Thursday, February 18th 2016
34 AND COUNTING!
We are just over a week away and we have 34 people signed up for the CrossFit Open! That’s just awesome and keep the sign ups coming. Given we have over 100 members and we’re hoping for 100% participation, the pressure will be on for the rest of you to join in the fun!
CROSSFIT KIDS TOMORROW @ 4:45P
We are excited to have the kids back for the third CF Kids class at 4:45 Thursday. We will still be having Open Gym at 4:30 but we ask that you be respectful of the kids (and the instruction) happening. If you can be flexible with where you work and can tolerate “Kidz Bop” instead of Jay-Z, it should be a win-win! Thanks in advance for your understanding.
STRENGTH WOD
Pause Jerk with and empty bar 5/5/5/5
Split Jerk 5/5/5/5 (use 50-60% of 1 RM)
**Here is your chance to really work footwork and diving under the bar. It is not about the load today it is about the technique.**
WOD
Tim deep in the pain cave after a LOT of pushups!
Wednesday, February 17th 2016
FREE FOUNDATIONS NEXT WEEK!
If anyone has friends or family on the fence in terms of trying CrossFit at the Cove, this is an easy and no-risk way to try it out! We will run classes on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday of next week (each class is at 7:30pm). We cover different movements at each session, so it is also a great opportunity for members to come and take a class if you want a refresh. Our session focus is as follows:
Monday: Squats and Presses
Wednesday: Deadlifts and Cleans
Thursday: Snatches and Pull Ups
Thank you in advance for your continued support of the Cove and growing this amazing community!
THE SPLIT JERK CYCLE
We are off to a great start and really excited for the coming weeks. We saw some big numbers go up already, and with continued work on speed, agility and building strength we feel confident we are going to some massive growth when we retest.
STRENGTH WOD
20 Second Hollow Hold
10 Glute Bridges
Front Rack Stretch with a Band
4 Rounds
WOD
Brooke works hard every time she comes and man, can she squat heavy!
Tuesday, February 16th 2016
TRAINING CYCLE UPDATE
A huge congrats to all that re-tested their pull ups Monday. We saw some amazing strength (and form) gains and people had some huge breakthroughs.
We had people downgrade bands or lose bands entirely. And some who went RX the first go-around shaved LOTS of time from their scores. It is clear that when you come often, embrace the programming and work hard, magic happens!
We will continue to work on pull up efficiency and strength (as it is such a core movement) but we are also shifting into a NEW strength cycle! Drum roll please…
THE SPLIT JERK CYCLE STARTS TUESDAY!
While our general philosophy is to build your overall fitness through our everyday CrossFit training (constantly varied, functional movements performed at high intensity) we also believe in focused training. That is, focusing on movements that tend to be a weakness, could require more skill or that will assist in other aspects of your training.
We’ve done strength cycles for the Power Clean, Squat Clean, Deadlift, OHS and Back Squats (to name a few) and now we focus our attention on the Split Jerk. We chose this because it requires terrific speed and agile footwork to be successful and we, as a gym, need to build those capacities. It also requires significant core strength to hold a heavy load overhead, so it is so much of a total body demand than just “putting something overhead”. Lastly, the change in direction to drive yourself under the bar is something that translates to many of our lifts (the snatch and clean, to name a few).
Today we will determine a new One Rep Max Split Jerk (coming off the rack) so you are not limited by you ability to Clean. We look forward to working with all of you during the coming weeks to master the Split Jerk!
STRENGTH WOD
Take 15 minutes to find a 1 RM Split Jerk
**Work on footwork and dive under the bar, every single time.**
WOD
Fitness: 95/65 (25 Doubles or 100 Singles)
RX: 115/75 (50 Doubles)
RX+: 135/95 (75 Doubles)
Cove Coaches Tip: You should have 1:30 to 2:00 minutes for the barbell work. If the doubles take you 2:00 minutes, please scale down. The aim is to work barbell cycling while fatigued today. You will be tired coming off the rope but keep good form and technique and try to hold on and string reps together.
The kettle bells anxiously await their athletes to take them for a walk…
Monday, February 15th 2016
COMPETITION: LOVE IT OR HATE IT?
Most people have a visceral reaction to the word “competition” one way or another. Some love to stalk the white board daily. Some love to race the clock and crush previous WOD times. And some even take themselves outside of the box and see how they fare in an actual competition.
Then there’s the people who couldn’t care less who’s top of the white board. Or what the clock says. And they are more than happy coming in, generating a good sweat and going on about their day.
BOTH ARE GREAT. One is not better than the other; as long you are motivated come (because when you come you WILL see results)!
But now there’s the CrossFit Open. Which, technically speaking, is a “competition”. And we’re asking for 100% participation. And if you’re the latter type of athlete above you’re probably saying to yourself “You just said I don’t need to be competitive. Don’t you get I don’t like to compete?!”.
Although some might see the Open as the workouts that qualify people to the CrossFit games, that really is only for the absolute elite athletes. For the normal CrossFitter the games are just a series of really great workouts with the people that you love to workout with. And FYI, the Open WOD will be something we do every Friday as the day’s WOD, so in reality, you are all doing the Open in a way! But why we want you to register is that it’s a time to test yourself to see where your relative fitness is right now. It might be a world wide “competition” but in our mind it is just another way to benchmark your own fitness. One of biggest differentiators of CrossFit is that we track data to show improvement. It’s not data to be competitive, it is data JUST TO SHOW YOU THAT YOU ARE GETTING FITTER!
STRENGTH WOD
Re-Test: 30 Pull ups for Time
We did this on December 1st so we should see some great results from this!
Try to either use the same band (if you used bands last time) or drop to a lower band and come close to your time.
WOD
Our “WODFather” (co-owner, head coach and programmer!) Geo Rockwell looking on proudly at our anniversary bash. We can’t thank him enough for his incredible programming, continuous drive for excellence and for helping make the Cove what it is today.
