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Hey all!

March 24th marks the final testing day of the 2017 Open! Let’s all get together, throw down on 17.5, enjoy each other’s company, and have a great time!
ALSO….

This event is two fold: We will also be celebrating the fact that CFD has won Barbells for Boobs and are the State Champs of Iowa for the second year in a row! I will be handing out shirts to the athletes who raised money for the cause and giving congratulations for making a difference!

If anyone would like to contribute with some pot-luck style food, please post it on the website so we know what to expect!

Come on out and let’s have a great time–see you all there!

People who will be receiving their State Champ shirts (please be present so we can congratulate you as a community!):

Austin Weitz
Jamese Saunders
Calais Baker
Sarah and Andy Accacian
Katie Kieffer
Tammi Saunders
Holly Wellman
Nicole Freiburger
Lynney Courtney
Theresa Hughes
Angie Pfaff
Kathy Hoerner

1. How long have you been a member at CFD, and what made you want to get started?

I’ve been at CFD a little over a year. I started because I have size DD boobs and I wanted to get CrossFit boobs. Hahaha!!! I’m a yo yo dieter AND exerciser. I love to be active but I could never find anything that held my interest long enough. My son Chase was my primary motivator. He was one of those ‘just try it’ people that finally got the best of me. Here’s a 21 y.o. extremely healthy kid telling me that I can and should do this. What the heck did he know about a 41 y.o. body?! How did he just ‘know’ I could do it? I did not think it was for me. I was also motivated by my cousin Shane and his wife Abby, who have been doing this for years. When I walked in to the CFD box for the first time I was scared out of my mind but I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of. Who was this guy teaching me how to do a ‘proper’ squat, and what the hell does ‘proper body mechanics’ mean? How did I spend the majority of my 41 years squatting the wrong way? He wants me to activate my glutes (my what?)? Just listening to Phil that first night taught me so much and planted the excitement for what was to come! Phil took the time to learn about each person coming in which meant a lot and eased my nerves.

2. What changes have you seen in yourself since your very first day?

EVERYTHING has changed. I feel like I felt when I was 16 years old and working on the youth core. I’m not as small as I was then, but I feel THAT good. I just sent Chase a text the other day thanking him for his motivation, and thanking God for giving me such a special kid. I will forever be grateful to Chase for motivating me to start, and in general for motivating me to be a better version of myself every day. Sounds backwards I know, he’s a great kid and old soul even when he’s bitching at me not to eat mayo. It used to be about the number on the scale and if I could fit in a size 6. Now it’s a balance. You get stronger in the gym and skinnier in the kitchen. You cannot outwork a bad diet! You cannot feel this good without MOVING! I could barely squat on the first day, and every day I can lift more and do more. My first T2B (toes-to-bar) was just a few short months ago. That feeling when my toes TOUCHED the bar the first time- who knew how hard it would be to hang on a bar and try to get your feet over your head!!! The first time the rope went under my feet twice!!! It’s the feeling of accomplishment you get every day when you show up for a WOD and finish it. You walk in, look at the board and think ‘holy shit why do I subject myself to this’. Then you do it and get that amazing feeling you DID something. Just standing around I feel stronger, I feel muscles in places I didn’t know I had. The first time picking up a barbell was intimidating- just the bar! My strength isn’t anywhere close to the strongest females in the gym but boy does it feel good to know I can confidently pick up the bar now AND some days it feels light even with heavy plates on the end! I love when Aaron says ‘pick up that bar with confidence’. Mindset matters prior to a lift- even though you know he snuck extra plates on the end! Each coach always offers some new tip that you connect with. Austin and overhead squats, Mike with hang cleans, the list goes on and on. I cannot say enough about the coaches at CFD, each one is amazing in their own way. I can’t imagine going a day without the morning WOD. If I don’t earn my shower I feel like I’m wasting water. Did I mention, hardly any chiropractor visits in the past year. I attribute that to the strength I’ve gained and to the focus on proper body mechanics the coaches reinforce with us daily!

