August 28, 2009 in Upcoming Events, member news by admin

Bad Girls, Bad Girls Whatcha Gonna Do?

Our Tuesday/Thursday Olympic lifting days are in full swing, and a number of people are already showing improved technique  through quality coaching (thanks Veronica!) and consistent exposure to the Clean & Jerk, and snatch.  So then, what better way to show off those newfound skills than to focus our efforts on a future endevor/adventure.

Veronica-Clean

Enter the “Bad Girl Open” being held on October 18th in the Bay Area

Firt barbell club (here) located in Los Altos, Ca will be holding their second annual Olympic lifting competition.  Entry fee is $40 and competitors are not required to lift in a traditional singlet-shorts and a t-shirt will suffice.  More info can be found at the Bad Girl Open website (here)

Crossfiters love good t-shirts, so if you are at all hesitant to enter do it for nothing else than for a shirt with this snazzy little tag line…Good Girls Tone, Bad Girls Lift

Mel showing off her killer jerk

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Chris and Jamie are at the mid-point of their Foundations sessions and are already seeing some amazing progress

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One Moving In, One Moving UP

Becky (above) is our newest L10XF member, but look out she moves like she’s a pro!

Jennifer absolutely rocked her fundamental sessions and will be Way Ahead of the game when she starts up in our group class system.

August 25, 2009 in member news by admin

Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive…Dodge

Chris and John showing that big guys can climb!

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Congratulations to L10xf’s honorary member, John Scheer, who recently graduated from the CHP academy.  Good luck on the job, and have fun Crossfiting at 4,000ft!

August 20, 2009 in Nutrition, Upcoming Events, member news by admin

Go Wild-Crossfit Style

Fight Gone Bad

If you have not already  signed up for Septembers “fight Gone Bad” event please head over to www.fgb4.org and put your name down for this great event. Doing so will bring awareness to these two great causes.  You can click (here) to register now

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T-nation (here) had a short artice on nutrition that examined the differences between grass-feed, organic, and feedlot beef.  Below is an exerpt.

The article in it entirety can be found (here)

Here’s the Beef!

Q: I was in the organic store the other day and they were trumpeting how ground beef in the grocery store usually has the DNA of 1,000 different cows in it, while farm-raised organic stuff is often from one cow. Should I care?

A: You should care very much, but probably for slightly different reasons.

Ground beef in the grocery store inevitably comes from what we call “feedlot farms.” These places are basically factories, and they bear as much resemblance to the old country farms of our childhood as a cheap Casio keyboard does to a handmade Steinway grand piano.

Cows on these “farms” are production machines for meat and milk. They’re fed grain, which isn’t their natural diet, and which causes great acidity in their systems. This produces “meat product” that’s very high in inflammatory omega-6′s and woefully lacking in omega-3′s.

They’re kept in confined pens and fed antibiotics to prevent the sickness that inevitably arises from the close quarters. They’re fed steroids and “bovine growth hormone” to help fatten them up. Then they’re “processed.” Whether the end product — the meat that winds up on your plate — has the DNA of 1,000 cows in it or not, it’s not something you should be eating.

Grass-fed meat is a whole different ballgame. Cows were meant to graze on pasture —their natural diet is grass, and when they roam on pasture and graze on grass their meat is higher in omega-3′s and CLA (conjugated linolenic acid), an important fat that has anti-cancer activity and may also help reduce abdominal fat. Since the cattle aren’t in confined quarters and they’re not eating primarily grains, they don’t get sick as much and aren’t fed massive quantities of antibiotics.

Now, “organic” meat is somewhere in between the two extremes. It usually means the cows were fed organic grain, which is only a minor improvement since cows shouldn’t be eating a diet of grain in the first place.

While the perception is that organically raised meat is better than non-organic meat, it’s still not nearly as good as grass-fed (pasture raised). Sometimes grass-fed meat is also organic, but some very conscientious farmers who raise real, healthy, pasture-grazing cows don’t meet some obscure government standard for organic so they’re not able to say their meat is “organic.”

I wouldn’t worry about it. Given a choice, I’d go with grass-fed over organic every time, though in the best of all worlds, you’d get both.

For what it’s worth, every study you’ve ever seen that talks about the bad health consequences of meat eating is looking at people who eat highly processed meat from factory farms. It would be very interesting to see if there are the same negative consequences to eating a diet of grass-fed (organic) beef with plenty of vegetables to balance it out.

No study like that has ever been done, but my hunch is that if people ate that way, the so-called “negative” health effects ascribed to eating meat would disappear.

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For future reference, when I say “Go Wild” it is usually in regards to eating wild game such as grass-fed beef, venison, bison and other yummy edibles…It is your prerogative if you decide  to actually “Go Wild ” during the capture of said edibles!

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The 6am Crew finishing off the hour with a little team row fun

Trevor and Ashley didn’t let the taunts from the rest of the class deter them from finishing first.  Great work team!

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Taylor during the workout….

Taylor’s stuff after the workout!  So, how many burpees did the class decide was the penalty for leaving ones stuff out? 10 burpees per piece of equipment….yeah, burpees!!!

August 15, 2009 in General Blog Posts, member news by admin

Hide your beagle, Vick’s a Eagle!

One of the premier web resources for Olympic style weightlifting is Catalyst Athlectics (here).  Owners Greg Everett and Aimee Anaya are phenomenal coaches and accomplished athletes who together have built a premier practice. Below is an exerpt from an interview by Jerry Hill of Crossfit Old Town (here) titled, “Interview with Greg Everett: Life & death training and more” (here).

