CrossFit San Jose

Core Work (concluded)

Actually, there will be no talk of core, abs or any strengthen concerns.  In fact, this post will not even be paleo.  After Court sent a picture of his birthday cake (BTW, this is the longest birthday in history), I knew it had to go up.  Connection, dedication and, well, fanaticism are the big three that make the CFSJ family great.  Thanks to all of you who socialize and connect as much as you tear up the WODs.  

WOD

50 burpees

50 dball slams

You can complete this in any order, but as soon as you stop your burpees, you have to pick up the dball and start slamming.  Try to finish in under 5 minutes. 

Core (cont.)

The Turkish get-up (TGU) might very well be the best all-around exercise one can do.  One can be seen here.  While CrossFit often discourages focusing on any one movement (although how many times do you see clean in a WOD), something should be said on behalf of the TGU.  First of all, it forces a collaboration between strength and balance, while also working on bi-lateral strength.  The off-balance nature of the lift recruits all major muscle groups (most importantly the core.)  In addition, due the lock-out that must be attained in the lift, ligaments can actually strengthen.  Lastly, this lift can get very heavy, really taxing the hamstrings and glutes (like any squat).  In simple works, this lift does it all.  Not saying that is should be your regiment, but if it isn''t in your bag of tricks, get it in there.  10 of these after a WOD can really bring some results.

Ps. I didn''t have a picture of any TGUs, plus people stopped believing that Chris worked out here.

WOD

8 rounds

200m row - sprint

200m row - slower recover

The point is to go all out for time.  Use the recover intervals to actually recover, but don''t come to a stop.  Try to keep the sprints as close to the time of your first round as possible. 

Keep it Tight

Hopefully, in your pursuit for a bigger lift, faster sprint or the ability to keep up with your kids, you have been paying attention to your core.  Not to be confused with your abdominal muscles, but the entire corset of muscles under your abs and around your ribs and spine.  The infrastructure that keeps us upright (aptly named, the erector muscles.)  And, while sit-ups can help and O''lifting has effect on your corset, there needs to be some time taken to develop strength in this area too.  Planks, supermans, reverse hypers, knees to elbows and Turkish get-up, to name a few, are exercises that help directly develop this structure, and proper development of the corset will not only help you stay tight in the bottom of a squat or out of the bounce of clean, development will also help protect your lower back when pulling big weight off the floor.  A couple of sets of 10 reps of the above exercises, either before or after the WOD, can go a long way.  For those of you that do extra core work, how do you fit it in?

WOD

Run 1 mile

This should be as fast as you can, not your 1 mile pace when you do a 10K. 

Rest Day

Stretch, contrast bath, relax and have fun. 

Put it To Use

As some of you might have heard, we are trying to get together a couple of teams for the Weekend Warrior series (see info here).  If you think that you would like to put some of the "hardcore" that you get from CFSJ, let us know.

Also, sorry for the redundancy, but, again, we are trying out a 4 pm class. This will start next week and will run Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. We hope that this meets your needs.  

Lastly, look for some upcoming events in the next couple of months.  

WOD

10-1 Dead lifts (60% of 1rm)

1-10 Shoot throughs (ask Brandon and Court, but they are tough to keep up)

200m run after each round