3. What did you do for fitness prior to CFD, and what do you like most about CrossFit?

I was doing a kickboxing class for the year prior to joining CrossFit, and found myself bored, and at the chiropractor way too much. Kickbox days were fun but it was pretty much the same routine every day. I’d always look at the clock and wonder when it’d be over, I felt more committed on cardio days less on band days- they bored the hell out of me.
What I love most about CrossFit is the VARIETY, the PEOPLE and how lightning fast every class goes! It doesn’t feel like we are there for an hour. I love that I am doing something I didn’t think I could do. I love I am not the strongest person and no one judges me. I love looking down and seeing the muscle definition in my legs when I go to pick-up the bar. My CrossFit family has seen me at my worst and always shows up and we do it again every day (shout out to 6:30 am crew).

4. What type(s) of workouts are your favorite?

EMOM’s! I do not know why. Unless they are assault bike EMOM’s.

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

RUNNING. Ughhhh. Running. I smoked for years and quit when I was 35 so breathing can be challenging for me. Even though I dislike it, I’ve gotten a lot better at being able to pace myself and breathe. And power cleans. I have such a hard time with hang cleans, so power cleans are that much more challenging. I look forward to getting better at these over time. I did my first overhead squat just last month. I didn’t think that would EVER happen!!! And lunges. Lunges are awful, add a barbell and holy hell. But lunges lift butts so the sore legs and rear end for days after is so worth it!

6. What are your goals going forward?

So many!! I want to be able to cycle T2B, I want to add weights to the bar for OHS, I want to be able to do double unders, power cleans and anything with the word ‘jerk’ in it. I want to be able to Rx a workout. I want to do a pullup! I want to jump on a box- not step! Something else that has changed, day 1 I could not jump over the bar or erg, now I don’t even think about it!

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

CFD is the best box you could hope for and it’s right here in Dubuque!! If you are thinking ‘can I’ ‘should I’ ‘I’m too old’ ‘what if’ – get out of your head and take action. Check out the webpage and go in for the introductory session. If I could gift everyone with the feeling of strength I have every day I would. I’m blessed with a healthy albeit aging body and I am committed to doing what I can every day to ensure I maximize that gift. Gift yourself strength and quality of life as you age. Don’t be afraid! Before you know it you’ll be throwing around weights with really cool people!

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Hey everyone,

I wanted to post a quick note out to everyone now that we’re in the new year and talk a little bit about punctuality and how that relates to what we do at CFD.

As we continue to grow in numbers, classes get bigger. This is the inevitable conclusion to success. With attendance elevated, punctuality becomes much more tantamount.

From a coaching standpoint, especially with the larger classes, we count on our RSVP list. Knowing exactly how many people are in our class determines, not only how the room will flow, but how much time will be spent on each component. When a coach counts out 16 in class with a no show on the RSVP list, only to have that last member come in five minutes late, it really messes with our game plan.

On that same note, when you are late to the warm up, you’re not getting the proper attention your body needs pre workout. Potentially, this puts you at a higher risk for injury. These are things we want to avoid, certainly. As coaches, we do structure our warm ups so that everyone in class is prepared for the work load ahead.

All of our members pay a premium price for what we offer. Tooting our own horn, I think that what we offer is the best around and worth it! That said, if the coach has to stop what they are doing and deal with someone’s tardiness, it takes away from everyone else’s session. The culture we have developed at CFD is one of caring and genuine concern for ALL of our athletes. We want to be able to take time for every one of you.

If you know you’re one of those that is perpetually 5 or so minutes late for class, please add a little more time to get here. This is a show of respect for not only your fellow athletes, but the coach as well. All of our time deserves to be respected. Once in a while we get it – life happens and you’re late. Not a big deal! It’s the constant lack of punctuality that fuels the frustration.

We have a wonderful thing here that all of you have helped build. In the scheme of things this is also small potatoes. Changing just a little though can have a tremendous impact on classes moving forward. Thank you again for allowing us to do what we love daily. Let’s all work on this together!

