CrossFit Edmonton would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

As a Reminder, the holiday hours this season are:

Christmas Hours:
Thursday Dec. 24th – 9am, and 10am classes only.
Friday Dec. 25th – Closed.
Saturday Dec. 26th – Closed.

New Years Hours:
Thursday Dec. 31st – 9am, and 10am classes only.
Friday Jan. 1st – Closed.

All other days around those listed above are running regularly scheduled classes.  You can also find the Holiday Schedule on our Schedule Page.

We will resume posting on on the website Monday January 4th ready for some exciting progress in the New Year!

A few highlights from the CrossFit Edmonton Christmas Party…

I’ve had a few comments from some of our members and think it’s time to officially establish a new courtesy rule at CrossFit Edmonton. It comes in regard to putting your weights away after the workouts.

We have an amazing community of people who are very courteous and ALWAYS put their weights away after their workout is finished. So courteous in fact that they’ll start to put the weights away IMMEDIATELY after they finishing the WOD. I’d like to change the focus of courtesy away from the facilities cleanliness and put it towards your fellow Crossfitter.

If you’ve ever been one of the lucky souls to be finishing last in a workout, you know what it feels like when everyone is cleaning up around you and you’re still struggling to workout. It just straight sucks! If you haven’t had this luck, then please take my word and know that it’s not only annoying but deflating of your intensity to finish.

So, from this date forward I’d like to establish a rule of WAITING to put your weights away until EVERYONE IS FINISHED. If you’re so fast a feel you need something to do, take that opportunity to provide encouragement for your fellow Crossfitter and help them finish rather than trying to clean up around them.

This is our official rule enforcer!

If you’re the type of person who’s interested in the CrossFit Community that extends around the world, then you probably know that each year CrossFit  holds it’s own Games to find the fittest man and fittest woman on earth. July of 2009 was the 3rd year of this event, and each year it has grown exponentially. The CrossFit Journal is releasing full video of each of the 8 events these athletes competed in online. You can easily download these videos and watch the games unfold. The first event was a 7K run and is free for anyone to view. If you’d like to see the rest of the events you can subscribe for only $25 per year. Well worth it in our minds.

You can download the first event here in HD, Windows Media and Quicktime versions.

Deadlift (event 2) at the 2009 CrossFit Games.
(photo courtesy of CrossFit.com)

Sorry for the delayed post today…

But just wanted to send out  a big thank you to all of our members who came out for the 2009 CrossFit Christmas party. It definitely lived up to tradition as the ‘party of the year’ with copious amounts of food, fun and photos! I now have to sort through 232 photos to see what might possibly be website worthy… I wouldn’t hold your breath for many though

Just a friendly reminder of the high-jinx from last years Christmas party.

Our CrossFit Edmonton Log books are now in. We only ordered 50 and over half were gone within the first day. Make sure you get yours soon! The benefits of using the log book include:

1) Monthly outline for summary of workouts and quick comparisons (6 months)
2) 2 Days per page for plenty of room for WOD/food logging
3) Ability to track sleep, fatigue and stress levels each day
4) Collected results for easy logging of all strength lifts and benchmarks
5) Percentage break downs for quick calculations on percentage based lifts

These are just a few of the advantages but as the people who already have theirs have noticed, they will be a great tool for all your fitness logging.

**A reminder that our CrossFit Christmas party is tonight starting around 7pm. All members are welcome. It’s a great opportunity to meet and socialize with many of the members you may not normally see in your classes. Directions are available at the facility or by emailing us.

Lisa and Karen rockin out some kipping pull ups

The following excerpt is from CrossFit Coastal.

If you don’t check your ego when you first come through our doors, one of two things will happen.

1. Your ego will go.

2. You will go.

In order to be successful at CrossFit Coastal, you need to develop a balance of confidence, strength and humility.

You must approach each class with the attitude that you are on a mission to achieve your goals. Sometimes, however, you might fall short of that goal for the day and that is when you will be faced with a choice…

You can point fingers at some external factor that caused a poor performance, beat yourselves up for not being good enough, or you might go as far as cheating (reps or range of motion).

… or we can accept our performance for what it is, evaluate it, readjust if necessary and continue on our journey to elite fitness.

If we check our ego at the door when we walk into the gym, the latter is much easier to do. We understand that letting go of that ego is a hard thing to do sometimes, especially when you have an established perception or identity of who you are or how strong you think you are. Our advice – approach each class as a sponge eager to learn – not to impress.

