Author: Phil Gothard

We have made it through the 2019 Opens and the involvement from the community this year far exceeded any expectations I could have ever had. You guys made these last 5 weeks very fun and I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of CFD! Our 2019 is off to a fantastic start already, and we aren’t even into April yet. The weather’s starting to warm up and there are a ton of exciting things on the horizon at CFD:

The 2019 Classic

Our next in-house competition is just around the corner, and early-bird registration is only available until April 12th, so gather your team and sign up today!

FS1 & Gymnastics

With the (very welcome) warmer weather and longer days come yet another opportunity to participate in some alternate or supplementary program paths to better suit your fitness goals! I will be offering the Foundational Strength 1 program as well as the all-new Gymnastics program beginning on April 29th. 

Moving Forward

We have reached yet another pivotal moment in many of our training paths. Whether you were happy with your performance in the Open, frustrated with it, or relatively indifferent, we are all ‘turning the page’ so to speak and moving on in our training cycle with new information and the potential for a fresh start and healthy outlook.

A friend, colleague, and my personal coach for years Jason Leydon from CrossFit Milford recently put out a great post on his IG page (if you don’t follow Jay or CFM, you definitely should – they put out TONS of great information and he’s one of the best coaches in the world in my opinion!). He asked his audience what the most important parts of any program are. His answer? Trust and Time.

Trust.

First of all, you have to have trust in your program, in your coach, in your goals, in your direction, and in yourself. If that isn’t established…if you don’t TRUST the process…you’re at best just going through the motions and have constant reservations about your purpose. Compliance suffers, purpose suffers, lifestyle factors will not align, and you’ll be constantly looking for the next-best-thing. You’ll fail before you even begin because your head and heart weren’t invested.

Time.

Closely related to trust comes simply respecting the process and giving it the time it requires. Nobody, I repeat – NOBODY – got to any respectable level of fitness in a short period of time. Adaptation requires consistent training. If you can’t set a goal and pursue it consistently over time, you’ll jump around too often and never make any changes. There’s a process to improving any measurable component of an athletic profile, and all of them require time.

We are so quick to forget that the accomplishments of any respectable athlete took massive amounts of consistency, trust, dedication, and time. I can personally recall a day in high school when I was invited to lift with some of the football players and ended up pinned to a bench with a 135# barbell across my scrawny chest because I couldn’t budge what the other guys were warming up with. 

We need to be reminded of these concepts every so often, especially since everything today is promised in very templated, packaged time constraints. There is a challenge, boot camp, or a get-fit-quick scheme for anything you could ask for today. Fitness models sell the hottest and latest clothes to wear to the fashion show that is any gym in 2019. There are exactly 8 bajillion supplements out there – exactly none of them are superior to spending your money wisely on groceries. There are millions of vultures disguised as fitness, nutrition, and lifestyle ‘expert coaches’ who don’t know shit and are eager to make a buck – the industry is plagued with this kind of nonsense. 

So what’s the answer? However that looks for you, you’re going to have to TRUST the process and give it TIME. There’s no shortcutting hard work and executing a solid plan. 

I went from a weak kid to a strong man in only two easy steps:

1. Be willing to work hard and commit to a plan
2. Spend just shy of two decades executing that plan.

Simple, right?

To those of you who trust me, I thank you for that trust and will do everything I can to lead you to success. I’m really looking forward to everything in store these next few months and am proud to watch each of you make progress along the way!

Stay the Course.

-Phil

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Not a member? Sign up for an Intro Class today!  The next Intro class takes place on April 6th at 10:00, and Foundations starts the next week (April 9th).
RSVP to the free Intro Class here!

The 2019 CF Opens are finally at an end, and what an awesome 5 weeks it’s been. On behalf of the entire coaching staff and the community as a whole, it’s safe to say that the involvement, excitement, and overall level of fun each and every week have far exceeded my expectations! We had such a great time seeing the rivalry develop and the incredible outpouring from everyone, and I want to thank each and every one of you for being so involved this year. Without your support and participation, none of this would have happened, and I’m incredibly grateful for how much fun this was to put on and run!