–Coach Mike

Tonight’s the night!  At 7pm, CFHQ will announce the first of 5 Open testers for the season, live streamed on games.crossfit.com!

Tonight, I will be coaching the evening classes and running our ROMWOD session at 6:30pm.  However, I’d like to offer the live stream at CFD for anyone who wishes to come in and see what we’re in store for tomorrow as a group at 7pm tonight (this means we will run one ROMWOD session from earlier in the week instead of two).

Bring your own snacks or drinks if you would like, and I’ll see whoever wants to join me tonight for the announcement of 17.1!

See you soon!

–Coach Phil

Hey everyone! It’s #wellnesswednesday and in light of the first workout of the CrossFit Open being announced, I’m going to write a bit about keeping your training practices consistent and in support of your game day practices.

The concept is quite simple: your training days are just that…training in preparation for the event (whatever that may be, whether it’s sport specific, responding to a crisis, overall function, etc etc etc). That means that every day you are working out you are training, and the hours before and after are opportunities to reinforce good habits and practices that support your ability to perform (see last week’s blog where I talked about that a bit). In no particular order, here are some things that need to be considered when you train, and I’m sure I’m missing a few:

1. Fueling (and that means fueling over the last 12-36 hours, not just something you put down as a pre-workout right beforehand!
2. Sleep
3. Recovery from last training session
4. Circadian rhythm (do you have a consistent time of day you train?)
5. Warmup protocol
6. Mental focus and being in the moment with your training

So what happens if you train very specifically and consistently in regards to the above checklist, but then game day comes along and you work out at a different time, eat totally different foods, try a new pre-workout because you see it’s endorsed by a Games athlete, and don’t do a similar/appropriate warmup protocol before you compete? Therein lies the point of the article—training days are your opportunity to try new things, but game day is doing what you know works for you best at that moment in time. Control as many variables as you can—some pieces you may have more control of than others (time of the event, for instance), but that means it’s up to YOU to plan your fueling and rest/recovery appropriately relative to that training time so as to keep as much of it consistent as is in your control.

‘The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war’ (Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek). I liked that saying when I first heard it years ago, and it transcends the idea of peace and war. Whether you compete in a sport, want to be better at life, or train to fight, the principle is true. If you are regularly lax on your training habits, it’s unrealistic to expect anything impressive out of yourself when it counts.

Another favorite quote of mine also applies to this blog: ‘We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.’ (Archillocos). If you are expecting something magical to happen in the heat of the moment to compensate for your lack of preparedness, I’d like to cite yet one more quote: ‘You can wish in one hand and shit in the other and tell me which fills up faster.’ (every dad and grandpa in the US!)

Haha, ok, jokes aside, I hope you all got something out of this blog. The overall point of my blog is to demonstrate that the purpose of training is just that—it’s training in preparation for an event or trying to facilitate an adaptation in the body (get stronger, faster, etc). Treat your training sessions as such rather than just thinking of them as checking a block and mindlessly working out. Doing so will ultimately be what is responsible for long-term adaptations and improvements and prep you for what is ultimately the purpose or application of your training.

If you haven’t been seriously training for the Open, then don’t stress about it! The fact is, CFD doesn’t have enough competitors right now to even put a serious team together, so we can simply have fun with it and enjoy the announcements and workouts. Last year’s Open was a really fun series of workouts, and I hope you all enjoy running through the testers over the next 5 weeks whether you are registered or not! Let’s use this opportunity to build the community, enjoy the process and have fun with it!

See you at the gym!

RLTW

—Coach Phil

For this week’s #wellnesswednesday post and with next week starting the first of 5 testers for the CrossFit Open, I’d like to talk a bit about forming habits in your food profile.

Every day, regardless of whether you are working out or not, is an opportunity to reinforce a habit—for good or for ill. Life is all about a series of choices and practices in an effort to set yourself up for success (or failure). As I mentioned in a previous blog, failing to plan is planning to fail; having habits in place that optimize your health or performance is the goal!