You know…sometimes you might not get that personal record you’ve been trying to achieve, sometimes you won’t come in first place, sometimes you’ll have to scale down the workout, sometimes you’ll have to sit out in the middle of a workout, and one day you might even be tempted to miscount a rep. when that day comes…Take a deep breath and remind yourself to “Check your ego at the door and take the time to achieve mastery.”

Sincerely,
Ezekiel

I know we’ve all had an ‘ego moment’ at some point in our CrossFitting career. Are you humble enough to share yours? Post thoughts to comments.

Yoga

Our last yoga class of the year is this Thursday night. If you haven’t tried it yet, drop ins are welcome. Yoga will be resuming in mid January so stay tuned for details on that.

Christmas Party

This Saturday the 19th is our annual CrossFit Edmonton Christmas party. It starts around 7pm and is potluck themed so bring a treat. Directions are available at the gym or you can email us if you won’t be in before then.

Log Books

We apologies for the delay in receiving our log books but they have been shipped and should be here any day. I’m hoping by the end of the week. Approximately half have been spoken for already so if you want one please let us know.

December 50/50 challenge

If you measured for the challenge this month, please make sure you pay your $10 buy in. We want to make sure we have all the cash ready by months end for our winner.

6pm class enjoying some man-makers.

In case you didn’t already know, and based off some questions from yesterdays post, CrossFit Edmonton also offers personal training. It also comes in two separate forms:

1) General 0ne-on-one personal training for all fitness levels who want the benefits of CrossFit and a Coach with an individualized focus. Whether beginner or advanced we can fast track your progress based on your personal needs.

2) Technique sessions. These are more for the seasoned Crossfitter. You’ve been doing CrossFit for some time but still have those one or two movements that you just can’t get yet. Maybe you even have more but you just want to shorten the list! Cleans, Jerks, Muscle Ups, Handstands, Snatch… All things that many have already taken advantage of this session for.

If you or someone you know would be interested in either of these options, please email us to set up your personalized appointment.

Ooops… the proper order of these pictures.

CrossFit Edmonton is now offering a new service called Program Design. These are individualized programs for 4 or 6 week periods. The ideal candidates for a Program Design are those who follow CrossFit already at home or at another facility but are looking to take it to a new level. They need something that will focus on their specific needs and give them an opportunity for some one-on-one coaching that they wouldn’t receive otherwise.

Another ideal client is someone looking to get into CrossFit because they need something different. They’ve been working out on their own for years, manage quite well on their own, but need something new to get them back on track. They already have a gym membership and you know they’re just going through the motions still doing bicep curls and tricep kick backs! A Program Design can get them introduced to CrossFit with an individualized approach without being intimidated by our classes full of amazing athletes.

Do you know anyone that fits these categories or can benefit from a Program Desing? If so, get them to call or email us for a free 30 minute fitness assessment.

Aaron digging out of a 170lb ring dip! (click image to enlarge)

This years Holiday Hours are as follows:

Christmas Hours:
Thursday Dec. 24th – 9am, and 10am classes only.
Friday Dec. 25th – Closed.
Saturday Dec. 26th – Closed.

New Years Hours:
Thursday Dec. 31st – 9am, and 10am classes only.
Friday Jan. 1st – Closed.

All other days around those listed above are running regularly scheduled classes.  You can also find the Holiday Schedule on our Schedule Page.

**A note to anyone coming in for training these next couple days. With this incredible cold snap, the gym isn’t holding heat very well. Please bring decent clothing as it is only 10-15C in the facility when it’s -30 out.

Apparently Mamas class is forming a Band!

Since we are nearing the half way point of December I thought I’d send out a reminder to our participants of this months 50/50 fitness challenge. We have approximately 28 people who have signed up and have their starting numbers. That means that the winner (most improved flexibility) will get approximately $140. Not bad just for getting more flexible! With that being said, keep stretching! It’s very important to take the time after every workout while the muscles are warm if you really want to see improvement. If you need help with figuring out what to do, please ask any of your coaches.

Can any one spot the ‘hissing cobra’…? NOT a recommended technique by the way.

In the spirit of working on weakness and upcoming challenges, qualifiers, regionals and games we’d like to know what your weakness (aka. Goat) is. It’s an important part of an athletes training that all coaches try and help them to overcome. When it comes to putting in your own effort to strengthen your goats, where do you stand? Do you run from it or attack it head on? What’s been your experiences with your goats and maybe offer some insight to help others pass that hurdle.

