Category: General

Why the new programming format?

I’ve received a lot of great feedback about the new programming, and I’ve heard some complaints about it as well, which is definitely to be expected when any change occurs.  Let me say my piece on why we are moving in this particular direction at CFD.

Most of the complaints come from the fact that I’m not writing prescribed weights for your barbells and heights for your box movements.  There is a very good reason I’m purposely not doing it, and it has nothing to do with me not wanting to help you or us not having your best interest in mind.  Instead, I want you all to start learning your own boundaries and finding out what you’re capable of.  For those of you who aren’t happy with the missing information, how regularly did you do the workouts Rx’d before?  Probably not very often.  So what difference does it make?  We’re still scaling to YOUR fitness level, and the workout is written to bring out a particular response in our athletes.  If I want the workout to be heavy and difficult, then pick a weight that YOU think would be heavy and difficult.  If you get through it faster than you thought you would, that is not a failure of a training day!  Instead, it’s part of a journey and a learning experience for you to know your true limits.

Chances are, we all don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do.  It’s happened to me before; I look at a workout and think to myself, ‘I think I can do that in X amount of time,’ and halfway through the workout I realize that I’m going to miss my mark by more than I wanted to!  Guess what happened on those days?  I LEARNED something about myself.  I don’t need a number in my notebook or a prescribed benchmark weight written in marker on a board to tell me how fit I am.  If I want you to push yourself, I want YOUR best interpretation of what ‘pushing yourself’ means!  If it was too easy, learn from it.  If it was too hard, LEARN FROM IT!  It’s only through these experiences that we will all truly progress.  No day is wasted as long as a lesson is taken from it.

This particular programming system is being implemented by some of the most successful CrossFit (and non-CrossFit) facilities in the WORLD.  They’re clearly doing something right, and I want to be a part of that community.  Next time you look at a workout and think ‘shit, I don’t even know where to begin!’ grab a bar, start small, and see what it feels like.  Mulling around for the ten minutes prior to the start time of a workout is not giving you any better an idea of what you’re physically and mentally capable of doing.  Get some reps in, feel how heavy 3 reps feels compared to 10, and put it all in the context of the day.  You’re regularly going to be surprised and often miss your mark, but that’s part of the process.

Let’s all embrace these changes and use this opportunity to see what we’re all made of.  CFD has made me proud since we opened, and we continue to get better both as athletes and as a community.  Nothing but good will come of these changes as long as we’re all on board and you can trust the vision I have for us all.  Know that we have your best interest in mind!

Let’s continue to lead Dubuque from the front!  RLTW <1>

–Coach Phil

Let me first preface this blog by saying that none of this really applies to most of us at CFD.  The people who stick around and make living a healthy part of their life have already realized a lot of these points, and I’m proud of everyone for having adapted to a better lifestyle.  However, this is very likely going to apply to family members and friends, and I think it’s probably a useful bit of information to pass along.

 

A quick rant on lifestyle…

I’m going to admit something many of you may not know about me (there’s a little sarcasm intended with that statement…).  I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who constantly complain about feeling like shit when they consistently make poor lifestyle choices.  If you want to have some examples of what I might be talking about, open up any social media site and start scrolling through your news feed.  Go to the grocery store and see what everyone else loads their carts up with.  I’m proud to be a part of a community of people who took a stand against an unhealthy lifestyle and are making a constant effort every day to better themselves.  Sure, there’s a lot of bad information out there telling people to eat low-fat, high-carb diets to lose weight (and other BS schemes), so in many cases, the predominately unhealthy society we are surrounded by is the result of people being misled.  Think of how many people WANT to do the right thing and be healthy, but just don’t even know what that really entails! I’m sure the frustrated overweight person buying whole wheat bread and restricting calories who eats a Lean Pocket for dinner and goes to bed hungry every night has had it up to their eyeballs with sacrifices for no gains!

Good information IS OUT THERE, and I’d like to think we are doing something right at CFD; our results speak for themselves.  There’s a part of me that wants to get pissed when I hear constant complaints about feeling terrible paired with ridiculous recipes of desserts designed to make you diabetic.  If you’re one of those people who feels bad even 30% of the time, that’s about 29% too often!  Chances are, you’re doing something to cause that.  Change something about what you’re doing to yourself and monitor the differences.  We all have intolerances to different foods, and sometimes it takes some experimenting to pinpoint things.  If you’re not happy with your energy, how you feel, look, or sleep, then CHANGE something about your lifestyle or STOP COMPLAINING TO THE WORLD ABOUT IT!

I apologize ahead of time if this comes across as rude, but I think some people need a slap in the face with reality in order to realize that the path they’re walking is a choice.  Personally, I like feeling great every day and being strong.  No candy bar, soda, or junk food in the world will ever taste as good as being healthy feels.  If a general sense of feeling ‘unhealthy’ describes you, then do yourself a favor and stop eating like crap.  Throw your skinny wraps, shape-ups, and diet soda in the garbage, because they aren’t helping you.  Start eating real food.