Jerry: When you speak of that Greg, working the snatch and the clean and jerk, you would work that sub maximally?

Greg: For a long time, yes. You know, initially there’s no point in taking a movement like that to a max. You’re not going to get anything from it. The way I look at it is this. You’ve got basically these four components here and the very first one is position. Then you’ve got movement, then you have speed and then you have load.

Load is the very last thing you get to. You cannot perform a correct movement from an incorrect position. It’s not possible. You can’t really add speed until you have a correct movement. You can’t add a real load until you have a correct movement at the correct speed from the correct position.

I think it is really important to lay the foundation and all the layers of that foundation in order and to make sure each one is dry before you start moving on to the next. It’s like people trying to hang curtains while the cement is still drying. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not going to work. With the O-lifts, prior to some degree of technical proficiency, your maxes are limited by technique, not power, so a max is not really going to elicit much of an adaptation, and it’s most likely going to cause an unnecessary technique breakdown, which will then make establishing that technical proficiency more difficult.

I realize people are impatient, I am just as impatient as the next person, but you’ve still got to think long term. Ultimately it’s going to be a shorter process because otherwise you are going to be, OK yeah I’m snatching and clean jerking, I’m maxing out all the time, but you know what? You’re still very limited by your technique because you’re not proficient, you’re inconsistent and you’re lifting far less than you could be if you had spent that extra month maybe or so really knuckling down on that technique work.

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As Crossfiters we have a tendency to feel that our workouts are unproductive if we don’t make sweat angels, or nearly lose our perfectly paleo lunch.  This is especially true when considering the relatively light loads that are needed when learning the Olympic lifts- the clean & jerk and snatch.  After all, how much progress can be made with an empty bar?  Well an awful lot if you consider the continuum of: Position>Movement>Speed>Load

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Veronica stopped by to help Meg and Em work on their O’Lifting…Veronica will be stopping by on our Tuesday/Thursday Olympic lifting focus days to offer coaching from an 20+ year vet of the sport.

Can ya believe it was Em’s first time split jerking!

Meg working on keeping tight throughout the lift

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Jeanne and Alan showing that our parents can and should be Crossfiters

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Dave Leys, one of the original Crossfit monsters, recently made a trip to Zambia where he and a group from Mosaic Church (here) helped to build a playground for the local children.  His full story can be read (here)

August 12, 2009 in Level 10 Events, member news by admin

Make that Two!!!

Congratulations to Alison who finished 1st in her division at the summer sizzle 10k event in Chico this past weekend.  Alison finished with a time of 49:37 dispite the fact that she has cut her road running down considerably.  About the race Alison said, “I just kept thinking about how much my legs hurt on the rower, and how the run wasn’t nearly as bad as that!”

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Tammy and her boys finishing up a tough session of sledge hammer hits, bear crawls, and tire drags.  This one won’t be easily forgotten.  Great work, team!

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Sadly Kaitlyn will be leaving us shortly to attend her first year at “the” Point Loma Nazarene University.  So when you see her in the gym next week wish her well on her next journey in life.  We will keep you in our thoughts… particularly on day 100 of the Burpee challenge, ha ha!

August 8, 2009 in General Blog Posts, Nutrition by admin

A Calorie isn’t a Calorie

Gary Taubes explains why good nutrition is less about accounting-i.e calories in vs. calories out-and more about how certain foods effect your body at the hormonal level. In his latest book, “Good Calories Bad Calories” Taubes challenges the medical community on the roll of refined carbohydrates and how they relate to obesity, heart disease,  and diabetes.

(here) is Taubes’ seminal article titled, “What if it’s all been a big fat lie?” which first appeared in the New York Times.

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(here) is a short article from EliteFTS on how Henry Ford ruined the contemporary gym.

August 6, 2009 in member news by admin

Good Work Emilee

Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general-Mark Rippitoe

Emilee made a HUGE PR last night with a 196 pound single, and it looked EASY…that is 31 pounds over her previous 1 rep max! Great Effort Em.

Tay is a dynamo of a young lady, and as you can tell from here expression- this weight was a cinch for her.

Brett had to “settle” for a 471lb dead lift due to the fact that there was no room for more plates

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Jacquie is absolutely running through her fundamentals sessions, however, it is her willingness to learn and absorb new ideas about fitness that is truly impressive!

August 3, 2009 in Level 10 Events, workout by admin

FGB IV

We have as a gym completed Fight Gone Bad a number of times, each time celebrating a  holiday or special event.  However, on September 26th we will have a great opportunity to join Fight Gone Bad IV which will help in bringing awareness and funding to prostate cancer research and the Wounded Warriors non-profit group. This fund raising effort is put on by athletes for a cure and over the past 3 years has raised over $1 million for these two great causes.

You can visit our level 10 crossfit donation page by visiting (here)

You can also register for this event, and even set up a personal page to track your donations-or better yet the donations of other who have pledged money in your name.  All by visiting the FGB IV even page by clicking (here)

Currently we are signed up under our gym name-Level 10 Crossfit- so make register for this important cause and help the whole Crossfit Community raise awareness for prostate cancer and those wounded overseas.

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More often than not kids cant wait to get in on the workout action once they see Mommy and Daddy having fun and getting fit!

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Rudy and Shawn throwing down a killer effort on the diagnostic workout Nancy

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