Greenlake Group workout tomorrow

5:30pm at the north end of Greenlake. Call/text (360) 908.9862 to RSVP. Thursday's next!

"Size Up the Competition" Competition Tomorrow!

@ Urban CrossFit. High Noon.


If you're not going to the Certification this weekend @ Rainier CrossFit BE THERE! $10 to compete. Male and Female winners get the pot, bragging rights and "all eyes on you" for the 2009 CrossFit Games: Northwest Regionals at Magnuson Park April 16th.

The Return of the Greenlake Group

Ann Marie, Tita, PJ, Marc, Max, Paolo and Justin

Big thanks to the crew who came out Tuesday and braved the rain and cold. Carey and Sevan from HQ came by and were surprised how badass Washingtonians are in that we workout outdoors rain or shine!

amrap in 20 min:
sprint to the bathroom
10 elevated pushups
20 walking lunges

NEXT PARK WORKOUT: Tuesday, March 31st @ 5:30pm at the north end of Greenlake.

Park Workouts!

First one of the year!

Tuesday, March 24th @ 5:30pm. We'll be at the north end of Greenlake [map], across the street from World Wrapps, Zeek's Pizza, Ben & Jerry's, Blu Water Bistro, etc. We may have some people filming us!

Dress appropriately! It might be 50 degrees and there's a 60% chance of precipitation. RSVP with me please: (360) 908.9862

The ultimate treadmill?

Can't even call it a treadmill. It's known as the Woodway Speedboard. Nice concept- no power source and it looks like it keeps well. I wonder would CrossFit affiliates ever bring these into their gyms? By their reasoning for creating it, it looks like they jettisoned any indicator of measurement. Hmm. I definitely would, but only if I could tell how far I ran because CrossFit WODs ask for 400m, 800m, 1600m, 5k, 10k, etc.

Check it out here. Spotted over at CrossFit Endurance.

Donkey Kong'ed Rodizio!

A great turnout today!


Allen 9:48
Andrew 13:13
Arv 10:03
Ben 13:13
Brian 16:31
Char 11:31
Chris G. 14:11
Damian 10:38
Dwinson 12:30
Glen 8:58
Jason 10:59
Jay 20:17
Marc 10:53
Max 15:25
Mel 17:40
Melissa 18:29
Nate 13:07
Winnie 19:53

Great job everybody. Some of us haven't been working out much, but I applaud the effort to come out and kick ass anyway. It's always sunny at a Foundation CrossFit RAINSTORM!

Big thanks to Adrian, Ron, Ben and his folk, Carey and Sevan, and Ben from the Seattle Times for coming out to support and help as well!

Good work, good times, good eats.

The Story of the 1st CrossFit Affiliate

The First CF Affiliate from CrossFit NorCal on Vimeo.

Courtesy of the wonderful Nicki Violetti who I had the pleasure to meet this past weekend at Coach Dave's house. She runs a wonderful site about developing the CrossFit business.

more info:
http://www.nickivioletti.com/
http://www.robbwolf.com/
http://crossfitnorcal.com/
http://crossfitseattle.com/

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DONKEY KONG RODIZIO SATURDAY! Have you RSVP'ed yet?!

If you're in the South End

Visit our buddies at King CrossFit!


King CrossFit from Ronald Antonio on Vimeo.

Tell Glen, Ron, Arvin and Allen that Andrew sent you!

What does "rodizio" mean?

(this is all in regards to this Saturday's event)

From ipanemabraziliangrill.us:

Rodízio, a popular Brazilian style of enjoying dinner among friends, is a unique dining experience. Rodízio offers a wide variety of different cuts of grilled meats slowly roasted in specially designed charcoal grills that preserve all the natural flavors. Served continuously by our “chefs” or “passadores”, brought to you on skewers and carved to order tableside. Our passadores make their rounds untill all the rodízio specialities are served or until you are satisfied.Rodízio also includes unlimited visits to our “mesa de frios”(cold table) where you’ll find an array of cold cuts, cheeses, salads and exoctic Brazilian specialities.

aka BUFFET! WHOOOO! "Meat and Vegetables", right CrossFit?! How about unlimited meat and vegetables?! YEAAH!

$16.95 per person. Bring enough cash to cover food expenses, tax, tip and parking.

CARPOOL! CARPOOL! CARPOOL!

17MAR09

5 rds for time:
5 deadlifts
10 box jumps

Andrew V. 4:50
Leila 6:45
Paolo 5:03
Shannon 6:05
Veronica 7:40

Great job everyone, especially Veronica for finally coming back to work with me and Leila for her first CrossFit experience!

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Donkey Kong Rodizio: Part Deux this Saturday, rain or shine!