Post thoughts to comments.

Is this one of your goats like it is mine???

CrossFit HQ has now launched the new games site for the 2010 CrossFit Games. All information will be published through that site for everything leading up to the qualifiers, regionals and ultimately the games. As you’ll read by visiting the website, they will also be releasing a registration website for anyone wishing to participate in the Sectional Qualifiers.

All Canadian crossfitters can find basic information about all Canadian Qualifiers here.

Let the training begin!

Aaron’s already getting ready with the BIG WEIGHTS!

That’s right folks, we’re brining back the Inner City Challenges! We are making plans to set up the next ICC (3) sometime in late January.

CrossFit Edmonton wants to continue forging elite community and encourage the growth of CrossFit in the city. We welcome all crossfitters from any where in the Edmonton area to come join us. As per usual we will have a challenging workout to test your fitness amongst others in the city and follow that up with a bit of socializing to get to know each other.

More and exact details will likely come in the new year but mark your calendars for late Jan. This will also be a nice primer for any one interested in joining us for the CrossFit Games Sectionals in late March.

Greg and Bruce doing push ups at ICC2

CrossFit Edmonton has re-invented it’s Fundamentals Course. Your first month of training is now geared towards the foundational movements of CrossFit and learning the value of technique towards your fitness goals. As your intro to CrossFit and before jumping with both feet directly into our group classes, we take you through 12 progressive sessions to prepare you for the intensity of our workouts.

We are currently taking enrollment for our next course starts on January 11th. If you know someone who may be interested in starting CrossFit, then why not give them the gift of fitness this holiday season. Gift cards are available and can be applied towards the Fundamentals Course.

A well deserved and rarely experienced break time at CrossFit Edmonton

CrossFit Edmonton will be holding it’s annual Christmas party on Saturday December 19th. The party will be held at Chad’s house starting at 7pm. As per usual it will be potluck style so please bring a dish and whatever you’d like to drink. If you don’t know where Chad lives, you can ask him in class. Spouses are more than welcome however this will be an adult only party.

Please post how many will be coming and what you’ll be bringing.

I love the holiday goodies!

A few common questions arise when we do the lifts with tempo and rest. Mainly these two:

1) Why does it matter if I lower the weight for 3 seconds or rest longer at the top/bottom? It’s easier to go faster anyway…

2) Why do I have to rest so long between sets? OR Why are the rests so short now?

Both can be answered with the same response: It’s all about consistency. And more specifically, consistency of data.

Let’s consider this: As we get fatigued throughout the workout, our tempo often changes. In our first set of the movement we are fresh, the weight is light, so we can usually go much faster. However, by the last set the opposite is usually true. We’re tired, it’s heavy, so we may go through the rep fast but then rest 2-10 seconds between each rep let alone the minutes between the sets.

The real issue arises when we compare back to our old workouts. How can I compare the fact that last time I felt strong and did 5 sets really easily and fast, yet for this time I do the same weight but much slower with a lot more rest between reps and sets? Can you truly compare the two workouts? My contingency is no, they don’t compare. If it takes me 15 minutes for 5 sets of 200lbs one week and then 25 minutes for 5 sets of 200lbs a couple weeks later, to me those are VERY different workouts.

What are you thoughts?

Attempting a muscle up.

For those of you who have been fortunate enough to join us for a grinder lately, you’ve seen some new information. Mainly in regards to Sets, Reps, Tempo and Rest. To try and get everyone on the same page, this post is to clarify.

You’ll now see Grinders written something like this:

Chest Press
5×3 30×0 4min

Now let me break down the parts so we can understand what all that means.

5×3: This means Sets x Reps. So in this case, 5 Sets of 3 Reps (not including warm up sets)

30×0: This is the Tempo for the lift. It is written as four separate values, not 30 x o.
The first value (3 in this case) is the LOWERING portion of the lift. (3 seconds to lower the weight)
The second value (o) represents if there is any pause at the BOTTOM of the lift. (no pause in this example)
The third value (x) is time taken to RAISE the load. (x represents moving as fast as possible regardless of actual time taken)
The fourth value  (0) represents if there is any pause at the TOP of the lift. (no pause in this example)
(this tempo scheme has been adopted from OPT)

Finally, the 4 min is how long you will rest between the 5 WORKING SETS. Any warmup sets performed are entirely separate from this prescription.

Which phase of the lift would this represent?

