Blog Archive

Says Nate Miyaki on T Nation. Please give it a read.

He came across this epiphany while trying to tabulate all his lessons from 2012. It really came down to just this one thing.

“You gotta know what you are fighting for.”

Think this guy knows why he does what he does?

Its poetic. It will keep you through tough times and good ones too. Sound and concrete resolve you feel in every cell of your body is a very difficult thing to undo.

“We’re all searching for the same three things in life: a passion, a sense of purpose, and peace of mind. We just go about it in different ways.”

How will you know when you found it?

“There will be no more beginnings or getting back on track. There will be no defined ends as some 90-Day programs promise. There will only be putting one foot in front of the other, in the next step of a never-ending journey.”

“You won’t have a sport or a hobby. You’ll have a way of life.”

Miyaki sums his message up perfectly:

“The path to success lies in the purpose, not the person. We’re all capable of great things.”

Ordinary men that had a purpose have achieved great things. Extraordinarily gifted men with no mission have chronically underachieved. Society provides plenty of examples of both.

Rule #1 – Find what you’re fighting for.

Rule #2 – First learn rule #1. Everything else is just details.”

As yourself. What are you fighting for?

Friday:

Warm Up:  Shoulder Prep

Banded over and back
5 breath push up
Wall Angel
Arm wrestle sparing

Tech: Treat this section as you would a lifting session

Muscle Ups – 3 sets of 3-7 reps (depending on your skill/strength level)
Use the partner assist if you can. Other wise use the ground assisted muscle up.

Handstand Push Ups – 3 sets of 6-10 reps.
Use your most challenging progression that will let you hit these numbers.

Go back and forth between the two movements.

Workout: Wabbits!

Fot time:

10 burpees
200 m run
9 burpees
200 m run
8 burpees
200 m run
…
1 burpees
200 m run

Love this workout. Hit it hard!

One Love,

The Shepherd

Due to the Superbowl this weekend, there is going to be a class change on Sunday!

Please note that this SUNDAY, there will be NO 5pm class instead there will be a 1pm.

Have a great weekend!

Next week our Olympic Weightlifting Clinic starts with 2012 Olympic-medalist Christine Girard, and there are still 3 spots left.

Christine Girard was featured in the CROSSFIT JOURNAL a while back. READ THE STORY HERE.

For those of you who reserved spots, please pay by FRIDAY. If you do not pay by Friday (using the paypal link below, or come in directly and pay us in person), we will open your spot to someone else.

The following people are on the RESERVED LIST (let Bill know if you think you were forgotten: william.mcclain@gmail.com

Nathalie Maurer
Damian Murray
Bobbi Barbarich
Colter Ripley
Caroline Kirkpatrick
Travis Goguen
Emily Beers
Dave Poettcker
Scott Denton
Alison Coolican
Meagan McGuinness
David Klein
Fred Claireaux
Pascal Gray
Robert Hayter
Lars Konge
Ryan Fisher
Tom Sarosi

And if you want one of those last 3 spots, then contact Bill by Friday and we’ll get you hooked up.

THE SESSIONS ARE:

Monday and Wednesday nights at 7 pm until 8:30 pm.

Starts February 4th.

Goes for 12 weeks.

Cost: $320 for 24 sessions.

Don’t worry – this will be an ongoing thing, so you’ll have more chances to improve your Olympic weightlifting SOON!

THURSDAY: Oly Total

1). SNATCH

A). EMOM for 5 minutes: 2 Snatches (adding weight each minute)

B). 15-20 minutes to establish 1 RM Snatch (Declare your attempts – you get 3!)

2). CLEAN AND JERK

A). EMOM for 5 minutes: 2 Clean and Jerks (adding weight each minute)

B). 15-20 minutes to establish 1 RM Clean and Jerk (Declare your attempts – you get 3!)

SHEPPY

Last week it was Eunice’s mom, this week it’s Audrey who is featured in the CrossFit Journal. CHECK IT OUT HERE!

WEDNESDAY

WORKOUT: TABATA THIS (Start the workout at quarter after the hour)

Tabata Squats
1 minute rest
Tabata Pull-ups
1 minute rest
Tabata Sit-ups
1 minute rest
Tabata Push-ups
1 minute rest
Tabata Row (Calories)

Cool Down (15 minutes):

-Quad Stretch on wall
-Banded shoulder stretch
-Scissor stretch (hamstring and hip flexer)
-Frog Stretch

Good luck getting into a frog stretch like this…

– Sheppy

What is the OPEN, you ask?

The Open competition is a worldwide CrossFit competition that essentially acts as the first round of qualification to the CrossFit Games – the World Championships. The idea behind the Open is that, like CrossFit, ANYBODY can do it. Last year’s first Open workout, for example, was 7 minutes of burpees. Even your 90-year-old grandma could likely get a legitimate score on this event.

