Hey Monday, how you doing? Are you folks as ready as Kacey to tackle this week?
Holy activities Batman!! Do we have a bunch of stuff coming up on the calendar or what??
Did you miss bringing a friend to Verve this past Saturday? No worries, we have another chance this month. Saturday April 28th is once again “Bring A Friend” day at Verve!! Get you and your buddy signed up in MBO.
Need a little yoga in your life? Well Kacey is leading the yoga charge this Sunday, April 22nd, at 11am. Get signed up in MBO.
Verve’s in house PT Zach Harmon will be providing a workshop titled “All about the hips” this Saturday April 21st. This workshop is free to Verve members and is designed to educate on common issues regarding our hips and lower back. Stay tuned for time details.
The Open has been over for a few weeks now, but we have yet to properly celebrate it’s ending and the winning team in the Open Team Cup. The post Open party will be going down Saturday night, April 28th. More details to follow, but mark your calendars now!
This is just what’s happening in the month of April! We have more fun planned in the month of May, as well as so many more events throughout the summer. Keep your eye on Monday’s blog for continued updates.
A little #tbt to some curls for the girls action. . . done by the ladies of Verve Barbell Club.
Got friends you want to lift heavy things with? This Saturday is “Bring A Friend” day at Verve.
We invite you to bring a friend you want to introduce to CrossFit. They can join you in a class on Saturday for free. The workout can be scaled to meet all ability levels.
Can’t make it this Saturday? No worries. Our next “Bring A Friend” day is also on the books. It is scheduled for Saturday April 28th.
So get you and your friend signed up in MBO!!
But wait, that’s not all. . .
Who’s been wondering when they get to celebrate the end of the Open and finally hoist the Chanly Cup in victory?!?! Well wait no more . . . well you will have to wait a little because the party will be Saturday April 28th. Verve will get a place set and ready to rock for the team members of Team Sex Panthers to throw down and celebrate their Open Team Cup victory. Not on Team Sex Panthers?? Don’t you worry, the party doors will open first for the winning team and then a wee bit later in the night members from all 4 teams will be invited to continuing celebrating into the late evening hours. Stay tuned for more details, but put the evening in your calendar now and call the babysitters. dog sitters, cause we gonna party.
And yet, there’s still more. . .
Folks, keep your eyes peeled to the blog and social media because w have a TON of fun stuff planned over the next several months.
We have our own in house PT Zach Harmon offering up free workshops for Verve members, providing you with info to keep your body happy and healthy.
We have a ladies only event just before Mother’s Day. Guys, don’t be sad, we have a dudes only event for you right before Father’s Day. You do not need to be a mother or a father to attend, just a lady or a dude. 😉
We have yoga on Sundays (4/22, 4/29, 5/6, and 5/20)
And there is still even more than this!! Folks, this is going to be a fun summer, get excited, and start marking those calendars as events pop up!!
Heath, getting set up to pull some heavy deadlifts.
We all know how important sleep is and the difference we feel after a great night’s rest versus a night where we toss and turn. I read an article over the weekend about how sleep affects different areas of our body. The full article can be read by clicking HERE. Below are a few excerpts from the article.
Brain
As we drift from consciousness into slow-wave sleep, our brain gets to work shifting short-term memories into long-term ones. But lack of sleep impairs the brain’s cognitive function—staying awake for 20 hours is basically the equivalent of having a blood alcohol level of .10%.
Heart
Both obstructive sleep apnea and habitual short sleep duration are associated with poor cardiovascular health. Part of this is due to how sleep regulates the hormones that control our metabolism, including insulin, ghrelin (hunger), and leptin (satiety),Jonathan Jun, an assistant professor medicine at Johns Hopkins University, explains. He recently authored a study that showed how sleep apnea instantly affects the metabolism overnight, causing a cumulative damage that could lead to heart disease or diabetes.
Muscles
Professional and amateur athletes perform better when they sleep well. In addition to resting their muscles, this could be because their brains are working better, and because sleep helps regulate inflammation.
Got a friend, co-worker, family member, neighbor you like enough to workout next to? We are having our next “Bring A Friend” day on Saturday April 14th. We invite you to bring a friend you want to introduce to CrossFit. They can join you in a class on Saturday for free. The workout can be scaled to meet all ability levels.