Water Intake

h2o

We've all heard it before: "drink 8 glasses of water a day", and most do (or at least try to). But why? No one gave us any reasoning as to why having a 2-liter of agua was beneficial, but it sounded right and I think we all have something in the back of our head wanting us to be "healthier".

There's a great article about this topic from Mark's Daily Apple:

Years ago someone put forth the idea that we all needed to drink 8 glasses of water a day. Perhaps it came from a series of studies in the 1940s after which the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine opined that the “RDA” for water should be roughly 1 ml per calorie consumed. At their recommended 2000 calories a day, that worked out to 2 liters a day, or roughly 8 eight-ounce glasses. Lost in the translation somewhere was an important caveat that much - if not most - of the water we required could actually be obtained from the foods we eat. In other words, it simply was not necessary to actually drink 8 glasses a day. And since the recommended diet at the time included substantial portions of water-sopping grains, maybe that initial recommendation was too high for someone eschewing grains altogether. (On a related note people will tend to drink more if the beverage is flavored. And, guess, what: carbohydrates (particularly sweet tastes) encourage increased fluid intake. So, it’s useful to ask if the hankering is real thirst or a flavor related craving.)

...

Contrary to what your neighbor might advise you, there is no evidence that drinking eight or more glasses prevents constipation, kidney stones, bladder cancer, urinary tract infections or that it guarantees you’ll have clear skin and a toxic-free liver. Yet these are often cited as the main reasons to drink so much. And forget the so-called hyper-hydration properties of “clustered water,” “ionized super waters,” “penta-water” and the rest of the scam-waters, about which I have blogged in past posts. Water is water is water.

....

(The following contains my own personal hypotheses. I would love to see some research done in these areas. If anyone is aware of any please drop me a line.)

Conventional Wisdom suggests that drinking water with your meals is fine - even recommended. But I suspect that some heretofore undiagnosed digestive issues may arise when people drink significant amounts of water or other fluids with their meals. The digestive process starts with, and depends on, a very acidic environment in the stomach (a pH of 1 to 2 ideally). That highly acidic environment also controls the timing of when the stomach empties. When you drink lots of fluid at a meal, you are substantially diluting the stomach acid and diminishing its ability to effectively digest your food. I would guess that many cases of GERD, gas, stomach upset and other common complaints might be addressed simply by NOT drinking so much water throughout the day and refraining entirely from drinking while eating. (Except maybe a little wine, which, having a pH closer to stomach acid has been shown to aid in digestion) This might also explain why some proteins that only break down under optimum acid conditions pass into the intestines only partially digested and thus might be recognized by the immune system as “foreign invaders”, setting up some immune response that gets diagnosed as a food allergy.

Continue reading the article if you are wondering if water helps the immune system, bottled vs. tap, and finally, how much water we really need daily.

Bonus article! Fitness Blackbook's How Much Water Per Day?

Donkey Kong Rodizio: Part Deux!

Who: Foundation CrossFit and anyone else who wants to join in on the fun! Please RSVP to andrew@foundationcrossfit.com

What: The "Donkey Kong" WOD (see below), $16.95 Rodizio-style lunch at Ipanema afterwards. COMPLETELY WORTH IT.

When: Saturday, March 21st @ 11am

Where: Harbor Steps in downtown Seattle

Why: Why not?! We did this last year and it was fun! Not to mention the Paleo lunch afterwards! (Bring cash please)

Start with burpees at the bottom

Kettlebell swings in the middle

Finish with box jumps at the top

"DONKEY KONG"
21-15-9 reps for time:
Burpees (ground)
KB Swings, 24kg/16kg (halfway)
Box Jumps (top)

Scale where needed. Normally, you must touch every step both on the way up and on the way down, but the harbor steps are a lot bigger than the place in the video, so skipping steps would be appropriate.



See you there!

Handstands

the ultimate goal: freestanding handstand pushups

Benefits of handstands:

• spatial awareness, better balance
  
• increased blood flow to brain
• tremendous upper body and shoulder strength
• bragging rights
• body control!

REMEMBER TO VOTE IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY!

Keeping 'Foundation CrossFit' is in the lead!

VOTE!

If you haven't noticed by now (or if you use a Reader), there's a poll that I want EVERYONE to participate in, even if this is your first time to the site or if you don't know what the hell is going on.

We are in the process of building a new gym in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle and we want to know if we should go with a new name or stick with our current one. We're building the gym from the ground up with YOUR input. This will be the first order of business.

VOTE! and tell your friends/enemies/coworkers/acquaintances/buddies/pets/strangers to follow along too!

Poll closes March 28th.