I feel like this is an episode of ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’ where the scoring really doesn’t matter and the process is what makes it so great. For what it’s worth, Team Rubber beat out Team Turf 212 – 189 (you can check the leaderboard here for specifics). Congrats to the winners!

For the record, my intention was to give the Team Spirit award to the team with the most overall participation points, but both teams tied with EXACTLY the same amount of participation points over these last 5 weeks, which is crazy! Plus, I can’t even begin to say how difficult it was to decide on Individual Spirit Awards; there were so many of you worthy of the recognition I honestly regret even including it in the scoring process, because I just didn’t feel right giving a subjective award to anyone and simultaneously excluding so many others from the deserved recognition. You all were just simply awesome throughout this whole thing and made the work going into this worth it 100 times over.

I’m looking forward to offering more things to the community as 2019 unfolds and already have a few things on the horizon I’m excited for. If you’re wanting something else to look forward to, I would highly suggest considering The 2019 Classic – I’m very excited about the theme and workouts this year and will be releasing more information about that very soon. Registration IS currently open and slots are limited, so reserve your team’s spot before April 12th for the early bird discount!

That’s all for now – sorry for the late-ish post, but I was looking forward to announcing the results to everyone here during the after-party and hung out until everyone left to post this. As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have ANY feedback or suggestions for things moving forward – I’m always striving to make improvements and appreciate the opportunities to get better.

Thank you all for a fantastic 2019 CF Opens season!!!

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Not a member? Sign up for an Intro Class today!  The next Intro class takes place on April 6th at 10:00, and Foundations starts the next week (April 9th).
RSVP to the free Intro Class here!

2019 Opens After-Party

First of all, don’t forget that this Friday (March 22nd) we will be gathering at CFD for a final Opens workout celebration! I’ll work to have the scores ready just as soon as the 5:30pm class is done and will announce the winners at that time. You’re all encouraged to come out and support the 5:30pm class as they bring it home and then stick around for the announcement and some socializing! Check out the FB event page for this and I hope to see you all there!

19.5 Scoring

Here’s how your team can earn points this week:

Currently, the score is 161-153 with Team Rubber in a sizeable (but certainly not insurmountable) lead! In fact, if it weren’t for Rubber killing the 19.4 prediction points, Turf would be in the lead. Just goes to show how close this race still is! Check out the leaderboard here and make sure I didn’t miss any points or make any errors in the top 3 categories, couples throwdowns, or attendance!

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Not a member? Sign up for an Intro Class today!  The next Intro class takes place on April 6th at 10:00, and Foundations starts the next week (April 9th).
RSVP to the free Intro Class here!

St. Patrick’s Day CFD Pub Crawl

Don’t forget, this Saturday, March 16th we will be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day! We will be starting at Jubeck New World Brewing at 2pm and heading south on Main Street around 4pm after that. Updates will be made on the FB event page, so keep tabs on our whereabouts and I’ll see you all there!

2019 Opens After-Party

I know, it’s basically two weekends in a row, but I wanted to put a get-together in the books for everyone to come out and celebrate the closing of the 2019 Opens! It’s going to be an informal gathering beginning at 6:30pm on the 22nd of March – or, by all means, come out and support the 5:30pm class as they finish up the last bit of 19.5! I’ll do my best to get the scores together so we can announce a winner shortly after class is over. Check out the FB event page for this and I hope to see you all there!

19.4 Scoring

Here’s how your team can earn points this week:

Currently, the score is incredibly close with Team Rubber in a 1-point lead over Team Turf: 108-107!!! Check out the leaderboard here

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Not a member? Sign up for an Intro Class today!  The next Intro class takes place on April 6th at 10:00, and Foundations starts the next week (April 9th).
RSVP to the free Intro Class here!

