Was it just me, or was it really humid in the Fort yesterday? It was so humid that my hair started to get curly as I was watching the metcon. You guys must have been working THAT HARD!

In teams of 2 get as many reps as possible:
4:00  Sumo dead lift high pulls
4:00 Box Jumps (24/20")
4:00 Burpees
4:00 pull-ups
4:00 Row (calories)

*Each team must have a "pet rock". For the ladies, your "pet rock" is a 15kg plate, and for the men, a 25kg plate.

*One team member must be holding the "pet rock" while the other is working. You may not set down your pet, and you may not rest it on anything.

*There is a 5 burpee penalty for setting down your rock, or leaning against something while holding it.

All of our teams fell in love with their "pet rocks", and several of them asked if they could take them home. Alas, the pets had to stay at the Fort. Pete and Garth took the championship belt by accumulating an amazing 480 reps! Congrats you two! When everyone was adding up their scores, someone's comment to Garth and Pete was, "Wow, 480 reps? How many times did you guys go through it?"

Despite the big hole in the wall, we decided to do some more work with overhead squats (3-3-3+) yesterday. By getting stronger at overhead squats, we can get better at  so many other movements we do at the Fort! Think about how strong your snatch would be if you could overhead squat your body weight 10 times.

Fortunately we finished up our strength work, and the drywall stayed intact. The metcon yesterday was tough! Here is what the prescribed numbers were:

50 push-ups
10 sit-ups
40 push-ups
20 sit-ups
30 push-ups
30 sit-ups
20 push-ups
40 sit-ups
10 push-ups
50 sit-ups

That's 150 reps of each movement! Bill offered a few scaling options for this workout, so don't be worried if you can't do 150 push-ups.

Know what I love about this picture? I'll give you a hint...it isn't the fact that the plyo boxes are all stacked in the right spots. I love that this picture shows that our CrossFit workouts are for EVERYONE. You have Matty Lo in the foreground pounding through this workout Rx'd, and Wes in the background going through a scaled version. CrossFit is about doing a workout that is hard TO YOU. My "hard" is going to be different than your "hard", and both of our "hards" are going to be different than the next guy's "hard".

Don't be turned away from CrossFit  because of the workouts I post on this website. The prescribed workouts are THE MOST I would want anyone to do. Everything we do at the Fort is infinitely scalable, and I promise you can do it!

Not every day at the Fort makes people excited. There are some days that people come in the door, look at the white board and groan. Or curse.

Yesterday the strength work made people do both: Thrusters 3-3-3+. Now really guys...what could the problem be with heavy thrusters? Are you guys sore from Fran? Tee hee.

After we got some work with our thrusters, here was our little metcon:

3 rounds of

500m row
10 hang power cleans (50/35kg)
15 pull-ups

To see this workout on the board, one cannot even begin to comprehend the agony they are about to experience. Round one is a piece of cake. No big deal right? Well hop on that rower at the beginning of round 2, and you'll know you're in trouble. By the 3rd round, I actually considered duct taping my hands to the handle of the rower because I RAN OUT OF GRIP.

Congrats to you guys for gutting it out and making it through this workout!

I've heard a bunch of feedback from my Better Body Challenge II participants. The feedback is that you all feel like a bunch of sleepy heads. Know what that tells me? That you're doing it right! Giving up grains and refined sugars puts your body into a little bit of an adjustment phase. From this point forward, I'm going to call it the "Sleepy Peasant Uprising" phase. This is the part of making the switch to Paleo that will leave you opening and closing cabinets randomly, staring longingly into the refrigerator, banging your heads against vending machines and not knowing what to eat.

Switching to Paleo is essentially re-learning to eat, and it's HARD. I've never sugar coated it, and I'm certainly not going to start now. It's frigging HARD to undo 20, 30 or sometimes 40 years of bad eating habits. There's a world full of sugar, grains, drive thrus and processed foods that are all waiting to sabotage your progress. Make it past these first two weeks, and I promise your life will be changed for the better.

I have already heard from a few participants that they have shed anywhere from 5-13 pounds in the last week! Hmm....do you think grains make you bloated? Great job you guys! Keep it up!

Carpool for Fogo De Chao should "meat" at the Fort tomorrow at 4:30PM! If you're driving on your own, don't worry about meeting up - we'll see you at Fogo!

