Physical Confidence: The ability to recognize the bodies(your) physical limitations and abilities; and to be able to operate within these abilities without fear of failure.

This is one of the intangibles of physical fitness training, yet one of the most important aspects that we, as athletes, could ever hope to garner. This is what allows us to do well in our chosen sports, it is what helps us through our daily physical challenges; and more importantly... the lack thereof is what hinders the everyday Joe and forces them into a life of physical distress.

It is a simple fact that our aging generations, generally, are scared to death of breaking a hip or simply lack the motor development to lift an object of any size over their head. This is something you used to only see in advanced age, but is becoming more and more common in younger and younger generations, even as young as 45. If you know someone who is starting to suffer from an obvious lack of physical confidence, offer to go walking with them, get them involved with a local swimming program, somehow get physical activity back into their lives. It will enrich both of your lives.

In younger generations, it is a faltering physical confidence that makes you take a look at a physical feat, such as a CrossFit workout, and say "that's crazy, I could never do that". I argue to say " You just don't know you can do it".


Daniel performing a basic forward vault.

Today's workout

5 rounds for time:

50 Mountain Climbers (50 each leg)
25 Situps

Lots of festivals this time of year in Memphis. My only complaint is the weather. I guess we all need to suck it up and keep on keepin on.


Cory feeling the pain of Angie



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Todays Workout

10 rounds:

100 meter sprint
1 minute rest

Good Combinaiton!



Why does Tim always look like he just got done smoking something after every workout?


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Today's Workout


For Time:

75 Burpees

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Recent Whiteboard

Today it storms, tomorrow we CrossFit.

Prepare for the mud.

Consider yourself warned

One of the fundamental requirements of all plyometric movement is the ability to maintain control in the concentric phase. The concentric phase in a squat is simply the bottom position of the movement (below parallel). Without balance in this phase, power is wasted in an attempt to over compensate for subtle movements and power is lost in the launch. We will experiment with this today.

Today's Workout:

10 rounds

- Static squat hold 25 seconds... to high jump (Bring yourself slowly into the concentric phase of the squat, and hold this position for 25 seconds. After 25 seconds, explode into a jump as high as you can)
- 1 minute rest


Note the loss of power as instability becomes prominent.

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Brooke Mid-Thruster


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Yesterday's Whiteboard

Too little emphasis is placed on plyometric conditioning and the effect it has on jump development. A strong vertical/horizontal/plyo jump is an innate survival skill. And something we should practice frequently. This weeks trio of bodyweight workouts will assist in the development of the groups of muscle responsible for explosive jumping movements.

The power for this jump was generated from plyometric contraction and release from the first bench step.


Today's Workout

5 rounds for time.

75 toe jumps (Think of jump-roping with no rope) or single jump ropes
15 Tuck Jumps (Jump and pull your knees to your chest mid-jump)

Even Little Miller.

Miller showing us how to row


GOOD JOB MILLER!

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Today's Workout

5 Rounds for time:

10 Jumping Jacks
10 Squats
10 Pushups
10 Mountain Climbers
10 Situps
10 Leg Raises

My friends have started asking me to dress up like Richard Simmons next halloween. Shane created a simulation of what I might look like:



We shall see if this develops into reality.

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Todays Workout

5 Rounds for time:

100 jumping jacks
100 mountain climbers

Written on 4/08/2008 by Alex Shalman, creator of the Practical Personal Development blog.

Way before the sun peeks over the horizon, a few chosen people awaken from their slumber and dive head first into their day. These chosen few accomplish a ton before the rest of us would ever consider rising from our nice warm beds.

Who are these juggernauts that have command over the morning hours?

In theory, your productivity level shouldn't differ if you rise at 4am or 11am. What matters is the quality of sleep that's giving your mind and body sufficient time to recover.

These early rising juggernauts, these unstoppable agents of productivity, they see things differently. They see these early hours as their chance to lay claim to their share of the day. They rise with purpose, act with determination, and achieve ruthlessly.

The sun has not caught me in bed in fifty years. - Thomas Jefferson

The world is in awe of these special people, so let's take a look at what pops them out of bed like a toaster strudel and what gets them up, sometimes before the alarm!

1. Appointment With Waking: The harsh truth about the human body is that we're creatures of habit. In some ways this can be extremely inconvenient when trying to take on new things. However, if we allow ourselves to live within the rules of our body's natural cycle, which is a 24-hour circadian rhythm, we will be pleased with the body's functionality.

This means that when you find a waking hour that will work best for you each day of the week, you should stick to it. This will allow your body to want to support you in your endeavor of waking up, and rise you out of bed feeling fresh as a daisy.

2. The King and The Pauper Way Of Eating: The way our bodies function optimally is if we eat like a king in the morning and a pauper in the evening. This means that it's best to eat heavier, bigger portions in the morning because these meals will give us high energy throughout the day and then burn off.

Eating like a pauper, meaning small light meals, in the evening allows us to go to sleep on an empty stomach. If your body is functioning normally, and you don't have stomach ulcers, going to sleep on a mostly empty stomach will allow you to sleep better. This nightly fast allows your body to take it's focus away from digestion and put it towards repair and rejuvenation of the body's cells.

