Posts from — January 2011

Congratulations to Carolyn, Brianna, and Majid for having the courage to step forward and compete in weightlifting for the first time last weekend. And Emily, Brianna, and Majid each bested their former PRs in the Clean and Jerk. Thank you to all four of you for breaking ground for the CFSR team. And a big thanks to all of you from the awesome CFSR community for coming and watching! I hope you were inspired by what you saw. Maybe you’re thinking of competing in the future? Look for a future blog post on the topic.

Here are some pictures from the event.

This weekend four of our members will be competing in the Friendly City Open Olympic-style weightlifting competition right here in our own backyard. Rohnert Park is apparently a friendly city, and our friendly friends down there at Myles Ahead Fitness are hosting the meet.

This event marks the debut of CFSR as a USA Weightlifting Team.  Please come show your support for our team members Brianna, Carolyn, Emily, and Majid as they each take the platform to attempt a personal best in the Snatch and Clean and Jerk. Cheers from the crowd really do help the athletes!

When:
This Saturday 1/29. Women start lifting at 12 noon, men start at 2 pm
Where:
Myles Ahead Fitness
121 Southwest Blvd
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
Why:
1) Support your CFSR team!
2) See what Olympic lifting is really like. Who knows, maybe you’ll be inspired to join the team!

Click on image to enlarge:

You can register for this event by clicking on the Whole9 logo
in “Upcoming Events” to your right—>

Hey y’all, this week we’re working on stuff below the knee. Two different elements, using a lacrosse ball and a foam roller (or paralette bar). Take a look at what we’re dealing with:

1. Get on the floor with foam roller (or paralette bar), rest your leg up on the roller. Rock your calf side to side across the roller, starting at the bottom of your calf and inch-by-inch working your way all the way up the calf to the back of the knee. The calf muscles run vertically along the leg, and here you are working “against the grain”. If you find a painful, twangy spot (I’m gonna bet there’ll be many), then stay there and give it some extra love. Prop your other leg on top to get downward pressure into the foam roller (he shows this version toward the end of the video). Be thorough! This should be roughly 1-2 minutes on each calf.

Here’s the video, the piece we want is from 0:25 – 1:20 and 4:10 – 4:30.

2. Second element involves the lacrosse ball. Take your shoes off, even the 5-fingers. I know, they’re hardly there, but you really don’t want anything between the sole of your foot and that ball. Humor me! You’re going to be giving the bottom of your foot a deep tissue massage. Standing up, put the ball under your foot and roll it into your heel (surprising how tender it can get in there), and the arch of your foot. Really mash around. This is where some of your calf muscles run down and attach in – the heel and arch of your foot. Get about a minute of rolling on each foot.

Following my last MWod post, Tom D. asked a good question in the comments section, which I’d like to address here. Tom asked if too much shoulder flexibility might be a bad thing while lifting heavy weights.

Yes, you need appropriate ROM (range of motion) to lift heavy weights. Yes, you can overstretch without firing the muscles up before a lifting session. We’ve always advocated active stretching at the beginning of class to warm the muscles up, increase ROM, and decrease chance of injury. Dynamic (active) stretching uses active muscular effort to bring about a stretch. MWod’s tend to be more static-type mobility (holding in the end range) and are most appropriate after class. You’ll notice that we’ve ended up placing the MWod at the end of class.

NOW….here’s where I tell you to pony up. You know your body better than anyone else (or should…). Effectively using your body as your vehicle for an exuberant life means knowing where you historically have issues. And then addressing ‘em. If you already have good flexibility in your shoulders, but tend to get tight in the hamstrings….well, you need to focus on your hams, not ‘yer shoulders! You don’t need to overstretch an area if it’s already okay.

Also, for whatever it’s worth (I think everyone tends to struggle with the committment that a daily practice takes…physical, musical, meditative, etc), trying to embed stretching into a daily routine is going to be most effective. A surprising amount can be accomplished while sitting at a desk. Or while standing in your kitchen waiting for food to cook. Or while sitting in your car at a stoplight. So, coming into the box and addressing your tissue issues (like that one?) for only 5-10 minutes out of your 24 hour day is less than ideal. I’m no saint myself….I’m just saying, lets all strive toward more frequent maintenance.

The MWod’s have been incorporated recently to give folks some tools for addressing their ROM issues. I won’t be posting new ones indefinitely, and so remember the ones that have helped you most and use them as you need. Do dynamic stretching before your splendid feats of athleticism, and static stretching throughout your day and/or at the end of class.

The shower is in. Feel free to use it! (Both bathrooms are now unisex.)

Alrighty, grab ‘yer giant rubber bands and let’s get some flexibility in three different shoulder positions. Here’s the video, just watch the whole darn thing, try the first partner stretch on your own time, and lets do the three with the band. Remember, you can do this stuff even when it’s not the week’s MWod….

