3 Rounds of 75 Reps For Time: 1min Double Unders Wall Balls - 20/14
*At the beginning of each round, do 1min of as many double-unders as possible. At the end of the minute, go directly to wall balls and finish your reps until you reach 75 reps (e.g. 50 double-unders in 1min, then 25 wall balls; 22 double-unders in 1min, then 55 wall balls).
MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
Kasey, a member of the gym, will be putting on a Fight Gone Bad fundraiser on June 2nd at CrossFit Heat. This fundraiser is his Eagle Scout project and will go to the Assist the Officer Foundation! Plan on attending and recruit some fellow friends to join the cause. You can visit Kasey's website - www.workoutforwarriors.com - in order to sign-up, sponsor, or donate. Make sure you read his website and sign-up; don't just show up on Saturday, June 2nd without being in the know on the details.
***We will have a cookout at the gym immediately following the fundraiser.***
Kasey, a member of the gym, will be putting on a Fight Gone Bad fundraiser on June 2nd at CrossFit Heat. This fundraiser is his Eagle Scout project and will go to the Assist the Officer Foundation! Plan on attending and recruit some fellow friends to join the cause. You can visit Kasey's website - www.workoutforwarriors.com - in order to sign-up, sponsor, or donate. Make sure you read his website and sign-up; don't just show up on Saturday, June 2nd without being in the know on the details.
***We will have a cookout at the gym immediately following the fundraiser.***
For Time: 400m Weighted Run - 40/20 lbs 21 Deadlifts - 185/115 lbs 21 Pullups 400m Weighted run 15 Deadlifts 15 Pullups 400m Weighted Run 9 Deadlifts 9 Pullups
*Find anything to carry on the run. It should be in the vicinity of 40lbs for men/20lbs for women. If you feel that you are beast, don't hesitate to get up in the 60lb region.
Don't forget that the last hour of Wednesday's Open Gym (6:30-730pm) is FREE to everyone. Invite a friend from an obstacle-oriented workout!
This is still one of my favorite videos from CrossFit HQ - an old original from back in 2007 with an original female firebreather.
"Breathing, Anterior Pelvic Tilt, and Voodoo Witchcraft"
Who is This Guy?
My name is Jim Laird, and I am a Strength and Conditioning Coach and the founder and co-owner of J&M Strength and Conditioning in Lexington, KY. To give you a brief history about me, I am an elite-level powerlifter who has competed in the 242 class. I have spent the last three years getting myself back on track from two car wrecks, a nasty fall down the stairs, tons of stress from starting a new business, and a bout of Ulcerative Colitis. As a result of these things, for the last three years, my training took a back seat and I was able to complete one, maybe two, lifting session per week.
My Introduction to IFAST
A couple of years ago, my business partner Molly Galbraith decided to go up to IFAST and see Bill Hartman and Mike Robertson for an assessment. She ended up having a lot more improvements to make than we anticipated, so shortly after she got her assessment I went up and got one. It was quite a humbling experience and I learned a lot about myself and how my body compensates and functions. I have learned so much from Mike and Bill in the last number of years that my understanding of how the body works and functions is now at a completely different level and my clients and business have benefited greatly because of it.
My Re-assessment and Intro to Diaphragmatic Breathing
In the past few months I have started to feel better so I have started to train more often. I decided to visit for a reassessment. The main reasons for my recent reassessment were my right shoulder (torn labrum from a car wreck) and wanting some help with my squat. I’ll be honest: I knew what the assessment was and I was expecting to get run through a collection of drills and tests. For a number of weeks I had been practicing lunges, planks, side planks, and some of the various tests. No one wants to look like a fool, especially someone who coaches people for living.
When I arrived for my reassessment, Bill and I briefly discussed my purpose for the visit. He looked at my squat, then put me on a table and conducted a few tests. He concluded my hips were off. He then gave me some very simple but painful exercises to get my hips right. After that, he looked at my shoulder, and this is where it gets interesting. I could write a book on everything he did with me, but I will try to keep this as simple as I can. If you get the general overall principle of what I learned, it will not just help you with your training; it will also make you a better coach.
Bill did a few tests and then explained I was not breathing properly and my left diaphragm was not functioning effectively (the left diaphragm controls breathing in the right lung). After some simple breathing drills I retested. Wow! What a difference in range of motion! On a side note, a funny thing happened: my spinal erectors released. They are always tight, so much so that my friends and I joke that I “brush my teeth” with my spinal erectors. Bill explained that when the diaphragm is functioning properly it turns on all the deep abdominal muscles. Their number one job is to give us stability while we are walking around, therefore allowing prime movers such as spinal erectors and hip flexors to rest for their job doing things like running from bears and lifting heavy objects. Bill proceeded to do Active Release Therapy, or ART, on my shoulder to get the rest of mobility I needed. Bill explained the ART would not be as effective without the breathing.
