Monday, August 3rd

We're heading to the lake for the holiday on Monday - actually all of flux coaches are coming too - so flux CrossFit is taking the day off. 

Okay, I'll do a beach workout and see how many others I can convince to join me. jumping squats, burpee tuck jumps, and swimming (along with a lot of handstands)

Post your results ...  

Classes resume on Tuesday morning morning at 6am.  

darci

Courtney works on the olympic lifts

Courtney is a natural at the olympic lifts. She has tremendous speed through the middle of the snatch. 

Jane's Tough Workout

Everyone's hands took a beating during this workout!  Kudos to all of you who did renegade rows for the first time.  We also witnessed huge improvements in abdominal strength and grip strength on the knee to elbows.  Thanks Jane!

stretching workshop

Some of the flux folks have been asking for another stretching seminar. On Monday, July 27th Fran will be holding a stretching workshop from 7-8pm. Fran is a yoga and dance instructor with tons of experience. This is a great opportunity. Don't miss it! 

-Darci

Working on the clean and jerk

Brittaney and Kim

XXX flux 

Theresa's clean and jerk

Saturday's Workout

Reviewing the clean and jerk

Mike's box jump

Inspired by Ryan's graceful jump, Mike gave it a go. A whopping 45" box jump. 

Post-Workout Exhaustion

In the Moment

I witnessed some serious drive and determination from these women.

Box Jump Ladder, 5 thrusters, 50m sprint 6 rounds

Kennedy and Jane racing each other. The box jump ladder went from 12" 16" 20" 24" 30".

Congrats to all of you who found ingenious ways to get over the 30" box.

reminder: Additional Class Saturday 9am

Hi flux folks, just a reminder that I have added a 9am class on Saturday mornings. This new class begins this Saturday. 

Brenda's Stamina

Today's workout is borrowed from CrossFit Football. On the minute you do 5 burpees, then for the rest of the minute you do as many thrusters as possible. Record how many minutes it takes to do 100 thrusters. 

Rochelle and Tamara

Team Workout- 100m Tire Flip and 800m Sandbag Run

After our deadlifts we did a partnered drill.

Jack's Big Comeback

Jack had a rough time during Monday's workout but yesterday he and Ryan killed the sandbag run and the tire flip! He also pr'd on the deadlift. Way to go Jack!

W.O.D. from Dublin

Last night I flew over to Dublin to do a bit of extra work and to visit Darci's mom Shannyn (she lives in Dublin and co-owns an alternative health clinic). So this morning I completed my W.O.D. on Shannyn's balcony overlooking the grounds of Castleknock Community College which also have a whole lot of cows in the pasture. No chickens in the yard, but cows (black and white) - pretty cool.

The workout consisted of 3 rounds 100 squats and 30 push-ups. Easy to manage on the balcony. I feel good but stiff from the plane, jet-lag, and sleeping in a couple of new beds. All is good though.

I head back to Liverpool this evening for the last couple of days of the conference and tomorrow's rowing workout - yikes!

I heard about the box jump ladder - I'm so jealous - and I look forward to working out on Saturday at the 9am class and running flux CrossFit Kids at 10am.

Charity is over and out!

Additional Class Saturday July 18 at 9am

Holy Cow! Last Saturday's Class was very busy! 

I have added a 9am class starting this Saturday.  

flux CrossFit Kid's will continue to be at 10am.

-Darci

In Praise of the Non-Specialist -By Jane

Ryan's successful 42.5" box jump.

Specialization.... not the Crossfit Way

One of my favourite concepts of Crossfit is the idea of being good at everything and specializing in nothing.  It is a pretty cool way to approach the workouts, every work out you are striving to be better but you want to be better in every type of fitness aspect, endurance, strength, speed etc., no one aspect should be focused on or “specialized” in.  I think it is something to be remembered at the gym, just because you are good and enjoy a certain aspect, say heavy lifting, does not mean that you should only focus on that element.  By doing so you are sabotaging your abilities in other areas and are becoming a specialist rather than a generalist.