How does this relate to #wellnesswednesday? Well, you can have all of the recipes in the world, but if you don’t implement them in a way that is useful and that fuels your body for the task(s) at hand, they’re practically useless.

Let’s say you train at 1pm. How does your fueling profile look leading up to that training session? Do you have an idea of what your body needs to make the best use of your training session, or do you have really haphazard and erratic fueling and hydration practices in the hours and meals leading up to that time? The average person tends to have very little awareness on how their practices and habits impact their performance.

Here’s what I recommend you start doing or CONTINUE to do and refine regarding your food profile so as to create habits and knowledge around what works for you:

1. Implement a plan based on your (or better yet, a coach’s) knowledge in your food profile. All the things that need to be taken into account—macros, caloric intake, timing, hydration, sleep, etc—need to be considered and a plan needs to be conceived.

2. Be comfortable that this plan is NEVER going to be perfect the first time around—it’s is your initial best ‘educated guess’ as to what you think things need to look like!

3. COMPLY with your plan (this is the toughest part). If you can’t comply with the plan, you’ll need to ask yourself:

• Why can’t I comply? (unrealistic, toxic, addiction withdrawal—life coaching stuff here)
• What can I modify about this plan so as to be able to comply with a repeatable profile? (too much change at once, overly complex, etc)

4. Monitor your plan over time. This is the step that any useful observation comes into play, when you are able to COMPLY with a food profile over TIME.

5. Make adjustments based on your observations. Here’s where small, incremental improvements can slowly tweak your food profile over months and years to further match up how your food and recovery protocol matches up and works with your training program.

Let’s face it—most of us don’t have much of an idea of a baseline, so before you can worry about step 5 (making adjustments), you need to first implement step 1 (log a baseline so we know what we’re starting with). If you think logging your food is too much work, I think that’s an indicator that you don’t have the discipline to stick with a new food profile. There is a process to everything, and starting with smaller steps is the key to success for a vast majority of us all!

So in closing, let’s take some of the ideas we’ve learned from others and implement them into a food profile that we can live with. Let’s see what works, let’s comply and stick with a plan, and let’s use that information that we are observing to influence our behavior and our adjustments moving forward.

Only in this way can we stop being surprised about bombed training sessions and frustrated with lack of progress—there is enough information out there to decipher what needs to happen that we don’t need to leave things up to chance. Together and by trusting a process, we can become better versions of ourselves!

RLTW

—Coach Phil

For this week’s #wellnesswednesday, I’m going to give everyone some insight on what I do to prep lunches.  I get asked all the time about meal prepping, and most people’s main concerns are as follows:

1. They don’t have time
2. Eating healthy is expensive

I’m going to demonstrate how dedicating the time on the front end of your week is not only cost-effective, but in almost all cases it will SAVE you time at the end of the week.

Here’s how it goes:

Step 1:  I have a glass pan that I use for baking.  Turn the oven on to 350 degrees.  Throw a bag of frozen, boneless chicken thighs (I buy mine at Aldi’s and it’s about $6.49 for the bag) in the pan.  Toss with taco seasoning and salsa (I never measure anything!).  Put aluminum foil on it and throw it in the oven–set kitchen timer to 99 min (it’s as long as it can go for!).

Time spent on step 1:  2-3 minutes

Step 2:  Go do something else for 99 minutes–after all, you’re busy, right???

Step 3:  When the kitchen timer goes off, start your rice cooker.  The quantity of rice you need to cook may vary depending on how much protein/carbs you need in your lunches, but let’s say you cook up 1.5 cups of uncooked rice (that’s 1.5 cups white rice, 3 cups water).  I like to throw a couple of chicken bouillon cubes in there for added flavor.

Time spent on step 3:  2-3 minutes

Step 4:  When the rice cooker is done, everything is done!  You can either wait for things to cool a bit before portioning or you can portion it out right there, but I would recommend not throwing the hot food directly into your refrigerator.  I portion out about 7-8 oz chicken with about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of white rice per meal.  The bag typically makes about 4-5 meals, or about 3 meals if I am divvying it up between Maggie and I (she eats a smaller portion as you might guess!).  Combine each lunch with a steam fresh veggie bag and you can’t get a whole lot easier of a meal to take with you to work!