Lately, so much of the content put out has to do with all of the many events that have already come so far in 2019. We’ve had an incredibly busy and exciting year at CFD already this year! However, a downside of so much excitement is that so much of the ‘bread-and-butter’ of what we do as strength and conditioning coaches get pushed to the side to make room for events, gatherings, and the like. I wanted to take a quick moment to spotlight some interesting and very relevant data that came as a result of the conclusion of the most recent Cardio Club program that just finished up less than 2 weeks ago.

It doesn’t take a S&C professional to know that the aerobic engine is responsible for utilizing oxygen as a primary fuel source for constant, cyclical movement/contractions. However, many don’t realize that yet another benefit to improving the aerobic engine is that it facilitates recovery BETWEEN anaerobic efforts through a process known as the Krebs Cycle, which is (very simply put) the body’s way of restoring ATP (usable energy) via oxygen (breathing).

What this means is that having a big aerobic engine allows you to recover faster from these intense, all-out efforts that primarily use fuel substrates other than oxygen (ATP/CP/glycogen/lactate) so that you can repeat those efforts more fully (repeatability) and with less rest (more often).

Note: Just to keep some biochemist from jumping down my throat – it’s not necessarily true that an improvement in the aerobic system doesn’t do anything at all to improve the anaerobic system, since no system ever works in total isolation; there are always ratios of each fuel substrate being used at any given time, but I’m speaking strictly as though the anaerobic system were put in a vacuum…in which case, an improvement in the aerobic system wouldn’t improve the AnAer system. I just wanted to clear that up for those of you who care!

Anyway, I thought the example was interesting and hope you all find it useful, insightful, and perhaps even somewhat motivating or inspiring to continue to trust the process and Stay the Course. As we all develop from different starting points and have differing goals, I want to continue to offer ways we can focus our improvements in areas that suit our wants, needs, goals, and athletic profile strengths/weaknesses – hence the conception of the supplementary programs.

If you’re interested in those or in hopping on an individualized program design tailored specifically for you, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an e-mail and start a conversation! Questions are free and I always enjoy having interesting discussions with people.

Keep on the lookout for an upcoming Gymnastics Club program as well as another shot at Foundational Strength 1 sometime this Spring 2019 (Exact launch date TBD)

Stay the Course

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Not a member? Sign up for an Intro Class today!  The next Intro class takes place on April 6th at 10:00, and Foundations starts the next week (April 9th).
RSVP to the free Intro Class here!

There’s a lot going on this week! Check it out…

Apparel orders live until 3pm today (11MAR)

If you want to still get in on this shirt order, I’m submitting it by COB today, so get them in by 3pm or else you’ll be S.O.L.! Click here for access to the links

St. Patrick’s Day Pub Crawl

This Saturday is the St. Patrick’s Day Pub Crawl! RSVP to the FB event for updates – I hope to see you all there!

19.4 Scoring

Check out how your team can earn points this week:

Currently, the score is incredibly close with Team Rubber in a 1-point lead over Team Turf: 108-107!!! Check out the leaderboard here
*Somehow a person who is not on either team had their name written on the board under Team Rubber. That person’s name has been omitted from the board, narrowing the gap by a single point

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Not a member? Sign up for an Intro Class today!  The next Intro class takes place on April 6th at 10:00, and Foundations starts the next week (April 9th).
RSVP to the free Intro Class here!

*update 12 noon 09MAR: Lincoln did the workout on Saturday (which is why it’s not on WODhopper) and edged Micah G out by 1 point, returning the split to 109-107 with Team Rubber in the lead by 2

*update 11:30am 09MAR: Mary K was accidentally scored for the wrong team on the top 3 scaled female leaderboard – after correction, the points are 110-106 Team Rubber

The results are in and it’s still a very tight race! Neither team had much luck with the prediction points with each team earning only one point (HSPUs), and each team had identical attendance points. However, Team turf took the lead on 3 of the 4 ‘Top 3 Leaderboards,’ but Team Rubber took the majority of the ‘Spouse Throwdown’ points, resulting in a 35-35 tie in 19.3! This means Team Rubber is still in the lead overall with a narrow 2-point margin over Team Turf, 109-107. Check out the latest leaderboard page and make sure I didn’t miscalculate anyone’s points!