So a couple of examples of Specialists and what is gained and lost:

“Endurance Athlete – Triathaletes, Cyclists and Marathoners are often regarded as among the fittest athletes in the world but the endurance athlete has trained long past any cardiovascular health benefit and has lost ground in strength, speed and power and typically nothing has been done to improve coordination, agility, balance and accuracy.” (Crossfit Training Guide, 2006)

Strength Athletes – Weightlifters that develop the capacity to lift heavy weight develop strength to be sure but that development comes a cost of loss of cardiovascular and respiratory endurance and loss of stamina.

Crossfit wants its athletes to have the ability of maximum competency in all physical challenges.  This again comes back to functionality, really, as an athlete don’t you want to have the ability to meet any type of challenge and do well in it rather than being really amazing at one activity and weaker than average in every other activity?

At my certification in May, a really good scenario simplifying this concept and explaining it was used and I thought it was really cool so I am going to share it:

The top female time for the Boston Marathon this year was Salina Kosgei, at 2:32 (wow).  The female winner of the Crossfit games this year was Tanya Wagner.  We will bring these two women together and tell them that we want them to compete.  We will then bring out a hat and into the hat we will put various random exercises, as many as we can think of.  So as the hat is shaken up, you would have to wonder what each woman would be thinking and I think Salina would be hoping that what comes out of the hat is a distance run while Tanya is probably hoping that the only thing that doesn’t come out of the hat is…. a distance run.  Thinking of all the activities that could come out of the hat, 24” box jumps, 300lb deadlifts, 100m sprint, pull-ups, push-ups, muscle ups, burpees, etc.  Every exercise that I can imagine, aside from distance running, I think Tanya would dominate.  As a Crossfit athlete, someone who has trained to do well in a variety of areas, Tanya should have the advantage over Salina in every type of activity that is drawn out of that hat except for distance running.  The fact that Tanya is not a specialist (distance runner) means that out of all the activities that could be drawn from the hat the one she will lose in is the distance run, while Salina, who is a specialist, is limited to being able to win against an athletic generalist in her one area of specialization only. 

That is a concept that I think is really great about Crossfit and I really love about our gym.  I am thrilled with the idea of being good at everything and having functional capability in such a variety of tasks.  While I admire specialists and the work and dedication they put into becoming the best they can be in one specific area, I much prefer for myself the idea of dedicating my fitness to be good at everything and excellent at nothing.  I want to be able to do a lot of activities well, which is why flux Crossfit is such a good fix for me and I think for most people out there.

So that is my blog on Specialization, thoughts/comments?  I would love to know what everyone thinks!

-Jane

tomorrow's W.O.D. from Liverpool

Well, most of you saw me head out to Liverpool yesterday. I flew from Regina to Toronto (watched Sunshine Cleaning 2008 and a 30 Rock episode) then from Toronto to Amsterdam (had no choice - had to watch 17 Again with the Zac guy as well as one of the first episodes of Mad Men that I had previously missed) and landed in Liverpool this morning (Sunday) around 10am. I made my way to the Malmaison hotel (with a chic, yet goth-like aesthetic, which is only emphasized by the fact that I'm reading Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan's The Strain) and then went for a short hike (1.5 hours) around the harbour and city before settling in for some much needed zzz's (about 6 hours). I just had a lovely dinner at the restaurant here and on my way back up to the room I stopped by the hotel gym. And what to my wandering eyes did appear - a concept 2 rower with a view out to the pier.

So here's my "I'm away from flux CrossFit'" plan for this week:

Monday - W.O.D.
3 Rounds
Row 400 meters
12 dumb-bell presses
10 Burpees

Tuesday - W.O.D.
3 Rounds
100 air squats
30 push-ups

Wednesday - W.O.D.
if I have time I'll check out the Dublin CrossFit (I'm heading to Dublin for a quick visit with Darci's mom)

Thursday - W.O.D.
4 Rounds
800 meter row
resting between each round

Friday - W.O.D.
5 Rounds
20 pushups
30 situps
200 meter row

I'll report back ...