We started our workout yesterday with some dead lifting. Our classes did 5-5-5+ at 65%, 75%, and 85% of their single rep max. It was pretty cool to see some of our ladies getting 5+ reps at almost 1.5 times their body weight!

Sometimes parts of the workout are designed to make it SUCK more. Tommy Mo calls this "the suck factor". Yesterday's metcon included a little dash of suck factor.

12:00 AMRAP of:
20 wall ball shots (20/14lb)
15 kettle bell swings (24/16kg)

*ALL REPS MUST BE UNBROKEN

That last part in all caps there....that's the suck factor in case you didn't guess. If you stopped to rest at wall ball shot number 17, when you picked up your ball again you were back at zero for that round. Ouch! The key was to rest just enough so that you were able to go through all the reps unbroken, but not so long that you ate up all the time for the workout. Some of our beginners scaled this to 10 reps of wall ball shots, and 7 reps of kettle bell swings, and they did GREAT!

I would like to welcome two of our newest members, Wes and Kristin!

If you would like to join us this Saturday for our Fogo De Chao celebration, it's not too late. Shoot me a quick email and let me know if you'd like to join in the fun!

The Better Body Challenge II is in full swing, and our participants are all doing GREAT! Bill and I have been reviewing food logs daily, and it's inspiring to see people giving up their beloved grains. The competition is fierce this time around, and I can't wait to see what the next 90 days brings!

The strength work yesterday started with push jerks 1-1-1+. The only people who wrote "PR" after their last attempts were Jelli, Audra and McKenzie, but I have a feeling we had a few more PR's than that yesterday. Make sure you write it on the white board if you PR so I can give you props!

After jerking, we moved on to the dreaded Fran.

21-15-9
thrusters (40/30kg)
pull-ups

There are few workouts that inspire as much fear as CrossFit's Fran. It's a short blasty workout, and it will leave you breathless! There's a weird phenomenon that happens with this workout, and it's called the "Fran Cough". For some reason, after you finish this workout, you'll have a temporary cough. Weird, I know....but it's just part of the coolness!

Great job for everyone who set Fran PR's yesterday! I know Garth and Matty Lo set PR's, but so did Beth! She beat her old time by 4 or 5 minutes AND she used a smaller pull-up band! Great job girlfriend!

Our "Pants Progress Bin" has grown substantially! Thanks to Steph L for bringing in all her progress pants. If I had to guess, I'd say she donated close to 40 pairs of pants! Your shopping addiction is going to make some ladies VERY happy Steph!! Ladies, if you need new pants, shorts or capris, make sure you check out BOTH progress bins and take home some new pants!

Matty Lo and Bethy lock out their thrusters

We have some exciting news at the Fort - Trish and Mark are having twins, and they found out that they're having one girl and one boy! Hooray! Congratulations you two!

In other baby news, Leslie had her baby on January 28th. Baby Mya was born at 4:14PM weighing 8lbs 11oz, and was 21 inches long. Congratulations Adam and Leslie! She's BEAUTIFUL!

Strength work yesterday was overhead squats 5-5-5+. Unfortunately, our drywall suffered the consequences of someone not letting go of the bar. Garth definitely wins for making the biggest hole in the Fort history!

The workout yesterday came from Wild Bill's laboratory, and it was GREAT.

2 rounds of
1 minutes of burpees
1 minute rest
1 minute box jumps (24")
1 minute rest
1 minute double unders
1 minute rest

The idea was to get as many reps as possible. I can't even remember the last time I felt THAT BAD after a workout! I sat on the floor for a few minutes just praying not to meet pukie....but it was good. Everyone did a great job! What I liked the most was that everyone kept working the entire minute; nobody was stopping with 10 seconds left to get some extra rest. THAT'S how we get better at these workouts!

Look at that beautiful pregnant belly!

Join the crew from CrossFit Fire on June 19th, 2010  as we participate in the annual Warrior Dash! The Warrior Dash is a 3.17 mile long course and includes 12 obstacles. There's free beer, live music, and a muddy obstacle course....need I say more?

Register RIGHT AWAY if you are interested, as this event is filling up fast. The first group of CrossForters are scheduled to make the dash with the 3:00PM heat, but if that fills up, just choose the next possible time and we'll be at the finish line waiting for you.

Hope to see you all there!