'You'll Be Fine' aka 'You Have No Right To Bitch'

from AgainFaster.com via The CF Affiliate Blog:

You have no right to bitch. Your sore hamstrings and screaming core are artifacts of high intensity compound movement, enabled by firm contact with Mother Earth and the primate’s gift of an opposable thumb. The very fact that your arms feel like lead and your legs like the business end of a propane torch is a gift of inclusion, given only because you have legs and arms to hurt.

The men of the Warrior Transition Battalion at Brooke Army Medical Center don’t know your pain. They brought guns to a bomb fight, and came home with fewer limbs than they packed, blown apart by the cowardice of other men.

Their pain is worse, one of exclusion, borne of wheelchairs and ramps, endless hours of physical therapy and prosthetic fittings, hobbled by the incessant need for painkillers. You will never know the agony that they’ve endured, first physically mangled, and then pitied, seen as victims of a botched War.

Luckily, they don’t share the viewpoint. An even twenty, enabled by the efforts of a young Lieutenant, are pursuing rehabilitation with revenge.

These men came to Alamo CrossFit to learn the tenets of CrossFit, supported by a crackerjack crew of trainers and an unrelenting need to go beyond the bounds of traditional recovery.

Placed in an environment where pity was gone and intensity was the only goal, I watched men do handstand pushups, femurs balanced against their wheelchairs, no feet weighing them down. I watched a Marine pull himself up a gymnastics ring, ripping as hard as he could while an unwieldy leg brace fought his every effort. I watched a man with no patella tendon sit into a full-depth squat, and a man with no legs clean a medicine ball from the ground.

These men, broken in body, were impossible to stop. The pain that we could inflict—jackhammering hearts, mental torment, and burning muscles—paled in comparison to the months of adversity that led them to our doorstep. They deadlifted and squatted, ran and pressed, displaying a fortitude far beyond our capacity to keep up.

Every moment hammered home a single point: You’ll be fine.

Remember that the pain is a gift, and men have overcome far worse. When your training results in injury, remember that there are those whose injuries dwarf yours by degrees of magnitude, men who would kill for the right to feel a strained Achilles or a jammed thumb. They will not quit regardless of the odds, and you will not disgrace their example.

The next time your muscles protest or you feel a callus give way, be thankful for the feeling, and the comparative ease with which you train every day. Be thankful for the gift that is your body, and the pain that it brings.

In Northern Texas, there are twenty men battling to reclaim lost capacity, showing the world that injury is not an endpoint, that sacrifice does not end in martyrdom. Their courage is physical and mental, and their lesson is one that will serve far beyond their lifetimes.

Their pain is unimaginable, but their message is easily understood: the struggle to become a better human being ends only in death. Don’t let them down.

Kyle Maynard coaches Josh through a muscle-up attempt at Alamo CrossFit. Picture courtesy of The Napping Poet.

I call bullsh*t

Back in the day when I was working as a trainer for a big box gym, I had a client come out of nowhere with these shoes. I told her she just wasted $300 she could've used for better equipment, or even better, more training. This is stupid:

Read the article/watch the article here.

"As they walk on natural uneven terrain, they develop toned, lean leg muscles," says the video.

That's the science behind MBT shoes - Masai Barefoot Technology. It starts with posture. The curved heel makes you stand up straighter. Better posture means less stress on your joints, working your muscles more and therefore making you more fit.

...

Fashion may be the price you pay for fitness. The curved heel just looks weird, but it's that curve that could help shape your curves in a shoe inspired by people who don't wear any shoes at all.

Other people who've worn the shoes describe it as walking in sand. One pair of the MBT shoes costs $250."

If you want to be toned and lean then you have to eat better! Want better posture? Learn to proper spinal alignment through various activities (see: CrossFit)! Those who do see improvement with these pieces of sh!t will be DEPENDENT on them for "good posture" the rest of their lives.

Who gives a damn about fitness fashion?! Clothes look better on you when you have a nice looking body PERIOD.

With $250 you could buy this piece of crap or you spend that more wisely at a CrossFit gym. You want workout shoes? See what CrossFitters wear.

LYNNE ftw

this video is labeled wrong!

This is a great strength workout and a beautiful couplet.

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Warm-up

• 400m run
• 10 squat thrusts
• 20 burpees
• 30 pushups
• 40 squats
  

WOD

"LYNNE"
5 rds for max reps:
bench press, BW
pullups

Scale as needed. After completing the bench immediately start on the pullups. You may rest in between rounds. Total reps at the end of the WOD is your score.

Finisher

parallette tuck sits!

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The sun is starting to show up and Daylight Savings is this Sunday. We will resume outdoor park workouts 1-3x/week. Stay tuned!

"Size Up the Competition" Competition

Time to size up the competition for the NW Qualifiers coming in May.

Come to Urban CrossFit in South Lake Union on the 28th of March at high noon.

Workout will be announced at the event, but expect a difficult one.

$10 entry fee for competitors. Winner takes all!