Can’t make it this Saturday? No worries. Our next “Bring A Friend” day is also on the books. It is scheduled for Saturday April 28th.
CrossFit has evolved, but the Open didn’t leave you behind.
It could have, but it didn’t.
I was recently laying out a CrossFit Journal article, and I dug up a picture of legendary Games athlete Chris Spealler. He was out front of CrossFit Founder Greg Glassman’s original gym in Santa Cruz, California, in 2007. He was doing an overhead squat with 135 lb., and it was probably an impressive feat at the time. No one would bat an eye at it now.
Less than a year ago, I stood in the spot where that picture was taken and paid my respects before a breakfast meeting down the street. The place was empty. No gym, no people, no sign that it was Ground Zero of the Fitness Revolution. Nothing but a few roll-up doors, a parking lot and a guy posting a picture on Instagram.
At breakfast, I told Coach Glassman I had visited the old CrossFit HQ, and he jokingly said the place is probably a meth lab now. He showed no sentimentality at all—the mark of a leader who has always been way ahead of the pack. We’re looking forward, son—always.
You shouldn’t be sentimental about CrossFit either. Doing so is literally bad for your health.
This year’s Open competition was next level, and some sentimental people didn’t like that. They longed for the old days, which are long gone, even if 18.5 was a repeat of a test seen in 2011 and 2012.
In some forums, I heard a few people complaining about workouts that were very, very challenging at the Rx level, as if something had been taken away from them. Some were upset about the placement of difficult gymnastics elements, the number of reps, the loads and the new movements that thinned the herd. It was as if some thought the tests weren’t “appropriate” solely because they didn’t have the fitness to do them or weren’t prepared for them. Some seemed to think a few athletes “deserved” to be at Regionals due to past performance, not current fitness levels.
I don’t have time for all that.
Any student of CrossFit history can see the evolution of both the general fitness program and the Sport of Fitness—and remember that the two are not the same.
Here are three timeline points that show the evolution of our sport:
Diane from June 25, 2004: Take a look at the comments here. You’ll see a ton of scaling, several Rx times well above 10:00 and a few times below 10:00—but not by much.
Fast-forward to May 2012: Here’s Dan Bailey doing the same workout at Regionals in 1:35. That’s 95 seconds. Had Bailey posted that on CrossFit.com in 2004, he would have become a new member of the ever-swelling ranks of blacklisted commenters who were found to be liars, assholes or lying assholes.
Now recall 18.4, in which the top athletes performed Diane in its entirety, followed by 45 heavy deadlifts and 150 feet of handstand walking. The best finished all this in under 7 minutes. This workout likely would have been laughed off CrossFit.com by its own administrators back in 2004.
People are simply capable of more than anyone imagined. That’s become clear as the best athletes push the limits and the average Joes and Janes follow the same path about 20 or 30 steps back.
The Open is the first stage of finding the Fittest on Earth, and the tests need to become more challenging as the athletes become better. That’s why you see what used to be Regional-level workouts in the Open’s Rx Division. And that’s why you see dramatically scaled-up workouts at the CrossFit Games Finals.
To allow the Open to test the elite and the masses, the Scaled Division came into existence in 2015. Just as scaling allows broad participation in regular CrossFit classes, the Scaled Division allows broad Open participation but still tests fitness. The best part: You can earn your way to the next level.
No one is saying you must perform deadlifts at 315 lb. and handstand walks to participate in the Open. If you can perform lighter deadlifts, push-ups and bear crawls, you’re in. Join our party. We’re going to the Games, too, and we’re stopping by the beer garden in Madison.
Guess what? The scaled version of 18.5 is still a hard workout. Try it, and you’ll find nothing was compromised and no one was cheated out of fitness.
The evolving nature of the sport caused a former CrossFit Games competitor, retired Navy SEAL and 12-year CrossFit athlete to say he had no problem scaling Open workouts, which terrify him, by the way. Pat Sherwood even used the hashtag “#nottooproudtoscale” in his post just before the Open kicked off.
Some don’t stow the ego as readily as Pat, and I hope the brief history lesson above puts things in perspective, both for the Open and your next CrossFit workout. As the elite push the upper limit further away, the spectrum of scaling becomes ever wider, and fewer people can do workouts as Rx’d.
