Don't forget about the 2012 Run For The Children TOMORROW!!!!!  The box will be CLOSED tomorrow for the race.  Good luck to all our runners.

The World Is Brutal and You Must Be Brave

CrossFit Lisbeth

The world is brutal, and you must be brave.

I wish I could tell you otherwise.  I wish I could fill your days with new barbells and kettlebells and beautiful, inspiring PRs.  I wish I could tell you that the path to success is sunny and bright and sunshine will come out of your ass.

But that's not going to happen.  And stop listening to the people who feed you that bullshit.  The world is a much darker place.  There are no f'***ing unicorns.  Just horses with pointy shit glued on their noses.  And yeah, the world can be a cold place.  And vicious.  And sometimes seemingly devoid of any real meaning.  You can lose yourself in the world, searching for soul.

But don't.

There is soul and you know how to look for it.  You must look for it.  You must find it.  Just because the world is brutal doesn't mean that you get to hide yourself off from it and live the life of the complainer, the person who never gets a break, the suckass whiner with the perpetually doomed viewpoint, certain that life's suckerpunch is always headed for them.  Don't search for pity.  Don't settle for consolation.  Fight for victory.

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39 Ways to Not be LIke Everyone Else
Jason Ferruggia - Renegade Strength and Conditioning

The problem with being like everyone else is taht everyone else sucks.

My advice is not to do it...

How do you start your day each morning?

Do you angrily smash the alarm clock and roll out of bed exhausted, dreading another day doing what you hate?

Or do you spring up fresh and well rested because you went to sleep before 11pm like you know you should, and get excited to tackle another day doing what you love?

After hitting the bathroom do you stagger into the kitchen and get a pot of coffee brewing as fast as humanly possible?

Is that what it takes for you to wake up in the morning and actually feel alive?

If you eat, sleep and train properly the last thing you should ever need is caffeine to wake up.

What about your workout regimen?

Do you focus on big compound lifts, advanced bodyweight exercises, strongman training and avoid machines and isolation movements like the plague?

Do you keep a detailed log book and track your progress week after week, year after year?

Do you stick with a program for longer than a week?  It takes at least four to even have a clue what's going on and what's working.

When it comes time for cardio do you hop on the elliptical or stair climber or do you go find a hill and sprint up it until your heart beat is visible through your hooded sweatshirt?

There's always an easy way out.  You can alwaysl ive a life of mediocrity and unhappiness and do what everyone else does.  Or you can choose to not be like everyone else.  You can choose the road less traveled.

How do you do that?

Here are 39 ways that would be a good start:

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Why the Campaign to Stop America's Obesity Crisis Keeps Failing
Gary Taubes - The Daily Beast

Most of my favorite factoids about obesity are historical ones, and they don’t make it into the new, four-part HBO documentary on the subject, The Weight of the Nation. Absent, for instance, is the fact that the very first childhood-obesity clinic in the United States was founded in the late 1930s at Columbia University by a young German physician, Hilde Bruch. As Bruch later told it, her inspiration was simple: she arrived in New York in 1934 and was “startled” by the number of fat kids she saw—“really fat ones, not only in clinics, but on the streets and subways, and in schools.”

What makes Bruch’s story relevant to the obesity problem today is that this was New York in the worst year of the Great Depression, an era of bread lines and soup kitchens, when 6 in 10 Americans were living in poverty. The conventional wisdom these days—promoted by government, obesity researchers, physicians, and probably your personal trainer as well—is that we get fat because we have too much to eat and not enough reasons to be physically active. But then why were the PC- and Big Mac–-deprived Depression-era kids fat? How can we blame the obesity epidemic on gluttony and sloth if we easily find epidemics of obesity throughout the past century in populations that barely had food to survive and had to work hard to earn it?

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The 2012 Run For The Children will take place on May 19!!!!!  Sorry I'm just now getting the registration info out to everyone.  As always, there will be a 10k, a 5k and a 1k fun run.  The 10k and 5k will be chip timed.

Click here to register online...you can also register in person on the day of the race for $25.  And...our new shirts should be here in time for the race...be on the look-out.

Speal

by CrossFit Lisbeth

I struggle here today to find the words to place the performance of one man into context, to give perspective, to serve justice unto the event and not overdramatize, overspeak, overwrite the events that happened on one Sunday afternoon in Colorado. It was just exercise, after all. One man picked up weight and put it down. He threw a ball in the air and caught it. He pulled himself up on the rings.

And he pulled us all up.

Chris Spealler, a small man with the strength of a bigger man, a Bible tattoo on his chest, and a megawatt smile, lifted us all up on a Sunday afternoon and made us feel, for one bright, sunny afternoon, like life was fair.

He got third place in the South West Regionals of the CrossFit Games. Third place. And yet he overshadowed the first and second place winners. Why? Because he wasn’t supposed to be on that podium. Because he came from  behind. Because when all else was dark, Speal was light. Because one man, one small man, working harder than ever, managed to pull out the performance of a lifetime and make the last spot in his region for the 2012 CrossFit Games.