Breathing Drills
Here is one the drills Bill gave me to help expand my right rib cage:
Now I know that for many of you this seems like voodoo.
If you think I’m crazy and should be wearing a tin foil hat, that’s fine, but take a look at this statement before you dismiss what I’m saying:
“The diaphragm will drive intra-abdominal pressure that helps to activate all the core muscles. If you aren’t breathing properly, you can’t get core the right core activation to build a monster, regardless of the transverse activation.” Charlie Weingroff (Quote from: http://deansomerset.com/2012/02/13/a-weekend-with-charlie)
If you want more information on breathing and how it relates to thoracic spine mobility and function, here is an excellent three part series by Dean Somerset: All Things Thoracic Spine Part 1: Functional Anatomy.
Anterior Pelvic Tilt, 360 Degrees of Pressure, and My Squat
After getting my shoulder squared away we then moved on to the squat. Bill had me squat for him, as if I were squatting a heavy load. Bill told me that my squat looked great and he wouldn’t change a thing other then where I created my pressure. He pointed out like many power lifters I was pushing out too much into the belly instead of creating 360 degrees of pressure. This caused me to go into anterior pelvic tilt and forced me to run into my hips, so to speak. Here is a great video of Bill explaining this:
So you’re probably wondering, was this effective for me? All I can say is,“Wow! What night and day difference!”
Here I am doing pause squats with 500 pounds a couple of years ago. Notice that I’m wearing Olympic shoes. Look at my low back at the bottom. I was pretty much squatting with my low back.
Here I am two days after working with Bill. This is accessory work after my pull, as I had no plan on going up to 500 on the safety bar (pretty much a front squat). It felt effortless so I kept adding weight. Notice I wore no Olympic shoes. Getting depth was easy, and therefore I was keeping my pelvis in a good position.
Now here is the clincher: one week after working with Bill and working on what he taught me, here is a 400lbs squat with 400lbs of chain, belt only. I was only planning on working on form that day, hence no training partners. I have not had 800lbs on my back since I last competed years ago and I have only been training one, maybe two days a week for the last year. It felt effortless so I kept adding weight. I also did not have any stiffness in my low back at all the next day, which is a first for me. Notice how easy it was for me to get to and find depth, and look at my low back position. In the past I had to fight and search for depth. Not now, because it feels natural.
I am excited to see what I can do with this new information. I also think it proves the fact that no matter who you are, if you want to be successful, you need someone else to take a look at what you’re doing. Since I discovered how important breathing is and how important being able to create 360 degrees of pressure is to not only my health but my performance, we have added some really quick breathing drills to the beginning of each of our classes/training sessions. The results have been dramatic. People are moving better, and there are reports of low back stiffness going away. Here are the two drills we have added:
Conclusion
Like I mentioned, this may seem like voodoo witchcraft to some of you “squat, eat, sleep, repeat” guys out there, but take it from me, it works. I definitely think we should focus on getting really strong at the basic movements, but remember, the body functions as a unit and it will always compensate and find the easiest way to do a particular movement. If you have any glaring weaknesses/imbalances like I did, you are much more prone to injury. Plus, what if I told you that you were leaving lots of weight on the table and it would only take you 5 minutes a day to get significantly stronger. Would you be interested? I sure hope so! So take a few minutes and work on the breathing drills I linked above. They have worked wonders for me and my clients in a short amount of time. I hope you enjoyed this article!
Tabata: Sumo-Deadlift High-Pull - 75/45 lbs 15m Sprint/Push-ups - (regular) Box Jumps - 24"/20" Hang Power Snatch - 75/45 lbs
*Tabata is 20secs work; 10 secs rest for 8 rounds (4mins). *Rest 1min between each exercise. *On the Sprint/Push-ups: Sprint 15m at the beginning of every round and immediately drop down into the push-ups. *Your score for each exercise is the lowest number of reps you make in any round for that exercise.
In 1850, George Barker Windship was a sixteen-year-old freshman at Harvard University. He was five feet tall and 100 pounds. But by the time he graduated, having logged endless hours in the college gymnasium, Windship was known as the strongest man at Harvard.
Soon thereafter, he came across a weightlifting machine on a Rochester, New York street, surrounded by curious passersby. Newly strong, Windship tested the machine, and ended up lifting 420 pounds using a technique now known as a partial deadlift or hand-and-thigh lift. Inspired, he returned to Boston and created his own lifting device by “sinking a hogshead in the ground and placing inside it a barrel, filled with rocks and sand, to which he attached a rope and handle. Then, standing on a platform he constructed above the barrel, he mimicked the partial movements of the lifting machine he had tried in Rochester.” Practicing with this machine and other devices and harnesses he created, Windship reportedly maxed out with a lift of 2,600(!) pounds.
