Why does everyone under estimate the awesomeness of body rows? On Friday we did a combination tabata workout of body rows, kettle bell swings and squats. NOBODY went into the workout thinking that the body rows were going to be the hardest part, and almost everyone hated their life during the rows.

Our strength work was some sets of 5 on deadlifts. If anyone wants to see amazing deadlifts, stick around when Ivan is loading up his bar. He is STRONG as an ox, and sets his back perfectly every single pull. I can see him going down his mental check list before every rep, and that will ensure he is always lifting safely.

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Now you guys....if you keep saying all those bad things about Kalsu, he's going to get a complex! Kalsu was our metcon yesterday, and it's 100 thrusters for time. Oh, but with the added bonus that every minute I'm going to stop you and make you do 5 burpees.

Ouch.

Even though a LOT of you knew what the workout was, you still chose to come and give it your best shot. I'm proud of you guys! Even Tommy Mo, who said "I would rather be shot in the butt than to do Kalsu ever again", made it to the Fort yesterday. Love what you hate, and hate what you love as Garth would say!

It's not so much the thrusters that make this workout horrible, it's the impossibly heavy prescribed weights. Prescribed weights are 40kg's for the ladies and 60kg's for the men. Only Zachamole was brave enough to try this at the RX'd weight, and he admits that after the first round he knew it wasn't such a good idea.

Great job to everyone for enduring this workout! I promise we only do this twice a year, so you won't see Mr. Kalsu again for about 6 months. Josh Tran wins for best quote of the day. We cut everyone off after 20:00, or 20 rounds of this workout, and after Bill did the math and filled him in on the fact that he had to do 100 burpees, Josh replies:,

"Well, I knew I was going to do 100 of something today."

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Great job to everyone for your hard work yesterday. Front squats are hard on the wrists, as you all know, so make sure you are stretching your wrists regularly. In some cases we will allow the "x" hold on the front squats, but this is only for our CrossForters with previous injuries or surgeries. The "x" hold just doesn't carry over to anything else we do at the Fort. You NEED to get your wrists more flexible so that you can be a champion clean-er.

The metcon was a 12:00 AMRAP of overhead squats, box jumps and rowing. There was some peer pressure going on at the 5PM class, and it turned out to be a good thing. I convinced Jeanne to put a 10kg plate on top of her 16" box, and Jessica did the same! Both ladies did a fantastic job, and will be graduating to the 20" box in no time!

Can you morning class kids do me a favor? Can you PLEASE register for the 8AM and 9AM classes? These two class times are consistently filling up, sometimes over capacity. The other morning we had 16 people at 8AM, and only 6 people at 9AM. See the problem? Had you all registered, you would have seen that 8AM was full, and that you should come at 9AM instead. I love you guys, and I know you'll be upset the first time Bill makes you wait until 9AM because 8AM is full. He'll do it. I swearz.

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I have to thank Mike and Andy Bender for their help creating and installing our new pull-up bar. We now have another 20 feet of pull-up bar awesomeness, AND it's closer to the ground! Ladies, you'll be glad to see that you don't need a box to reach the pull-up bar anymore! Just step on up, and away you go! The old pull-up bar is still in need of repair, but should be back to its full glory in the next day or two. Make sure you try out the new pull-up bar!

In other news, we did a workout yesterday! The strength work was sets of 5 on press, and everyone did great. For our newer members who don't yet have a single rep max on this stuff, don't let that frustrate you. We will just have to guess for now, but our guesses are usually REAL good.

The metcon was 5 rounds of dead lifts, clapping push-ups and sit-ups. There's just something about clapping push-ups that scares me a little. I told everyone that if you ran out of clapping push-ups, just switch to a big push off the ground. When you run out of big pushes, just do regular push-ups. We don't want anyone to have to make a trip to the dentist because they didn't get their hands back under them in time.

Shaff Dog thought he'd give the old "two different shoes" thing a try yesterday....it was too funny not to post.

AND, last but not least, there was a birthday in the house yesterday - Shawn turned the big 3-0!!

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Let's take a journey to the land of your imagination.....

You've been coming to the Fort for about a year now, and you're doing AMAZING. You have been consistently losing weight, and getting stronger and faster. Your technique is solid, and your attendance at class is fairly consistent.

AND THEN IT HAPPENS.

Suddenly, you stop setting PR's at the Fort. The scale stops making its beautiful downward progress. You start to feel frustrated and you wonder why CrossFit "isn't working anymore". Immediately you start to wonder if busting your ass in the heat and humidity 3-4 times a week is really worth it. After all, if you're not going to keep seeing progress, why should you keep going, right?

WHOA. Back that train up.

This is the part where I wrap my loving coach arms around you and tell you that this happens to everyone. At some point, you are going to have to take that dial, and turn it up a notch in order for you to continue seeing results. Bill and I have seen this quite a few times and I want to be the first person to tell you that this does not mean the end of the road for your progress, it just means that you've reached the point where you need to put in a little more effort. Expecting to put in the same amount of effort, and to continuously get results would be like expecting to take 6th grade over and over, hoping to get your PhD.

