September 16, Fight Gone Bad VI

Fight Gone Bad September 17

Your fight will last 17 minutes. Ours will last a lifetime.

Tomorrow. 9-noon.

We’ll provide burgers, dogs and barbells. 

You provide the heart and funds to help.  Bring food to share if so inclined.

Click here to donate online.

Fight Gone Bad 6
On September 17, 2011, CrossFitters from around the world will come together to endure 17 minutes of one of our most grueling workouts in honor of those men and women who have given a lifetime of service and sacrifice.
 
For 17 minutes, we will push ourselves further, challenge ourselves deeper, feel the doubt and wonder if we can make it, but then remember why we are there and appreciate fully those who we wish to honor.
 
We turn to you, our community of friends and family, to join us by donating what you can or what you are inspired to give to two phenomenal organizations that provide immediate and measurable support without waste or delay.
 
The heart of an athlete can change the game.

The soul of an athlete can change the world.

 

Workout of the Day

As many rounds as possible in 15 minutes of:

5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Kettlebell Swings (35/53#)
100 Waiter Walk (35/53#) switch arms at 50m

September 15, First Time

Do you remember the first time you did a CrossFit workout?  You may have felt your first attempt was an abject failure, but you came back.  In time, your work capacity improved.  We all start somewhere. 

Remember the first time you did an unscaled workout, got your first pull-up, or your first body weight overhead squat.  CrossFit gives you the chance for firsts, which leads to increased confidence and ability.

Everyone started exactly where they were.  It sounds redundant, but it helps to remember where you came from.   The world’s fittest people may be gifted athletes, but they train hard and dare to test themselves against steel and the iron wills of others.

CrossFit itself started small, with a single post on a nascent internet.  In 2007 the CrossFit Games came into being.  Only four years later, the games are now televised on ESPN2 and the winners receive $250,000.  Every Wednesday you can watch the games on ESPN2.  Get inspired!

 

Workout of the Day

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

21-15-9 Reps of:

Handstand Push-ups
Hang Power Snatch (55/75#)
Air Squats
Double-unders

September 14, Call to Arms

Fight Gone Bad VI

Join our team!

Who:  If not you, then who?

What:  You will have 17 minutes to make a difference.  In seventeen minutes you can help children who lost fathers in the war and help prevent young children from drowning.  When is the last time you made a difference for someone else?

Where:  CrossFit Mt Olympus 2687 Preston St, Salt Lake City, UT 84106

When: Saturday from 9am-noon come do your bit. 

Why:  Watch the complete “Sterling’s Story” video.  To sweeten the competition, we will have a Red donation box and a Blue donation box.  Let’s see which team can raise the most money on Saturday before the rivalry game! 

How:  We will have multiple heats throughout the day, so come have fun.  CrossFit Mt Olympus will provide burgers and hot dogs (AFTER you workout!), feel free to bring other dishes to share. 

Friends and family are more than welcome to come watch or jump in and participate.  Have you been trying to explain this “Crazy CrossFit” to them?  Come let them feel it.  The event is free, but we do ask for donations to the cause.  All donations are tax deductable.

How Does It Feel?

by Scott Zagarino

Marla lost her son Sterling

How does it feel? I’ve had someone’s life end in the middle of CPR with my lips on theirs. I know how that feels. I’ve put down two of my best friends in the world. I know how that feels. I’ve buried my father. I know how that feels. Then there are feelings I can’t imagine and don’t want to think about.

I’ve tried to watch the complete “Sterling’s Story” video on the CrossFit Journal and until I decided to edit it and re-post it here I couldn’t get through it. I didn’t want to “feel” that kind of pain, so I shut it off, changed the mental channel. I felt enough to want to use what we’ve built in Fight Gone Bad to support the CrossFit Kids/ Infant Swim Rescue and Coach Glassman’s promise that no more infants would drown, but still I didn’t want to feel it.

I sat down to edit the videos and I felt it. I’m not claiming to feel that crushing loss the way thousands of mothers and father have, but I felt enough to make myself sit down and try to make you feel it too.

There are three ways you find out your child is dead. You see it happen, you hear it on the phone, or someone looks you in the eye and tells you. I have two daughters and this morning I sat down, closed my eyes and imagined for a moment how that would feel. I imagined the phone call, I imagined the doctor telling me, I imagined waking up the next morning and having the reality slowly blossom in my brain like the breaking of day that they were gone. I felt my heart break into a million pieces and I couldn’t even come close to the reality of it, and still tears rolled down my cheeks until I was sobbing. I’m not proud of this, but all I wanted to do was get away from that feeling. I wanted to call my daughters and tell them how much I loved them, but I didn’t want to think about what it would’ve felt like to know they had drowned, that they were dead….forever. The only kind of dead there is.

