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Back to the Basics (Part 3)

Back to the Basics (Part 3)

It is natural to want to teach people advanced and fancy movements. The urge to quickly move away from the basics and toward advanced movements arises out of the natural desire to entertain your client and impress him with your skills and knowledge. But make no mistake: it is a sucker's move. Teaching a snatch where there is not yet an overhead squat, teaching an overhead squat where there is not yet an air squat, is a colossal mistake. This rush to advancement increases the chance of injury, delays advancement and progress, and blunts the client's rate of return on his efforts. In short, it retards his fitness

Forty-One Percent

Forty-One Percent

Since it is officially Murph season and our yearly dedication workout is just around the corner, there couldn’t be a better time to mention David Goggins.

David Goggins has been esoterically famous for some time. I had never heard of him until recently though, when he popped up in a podcast interview I was listening to on the way to work. I was taken aback both by the brash way he describes anything (so many F bombs) and his impressive resume.  As described on his website…..continue reading

Back to the Basics (Part 2)

Back to the Basics (Part 2)

The novice's curse is manifested as excessive adornment, silly creativity, weak fundamentals and, ultimately, a marked lack of virtuosity and delayed mastery. If you're ever had the opportunity to be taught by the very best in any field you've likely been surprised at how simple, how fundamental, how basic the instruction was. The novice's curse afflicts learner and teacher alike. Physical training is no different

Book Report: Chasing Excellence

Book Report: Chasing Excellence

No matter your level of immersion into all things CrossFit, you may have heard the name Ben Bergeron. Bergeron has been a long-time CrossFit coach and owner of CrossFit New England, but in recent years has earned further CrossFit fame and success with the win of his athlete Katrin Davidsdottir in the 2015 and 2016 Games. He also trains athletes Brooke Wells and Cole Sager, owns the company No Bull, and has his hand in many other health and fitness endeavors.

Last winter I read…

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Mindset March

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Mindset March

We spend hours and hours honing our craft in the gym, working hard, recording our results in order to improve. We encourage each other, change our eating habits, drink less, mobilize. But most of these practices are futile if we aren't taking care of what is going on between our ears. Mindset and mental toughness are the hallmarks of progress in both CrossFit and in our lives. If we aren't tending to that in the same way we are practicing our double unders, then what are we even doing?

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Process > Product

Process > Product

As a teacher, I see every day how worried kids are about their grades. They make themselves sick over a final product; one low grade on an essay can ruin their mood for the class, the day, the semester. I see them ruminating, criticizing themselves, and talking negatively about their abilities. Many of them see one low grade as a predictor of an entire failed life: a bad grade on an essay means rejection from a good college, a good job, and as a result, a good life. They often feel their performances on these assignments now will dictate their happiness for the rest of their lives.

Practice, Training, and Competition

Practice, Training, and Competition

On any given day at the box we watch each other walk in, warm up a bit or stretch, and wander over to the whiteboard. We read the day’s workout, but also check out everybody else’s scores. We have conversations with ourselves about how many rounds we think we can get based on other athletes, whether we will scale or go Rx, which level of Rx we might choose, and how we think we can perform for the day. We often make decisions about our own training in comparison to others’ performances.

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What's the Deal with Macros...

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What's the Deal with Macros...

Despite Greg Glassman’s famous statement about diet in the CrossFit Journal back in 2002, “Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat,” the whole institution known as CrossFit does not advocate a specific type of diet. For a while there was a lot of talk about The Paleo Diet and The Zone Diet, and these days, the buzzword you often hear is macros.

…continue reading

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