February Newsletter

What’s up CrossFit Dubuquers? Did anyone see the story on Channel 9 news last night??  How awesome was that?  They did a great job of making us look good, and I’m proud of all the CFD athletes who represent us each and every day.  As soon as I get my hands on a copy of the story, and assuming I get permission to upload it, I will get it online for everyone to see who may have missed it.

We’re already approaching the second month of 2013, and are off to a great start!  New Foundations classes start up on the 4^th, so if anyone is interested in starting the journey as a new CrossFitter here at CFD, head over to the Foundations tab to check out the schedule and email phil@crossfitdubuque.com to reserve a spot!

CrossFit is constantly evolving.  Just as our understanding of the human body continues to get smarter as we fill in the gaps of our knowledge, we are doing our best here at CFD to evolve the business model with it.  Know that with all these changes that occur throughout the weeks and months, the well-being of our athletes is priority in our minds.  We wouldn’t be making a change if we didn’t think it was for the better.

Starting in February, Mike and I will both be starting our nutrition counseling volunteer hours for the IMBI (Iowa Mind Body Institute).  For those of you who do not know about the IMBI, I encourage you to click the link and see what it’s all about.  We’re proud to be a part of an exciting addition to the community and are more than willing to dedicate our time in an effort to better the human race through fitness and nutritional education of the public.  Through the IMBI, we hope to spread our area of influence beyond the confines of the CrossFit community.

Our Garage Games event, the Tri-State Throwdown, is also still underway May 4^th!  We are excited to be hosting this event through Loras College, and hope to see a great turnout!

Coach Vanessa will be hosting her women’s-only clinics starting the first week of February as well.  Many female athletes at CFD are excited about this long-awaited female addition to the coaching staff, and she is certainly doing a great job of hitting the ground running.  Additional information can be found on the women’s-only clinics post or by emailing Vanessa@crossfitdubque.com .

We also welcome Juan, our intern from Loras, to our staff!  Juan will be a great addition to our staff and is looking forward to shadowing our coaches here and offering advice and cues when he can.  His movement knowledge is pretty solid, and though he has yet to obtain his CrossFit Level 1 Certification (though he’s chomping at the bit to do so!!!), he has a lot of useful knowledge to share.

A Goals Board will be implemented this month.  This will be added to the far right end of the whiteboard (the end we really don’t use for anything anyway!).  Our intention here is to make public our athlete’s intentions on meeting a personal goal, whether it be pull-ups, pushups on toes, doubles, etc.  The athlete will be able to list their goal, when they plan on obtaining it, and what they are doing to actively get there.  This way, we can hold each other accountable!  I think it’s a good idea for everyone to think of a goal that is realistically obtainable—start small—and actively work to achieve it.

As we gear up for the CrossFit Open to start, we are always trying to fill in the chinks of everyone’s collective armor as it pertains to skills and strength necessary to be a good CrossFitter.  Unfortunately, there aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the week to hammer out all the things that could be done between now and then!  However, we will do our best to tackle the ones we find most important.  One idea we will be implementing in February is to enforce a chest-to-bar standard on all pull-ups done for the entire month.  We notice some slippage when it comes to the chin-over-bar standard on the pull-ups, especially as of late, so we’re just going to make everyone pull higher for a while!  It’ll make you stronger….promise!

Keep in mind our intention:  We are here to make everyone better.  With that said, there are some points I want to make.  First of all, understand why we scale.  Scaling, when done appropriately, makes the workout apply to you the way it was meant to be applied.  So, if Fran is supposed to take 3-7 minutes, and you’re doing it in 15, you’re not scaled appropriately.  There’s no black-and-white formula, but the numbers tend to speak for themselves.  This leads me to my second and related point:

Understand the difference between training and competing, and understand how often we do each.  Competition time is when you’re at an event, or when you’re eeking out every possible point you can get during an upcoming Open or Regional WOD.  However, training (ie: our day-to-day programming) is there to make you better, so that your competition performance in the future is better.  Training doesn’t mean half-assing your range of motion, not getting your chin over the bar (hence chest-to-bar pull-ups for the month of February!!!), ignoring a ball placed under your butt to measure depth in a squat, and not showing control at the top of a press or jerk.  Training means moving efficiently, appropriately, and safely.  You can still move fast, and are encouraged to do so, but not at the sake of throwing technique in the garbage to shave 2 seconds off your time.  Remember:  we remind you all of this because we care and because we want to have good, healthy athletes!

That about wraps it up for now—we appreciate each and every one of our athletes and the hard work you guys put in every day.  If anyone ever has any feedback or constructive criticism, please let me know!  Believe me when I say I’m not too proud to take some advice or to have a flaw pointed out, so if you think you have something useful to tell me, I would appreciate hearing it.  Our goal here is to continue to build CFD into a successful business and community.  I can’t do it without everyone being happy, and I want to continue to make everyone happy by providing a good service.  We’ve made some pretty amazing progress in just over a year, and I couldn’t be more proud!

RLTW! <1>

–Coach Phil

Here are a few words from Coach Mike as well:

The open is coming up and as a result so is our met con training for February. We are focusing, as coaches, on teaching where your redline is and how to avoid it in a workout as well as when to hit it to be a little more competitive. Look forward to some challenging wods this month and a new love for oxygen.

Speaking of the open, it starts March 6. If you’re not sure what this entails, please check out games.crossfit.com for information. I would love to see as many of our athletes registered and competing in this. Even if you don’t feel that you’re at “that level” it offers a great way for you to check yourself in relation to tens of thousands of fellow CrossFitters the world over. Regardless, we will doing these wods every Saturday during the course of the open. You might as well register and have it recorded as a benchmark for next year…

We will be hitting some of the competition wods from last year as well. For those of you that participated last year, check your numbers over this time last year! Any questions, please email mike@crossfitdubuque.com. Otherwise I’ll see you all in class!

 –Coach Mike