This is probably one of my favourite discussions. I don’t know how many times a day I hear “but I don’t want to waste my energy” in response to why people aren’t doing the warm up. Let’s discuss the importance of a warm up shall we…

The warm up has two specific purposes in my books. One, it literally warms up/increases the temperature of the muscles you’ll be using. Two, it serves as an assessment to how your body is feeling today. If you warm up properly, you’ll be ready for any workout that comes your way based on your abilities for that day, hopefully somewhere along the lines of giving “100% of what you have” for that day. If you don’t assess how you feel and get the body ready, you could be setting yourself up for injury.

While you warm up, assess your body and muscles as to what’s going on. Are you sore, stiff, tired, lazy or are you, loose, ready, strong, fired up? Knowing this will greatly affect your outcome in the WOD. If you’re down, you’re going to need a lot more time in the warm up to get your body ready. If you’re up and the fire’s hot, it’s time for cooking! If you learn to properly assess how you feel and approach the workout accordingly, you’ll achieve much more in the long run.

Burpee’s to 1 foot above reach.

As Crossfitters we are involved in the Sport of Fitness. Our sport doesn’t ask us to put a puck in a net or do multiple flips across a narrow beam, it simply tests our ability to do work. Regardless of what sport you do, most people would agree that it’s valuable to train and practice for it. Athletes will train the specific skills required for their sport as well as the physical requirements such as strength, speed and muscular endurance. If all a hockey player did was play games and never practice skills or conditioning, would he get better at hockey? We can probably agree that it’s quite likely he will. However, will he improve as much, or as fast as another athlete who does practice skills and conditioning? Not a chance! Any coach of any skill, sport or not, knows you need to practice and train if you want to get the best results.

As Crossfitters, our sport isn’t as clear cut. Our sport is the workout. It is fitness. We practice and train, by playing the game. This creates a grey area making it much harder to know when we’re training vs. when we’re performing. This has been a problem, emphasized by the way we’ve been programming and posting workouts at CrossFit Edmonton. A huge part of this has been the idea of constantly comparing back to previous results. On EVERY workout we do or to every other person in the facility. When this is done we constantly come in thinking we need to beat or PR our last score. We need to perform, not train. And that, greatly diminishes our ability to improve.

The good news is that we do have clear testing points built right into the program. These are the benchmark workouts and the weighted lifts. To test these every so often and have clear comparisons are extremely valuable. However, we need to understand that everything in between is our training for that. Yes there are scores to all of our workouts and yes we can compare and see improvement, but if that’s all we ever do the question becomes: When are we training and when are we performing?

Our emphasis in our programming at CrossFit Edmonton is now on understanding the difference. We want you to know when you’re training and when it’s test time. When to perform. This means that our programming is taking a pretty different shift making it much harder to truly compare to stuff we’ve done in the past. It doesn’t make any of our previous training worthless. Far from it. It just simply makes it hard to compare. Our goal is that we now have a much clearer definition of our training which will actually make comparisons in the future even more valuable and more precise.

As members of CrossFit Edmonton, you get to experience this improvement first hand in each and every class you come to.

Training and Game Day.

As some of you may have already noticed, there are a few changes going on at CrossFit Edmonton. Auty and I have had many discussions about these changes and feel strongly about the positive effect they will have. ALL decisions are being made to enhance our service to our clients. With out you we don’t have a service to provide.

The biggest issue thus far has obviously been our website posting. We appreciate every single comment that has been made and have discussed in length every individual suggestion. We agree that it is the thread that holds our community together in our common bond of CrossFit workouts. We obviously don’t moderate any comments and allow for open discussion and disagreement. (if your comment is moderated by the system, we approve it as soon as we can). This service is NOT going away and we feel that it is only getting better. We now have the opportunity to discuss and open up MORE topics that can help strengthen the bond between us all with your continued feedback.

That being said, we would also like the opportunity to state our position on the changes being made. All of our changes are geared towards affecting the ‘big picture’ and improving our service and program. We understand that not all of our decisions will be meet with immediate acceptance, but let’s face it, CrossFit Edmonton wouldn’t exist today if we didn’t go against the grain once in a while. Over the next fews days, or even weeks, we plan to clear all concerns about all decisions being made. Anything we are removing is being replaced by things we feel are more valuable. One of which is posting the WOD (Workout Of the Day). We will still have a daily post but it will not include the WOD.