19.4 Scoring

The pieces scored are the same, but the point value just got bumped to another level for 19.4 – check out how your team can earn points this next week:

See you all next week for 19.4!

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Not a member? Sign up for an Intro Class today!  The next Intro class takes place on April 6th at 10:00, and Foundations starts the next week (April 9th).
RSVP to the free Intro Class here!

It has recently been brought to my attention that there was a slight inconsistency with the scoring, and upon correcting that error, Rubber is now at a 3 point lead over Turf, 74-71!!!

Here’s what happened…

For 19.1, there wasn’t enough people on teams who did the workout scaled to make a top 3 scaled category. However, for the Rx categories, people who weren’t a part of either team got bumped from the top 3 so as to award the most points to the teams.

However…

I failed to remove people who weren’t on either team from 19.2’s scoring considerations, which kept two people, both from Team Rubber, from making top 3. In order to rectify the error and stay consistent with scoring, I have fixed the leaderboard. Check out the updated leaderboard here and make sure I didn’t make any other errors!

As always, I do my best to stay as transparent as possible and appreciate when someone brings an error to the attention of the coaching staff. I’m running this leaderboard solo, so please don’t hesitate to reach directly to me in the future if you notice a problem or error I may have made. Thank you all for your understanding, patience, and – most of all – participation in this event. Everyone’s involvement and excitement have far exceeded my expectations already, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the next 3 weeks play out!

-Coach Phil

There are so many things I have to announce to you all today – fair warning, this is a long post and there are a lot of parts to it!

19.2 Scores are in!

After another week, the scores are still REALLY close, but from what I can tell, Team Rubber is holding a 1-point lead over Team Turf after 19.2! Both teams scored 35 points in 19.2. Check my math and make sure everything looks right!

• Prediction points: Turf – 5 points, Rubber – 2 points
  • Team turf correctly predicted a triplet, whereas team rubber guessed 4 movements, awarding Turf 3 points. Both teams guessed 2 of the movements correctly earning 2 points each, while neither team correctly guessed the time domain (ascending).
• Top 3 points: Turf – 4 points, Rubber – 6 points
  • Top 3 RX male: Chase (Rubber), Art (Turf), Matt F (none)
  • Top 3 RX female: Maddy (Turf), Katie (none), Tammy K (Rubber)
  • Top 3 scale male: Micah (Rubber), Chad (Rubber), Dustin (Turf)
  • Top 3 scale female: April (Rubber), Nicky (Rubber), Carolyn (Turf)
• Attendance: Turf – 26 points, Rubber, 27 points

Currently, my count is Team Turf – 71 points, Team Rubber – 72 points

19.3 Scoring

New to 19.3: Couples Throwdown and Rep Scheme prediction:

• Rep Scheme Prediction points: 1 point per matching number.
  • ex: Team guesses 21-15-9 but the correct scheme is 18-15-12-9-6-3, team gets 2 points (for 15 and 9 matching). HOWEVER, for every 3 numbers that are NOT included in the rep scheme, you lose 1 of the points you would have gained. This means that the example above would net 1 total point. If only 2 numbers don’t match, you don’t get a penalty. This is to discourage people from guessing a descending rep scheme from 100 down by 1’s! You cannot get a negative number of points though, so make your best realistic guess!
• Couples Throwdown: if a spouse/bf/gf/etc beats their partner’s score, they earn an additional point for their team. Doesn’t count for mistresses or side-flings…keep it classy, everyone! 😉

Cardio Club and FS 2

We’ve had fantastic success with Cardio Club this year with 10 people completing a 1/2 marathon row! Also, this week is the Foundational Strength 2 re-test week, and numbers are already coming in. Keep up the great work, everyone!