3. Living With Purpose: Young children will do anything to avoid going to sleep at night. These same children are also the ones that can't wait to get out of bed first thing in the world. The simple reason for this non-lazy behavior is that they don't want to miss a thing.

As adults we may need more persuasion than 'not wanting to miss a thing'. This is why we take extra steps in creating fun, life changing goals, and scheduling specific ways of how we'll get a step closer to these goals during this coming day. What we all need is not necessary a cause we're willing to die for, but at least a cause we're willing to LIVE for.

4. Plan Your Day: We can say we're going to live with purpose, but unless we plan, we can tell ourselves that we'll start living with purpose next week, or the week after that. Planning is one of the fundamental ways to maximize your mind to achieve your goals, and as such it plays a critical role in allowing us to have an awesome day, everyday. We need not do more than take 15 minutes the night before to succinctly organize the next days schedule.

A schedule complete with waking time, most important things of the day, eating and recreational allowances. Having a tight schedule allows me to live out my day with definitive purpose, while getting more done, having more fun, and not wasting precious moments of my life.

“Happy people plan actions, they don't plan results” - Dennis Wholey

5. The Water Hack: A bit of water before bed and half a liter as soon as you get up. The water before bed will serve in the rejuvenation process we mentioned above. While you sleep all your cells will fill up with this fresh water and create an over all well being within your body.

The water in the morning does two things. One is it provides your first dose of water to get your mind and body going. Another function, as told to me by my endocrinology teacher (a very qualified person to say this), is that a dose of water in the morning triggers a cascade of physiological functions that engages your digestive system and causes you to excrete feces. You'll feel nice and light first thing in the morning!

6. Work That Body: In number 1 above I mentioned that our bodies adapt around a 24-hour circadian rhythm. This works for sleep, eating, exercise, and many other bodily functions. We're a pretty efficient physiological machine when you think about it. This is why getting a dose of exercise is optimal in the morning. It gets the blood flowing and stimulates you to function on a higher level.

"Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness." - Edward Stanley

Once you're used to this routine, your body will prepare by providing you with high energy before you start to work out. As you can see, if you wake up with this high energy, you're going to just pop out of bed.

7. Have 'Me' Time: No morning is completely satisfying unless you've scheduled in some 'Me' time. Whether you enjoy meditating to clear you mind and give you laser sharp focus, or reading to gain some new knowledge about the world, make sure you schedule in this time.

There may very a variety of things you enjoy doing, so this will be custom tailored to the individual. The point is that when you have something you REALLY enjoy doing right when you get up, you won't be able to wait until that alarm goes off till you jump out of bed and get to it!

See, that's all it takes! Try it for a couple weeks, get used to it, and soon you'll be relishing sunrises like this:

All workouts this week will be based on dynamic bodyweight movements, this includes the 3x weekly bodyweight workouts, and your scheduled personal training schedules.

Prepare for boot camp style workouts this week.

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Todays Workout

For time:

70 Jumping Jacks
60 Mountain Climbers (60 each leg)
50 Crunches
40 Squats
30 Pushups
20 Tuck Jumps
10 Burpees


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Cory with a beautiful Clean receive

Hey guys,

Im working out the kinks on how I will be presenting the Commando Krav Maga classes. I have decided to make it a second program to run parallel with the CrossFit personal training program. More details to be released soon.


Todays Workout

10 100 meter sprints
Rest 1 minute between each sprint.

Brooke working on ring pushups



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Yesterdays Whiteboard

By GINA KOLATA
Published: April 10, 2008



Correction Appended

I have a confession to make. I get so competitive about heart rates when I am at the gym that my husband will not tell me his.
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“How was your workout?” I’ll ask when we get off of Spinning bikes or elliptical cross-trainers. He’ll reply that it was good, he worked at “80 percent.” But 80 percent of what? I want to know what he thinks his maximum is. But he won’t say.

Of course, I know it’s ridiculous to think that a higher maximum heart rate means that I’m a better athlete than my husband. He may have a slower heart rate, but he can beat me in cycling any day. And, after all, the goal in exercise is to get more blood to your muscles. The heart does that by beating faster and by pumping more blood with each beat. If your heart is more powerful, it does not have to beat as fast. “There is no association between maximum heart rate and exercise performance,” said Hirofumi Tanaka, the director of the Cardiovascular Aging Research Laboratory and an exercise physiologist at the University of Texas in Austin.

In fact, Dr. Tanaka said, when people start exercising regularly their maximum heart rate often goes down.

And I know that the whole heart-rate monitoring issue is contentious. Many athletes strap on those slender black bands around the chests. Then they try to keep their rate at some percentage of their maximum, 70 percent, say, or 80 percent, depending on their goals for the workout.

For some activities, like using an elliptical cross-trainer or riding most Spinning bikes at the gym, it can be difficult to gauge your effort without a heart-rate monitor. You can’t figure out speed or distance the way you can if you are swimming in a pool or running or cycling outside. Maybe it’s all that sweating, but it always feels as if you’re working hard even when your heart rate tells you that you could do a lot more.

