm and Laurel’s Baby Shower!

Photographer Malcolm and Coach Laurel are longtime members of the CFSBK community, dating back to Lyceum days. They celebrated their wedding in one of the first big parties at DeGraw street. Now let’s help them celebrate the impending arrival of their baby! We’re holding a shower for them on Saturday, June 8th, 3:30-5:30 PM. Paleo Potluck! Please RSVP with your contribution to mayojane(AT)gmail.com by Sunday, June 2.

* NOT TRUE
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Exercise like a show horse… Prancercise.
Badassoftheweek.com
Glen Pendlay on Weightlifting and CrossFit

Fitness: 3×5 Across
Add 5lbs from last week’s exposure.

Performance: 5/3/1 (1 week)
75%x5
85%x3
95%x1+

Post loads to comments.
Bench Press e6/6
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Power Clean

Perform 2 Reps on the minute for 10 minutes.
Today’s reps should be heavy but crisp. Make sure every bar is racked correctly before fully recovering. Go heavier than last week

Post loads to comments.
Power Clean e6/6

The Myers’ finish up mile #2 at Memorial Day Murph

• Farewell to Corbett M who will be down south for the next few months. You will be missed!
• Check out Bekka P’s awesome Memorial Day Murph phots on the CFSBK Flickr

Sasha’s IFTT Email set up for Blog Posts

“Just wanted to share this thing that I’ve set up.  Using IFTTT, I configured your blog to e-mail itself to me every day. I find it really useful to keep my head in training on days when I can’t make it, and thought others might find it useful too.

–Sasha

-slim jim
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Is Racewalking a Sport?

Fitness: 3×5 Across
Add 5lbs from last weeks Squats.

Performance: 5/3/1 (1 week)
75%x5
85%x3
95%x1+

Post loads to comments.
Squat e10/12
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4 Rounds Not For Time:
8e Dumbbell 1 Arm Push Press
8e Dumbbell 1 Arm Renegade Row
270m Run

Go as heavy as possible with good organiation on dumbbell weight.

Dr. Judy gets her Bench on

• Happy Belated Birthday do Avi S and Marian L!

Save The Date

Coach Margie and fourth interation of the Tough Titsday Powerlifting Meet return! Ladies, it’s time again to showcase your awesome strength on this great day of lifting. Registration info will be available after June 1, but start planning now!

Who: SBK women who have been training consistently for at least 3 months.
When: July 14, 2013, time TBD
What: 3 attempts to find a max rep in each of the following lifts:
Backsquat, Bench Press & Deadlift.

Whitney H Teaching Yoga at Bend & Bloom

I’m substitute teaching two yoga classes this coming Saturday, two short blocks from CFSBK!

When: Saturday, June 1
1:45PM – Open Flow (90 min) – for students already familiar with yoga basics
3:30PM – Basics (75 min) – for students who may think they’re “not flexible enough” for yoga and are interested in getting some experience with the fundamentals

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Becky Rich competed raw in sleeves at the USPA 2013 Beast of the Bluegrass with a 142.5/105/152.5 (314/231/336) for a 400kg (881lbs) total. This total retakes the 123 all time record. The record was held by Gunha Sampa of India at 876!
The Relation Of Snatch, Clean & Jerk And Squat Weights Cathletics

• Thank you so much to everyone who volunteered to help out yesterday and make our Memorial Day Murph one of the smoothest and most successful to date. We were honored that so many people chose to spend their holiday with us honoring Lt. Murphy and those that we’ve lost. 
• If you came to Murph AND will be coming on Wednesday AANNDDD will be coming today, we’ve got a floater recovery WOD programmed for you tonight.

Beat The Heat

Memorial Day not only marks the time of year we get to do “Murph” and drink beers, it’s also the beginning of Summer..  This change of environmental conditions comes with some new responsibilities that we all need to be aware of.  The two biggest risks when working out in high or humid temperatures are dehydration and heat stroke.  Dehydration occurs when your body loses more water than it requires for normal functioning and heat stroke occurs when your body temperature rises faster than you can regulate.  Both of these conditions are very serious and can lead to sickness and even death in extreme cases.  That being said, you can do a few simple things to make sure you’re safe while working out:

1. Hydrate! Drink cold water before, during and after you exercise.  We have two water pitchers in the fridge for everyone to help themselves to.  We encourage everyone to bring their own reusable water container but also have cups available if you forget yours or don’t own one.  Try to drink water at regular intervals, you want to be taking in more water than you’re losing so don’t wait until you’re thirsty to start chugging.