Think of your fitness journey as going in phases. Here is what the experience is like for a lot of people:

1. Phase I - during this initial phase, you are going to be losing weight like a maniac. With minimal effort at the gym, and some tweaks to your nutrition, you'll see weekly weight loss of a couple pounds a week. Your first 4 weeks you might even see more dramatic results from the initial water weight you will be shedding by eliminating all the inflammatory foods you've been ingesting. Life is good in phase I.
2. Phase II - we'll nickname phase II the "honeymoon phase". Now your progress is visibly noticeable to the people around you. People comment all the time how good your butt looks in your jeans, and other such inappropriate (but flattering) comments. You'll be making strength gains in the gym, and you'll be building endurance. You're still madly in love with all the meat you get to eat, so you are losing weight at the rate of about 1.5-2.5lbs per week.Life is REALLY good in phase II.
3. Phase III - Hmm....a name. Phase III needs a name. Let's call it the "just a little won't hurt" phase. During this phase, you are playing around with not being quite so strict with your nutrition anymore. You still come to class regularly, but you've picked up your liquid grains 2-3 nights a week again, and you regularly sneak a cookie from your co-worker's desk. After all, you've done so well, so you should be rewarded, right? Unfortunately, in phase III, you won't be losing weight anymore. The scale will have leveled off. It's not climbing again, but it certainly isn't going down anymore. Life ISN'T so amazing in phase III, but you still put on a happy face.
4. Phase IV - This will be the "I'll start again next week" phase. This is NOT a happy phase. You actually start gaining weight. You skip your regular workouts, and decide to "take some time off". You keep telling yourself that you will get back on the wagon next week. But then next week becomes next month, and next month becomes "after so-and-so's-wedding" which turns into "after so-and-so's-something-or-other". You'll use ANYTHING as an excuse to put off starting to get strict with your nutrition again. Phase IV is almost a complete abandonment of everything you worked so hard for. You stay away from Paleo and CrossFit for so long that you find it daunting to have to go back again. Life is sad and lonely in phase IV. Suri Cruise cries in Phase IV.

That sounds awful, doesn't it? Remember that in order to continuously see results, you have to continuously put in effort. There is an ever increasing scale of effort that you'll have to commit to in order to keep progressing onward and upward. If you stop losing weight and leaning out, let's examine what you're eating. You might actually have to weigh and measure your food for a few weeks just to get an idea of how much you're eating. Let's also look at how much sleep you're getting and how often you're working out.

The moral of the story is to never allow yourself to get comfortable, and start adding more and more cheats back into your diet. Stay as far away from Phase IV as possible! Remember that the amazing CrossFitters you see at the Fort and online all have to work VERY HARD to be where they're at. These amazingly strong and lean people never make it past phase II. They just continuously put in more effort to make themselves more amazing. You can get there too, but you have to be willing to work for it. You have to want it more than ANYTHING. More than Oreos, or Sam Adams. It's THAT serious.

This entire post can be summed up with this simple graph of the ratio of Badass-ness to amount of effort:

As you can see, the more of a badass you want to be, the more effort you have to put in. You could go your entire life without weighing and measuring your food, or getting real precise with your nutrition....but that will only work if you are not an aspiring Games contender.

If you, or someone you know has reached a plateau, talk to your coach. We are here to help you through these rough and frustrating times. Email me. Call me. Send me a message on Facebook. Just for the love of all things Holy, let's not reach a point where you feel so frustrated that you cry any time you look in your fridge. Mkay?

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Saturday was an all-around awesome day. We started our morning at the Fort by taking a group picture of our Dads squatting their kids. The picture turned out GREAT! Happy Father's Day!

After the picture, we had a super fun Team Saturday event. You kids got to run, box jump, kettle bell swing, push-up and goblet squat until our champions were crowned! The weather was perfect, so I hope you all enjoyed your extra tanning.

As a special surprise, Trish stopped by with the new babies, so we all got to smooch a baby before the workout. Don't babies make everything better?

Next up on the agenda was the Warrior Dash. As a "note to self" we will definitely be arriving a little earlier next year, as it took about 45 minutes from the time you got into the parking lot to get checked in for the race. Either way, it was an absolute blast. We saw some CrossFit friends from Milwaukee, as well as Bloomington Normal - it's always nice to run into CrossFitters! I always know which ones are CrossFitters....because they're the ones doing handstands in the mud.

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Sorry for the delay in posting about all the fun we had on Friday. Bill and I came home Friday afternoon to a house without power, and it stayed that way until about 9PM on Saturday night. FUN. It's kind of like camping, but in your house.

The strength work on Friday was single rep max on power snatch. As you can probably guess, there were a TON of PR's. A dump truck LOADED with PR's pulled up to the Fort and deposited them right outside our door. You kids were smart enough to scoop some of them up before walking inside. Mark, Sam, Kinsy, Erin, KTUCK, Ivy, Heather, Katie, April, Barbie, Steph L., Brandon H., Neil, Chris T., Scott, Hannah, Kirsten, Shaff Dog, Tommy Mo, Bethy, Brian A., Earl, Jose and Deb all found a PR!! Great job you guys!

The metcon was a blast, and I'm sad I didn't get to participate. For those of you who navigated through the 80mph winds, downed trees and torrential downpour to make it to our evening classes, I salute you! Here's the fun we had yesterday:

21-15-9
row (calories)
box jumps
push jerks

Looks like fun, doesn't it? Shaff Dog made a funny comment about 10 seconds before starting the workout. He was trying his push jerks at 40kg's, and he sets the bar down and says, "Well, I'm going to hate my life....but I'll do it." That's the spirit!

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