By 1861, Windship had graduated from Harvard Medical School and had made a name for himself as the “American Samson,” a health reformer known across the country for bucking the then-prevailing wisdom about proper nutrition and fitness. While most experts pushed vegetarian diets and exercises with — at most — light weights and moderate resistance, Windship had a very different take on things.
The body should be made as strong as possible, he contended, with no weak points. It should be balanced and symmetrical with the muscles full and round and strong… [H]eavy weights and short workouts were the secret to health and longevity. Training should be systematic, he argued with the intensity of the exercise gradually increasing over time. He maintained that workout sessions should never last more than an hour and that proper rest must be obtained before the next day’s training.
Windship’s health lectures, feats of strength, and impressive physique garnered plenty of attention, disciples, and copycats who developed their own lifting machines to mimic Windship’s machine-based partial deadlift exercise, which came to be known as the “Health Lift.” For example, one New York-based company sold a contraption called “Mann’s Reactionary Lifter” similar to Windship’s device — a “cast iron lifting machine” that could be “adjusted from twenty to twelve hundred pounds”:
Two handles attached to the weighted lever arm so that by standing on the machine’s base, with a handle in each hand and the knees slightly bent, the lifter would simply straighten the legs to move the weighted arm a few inches. Prominently displayed in the advertising for this machine was a fashionably dressed young woman complete with bustle and corset. “Side-lifting” machines, such as Mann’s, were partly designed with women in mind. The idea was that the two side handles made it unnecessary for women to change their clothes for a workout.
The “Health Lift” was deemed the only physical exercise a man or woman needed — or wanted. After all, it was simple, straightforward, and offered fast results: “Pile heavy objects onto a machine, and then lift it. Workout completed, fitness and health improved — instantly.” In cities across the United States, gyms and fitness studios outfitted with similar “Health Lift” machines opened their doors, attracting white collar workers hoping to squeeze a quick workout into their lunch hour.
But while others took the exercise and ran with it, Windship himself didn’t appear very interested in capitalizing on the business opportunities presented by the “Health Lift” craze. He focused his attention elsewhere, patenting and selling the first-ever plate-loading free weight in America. (In other words, it was the great-great-grandfather of not only Olympic barbells, but also those fancy adjustable-weight dumbbells hawked on late night infomercials.
Windship also invented the first all-in-one full-body weight machine — something he called the “Apparatus for Physical Culture,” which “contained a lifting platform, cables for chest work, a rowing machine and a chinning bar.” (Eat your heart out, Soloflex.)
Sadly, Windship didn’t live long enough to see much success from these ventures. He died of a massive stroke at the age of 42.
The Health Lift faded from public view in the years after Windship’s death. With the sudden passing of the most prominent voice of modern weightlifting (and at such a young age), it’s not surprising that people began questioning the health benefits of resistance training. Nonetheless, competitive athletes and influential health reformers continued to employ Windship’s lifting protocols. Robert J. Roberts, the YMCA’s first physical education director, was a Windship disciple, and incorporated heavy lifting into the Y’s physical training program. Even the controversial (and bowel movement-obsessed) physician John Harvey Kellogg (of corn flakes and “Road to Wellville” fame) was a big proponent of the Health Lift.
Eventually, the Health Lift evolved into what we know as a deadlift — arguably the best all-around lift for full-body strength and muscle development. Over the past century and a half, barbell deadlifts gradually surpassed the machine-based Health Lifts in popularity and efficacy. Today, the Health Lift still has its place: With a higher starting position, partial deadlifts (which are now typically done with racks and bars rather than wooden machines) don’t put as much strain on the lower back and therefore enable the lifting of much heavier weights. But as Mark Rippetoe writes in “Starting Strength,” deadlifts incorporate lower back strength — something that’s vital to sports conditioning:
The ability to maintain a rigid lumbar spine under a load is critical for both power transfer and safety. The deadlift builds back strength better than any other exercise, bar none. And back strength built with the deadlift is useful: while the bar is the most ergonomically friendly tool for lifting heavy weights, a 400 lb. barbell makes an awkward 85 lb. box more manageable.
The takeaway: By incorporating lower back strength, deadlifts are an improvement on Windship’s “Health Lift” — the original lift for optimal functional fitness. Plus, deadlifts are fun and more badass-sounding than “Health Lifts.”
Wendler's 5/3/1 Shoulder Press 5-5-5 (75%-80%-85% of 1RM)
"M" For Time & AMRAP: *800m Run 2mins Double-Unders 2mins Push-Press - 95/65 lbs 2mins Power Cleans - 95/65 lbs 2mins Burpees
*Before each round of exercise, run 800m as a buy-in, then attempt as many reps as possible of the exercise in 2mins. There is no resting between the exercise and the run; move continuously. Post your number of reps for each exercise, and your total time for the workout. If it's your birthday today, wear a vest.
