CrossFit Santa Cruz

Why Be Coached?

Colin finds overhead

Everyone needs a coach. Even coaches need coaches. Having someone watch your movement and instruct you on improvements is an essential aspect of training. One role of a coach is to challenge an athlete.  Every athlete has strengths and weaknesses, a good coach will know them and exploit them.  Working our weaknesses makes us better athletes. Coach D has a great eye for spotting someones weakness at getting after it. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?

Post thoughts to comments.

Workout: 5 rounds for time of:
225 pound Back Squat,
10 reps 400 meter run

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Dont forget to sign up for the CrossFit Santa Cruz Holiday Party

Reminder:  Community Night this Thursday.
We are now offering kids classes at 5pm and 6pm

Accomplished

Cara finished

The satisfaction of completing a workout is a reward in itself. The joy of making progress is one of the reasons we all stick around. These are personal experiences. That being said, a little recognition from our peers is priceless. Sometimes a great effort is seen by some and talked about by others. Legends are born from such stories. The motto "I'll believe it when I see it" requires that all records and amazing feats must be on video. So, we have added a new link to our site.

Athlete Achievements.

We will chronicle the efforts, and let you tell the stories.

Workout: Minute interval work
Within the first minute complete
3 Box jump,
4 Kettelbell swing
5 Wall Ball
Starting at the beginning of minute to complete
4 Boxy Jump
5 Kettlebell swings
6 Wall Ball
Continue for ten minutes. If you miss an interval, immediately return to 3-4-5

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Dont forget to sign up for the CrossFit Santa Cruz Holiday Party

Don't forget about Community Night this Thursday.
We are now offering kids classes at 5pm and 6pm

History

Happy Birthday Dave

How many readers of this blog have heard of C3? No? Well few ever have. When we asked Dave how he heard about CrossFit, he said "CrossFit Combat Circuit"or simply C3.  We asked what C3 was and he described workouts  a lot like a fight gone bad. Dave was an avid gym rat and these workout were his first exposure to CrossFit.  He was instantly hooked.  He proceeded followed CrossFit from Spa Fitness to Claudio's juijistu studio to the once famous research park drive suites. Since then he has spent some time in Los Angeles at Patranek's and is currently training hard for next years CrossFit Games. How long ago was it that Dave started CrossFit? His first C3 workout was when he was 19. This week he turns 29!

Let's Celebrate Dave's Birthday,and the Holiday season this Friday at 7pm at the CrossFit Santa Cruz Holiday Party

Festivities

CrossFit is a serious strength and conditioning program. When athletes come in to our box we expect focus, discipline and hard work. There is not a lot of time to get to socialize with your fellow athletes  Sure, we learn a lot about each other when you do a WOD together and we all socialize quite a bit before and after class. However, we rarely see each other in regular clothes or outside of the box. Now is our chance.

This Friday is the CrossFit Santa Cruz Holiday Party. It will be a time to get away from the blood, sweat and tears of the box and relax with friends. The festivities will start at 7pm. Check the flyer for location and to sign up for the potluck.

Deviance

Kristy practicing her squat.

Very small errors in the mechanics of our squat at unloaded, and slow speeds are magnified with load or speed. When trying to get our best Tabata squat number we often loose perfect technique. It is expected. The problem is that if we spend thousands of reps reinforcing poor motor recruitment patterns, when the time comes to lift heavy weight we don't understand why we can't maintain our technique. Try this. Video yourself trying to get the perfect squat at slow speed. If you see any errors imagine what they look like at high speed and heavy weight.

Workout:
Three rounds for time of:
Run 400 meters
100 Squats, (holding a 20lb med ball)

Progress

Carie learning the muscle up.

This past week, we talked about the importance of the basics. We touched on practicing, and scalability. Today its all about progress. Mastering the basics, practicing new skills and scaling all lead to better performance. Better performance leads to better fitness, and that is really what we are all about. Carie is one of our athletes that has made great gains following these simple rules.

Happy Birthday to SFSC, who turned 4 on Friday. For some more info on progress check out their blog.

Scaling is not scary

Vince and crew

CrossFit can be intimidating. To a new client the box might look like a warehouse full of strong, fit people lifting heavy weights really quickly, lots of times. The beauty in all of it, however, is that the programming is not just for the elite athlete, it is for everyone who is willing to show up and give their best effort. All levels, all shapes, all sizes, all ages. The ability to scale the workout for any level is one of the reasons that the CrossFit program is so successful. Scalability allows athletes to gauge their progression by measuring the increase in weight/reps or decrease in time in repeated workouts. Scalability allows all athletes to workout together as one community, regardless of fitness level. And it works in both directions. We scale down for newer crossfitters, injured crossfitters and whenever necessary. We scale up for crossfitters who need a more challenging workout in order to achieve optimal results. For example, a pound of weight for most humans (a human pound) is actually equivalent to 1.13 pounds of weight for Patrick (a patrick pound).

Workout:
4 rounds for time
10 Deadlift - 255 patrick pounds (225 human pounds)
7 Weighted Pullups - 40 patrick pounds (35 human pounds)
Choose your scale - patrick pounds or human pounds

Practice

Gilly finds overhead

Practice does not make perfect, but perfect practice makes perfect. When going through a WOD there is no time to be thinking about the small details. Keeping up the intensity requires that we push past the point of perfect control. The idea being that we need an 80-20 split. The quality of our movement in the middle of our workout should not be below 80 percent perfect. The question then is how do we get better? The answer is use the warm up and cool down to practice skills. Work movements slowly and keep the mind on the small details. The reward of mindful practice is improved technique, improved technique leads to faster times and heavier loads, all of which lead to more elite fitness.

Workout: Spend 45 minutes working on something you are not good at.

The Health Lift

Mark and Hannah

When in come to the basics there is never enough. We want to focus our attention on the basic movements, the squat, the dead and the press. Once we feel we have a sufficient understanding of the movements, we should look again even closer. We shouldn't move on to complicated movements like the snatch, without a rock solid deadlift.

"Blindfolded and inebriated, you need to know these positions" Kstar

Workout:
3 Rounds for time of:
20 Pull Up
30 Kettlebell swings
40 Box Jumps
50 Wall Ball

Management Strategies

Alex and Tyler

Turkey, Stuffing, Apple Pie, the list goes on and on. With the holidays come family, friends, and food. Mix in a little travel, and a downward spiral in our training begins. Right? Maybe Not. We can manage our training with one basic rule. Be flexible. Be flexible with time of day. Be flexible with equipment and locale. Be flexible with intensity. Moderate your training to accommodate your circumstances. I am not saying change the program. Don't be mistaken. So when the "Holiday Season" attempts to derail your fitness goals, don't stop training all together, just be flexible with your programming.

Workout:
2 rounds of
5 Deadlift; body weight
5 Pull ups
Then Rest 1 minute.
Repeat 6 more times for a total of 7 rounds