Charity

FOOD ANXIETY PART I

Food is often on my mind. I eat about 6 times a day. I do this for a couple of reasons. One, I have a high metabolism and two, the rigors of CrossFit require a high caloric intake (this is a whole other can of worms!).   I usually have supper with Charity and when our schedules permit, lunch as well. In our home, I do the bulk of the cooking, meal preparation and grocery shopping. I have a circuit that includes: Nature's Best, the farmer's market (in the summer), and Safeway. We buy our bison from a local farmer (grass fed, no antibiotics, no feed lot, the usual trendy, urban  disclaimers). In the summer, I also get a lot of vegetables from my Grandma D who lives in Archerwill and my grandpa who lives in Rose-Valley.  

Lately I have had a number of discussions with flux CrossFit folks about food and nutrition.  I guess you could say I am part of that new wave of urban folks that are becoming increasingly pre-occupied with the politics, health and ethics of food. Food security has always been on the collective mind of the human animal. Of course, how this anxiety over food security manifested itself, organized itself, and understood itself, was very different 500 000 years ago compared to today.  

In the late 1700s gloomy economist Thomas Malthus warned of an inevitable food shortage that would be the result of overpopulation (Paul Roberts: 15). European nations, partially in response to Malthus' prediction - but also in response to the configurations of industrialized capitalism - started to clear cut the land in order to grow an excess of food.  The storage of grains and seeds was a safety net in case of mass drought or other such 'natural' phenomena. 

For the last 60 years or so, the 'industrial food complex' (Pollan), has resulted in a super-abundance of value-added products, but very little 'food.'  After reading In Defense of Food I am much more discriminate in what I will bestow with the honorific food.  I have immediate access to 20 different brands of microwavable dinners, but finding grass fed and finished beef or bison, from a small local farmer requires a fair bit of research and time. I do not think the extra time it takes to eat well is necessarily a bad thing. Putting more thought into what we eat, as well as its preparation, mitigates against the western tendency to treat food with casual indifference.  

The urban food movement (growing your own fruits and vegetables, raising your own chickens, eating locally) of the western world is a contemporary response to this anxiety over food security. It is fundamentally an attempt to take more responsibility for the political and ethical ecology of  food.  Security has taken on a different meaning in the 21st century. Clearly, the problem is not one of lack. Yes, poverty leaves many hungry in Canada. But again, the problem is not lack of food but the meaning of food itself. The despicable irony of the food industry is that a kid can eat at 7-11, McDonalds, Wendy's, Macs for under $2.00 - a parent and a child can eat for $4.00. 

More later.

-Darci

You might want to check out this book. The End of Food by Paul Roberts (2008). 

A Determined Beth

Beth devoured the sandbag workout!!!

Sandbag Run=Real Fitness

The sandbag is a great tool for building real strength. It is great practice to practice cleaning 'awkward' objects like a sandbag. 

Ted's Pistols

I love pistols. 

To execute a pistol an athlete requires ankle flexibility, balance and strength. The pistol is also a great way to create muscular symmetry. 

July 7/09 WOD

WOD

5 ROUNDS

 200M SANDBAG SPRINT 50P WOMEN, 80P MEN

21 KB SNATCHES WOMEN 35P MEN 50P

9 RING DIPS

YOUR GOAL IS TO FINISH IN UNDER 18 MIN. 

Testing Our New Boxes

1 min max reps Thrusters 45p

1 min max reps pull-ups

1 min max reps box jumps 20" 24" 31"

rest 1 min

complete 3 rounds

OUR NEW BOXES

Thanks to Dad and my Uncle Lenn for helping me build the new boxes for flux! 

Here I am learning how to use a bandsaw. 

Traci's Push-Ups

Traci has been working hard on her push-ups and she has witnessed tremendous improvement with her form and range of motion. 

PULL