That’s OK. You’re ultimately competing with yourself as you earn health and fitness, even if you’re chasing the guy next to you. You’ll find your proper place somewhere on that scaling spectrum as long as you let your coach and common sense guide you. Regularly training at the right level will result in the incremental gains that allow you to eventually move to the next level. It’s a magical progression that’s only derailed when your ego writes checks your body can’t cash, to quote “Top Gun.”
Being sentimental about “going Rx” is foolish. It’s like asking Usain Bolt to stop lowering the world record so your best 100-m time doesn’t look worse. “Rx” is ever changing, an arbitrary label for a workout, not a person. It’s a construct. I can create a workout Mat Fraser would have to scale: Diane at 505 lb. Sorry, Mat. You aren’t an “Rx guy” anymore.
Or we can play the pointless game of euphemisms, in which we delicately stroke our fragile modern sensitivities. We’ll say Tia-Clair Toomey, Brent Fikowski, and the fittest guy and girl at your box are in the Dragon Division now. Me and you, we’ll compete in the Nighthawk Division. Our name is cooler.
Let’s be real here to close out the 2018 Open: You’re a CrossFit athlete, and you train at the right level in each workout. That’s how the program works, and it doesn’t change in the Open. For long-term health and fitness, you need to do the workout that’s right for you every day. No sentimentality, no ego, no shoulds, no shame. If you follow that plan, you’ll eventually end up doing some workouts as prescribed. But don’t worry too much about that.
Just do the right workout every single day. Do it in your garage or in a CrossFit affiliate. Give your best effort—whatever that means on each day. And do the workout with friends. It’s better that way.
Follow that plan for the rest of your life, and you’re going to be very healthy and very happy no matter what division you compete in when the 2019 Open rolls around.
Monday April 9th Verve will have two guest trainers coaching a few morning and evening classes.
CrossFit has 4 Levels of trainer. Level 4 trainers are certified CrossFit Trainers. It’s a title and a distinction that has been earned by few and is held by the very best in their profession. To earn the title of a Level 4 Certified CrossFit Trainer one must pass a practical test. The test? Running a class. From top to bottom, from intro and warm-up to workout execution and cool down. It’s not as simple as taking a group of people through a workout, in this practical test, trainers will be evaluated on 6 criteria: teaching, demo, seeing fault in movement, correcting faulting movement, presence and attitude, and group management. This test has not yet been fully released, as it is still in the beta testing phase. . . enter Monday April 9th at Verve.
CrossFit HQ will be sending some of their very best trainers to take part in a Level 4 beta test. James Hobart and Matt Lodin will be coaching our 5:30am, 6:30am, 4:30pm, and 5:30pm classes. There will be several additional HQ staff members present, evaluating these classes. Here is what we need from you, Verve members:
Get signed up for class! The classes taught by these two gentlemen will have a cap of 10 athletes. So MBO will reflect two classes at 5:30am and 4:30pm (as these are the only two that tend to get bigger than 10). We would ask that you please sign up for the “Beta Test” class first. When this class is full, capped at 10, then please sign up for the “WOD” class. We REALLY need you to actually sign up for these classes, an accurate head count is a must.
Get ready to workout! You do not need to do anything other than show up and be prepared to get led through a full 1 hour class, like usual.
The HQ trainers need to teach two different classes, so the programming will be different between the morning and the evening classes. This programming will also be different from Verve’s programming for the day. But I can promise you this. . . same or not, they will ALL be amazing workouts.
Get signed up for class! That’s right, this step is so important, we are mentioning it twice.
James and Matt are amazing trainers. This provides an awesome opportunity for Verve members to see some new faces and help provide an environment that is lending itself to the growth of future trainers in CrossFit. If you folks have any questions about this, put them up in the comments or feel free to send me an email, courtney@crossfitverve.com.
Who smiles during hollow body holds? Liz and Lisa do!! They know that midline is ready for summer!
In Wednesday’s post, we discussed what to do during this upcoming year now that the CF Open is over! There are so many options to get outside of these 4 walls and put our fitness to the test. Follow the links below, check out the races, get a team together, and lets have some fun! Shout out in the comments if you want to get a team together for any of these.