2. Listen to your body  If you’re feeling lightheaded, dizzy, nauseous, begin to cramp or display anything resembling fever symptoms, it’s time to stop, cool-down and hydrate.   Sometimes during hard workouts we try to “push through the pain” but remember that putting yourself at risk in order to shave off an extra :15 seconds is both dangerous and contrary to why you’re here in the first place. (to get fit!)

We also have ice in the freezer available in both cubes and cups that you can grab to eat, rub on your body (head,neck,chest, armpits..).

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IF… Vsauce
Top 5 Regrets of the Dying Guardian

For time:
1 mile Run
100 Pull-ups
200 Push-ups
300 Squats
1 mile Run

Partition the pull-ups, push-ups, and squats as needed. Start and finish with a mile run. If you’ve got a twenty pound vest or body armor, wear it.

The full version above is a bit too much for most folks. We’ll explain how to scale for volume and movements at the gym. The average times for this workout range from 45 minutes to just over an hour. Blazing fast times as Rx’d are in the mid to low thirties.

Post time to comments.
compare to 5.27.12

Memorial Day Murph

In memory of Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, 29, of Patchogue, N.Y., who was killed in Afghanistan June 28th, 2005.
“This workout was one of Mike’s favorites and he’d named it “Body Armor”. From here on it will be referred to as “Murph” in honor of the focused warrior and great American who wanted nothing more in life than to serve this great country and the beautiful people who make it what it is.”

• To learn more about Lieutenant Michael Murphy check out the his page on the Navy Seals website and his biography on wikipedia.

• To learn more about “Murph Day”, read, “At CrossFit, a Military Regimen With Geek Appeal” from the NY Times. This article was based on their visit to CFSBK and CrossFit NYC last year.

This workout is dedicated to everyone who has sacrificed their lives in the US Armed Forces. Take a moment today to thank someone who has served and reflect on those we’ve lost. If you’d like to donate to a good cause, we recommend the Wounded Warrior Project.

Participation Reminder

Please be ready to go at the time you signed up for. That means you’ll need to get there early and warm-up on your own. Here is a good MWOD for that if you’re not sure what to do. The gym will provide beer and meat for all who attend. If you can bring a side it would be much appreciated.  We’ve also got commemorative T-Shirts in house today. They are first come first serve!

The gym will be open starting at 7:30am today. We’ll start grilling around 11:00am and be done around 3pm… maybe. There are no evening classes today.

Fitness: Heavy 5
Work up to a heavy set of 5. This should be about 5-15lbs heavier than last week.

Performance: 5/3/1 (3 week)
70%x3
80%x3
90%x3+

Press

Fitness: 3×5 Across
Perform your sixth 3×5 of Pressing for the cycle. Add 2-5lbs from last week’s weight.

Performance: 5/3/1 (1 week)
75%x5
85%x3
95%x1+

Post loads to comments.
DL e5/6, Press e4/6
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3 Rounds NFT of:
400m Run
21 Kettlebell Swings, 53/35
12 Pull-Ups or Ring Rows

Consider doing Ring Rows if you’re “Murphing” tomorrow.

Coach Nick and Charmel at CRASH Bs

Thanks to everyone who’s signed up for Murph tomorrow! Remember that we need some sides so if you can grab a fruit salad or make some quick veggies or crudite it would be much appreciated! We love you!

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Competing in Silence

Fitness: 3×5 Across
Add 5lbs from last weeks Squats.

Performance: 5/3/1 (3 week)
70%x3
80%x3
90%x3+

or 70%x3x3 if you already hit your “3 week”

Post loads to comments.
Squat e9/12
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7 minute ascending ladder of:
Front Squats 135/95
Toes to Bars

For the rep scheme, start at 3 and 3, then move on to 6 and 6 adding by three reps to the previous round until time expires. Front Squats are taken from the floor. We’ll discuss scaling the T2Bs in class.

Post total reps and Rx to comments.

Brad gets ready for 30 Burpees in 13.1

• If you didn’t sign up for your Murph heat yet and see that they’re basically full. Fear not! You can sign up in the “Coaches Heat” at the end of the day.  Check out the events page for all the details.

A Warm-Up Refresher

We’ve been hitting the Standardized Warm-Ups for the last 6 weeks and are pleased to see people working dilligently on their calisthenics.  Here are a few points to keep in mind as you continue to make these part of your routine:

Intensity
You shouldn’t be approaching faliure with any these movements. The idea is not to necessarily make it harder each time you do it or test your limits, we want to build a base of sub-maximal volume to gradually build upon. Make it your goal to gradually work closer to Rx’d reps and mature versions of these movements but only after you can perform a submaximal sets or variations wth perfect technique. For example, if you do 10 push-ups as 5-3-2, keep that up until it feels less difficult and then attempt a different rep scheme like 6-2-2 or 5-4-1. Or if you’ve got 1 or 2 strict push-ups, do 2 strict at the top of each round and then finish out with 7 switch push-ups. Play around with how you approach these warm-ups but always keep some gas in the tank.