The main reason we are doing this is to better affect our programming. When we program a work0ut, there is a specific purpose or stimulus in mind. Without knowing the workout, we get to prepare you for the workout the way it is designed, not the just the way it is written. If we write out exactly how we want the workout performed on our website, then we ARE giving our program away for free and YOU, as a paying client, deserve more than that. By just posting what the workout consists of, as we’ve been doing, many clients come in with a pre-conceived plan of how they will do the workout. By not knowing the workout ahead of time, you will come in, ready to workout and ready to improve your fitness. It’s like having a personal trainer (without the pin setting). You show up, we kick your butt. Plain and simple.

There are MANY more reasons behind this decision that I will try and explain in further posts. At this point I just wanted to make clear that we hear your suggestions, we thank you for them, and we thank you for your understanding of our knowledge as coaches and that we will NEVER do anything that will result in REDUCING your fitness.

If you still have specific concerns about this, please continue to post them and we will answer them as best we can.

WOD LOGS:

With the removal of our posting the Workout Of the Day (WOD) on the website, we wanted to make sure everyone still had a method for tracking your workouts. We feel this is an extremely important part of your fitness but don’t feel that the workout is the only thing you should be logging. It’s also important to log sleep quality and hours, nutrition, stress and energy throughout the day. This isn’t always ideal on a website.

Hence, we bring you the WOD LOG book. It will track everything you do for an entire year of training. It also has dedicated sections for all the benchmark wod’s and strength lifts. We’ve only ordered 50 and they should be here in a couple weeks!

Front and back covers of our new WOD Log book.

December 50/50 Fitness Challenge:

This months fitness challenge is going to test Flexibility! Flexibility is outlined as one of the 10 general physicals skills and I’d venture to guess that most of you didn’t know that. Flexibility is a key component to developing your ability to properly execute many of the techniques we use in CrossFit. For this challenge you will be tested on 2 components: Hamstrings and Shoulders.

The Hamstring test will be a sit and reach test and the Shoulder test will be with shoulder openers. Both will be measured in inches (rounded down to the nearest half inch). The winner at the end of the month will be the person with the most improvement in BOTH areas. Results will be calculated as the average difference between the two tests.

Sit and reach test and shoulder opener test.

Sit and reach will be measured by how far from the end of the dowel can you reach and hold for 3 seconds. Shoulder opener will be the distance between the hands behind the back without bending elbows to get there.

CrossFit Edmonton Christmas Party!

It’s that time of year ALREADY, which means time to celebrate with friends and family. We love to socialize with our CrossFit Community so we’d like to try and pick a date to PARTY! I know we won’t be able to get everyone out but if we can get some feed back from everyone we’ll try and do our best. The two options for our Christmas Party are:

1) Saturday December 5th (next weekend!) or,
2) Saturday December 19th.

Please post which one you can make or either/neither to comments.

Overhead squats anyone?

2010 CrossFit Games:

CrossFit Edmonton will be hosting the Sectional Qualifiers for Alberta and Saskatchewan. The event will be on March 27th and 28th so mark your calendars. Anyone is welcome to participate in this event so talk to one of our Coaches if you are interested.

At this time that is the only info we have. HQ will be releasing all other info once it becomes available.

Getting set up for the WOD at the BBS.

Chad furiously taking notes at the Black Box Summit.

I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate all those who completed November’s Fundamentals Course last night! One month already done and an exciting road to optimal fitness ahead.

Along this note I’d like to implement another change at CrossFit Edmonton. From this day forward we will be implementing a new Greeting Rule. This rule states that if you see a face in your class that you do not recognize, you must go up to them and introduce yourself. This will help our newly graduated crossfitters feel welcome in our community and any future visitors we may have.

Thank you all for your participation in this!

For the time being, CrossFit Edmonton will no longer be posting it’s workouts online. We may resume this in the future but if and when we do it will not be the workout we perform in the facility. Our programming, as well as the superior coaching that comes along with it, will be reserved for our members only.

We thank you for your understanding.

Black Box Summit presenters; James Fitzgerald, Robb Wolf and Nicki Violetti.

Movement Focus:

Pull ups
Hip Extensions

The line up of genius at The Black Box Summit this past weekend.

“Angie”

Complete for time:

100 Pull ups
100 Push ups
100 Sit ups
100 squats

Compare to: 091128
Post time to comments.

Fabulous energy during the weekend WOD!

Front Squat
10-10-10-10-10

Compare to: 090614
Post score to comments.

Paleo friendly foods taste as good as they look.