Rundown:

1. Pretest is some movement that you normally feel limited in the shoulders (rack position, ring dip, kipping swing, etc)
2. Get the band affixed about shoulder height.
3. Figure out the way to grab the band like in the video (loop around back of wrist, reach forward, grab both strands).
4. You will collect one minute each side in each of the three stretches=6 minutes!
5. FIRST: arm straight, turn away opening up the front of shoulder. Keep shoulder down and back in socket as you stretch the front of the shoulder. Turn head away for additional neck muscle stretch. Palm is facing the ceiling.
6. SECOND: face away from the band, bend at the elbow and bring the arm up and over the shoulder. Palm is again facing ceiling. Don’t let your ribcage lift, keep it nice and inline by tightening core. Keep bicep near ear, don’t let the elbow fly out and get distracted sideways.
7. THIRD: again, palm up, arm across body, pull so that the shoulder blade gets stretched away from the spine. You want to loosen the shoulder blade off the ribs.
8. Don’t forget to retest after mobilizing. We want to see improvement! If you want to trip yourself out, do all three on one side, retest with stretched/unstretched shoulders and see the difference between your two shoulders! Then make sure you finish the other side.
9. Cheers!

for the New Year! Aubrey just got her first kipping pull up! And then for “Helen” she knocked out three of them per round. Woo-hoo! “Was my chin over the bar?” she asked. Um, yes, it was.

Ever heard of “S.M.A.R.T.” goals? It’s an acronym with several variations, but here’s one version:

Specific Strategies
What smaller steps do you need to take to achieve this goal?
Measureable
How will you know you’ve met the goal?
Agreed Upon
Who’s involved and has everyone agreed to their role in this?
Realistic
Do you have the resources and time to reach the goal?
Time-bound
What’s the time frame for meeting the goal?

Earlier this week, O’Nell, who’s been training at CFSR since October, posted in the blog comments that her goal in joining had been “to play around in the snow for hours without having an asthma attack.” Well, she spent these winter holidays tromping around in the snow with her man, breathing easy. This was only a piece of her larger goal, though, of completing a NOLS course in backcountry skiing later this winter. It has been awesome to see O’Nell push herself each day with this goal in mind. In fact, if you’ve trained in class with her, you might be surprised to find that this badass lady was only planning on doing CrossFit until the course! CFSR has been a specific strategy for reaching her goal. (I’m hoping we can convince her to stay, of course.)

So while most people make their resolutions for the new year, we at CFSR like to make goals. Of course, there’s no reason we can’t make goals at any other time of year. And surely there isn’t any point to stating your goal and then not carrying out the work needed to achieve it. But the first step, no matter when or how we do this, is to think about what it is you’d like to achieve as an athlete at CFSR. What are your performance goals?

Use the SMART goal acronym as a framework. It’ll help. For example, it’s futile to simply say “I really want to get my first pull up” and not figure out how exactly you’re going to do that. What are you going to do to get your first pull up? What role will your coaches play? How long do you think it will realistically take? These are all questions you need to ask yourself in order to make a plan.

We’re going to carve out a space on the whiteboard for you to post your goals, so you can declare them to the CFSR world. Scary, I know. But guess what? Other members might have advice and strategies to offer to you, and their support is only going to help.

Now, here’s Nelly and her snowcation:

***REMINDER: New evening class schedule starts Monday, this week! There are now two evening classes – 5:30 AND 6:30 pm.***

This week is about thoracic mobility. What do I mean by “thoracic”? Your spine is divided into four functional sections: Cervical (the top 7 vertebrae in the neck, C1-C7), Thoracic (the 12 vertebrae that your ribs attach to, T1-T12), Lumbar (the 5 vertebrae in the low back, L1-L5), and the Sacrum (5 fused bony segments at the bottom, finished off with the coccyx, S1-S5).

Thoracic suppleness and organization will affect all kinds of things like shoulder and front rack positioning, ribcage tilt (don’t want it, it means the lumbar spine is compensating), and the neighboring spine sections (your neck and low back).

We’re going to work this area with the two-taped-lacrosse-balls-tool. We’re mobilizing between each thoracic vertebrae, the spot where the ribs attach to each vertebrae, and loosening up all the muscles that attach to and run along the thoracic spine.

Here’s what we’re dealing with anatomically:

And here’s the video. We’re doing only the section between 1:05 to 2:10.

So:
1. Tape 2 lacrosse balls together, have your instructor show you how, it doesn’t take but 3 strips of sports tape
2. Start at T12, center the double ball along the spine, tighten your core, lift the hips off the floor slightly
3. Straight arms, start them by hips, reach them overhead, trying to touch the floor above your head
4. Work your way, vertebrae by vertebrae, up the entire thoracic spine to T1, arm pumps the whole way
5. 100 total arm pumps