With just a few days left before Fight Gone Bad 6, and more than a $1 million more that we have enough people out there to raise this year, I’m asking you to do the same thing I did. Stop for a minute, sit quietly and feel it. Feel what Marla felt when she saw Sterling laying there not breathing. Feel what she felt when she had to tell her husband that she didn’t know if it was ever going to be OK again. Feel what she felt when she had to disconnect her son from the last breath he would ever take. For one minute, FEEL IT.

Joan Holmes, founder of the Hunger Project explained why people go hungry in a world where there is enough food. She said it’s because we believe they should. What she meant was that we’d long ago given up hope and given into people starving to death as a reality, so we accept that reality.

After 25 years at this, I don’t have a lot of faith left in the average person’s ability to look squarely at a problem and feel it, rather than reach for the remote, but I do have hope in CrossFitters. I believe we can still feel, and if we feel, we’ll do something about it, and Fight Gone Bad provides you with the same confrontation as “can you feel it.” Fight Gone Bad confronts us with “Will you do something about it?”

Fight Gone Bad is going to provide CrossFit Kids/ISR with as much as we can from what we raise to train ISR instructors until (in the words of Coach Classman) not one more infant drowns. If you can make yourself “feel it,” you’ll go to your computer and ask people to support that idea with your donations.

If you can’t “feel it,” I understand, believe me, I understand.

www.fgb6.org

 Workout of the Day

90 Seconds Max Reps Deadlift (155/225#)
90 Second Rest
90 Seconds Max Reps Pullups
90 Second Rest
90 Seconds Max Reps Wallball Shots
90 Second Rest
90 Seconds Max Distance Farmer’s Carry (3/4 Bodyweight)

 

September 13, Charlie Mike

When things went wrong in the military, we used the phrase ”Charlie Mike” over the radio to indicate we would “Continue the Mission.”  Something ALWAYS goes wrong with your plan, but the mission still matters.  Equipment breaks down, the right people aren’t always in the right place at the right time, and sometimes you just had bad information from the beginning.  It doesn’t matter what hand you’re dealt,  you still need to finish the round.

CrossFit Mt Olympus-The Magnificent 7“Accidental Ultra” 

CrossFit develops this same attitude.  Get in, get it done, and get out.  We train for the unknown and unknowable, there will be bumps in the road.  When you feel it, just say to yourself, “Charlie Mike” and get back in there.  We practice it here in the safety of the gym so when real life hits you hard, you’re ready to Charlie Mike.

 Workout of the Day

Shoulder Press
5-5-5-5-5

Honey Badger Circuit
1 Lap Tall
1 Lap Rope Pull
1 Lap Low Bar

September 12, Do Your Bit

I know the media have been flooded with 9/11 tributes for the past week.  I have intentionally avoided it, but this one made its way into my conciousness and is so beautiful I wanted to pass it on.

This Saturday, from 9-noon you can come do your bit to help those who have been out doing our dirty work.  17 minutes of your time and sweat will make a difference.  Recently a Chinook helicopter was shot down, killing 22 special forces warriors.  That one incident alone has left 31 children fatherless.  Please join us in supporting them.  I can think of few better tributes to those who have picked up the flag and carried it forward.

 

Workout of the Day

Dr. Feelgood

3 Rounds of:

15 Pull-ups
15 Push-ups
15 Sit-ups
15 Back Extensions
15 Air Squats

If you are doing this as a recovery workout from the race this weekend take the entire class time to complete;

 All others, 3.2.1. GO!

September 09, Benchmarks

No 4:45 class today due to the relay. 

Class will be at 5:30pm today and 8:ooam Saturday

Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”
~Dr. H. James Harrington

There are a number of different benchmarks we use to measure our performance and progress:  the CrossFit Girls, Heroes, and Max Effort workouts.  Today we are going to see how fast you can run a mile.  As with all CrossFit workouts, you should leave nothing in the tank.  The last 100 meters should be run on pure willpower. 

Eliza works on levitating for time

Workout of the Day

1 Mile Run

Fast as you possibly can!

September 08, Band of Brothers

Last night I had the privilege of seeing a small group of CrossFitters stand up and follow through on their promise.  Many fell by the wayside, but an honorable few took on the challenge. 