Movement Tempos
Tempos can be very useful with even the most basic movements.  Holding the bottom of your squat for a 1 count not only strengthens the bottom position but helps open up your hips and ankles.  Remember that good movement is born out of good initial starting positions.  If the top of your push-up is soft then the mechanics of everything that follow it will accordingly suffer. Rushing through these movements can actually be counter productive.  You might develop bad habits, reinforce poor posture and overdevelop one part of the movement at the expense of another. For example if your pull-ups are always just barely over the bar you might get great at doing moderate volume pull-ups at 90% of the Range of motion. Very frustrating when you start failing getting over the bar at all during workouts and you can’t figure out why. One little trick is to think about someone taking your picture at the top and bottom of each repetition. What would you want it to look like?

Variations
Here are some ideas on how to vary your movements to better suit your weakness or needs:

• Do you have a problem with your knees caving in during squats? Why not throw one of the green therabands above your knees to help strengthen that aspect of the squat during warm-ups.  Have you never tried squatting with a theraband? Throw one on and see how it feels, you might be surprised. 
• What if you have trouble hitting depth? maybe grab a 12″ box or a Wall Ball and work on hitting a target. If your knees tend to shoot forward try squatting in front of a bench.
• Do you find that your body type makes it hard to get deep on push-ups?  Try using a few bumper plates under your hands so you can get a little deeper.  This might also be a good option for folks who struggle with strict push-ups and want a little elevation.
• Are you doing 3 sets of 5-8 pull-ups without thinking twice about it? Why not make it a little more difficult by going chest to bar or doing an L-Sit Pull-Up? You might have to drop the total reps to make these submaximal but you’ll be developing other areas in the process.
• Lunges too easy? Add a bumper held overhead or in front to increase the stress.
• If push-ups are easy you can try a ring push-up or weighted push-up with a bumper plate on your back.

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Jason Khalipa sets a new “Jackie” record at 5:04

Ryan Joyce Takes His Rest Day To the Gym

Fitness: 3×5 Across
Add 5lbs from last week’s exposure.

Performance: 5/3/1 (3 week)
70%x3
80%x3
90%x3+

Post loads to comments.
Bench Press e5/6
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Power Clean

Perform 2 Reps on the minute for 10 minutes.
Today’s reps should be heavy but crisp. Make sure every bar is racked correctly before fully recovering. Go heavier than last week

Post loads to comments.
Power Clean e5/6

Matt Chmielecki’s 2 year old, Lawson in training for the 2035 CrossFit Games

• Congratulations to the CFSBK Calaveras on their 14-2 win yesterday in Red Hook. This brings the team to a record of 5-1.
• Since Monday is “Murph Day”, we’ll be doing Sunday’s Deadlifts AND Monday’s Presses together on Sunday.
• We will not be running AM classes on Sunday, June 2nd as we’re hosting the CrossFit Movement and Mobility Course with Kelly Starrett
• Happy Birthday Julie Barnard!!

Memorial Day Murph Details

This year we’ll be holding “Murph Day” on Monday, May 27th.  It’s a day where our community comes together to celebrate and honor our service men and women.  Whether it’s by completing the workout, or cheering on a loved one, or just hanging out for the bbq…All are welcome!  As mentioned yesterday, we need more grillers and are asking that folks bring some sides if they can. Details below:

What is Murph?

Yes, in order to try to balance out heats this year, we’re asking for you to sign-up in advance.  Please use this Fancy Hi-Tech Spreadsheet to pick a heat that you plan to attend.  Just fill in your name under one of the 25 spots for that heat and you’re all set.  (Please don’t accidentally erase someone else’s information…but if you do, Control Z is your friend, right Bdubs?)

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This Is Why You Can’t Outrun A Cheetah The Big Picture
Check out the brand new Mobility WOD website
Surreal Wildlife Paintings by Tiffany Bozic 

Fitness: 3×5 Across
Add 5lbs from last weeks Squats.

Performance: 5/3/1 (3 week)
70%x3
80%x3
90%x3+

Post loads to comments.
Squat e8/12
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5 Intervals of:
Row 250 meters

Go hard each round and rest about 2:00 between efforts. Try to keep your times as consistent as possible.