This year’s Open starts March 6th and runs for five weeks (one workout per week), but registration begins THIS WEEK on January 30th.

Read more and watch videos about the Open, Regionals and The CrossFit Games on the GAMES website.

Who should sign up??

I strongly feel we all should sign up! We’ll be doing these workouts each week at CF Van anyway, so you might as well sign up and be a part of it. You don’t have to be an elite athlete to compete. You don’t even need to have goals of making it to the Regional competition to be involved. For most people, it’s just a chance to be a part of something and to compete harder than they normally would.

Alex, who the morning crew refers to as ‘Lex’, is a perfect example of someone who has set his sights on the Open this year and has some personal goals he wants to achieve. Last year, he found himself in the 70th percentile of the men in the Canada West Region. This year, he has been working his ass off and hopes to finish in the top 50 per cent of men in our region, which considering the impressive line up of competitors – and the sheer number of people competing – would be a great accomplishment for him.

The point is, it’s a fun competition to be a part of, it’s something specific to train for, and you will undoubtedly go a little bit harder with something on the line. Everyone who competed last year ended up completing workouts they never thought they’d be able to complete.

And on top of this, the affiliate who registers the most athletes in each region, wins 150 tickets to the Canada West Regionals. It would be kind of cool to be that affiliate. We have the numbers to do it!

Again, read more at www.games.crossfit.com. And sign up!

Write up by Eunice and Kermit

Tuesday:

Workout #1) Work your way up to a 1 rep max back squat.

Workout #2) AMRAP

3 minute row (cal)
2 minute rest
3 minute Burpee
2 minute rest
3 minute rope climbs

2 minutes rest is an eternity for a crossfitter so you are expected to hit that 3 minute interval hard.

Assuming classes wil be more numerous than the 10 rowers we have some of you can start on the burpees or rope climbs. Rowing will be done in the corner where the rowers rest. Burpees will be done by the pre warm up board.

Leaderboard will be your 1rm Back Squat.

Workout by Sheppy

First things first! Big shout out and congrats go out to Eunice and Poker for winning the Team Competition at Chaos in the Capitol at CrossFit Olympia.  They both have been working very hard for a long while now.  Awesome to see them rewarded.  This is Eunice’s second win of the season.  At a girl!  The Woodchuck and Kane also competed.  Kane hit a 20 lb pb with a 265 clean and Nat did more ring dips than she ever has before! Big Love to all of you!

Our community has grown by leaps and bounds since we moved to our current location.  It will be four years here this March.

In that time we have more than doubled our membership, become a vocational school, sent a team to the CrossFit Games twice, thrown a bunch of great parties, and burned millions of calories.

But alas one of the very building blocks of our community is fledgeling along.  Its time to stop this.

Believe it or not it wasn’t until we moved from our last location (1261 East 2nd – a block and a half away) that we had all the classes doing the same workouts. Originally the coaches programmed different workouts in their own respective classes (I know – Crazy right?).  Well eventually we came to our senses and had all classes doing the same wod.

Next came the whiteboard leaderboard.  People would just write their name and score on the whiteboard by the front door and at the end of the night the scores got tabulated into a top ten.  A picture was taken and we posted it on the website.  Kinda like our monthly personals best board.  Always a goofy person and pose in with the stats.

Patty then got the idea to make a website that could do exactly what our whiteboard and picture did as well as make it like a facebook profile thing.  Along came crossfitleaderboard.com.

It thrived for years but seemingly in the last while is faltering along.  I’m writing this post to ask you, yes you, each of you individually and collectively as a community to help us resuscitate our leaderboard.

I remember times when the comments on the post were full of congrats and wahoos on people’s scores.  It did wonders for the vibe in our box.

SO…  I am asking all of you who have a profile on the leaderboard to spruce it up and start posting your scores again.

I am asking all of you who do not have a profile to make one on the leaderboard and start posting your scores.  It doesn’t matter if you still use progressions.  There is space to add them in.

Its not about who is the best.  Its about participating in the leaderboard.  Its a great way to track your workouts.

So pretty please jump onboard!

And speaking of moving to this location…  Many of you folks may not know how we did it.  Here are the videos of our “move”.

Monday’s Class:

Tech: Power Clean 2,2,2,2

Workout: Got this from Outlaw CrossFit

5 Rounds for Time

4 Power Cleans (185/120 lbs)
8 HSPU
40 Double Unders

Bring your own rope or buy one in the vending machine. You’ll be happy to have your own and it will make you practice your skipping and double unders more often.

We did this workout in HPC last week.  A little heavier (205/135lbs) but a great hit.

Ps. Patty is working on developing a newer and better type of software.  Should be sweet.

Mucho Amore,

El Shepardo