Stay tuned for Gymnastics Club launching this Spring 2019!

Apparel Orders

Click here to see the mock-ups and order sheets for your CFD gear!

St. Patrick’s Day CFD Pub Crawl

I’m pumped to announce more specifics about the plans for St. Patrick’s Day! Saturday, March 16th we will be starting at Jubeck New World Brewing at 2pm and heading south on Main Street around 4pm after that. Updates will be made on the FB event page, so keep tabs on our whereabouts and I’ll see you all there!

2019 Opens After-Party

I know, it’s basically two weekends in a row, but I wanted to put a get-together in the books for everyone to come out and celebrate the closing of the 2019 Opens! It’s going to be an informal gathering beginning at 6:30pm on the 22nd of March. I’ll do my best to get the scores together so we can announce a winner shortly after the 5:30pm class is done! Check out the FB event page for this and I hope to see you all there!

2019 Classic Registration is LIVE!

Registration for the 2019 Classic is LIVE, and I’m hoping many of you get signed up for the early registration of only $105/team of 3! That’s only $35/person with 5 events AND a shirt (mockups to follow, but you WON’T be disappointed!). Check out the FB event and stay posted for announcements and sneak peeks. The registration form can be found here for download:

I know…that was a lot, but that’s all for now. Reach out anytime and I’ll see you all soon!

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Not a member? Sign up for an Intro Class today!  The next Intro class takes place on April 6th at 10:00, and Foundations starts the next week (April 9th).
RSVP to the free Intro Class here!

How long have you been a member at CFD and what made you want to start?

I became a member at CFD in 2014. My dad actually got me started. I had been talking to him about wanting to start lifting (mostly to improve in high school sports) and he thought I would enjoy it. He was right!!

What changes have you seen in yourself since you started?

I have seen a lot of changes in myself since I started at CFD. One of the biggest being, I am a hell of a lot stronger both mentally and physically. At the beginning, I can remember lifting the trainer bar with maybe 10s on each side and barely being able to do that. There were even a few times I shed some tears during workouts. I know Mike remembers those days! I go in to workouts now and I am able to push myself and be confident in my ability.

What do you like most about CrossFit?

My favorite part about CrossFit are the people and coaches at CFD. Everyone is so supportive! There is always someone there pushing me to do more weight or to finish the last few reps. Coming to the gym is honestly my favorite part of the day. Not only because of the workouts, but the people at CFD. I also love the variety in the workouts. Every day it is something new, so it keeps things fresh and interesting.

What type(s) of workouts are your favorite?

My favorite workouts would be anything with squats, cleans, double-unders, or wallballs. I really like AMRAPs or chipper workouts. I like to feel like I am dying at the end so that I know I got a good workout in.

What type(s) of workouts do you least like to see come up?

 My least favorite workouts would include running and deadlifts. If there is running in the workout I really have to force myself to get to the gym that day. I have never enjoyed running and I’m not sure what it is about deadlifts, but I am not a fan. If you really want to make me feel bad about myself, add in some strict presses.  

What are your goals going forward?

My goals going forward are to keep enjoying working out and staying dedicated. I want to continue to get better every day and work on my weaknesses. I think one of the biggest things I want to work on is dieting. I definitely don’t get enough protein on a daily basis. That is one of my biggest focuses going forward.

What advice do you have for someone just starting out at CFD?

My advice to someone just starting at CFD would be to not compare themselves to other people. Everyone started somewhere, and everyone is at a different point in their journey. Just remember where you started and keep trying to do your best.

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Not a member? Sign up for an Intro Class today!  The next Intro class takes place on March 2nd at 10:00, and Foundations starts the next week (March 5th).
RSVP to the free Intro Class here!