But experts disagree on whether heart-rate monitoring makes sense.

Exercise physiologists tend to favor it. “You need to keep track of exercise intensity” in order to meet performance goals or to improve, Dr. Tanaka said. He does not rely on standard formulas for finding maximum heart rate, though, because they vary so much from person to person. Instead, he advises that people find their maximum “in a field setting.” He suggests going to a track and gradually increasing your speed until your heart rate stops climbing.

Some coaches, like the one who trains Dr. Richard Friedman, 51, a masters swimmer in New York, set their own heart-rate goals for athletes. And, that, said Dr. Friedman, a psychiatrist at Cornell, is a problem. Even though he is one of the fastest on his team, his coach insists that he should hit a heart rate of 150 when he does, say, repeats of 50 meters freestyle in 60 seconds.

“I can never get my heart rate up to his target no matter how hard or fast I swim,” Dr. Friedman said.

Others, like Kevin Hanson, coach to Brian Sell, who just made the United States Olympic men’s marathon team, advise against monitoring your heart rate.

The classic formula for determining your maximum rate, 220 minus your age, is notoriously inaccurate, he said. And glancing at your heart-rate monitor all the time can hinder your training, he cautioned.

“It ends up playing mind games with you,” Mr. Hanson said. “Let’s say you are out for a 10-mile run and you don’t feel tired. Then you look at your heart rate,” and it is so high you decide you must have overdone it. Suddenly, he said, you feel tired and slow down.

Everyone’s maximum heart rate declines, slowly and steadily, with the passing years. So if your heart rate is higher than expected, doesn’t that mean you are exercising like a younger person?

It depends. On the one hand are athletes like Lance Armstrong, known for having an unusually high maximum heart rate. And that, said Edward F. Coyle, an exercise physiologist who has studied Mr. Armstrong, was to his advantage because his heart also was extremely efficient. A high maximum heart rate, helps, “all other things being equal,” Dr. Coyle said. The problem, he noted, is that there are so many other factors in performance that rarely are all other things equal.

So if Dr. Friedman could get his heart rate to 150, wouldn’t he be faster?

Not necessarily. And the story of Rebecca Soni, a swimmer at the University of Southern California, helps explain why. Ms. Soni, who has the second fastest time for an American woman in the 200-meter breast stroke, had an irregular heart beat. At times when she exercised her heart would beat up to an astonishing 400 times a minute.

Instead of making her swim faster, though, her fast-beating heart made her go limp. In 2006, in order to continue competing, she underwent a procedure to destroy heart tissue that was causing her heart to beat so fast.

This suggests two things. First, a faster heart isn’t necessarily better. And, second, hearts can beat much faster than they ever actually beat when most of us exercise. Something slows our hearts down, probably for the good of our performance or survival.

A heart beating at its maximum possible rate may be inefficient, Dr. Tanaka explained. As the heart beats more quickly, there comes a point when there is too little time between beats for it to fill with blood. “For exercise capacity, heart rate is not the issue,” said William Haskell, an exercise physiologist at Stanford University. “The heart has got to be an efficient pump.”

It turns out that the heart rate is controlled by three factors. First is the heart’s own intrinsic rate, how fast it would beat if you cut all its nerves and removed it from the body. The heart’s own internal pacemaker would make it beat roughly 40 to 60 beats per minute more slowly than its maximum rate. And, Dr. Tanaka said, the heart’s intrinsic rate declines with age parallel to the maximum heart rate’s decline with age. No one knows why.

The other factors controlling heart rate are the sympathetic nerves, which speed it up, and those that slow it down, the parasympathetic nerves.

When you start to exercise, said Patrick O’Connor, an exercise physiologist at the University of Georgia, the first thing that happens is that the parasympathetic nerves become less active. That makes your heart beat faster. As the intensity of your effort increases, the sympathetic nerves come into play, speeding the heart still more.

But there are complications. Anxiety, for example.

“We had people on treadmills who were getting ready to start,” Dr. O’Connor said. “Their heart rates were 160 or 170.” They weren’t exercising, just nervous, he explained. And when they started to run on the treadmill, their heart rates went down.

There’s a lesson here, of course, for runners who use heart-rate monitors during a race. Be careful about interpreting those numbers.

Then there are the differences among sports. Swimmers, for example, have lower heart rates when they swim than runners when they run. The reason, Dr. O’Connor explained, is that during running, your heart has to push blood against gravity to bring it to your head. During swimming, your heart does not have to exert that extra force.

Maybe Dr. Friedman should tell his coach.

As for my husband, he knows that my fixation on whose heart rate is higher is ridiculous. Still, I wish I knew what he thinks his maximum is and how he knows it.

I created a workout in honor of one of our CrossFitters (Tim) yesterday... dubbed "Tabata Quadstacker". This is due to Tim's infatuation with the Quadstacker sandwich from the BK.


Cory and Tim Pushing Through the Quadstacker


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Today's Workout

5 minutes inverted in a handstand. Use a wall for balance if you need to. This is total time inverted so stop the clock if you come down to rest.

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Yesterdays Whiteboard


Cory had his first taste to the Lactic wall.... How about those pushups Cory!