Facing an overwhelming French force at the Battle of Agincourt, King Henry V rallied his forces who defeated an army reported to outnumber his own 10 to 1.  We don’t know what he actually said, but we have Shakespeare’s account, which goes down as one of the greatest speeches ever given.

 

To those who stood up when the time came, we honor you. 

 

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
 Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

 

Workout of the Day

5 Rounds of:

3 Cleans
20 Burpees

Record total time and weight used. 

September 07, Happy Birthday, Stacy!

 

CrossFit Mom!

Happy Birthday, Stacy!

 

Workout of the Day

3-3-3-3-3

Front Squat

September 06, Not Destroyed

 

 

Not Destroyed

by Scott Zagarino

You sign up. You make it into Special Operations training. There are a million moments you think will destroy you. They don’t. You finish. Not destroyed.

You take your seat on a plane to Afghanistan. Headed for the fight. You leave the base in a Humvee with your buddies. Just driving down a dusty road. Another day. A distant sound that reminds you of something you heard on a warm 4th of July years ago. Suddenly the whole world explodes. Slowly your brain begins to absorb the burned and twisted remains that used to be a Humvee, the bodies of your friends no longer what or who they were. You breathe, know you’re still alive and they aren’t. Your leg doesn’t look like a leg anymore. Not destroyed.

A face leans over your bed and a disembodied voice tells you the leg has to come off. You refuse. There’s something that needs to be done for the other guys and that leg is necessary for a little while longer. Not destroyed.

You limp to the starting line on a hot, humid morning in Miami, Florida months later, looking 100 miles down the road to Key West and you look down and tell the scarred, twisted leg, this is what I kept you for, now do your damn job.

60 miles and the leg says no. A doctor leans in and tells you he can’t let you go on. You look at the leg, you sign the papers that say you understand and accept the risk, and you get up on the leg that shouldn’t still be there and you run 40 more miles. You finish. Not destroyed.

They ask you to count backwards from 100 and when you wake up your leg is gone, wrapped in plastic and thrown into a trash bin somewhere. Not destroyed.

You walk into a CrossFit box for the first time and look at a whiteboard that tells you all of the things you can’t do with only one leg. You suited up, you showed up, and you finish up. Your first WOD. Not destroyed.

Fight Gone Bad 6

On September 17th, Keith Zeier will stand next to brothers and sisters at Alamo CrossFit in San Antonio, Texas who also refused to be destroyed. This first group has missing parts too, but they all know that on this day, if you want that t-shirt, you finish what you started, and Rick Martinez gave them a chance to prove it. You’re all waiting for the call. 3-2-1 Go. 17 minutes later Fight Gone Bad 6 is done. You, your brothers and sisters have done the work, raised the money, and stand together with chests heaving, sweat pouring through t-shirts. Not destroyed.

A woman standing off to the side, nervously bouncing from one foot to the other, catches Keith’s eye and without a word spoken between them, he tells her that you can only be destroyed if you give in, if you let yourself be destroyed. His prosthetic leg is the authority that makes what he’s telling her true. Only you decide when and if you’ll be destroyed.

3-2-1 Go. Not destroyed.

Keith decided not to be destroyed because he had a responsibility to those brothers of his that had given their lives, not their legs, to see to it that their children got to college, so he raised the money because that’s what you do.

Got 17 minutes now?

www.fgb6.org

Workout of the Day

5 Rounds of:

40 Double-unders
30 Box Jumps (20/24″)
20 Kettlebell Swings (35/53#)

 

September 02, Squirrel-like Intensity

The central tenets of CrossFit are constantly varied functional movements, done at high intensity.  What exactly does it mean to exercise with intensity?  We have used the analogy of junkyard dogs, tigers, and even sharks to explain.  The animal kingdom once again provides an excellent example of what intensity means.

A mama squirrel gets ready to open a can of whoop-ass when a dog pounces on her baby. 
When  you hear 3-2-1 go you should be ready to attack!!Bring your squirrel intensity everytime!

Do YOU have the squirrel-like intensity  when needed to take on a challenge bigger than yourself?

Do you have squirrel-like CrossFit intensity!

Sometimes you just have to dig in with everything you have and hold on!

Sometimes you just have to hold on and ride out the WOD!

Never underestimate the small, but powerful when they come at you with everything. 
Sometimes you win just by enduring to the buzzer.  All workouts end...eventually!

For more info on how to become a CrossFitting Mama, check out Holly’s blog.

Workout of the Day

As many Pull-ups as possible in 2 minutes
Rest 1 minute
As many abmat Sit-ups as possible in 2 minutes
Rest 1 minute
As many Air Squats as possible in 2 minutes