Time spent on step 4:  3-5 minutes

 

There you have it!  Granted, there’s down time while you wait, but it’s time you can spend doing a multitude of other productive things.  For a net total of about 7-12 minutes of actual WORK, you have meals prepped for virtually the entire week.  Not only is the total cost of all those meals right around $7-8 COMBINED, but your total time you spent would be less than if you added up all the time you’d have to spend sitting in a drive through window, or ordering lunches by phone all week long to have them delivered.  My argument:  it SAVES you time rather than costs you time.

The choice is simple, and I like to remember the following advice:  Failing to plan is planning to fail.  I’ve become so accustomed to planning my meals out ahead of time that it is a huge inconvenience in the rare occasion I fail to do it.  Make it a habit–your wallet and calendar will thank you for it!

It’s almost that time of the year again for the CrossFit Open!  Whether you’re registering as a scaled or Rx competitor or not, we will be doing the testers (or scaled versions of them, of course) on Fridays for the 5-week open period.  The Open is a great time to test your fitness but MOST importantly to build the community and have fun!

On that topic, we will be hosting Friday Night Lights for the 5 Fridays of the Open (Feb 24th, March 3, 10, 17, and 24th) in place of the regular 5:30pm class.  So with that said, you have a few options:

Whether you’re registered for the CF Open this year or not, we will run heats of competitors until completion every Friday night.  We will announce the rules and standards at 5:30, give people time to warm up, and start running heats at 6pm.

If you’d prefer to not take away from the class experience, get your workout in that day prior to the 5:30pm class.  I would still encourage you to come back out to CFD for Friday Night Lights to cheer on anyone else doing it and enjoy the community–we will have a sort of BYOB and snacks for the first 4 Fridays with the final Friday Night Lights (the 24th) the biggest bash of them all, so don’t miss out!

I hope to see you all there–let’s make this a fun 5 weeks of working out with your friends!

1. How long have you been a member at CFD, and what made you want to get started?

I have been a member at CFD since May of 2016. People had told me about CrossFit since I was in high school but Jamie convinced me to come watch The Classic in house competition. I emailed Phil the night after the competition and was signed up for foundations the next month.

2. What changes have you seen in yourself since your very first day?

I initially wanted to start CrossFit to make me a better athlete on the tennis court. Tennis being a very one sided, push, sport made me very low back injury prone. My senior year of high school, at state, I had to be carried off the tennis court by my coach and taken to the hospital. I spent the next 2 and a half months not being able to do any activity other than walk. This felt like an eternity to me but I knew I had to be healthy to play tennis at Loras College. I was healthy in the beginning of my tennis season my freshman year of college but by the end of the season I ran into the same problem with my low back. I went to Dr. Dan at Spine & Sport (plug☺). I remember Dr. Dan saying “It’s better for me to lift a barbell than to use a machine” then told me a little bit about CrossFit. After that is when I started talking to people about CrossFit and Jamie encouraged me to check out CFD. (Thanks Jamie ☺) People were a little apprehensive when they found out I was doing CrossFit because they thought I would hurt my back again. To their, and my surprise the exact opposite happened. As months went by with CrossFit I began to gain strength in places I didn’t know existed. Through a variety of power, strength, and gymnastics movements I have balanced out my strength in all planes of motion. I have never felt more powerful in tennis than after I joined CFD. Not only has CFD helped me physically in tennis but it’s allowed me to push myself past my limits and show me it’s ok to be out of my comfort zone because that’s where the true “gains” (I know, I’m sorry) happen. It’s allowed me to push myself not only in the gym, but in the classroom, and personally as well.