Speal will be going back to the Games for the sixth time: the only person to compete in all six CrossFit Games. That in itself is remarkable. That he was also the 2010 CrossFit Games “Spirit of the Games” award winner is remarkable. That he managed to push that big honking sled in the 2011 Games is remarkable. There is pretty much nothing unremarkable about Chris Spealler … except that he’s a regular guy, a husband, a dad, a CrossFit affiliate owner, a CrossFit Level One trainer, and just about one of the nicest guys you could ever meet.

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Does CrossFit benefit the golfer?
Real Fit Plus

CrossFit is a strength and conditioning program who's main focus is improving "G.P.P" or general physical preparedness.  CrossFit is a broad, general and inclusive program built with constantly varied, high intensity, functional movements.   This form of training is beneficial to all athletic performance. Today we are going to discuss the benefits between CrossFit and golf.

Crossfit is built on 9 foundational movements:

1. Air Squat
2. Front Squat
3. Overhead Squat
4. Shoulder press
5. Push Press
6. Push Jerk
7. Deadlift
8. Sumo Deadlift High Pull
9. Medicine Ball Clean

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Why We Don't Walk Anymore (plus a Primal Health Challenge)
Mark's Daily Apple

How many steps do you walk every day? Do you hit 10,000 steps, which experts recommend and is about 5 miles’ worth? Do you match the daily walking of a Hadza man or woman (8.3 or 5.5 km/day, respectively)? If you’re anything like the average American, you’re doing 5,117 steps a day, well shy of the 10,000 step mark and flirting dangerously with a formal sedentary classification. But we’re not alone (though we’re the worst). Of the four industrialized countries studied, not a single one found the mark. The Australians seem to come close, walking 9,695 steps a day. The Swiss follow with 9,650, and the Japanese are a bit further off with 7,168 steps per day. Contrast that with rural South African women, of whom just 11.9% can be classified as sedentary (under 5,000 steps a day) and for whom an average day means walking 10,594 steps (many of them done while carrying a load), or Amish aged 18-75 (PDF), who walk an average of 18,425 steps (men) or 14,196 steps (women) each day, and we’re all looking pretty darn sedentary.
 

Do we even need the cold hard statistics to know that we’re not walking nearly as much as we should? When I look out the window at 8 AM on a weekday and fail to see hordes of barefoot children walking uphill in knee-deep snow toward school (and uphill again on the way home), I know in my heart that walking is becoming a lost art in this country. But does it have to be like that? I don’t think so. Just take a look at a totally-fabricated-but-completely-plausible average daily schedule for an adult with a standard 9 to 5 job:

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Q&A With Bob Harper
CrossFit Journal

CrossFit HQ's Miranda Oldroyd sits down with Bob Harper to talk about his introduction of Crossit on the hugely popular NBC show The Biggest Loser.

Working with the morbidly obese brings a whole separate set of challenges when it comes to fitness and nutrition, Harper notes.

"People that don't really know about CrossFit see the CrossFit Games, see athletes such as yourself that are just so stong.  You're unattainable to the average person," he says to Oldroyd.  "What I've really wanted to do is introduce middle America to CrossFit in a very scalable way."

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Ok boys and girls....the fundraiser previously known as Fight Gone Bad is now "CrossFit For Hope."  CFV is registered to participate in this new event benefiting St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.  The goal is to raise $1,700,000 - one day's operating cost for St. Jude - to combat childhood cancer and other deadly diseases.  The event will take place on June 6.

Register Here and start raising some $$$$!!!!

If you've registered for a CrossFit event in the past, such as the 2012 CrossFit Games Open, you'll be able to use the same login / pswd you previously setup....otherwise, start fresh.  Be sure to select CFV as your affiliate.  Any questions let me know.

Spectators Are Inspired At Regionals
by Andrea Kirk - Games.CrossFit.com

Human Feet Originally Used For Walking, Anthropologists Report
The Onion

OXFORD, ENGLAND—A new report in the Journal Of The Anthropological Society Of Oxford reveals that human feet were likely once used as a means of extravehicular locomotion. "Apparently, as recently as 20 years ago, the foot was used in a process called 'walking,' by which the human body actually propelled itself," the report read. "Starting sometime in the late 1970s, these crude early feet gradually evolved into their present function of operating the gas and brake pedals on automobiles." The same team of researchers discovered in 1994 that the human brain was once used for various problem-solving applications before evolving into an absorption/storage unit for lyrics to TV-show theme songs.

Continue Reading... (Thanks Wade)

Mobility WOD

Episode 177

The Big Platform
by Patrick Cummings - Again Faster

Spencer Hendel and Camille Leblanc-Bazinet, both members of the Again Faster Competition Team, have found success not only at the CrossFit Games, but in the world of Olympic Weightlifting. Camille has been named to the Canadian National Team, and Spencer boasts a 300# Snatch, amongst the highest of all CrossFit athletes in the world.

In this short film, our cameras follow the pair as they compete in the 2012 Hard'n Up Challenge, held in Brisbane, Australia in February of 2012. The event, hosted by the Australian Weightlifting Federation and Again Faster Australia, brought together CrossFit athletes and Olympic weighlifters in a fight for first place and a $1,000 prize.

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Mobility WOD

Episode 176:  Ring Shoulders and Shoulder Stability