 

Who has two thumbs and doesn’t feel sorry for you if you won’t make an effort to break the cycle??

THIS guy!

–Coach Phil

Hello CFD!  I wanted to blog quickly on some differences many of you will no doubt notice in the workouts posted.  The writing format is going to be a little different than many of you have seen and are familiar with, but trust that we will make sense of it all at the box!  I have high expectations to where these changes can take us, and I hope you all are looking forward to it as much as I am.

See you soon!

–Coach Phil

What an awesome weekend with a great group of athletes from all over the area!  Thanks to all who made it, and a special thanks to everyone who made it possible.  I feel very grateful to be a part of a great community.  Here are the results of the competition!

Women’s scaled division:

1st Place–Ali Bergmann

2nd Place–Alicia Unkrich

3rd Place–Nicolette Drane

Men’s scaled division:

1st Place–Josh Connolly

2nd Place–Eric Wiersema

3rd Place–Wesley Symonds

Women’s RX division:

1st Place–Sonia Rodriguez

2nd Place–Jessica Wass

3rd Place–Sarah McCormick

Men’s RX division:

1st Place–Armand McCormick

2nd Place–Andreas Janzen

3rd Place–Justin Lowinski

 

Great work to all, and we hope to have you all back for our next competition! 

We are all geared up for the Tri-State Throwdown! No regular Saturday classes tomorrow (or Intro class)…instead we will be battling it out at Loras. Athlete check-in is at 7am and the first heat kicks off at 8! The order will be women’s scaled, men’s scaled, women’s RX, men’s RX.

See you all there!!!

ATTENTION ALL TRI-STATE THROWDOWN VOLUNTEERS!

We are having a volunteer-meeting on Friday night (the 3rd) at 6:30pm in order to go over things with all who are able to help out for the competition!  We will hand out your shirt, go over movement standards, and talk about how I intend to flow the day.  Hopefully any uncertainties can be addressed and we can all be on the same page.  I don’t intend for any of this to be very complicated, but I think it’s important that we all have a meeting in order to establish our high, consistent standard on all the movements, and I can answer questions about the workouts specifically.  If you are able to make it, I thank you ahead of time!

There will be a sign-up on WODhopper soon so that you can throw your name on the list just to get a head count.

See you then!!!

–Coach Phil

Winning. It’s a pretty cool feeling, right? The best. Conquering the competition, leaving all others in the dust, bragging rights, all that. That’s what CrossFit is all about, correct? WRONG! There is a small percentage of athletes in the CrossFit community that are games worthy (about 1%). The rest of us are just trying to be better.

Our job as coaches is to find chinks in your armor, make YOU aware of them and help you to hammer them out. We will find end roads in, side doors, cues and sometimes resort to outright trickery to get you past a block. That is OUR job.

What is your job, as an athlete then? To get out of your own way! Be coachable every day you come in and ready to leave CFD just a little bit better than when you came in.

Does this mean you can’t be competitive? Absolutely not. What this means is that you cannot sacrifice technique and form to shave a few seconds off your time. We want you to move through the WODs as fast as possible without losing control. If we can get you to the point that your last rep looks as good as your first and you collapse afterward with a solid time, then we’re on the right track.

Conversely we don’t want you to sacrifice intensity to concentrate solely on making each rep look pretty. You should be exhausted when we yell “TIME!” There is a physiological we are trying to elicit and intensity is the key to that.

The bottom line is this – we want both speed and pretty reps. As an athlete, you need to have the discipline to not allow poor movement. Once you get that grooved in, don’t let yourself slide. Don’t be satisfied with sub par movement. This will get you towards all of your goals (and beyond) faster. Allowing your standards to slip though will undue progress you’ve made up to that point.

As I’m writing this, I realize this short blog could easily become a treatise rivaling War and Peace in volume. I’ll curtail it here though and leave you with this thought – what we do is challenging but not impossible. We are here to help you better yourself. Let us help you find the better you!

We ARE lucky.  But every single one of you makes CFD this way.  You all check your egos and your inhibitions at the door.  You all look after each other, offer support, and celebrate the victories of your teammates like they were your own.
Its not unusual for women (and men) to be incredibly nasty to each other in their day-to-day lives.  We’ve all seen it, or been involved in some way or an other.  Many people ‘out there’ want to lift themselves up by tearing others down.

Our little world at CFD is different; we are rising together.  I know that I am not the only person who leaves the box feeling better than when I came in.  My day gets better from the kindness we show each other, and the sweat and hard work we put in.

What would the rest of our lives be like if they could be as good as our hours together?

–Coach April

The registration limit has just been increased, so sign up now!  Slot are filling up fast!

http://www.thegaragegames.com/events/tri-state-throwdown/

If you haven’t registered for the Tri-State Throwdown, it’s time to get on it!  Registration closes at the end of next week, and slot are filling up fast!  There are only about 13 left….

Also, if you plan on volunteering, please register as a volunteer so we can get a head count and a t-shirt size.  Thank you!

Registration can be done here: http://www.thegaragegames.com/events/tri-state-throwdown/