If it wasn’t for CFD I don’t believe I’d be going on to pursue my master’s degree. One day in August I was sitting on the rower next to Sandy (If you don’t know Sandy, you’re missing out). I had not known her a very long time and she asked me what I was going to do after I graduate this coming May. I told her that I was probably just going to stay in Dubuque and keep the job I have now. To my surprise, she responded with “Well don’t you just think you’re kind of just taking the easy way out? What about grad school?” I was a little taken back since I had only known her a short time but I believe people are put in your life at the right time and at that point in my life there was nothing more I needed to hear than that. After that workout I tried to brush off what she said because I had a “plan” for after graduation and I didn’t want to change it. Over the next couple weeks what Sandy said kept repeating in my head and I couldn’t swing it. I’m graduating a year early from Loras College which leaves me with one more year of NCAA eligibility. I talked to my current tennis coach and asked him what he thought about me going to grad school and playing another year of tennis. He encouraged me to look at a couple of schools and sent them a recruiting video (yes my DU had a small part in it ;)). Long story short I have committed to play tennis at Minnesota State where I will earn my Master’s of Science in Sport Management. Without CFD I can honestly say I would not be the athlete I have become to play at the next level and would not have had the confidence to go on to grad school. Thanks to everyone at CFD to pushing me to be better each day. You all truly mean the world to me.

3. What did you do for fitness prior to CFD, and what do you like most about CrossFit?

My dad used to be big into bodybuilding so he’s had me lift since I was in 7th grade. I’ve also done insanity, tennis lifting, and sometimes I play a sport called tennis.

4. What type(s) of workouts are your favorite?

I love me some double unders and cleans. Put them together and you’ll see me smile (close to) the way I smile at pizza.

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

Gymnastic movements. Thrusters. Deadlifts. Not my fav.

6. What are you goals going forward?

My goals going forward are (complete sentence☺) to increase my strength in the Olympic lifts. I hope to compete in Olympic weightlifting competition within the next year. Also to improve my gymnastics movements (yes all of them).

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

Don’t die. Ok, well, that and don’t be afraid to try a new lift or skill. When I first started CrossFit I didn’t think it was physically possible for me to flip onto the wall and would always walk up. After some peer pressure I eventually gave it a try and now Kristin and I will have contests to see who can flip up and hold a handstand the longest. Being in a community of people that all wants to improve themselves and each other is a dangerously positive combination. Utilize it.

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Here’s a recipe submission from one of our athletes!

Sweet Potato Egg Nests: They’ve got vitamin-rich sweet potatoes, eggs, and metabolism-boosting chili powder.

Yield: 12

1 lb. sweet potatoes, scrubbed with ends trimmed
3 Tbsp. neutral oil, like grapeseed
3/4 tsp. chili powder, optional
Salt and pepper
12 large eggs
Chopped parsley, for garnish, optional

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Using the large grates on a cheese box grater, shred sweet potatoes (you’ll have about 4 2/3 cups). Warm oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add sweet potatoes and chili powder. Season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring often, until just tender, about 4 to 5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and let cool.
Mist a 12-cup muffin tin with olive oil cooking spray. Place about 1/3 cup potatoes in each muffin cup. Press potatoes firmly into bottom and sides of each cup. Bake for 5 minutes.
Crack an egg carefully into each cup. Bake until eggs reach desired firmness, 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes in pan before carefully removing. Sprinkle with parsley just before serving, if desired.
Note: Be sure to use large eggs, not extra large, because extra large will overflow the muffin cups.

 

Coach’s note:  I would pass on the grapeseed oil, as it contains a high amount of Omega 6 fats.  I would think it would be more than safe to sub for olive oil, as the temp only gets to 350 degrees, but if you’re concerned about the smoke point of olive oil, go with coconut oil.  Also, the macronutrient breakdown of this meal is about 9g of Carbs, 6g of Protein, and about 2-3g of Fat.  For someone who needs 30g of protein for breakfast, that means I’d have to eat 5 of them, which would put me at 45g of carbs.  If your carb tolerance or blood sugar management isn’t great, eating enough of these to have adequate protein in your breakfast might bring you over the edge with carbs–as with any meal, take all of these facts into account and adjust accordingly…Enjoy!