Post times to comments.
compare to 1.28.12

Nick Hoenemeyer (black ARC kit) uses CrossFit to help him with cycling road races with the ARC Racing Team. Nick has been racing for 5 years.

• Baseball tonight! The CFSBK Calveras play at 6:15pm at the Red Hook Ball Fields. Come on down too root on the team and enjoy a summer game.
• Check out mover and shaker Kenji Summers‘ Vine about packing exercise related equipment (including the old skull and bones). Kenji is the founder of The Passport Project and was presenting at the PACK THIS! seminar.
• All the dirty details for Memorial Day Murph will be explained tomorrow. That being said, we still need volunteers to help on the grill. Please email info(AT)CrossFitSouthBrooklyn.com to sign up and help out!

Trouble Shooting your Linear Progression

Fitness programming often follows a Linear Progression (LP) which uses the tried and true method of slowly adding a little weight each time you train to systematically increase your strength. This method is optimal for novice lifters but sometimes needs to be tinkered with with things get sticky. Below we’ll discuss some things to consider when figuring out what you should be lifting on an LP.

“Novice Trainee”
First off, by novice I mean anyone who can sustain adding a little weight every single time they perform a particular barbell lift.  On average, this can be performed for anywhere from 3-6 months of sequential consistent training in that specific lift and rep scheme. Others can sustain an LP much longer if they started very conservatively and/or train the particular lift with less frequency. With the exception of the Back Squat, we usually see each lifts only once per week and often rotated in and out of training waves.  This allows many folks to train an LP in that lift for even longer periods of time and develop a series of accumulated exposures that they add on to over many months.
Any seasoned lifter will tell you this is the golden age of your strength training journey.  Things are ordered and predicable, the gains are consistent and managemable. It’s ideal to spend as long as you can in the novice phase before moving on to more advanced programming. Milk an LP for all you can!

Missing Reps
If you could simply add a little weight to your lifts each week forever we’d all be 2,000lb deadlifters and throwing small cars for fun. Eventually you’ll hit a wall and start missing reps. Here are a few things to consider regarding failed reps:

Did I start too heavy?
You should get through at LEAST 4-5+ full waves on a particular movement. That means you consistently hit all your exposures through several waves where we use that lift.  Sometimes I see folks straight out of Foundations or just a couple months into things start to grind out or even miss reps very eary in their first training career. This means they got too greedy with weight or perhaps just don’t understand how novice strength training works yet. If this is you, then pull back. WAY back to something that forces you to swallow your pride a little. In the beginning there should be some effort involved in moving the barbell, but the bar speed should remain quick and everything should be as perfect and under control. You shouldn’t grind or be particularly intimidated by the weights at first. Starting light gives you lots of running room to ingrain the mechanics, get lots of practice in and slowly get really strong.

Did I reset this lift?
Sometimes you’ve got to take 3 steps back in order to take 5 steps forward later on. If you’ve been at it for a while and finally are starting to approach failure on your lifts you can reset your numbers by 10-15% of the missed weight.  Often if we pull back to weights we’ve done before we can barrel past the weights that stopped us initially.  Additionally, you can further extend your LP by performing the same weight for 2 exposures instead of one. For example Pressing 100x5x3 for 2 weeks and then the following week starting a 105x5x3 for another 2 week rotation. This might be exactly what you need to keep the weights moving up over an extended period of time while getting really good at performing the exercise.

Are things getting wonky?
A downfall of the LP is that pesky motor control and tightness issues don’t often get better as the weight goes up. In the beginning, everything will feel a little awkward and you won’t move as well as the person half your size moving twice as much weight next to you. However, if you start light enough the motor learning portion will happen when the weights are easy enough to handle AND you’ll begin to loosen up to the movement in the process. Unfortunately, some issues are harder to trouble shoot out and become more and more pronounced as the weight increases. If your knees cave in a little at 100lbs, they’re probably going to touch each other at 150lbs.  In the grand scheme of things, technique issues need to be prioritized above moving more weight, plain and simple. We often get performance hungry and want to see those numbers move up and up even if positions are starting to drift and compromises are made in order to finish each rep. This is no bueno. What you’re actually doing is reinforcing problematic positions and digging yourself deeper into a hole that leads to frustration and injury.  We’ve had troubled movers stay at the same light weights until they demonstrated enough control and consistency to gradually move up in load.  This can be a frustrating position to be in for a lifter hungry to get stronger but a necessary modification in terms of long term health and saftey. Sorry bro.

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All Smiles: Allison Truscheit CrossFit Games
Chemin Vert
One Day On Earth Trailer