Workout of the Day:
Overhead Squat
3-2-1-1-1
and then,
“Nancy”
Five rounds for time of:
400 Meter Run
15 Overhead Squats, 95/65 lbs.
(Compare performance to September 2, 2009)

A HUGE Congratulations to Justin and Susan! They met at Invictus shortly after we opened and became engaged last week. It's hard to imagine a more perfect couple. Congratulations!

Michele’s Keys to CrossFit (and the Universe)
Written by Michele Vieux

I feel like I say these things over and over while coaching and there is a good reason for it. They are the keys to athletic performance and can make you faster, stronger, better, and mentally tougher in ANYTHING you set out to accomplish.

Bracing is not just for one rep max deadlifts and squats. That big breath in and tightening of the midline before a lift should be used before kicking up into a handstand, hitting a backhand in your tennis match, taking a charge in you pickup basketball game, as well as any other activity in which you want to project maximum power and not crumble on top of yourself into a pile of flesh and bones.

Perfect mechanics go a long way in the long run. Setting up the correct way and continuing to use perfect form throughout the entire movement puts you in the perfect position to execute with the most potential power in the quickest, most efficient, and easiest way possible. If you have been using poor form, you have not reached your potential. Take the time to retrain yourself and adhere to strict form. Slow down until you have achieved it and you will find it will make you faster, stronger, and more efficient in the long run. You might need to recruit the help of one of your coaches for this, but quality of movement should be your focus.

Set a goal. Never go into anything—workout or daily task—without some sort of goal. It doesn’t always have to be a time goal. It could be to finish the workout with perfect form. It could be not to take a water break until you are done. It could be to finish a certain round or exercise unbroken. It could be to avoid that cookie in the break room. Tell someone what your goal is so they can help remind you and keep you accountable.

Live by the “four quarter rule”. I used this trick when I was a swimmer in my youth (my specialty was the 200M butterfly)—it was verified by my friend, “the Real Nik Hawkes”, a former Navy Seal and a current BUDs instructor who has spent a great many hours studying mental toughness and how to achieve it. This will help keep you moving through any workout or challenge in life. Whatever you are facing, divide it into four quarters.

An easy example of this is a four-round workout. Start the first round at a pace you know you can keep throughout the entire workout. Round two should be used to check yourself. It is easy to drift off or lose momentum in this round. Don’t drop too far behind your round one pace and if you find yourself falling behind, pick back up to that pace you know you can hold. The third round is the most important in terms of making something big happen. This is where you go above and beyond, push yourself to your max, and pull away from the pack. Pick up the pace and get through this round and you know you are onto the home stretch.  Most people wait until the final round to start this move. Start in round three and all you need to do is bring it home—finish strong! You should have just enough left to accomplish this and hopefully a new PR, feat of strength, conquering of a life obstacle, or whatever it was you set out to achieve.

Workout of the Day:
Handstand Push-Ups or Handstand Holds
Perform three sets of max rep handstand push-ups (if you’ve got more than 3) or three sets of max time handstand holds
and then,
Four rounds of:
30 seconds of max rep push-ups
30 seconds of push-up position plank hold
followed immediately by four rounds of:
30 seconds of max rep squats
30 seconds of below-parallel squat hold

Is our super mobile Nichole properly braced?

The Fundamentals – Bracing
Written by Mike Hom

If you had the pleasure of being part of our On-Ramp process, you will know how important the concept of bracing is to us coaches. In fact, if you have not attended an On-Ramp session, I highly encourage you to do so in order to practice some of the fundamentals that you might be taking for granted. If anything, sit in on an On-Ramp session to get a better understanding of what bracing is and why it is important.

This rather simple concept is easily forgotten by many people but holds some astonishing long-term repercussions. Let’s quickly discuss why bracing is important in a nice, simple flowchart:

So how do you do it?

To begin, imagine your entire torso and butt in 360 degrees. You want that entire column of your body to be just that: a strong, immovable column that does not bend, does not shift, does nothing but keep your spine neutral and wedded to your hips. This happy marriage is often overlooked in the chase for extreme lumbar extension. While we initially want people who have problems with lumbar flexion to learn how to obtain a lumbar curve, we also want them to think about their entire body, and in particular their spine and hips, as one happily married piece.

In order to make this happen, do the following:

• Pull your shoulder blades down and back to stand as tall and proud as possible.
• Inhale and pretend like someone is about to deliver a life-threatening punch to your gut and you need to brace yourself for this. What you will do is contract your abs, obliques and a whole slew of muscles that make up your 360 degree torso as hard as possible. You are doing this because you are trying to protect your internal organs and your spine from any irreparable damage caused by this potential trauma. (To tighten your brace, exhale and squeeze even harder, maintain that tension and inhale again.)
• You should still be standing tall and proud – locking down your midline stabilizers should not cause your posture to change.
• Squeeze your glutes (your butt) as hard as possible. This helps to keep your spine and hips wedded together.
• Push your knees out to the sides and “spread the ground” by trying to kick your heels away from you as if you were trying to tear a piece of paper under your feet.

By this time, you should notice your whole body is about as tight as it can possibly get and you should feel like you’re working hard just to do this. This is the most extreme, dare I say ideal, bracing you can do. Aim to go through these steps in order to provide yourself minimum risk and maximum return while training. But beware, mastering the breathing takes some practice – so PRACTICE! Do it while you are warming up, going through basic movements, etc….

Just to provide yourself some individual feedback, try to do one air squat as you normally would. Now perform one air squat with the bracing process described above. You should feel more “integrated,” as if your entire body’s individual body parts are truly working in concert with each other.

Hopefully, everybody who reads this blog will learn to move their body with proper bracing and allow me to take the quotation marks off the word “integrated” in the future.

As always, big thanks to K-Star of San Francisco CrosSFit for the inspiration and knowledge to use the aforementioned verbiage!

Workout of the Day:
Deadlift
3-3-3-3
and then,
As many rounds as possible in two minutes of:
5 Burpees
10 Pull-Ups
Rest for one minute after each two minute interval, and perform a total of four cycles.  The workout will be 12 minutes total with only 8 minutes of work – go hard!

Don't let the pixie-like appearance fool you, Baby Belle is merciless as a coach. Here she adds a little extra weight to Coach Sun's sled drag.

Warm-Up Sets
Written by Calvin Sun

As you all know, we like to do some heavy lifting before our conditioning workouts. Typically you’ll see something like 5×5 or 5-5-5-5-5 written on the board. This simply means that you will perform five work sets of five repetitions each. Prior to your work sets, you should do a few warm-up sets to practice the movement, demonstrate you are capable of good mechanics under load, as well as prepare your neuromuscular system for the heavy work sets that lay ahead.

225 pounds should not be weight used for the first warm-up set of any exercise. If we are back squatting today and you know you’ll perform your first set of 5 at 225lbs, you’ll probably want to start off with the following warm-up sets: 135lbs for 5, 155lbs for 4, 185lbs for 3, and 205lbs for 2. This serves as a method to ensure that you are really truly capable of lifting 225lbs for 5 repetitions, a 5-rep work set should never turn into an accidental 1-rep max attempt.

Warm-up sets should not take much time at all. Work together with your partner to help change weights on the barbell, you don’t need much rest between these lighter sets. Increase the load with relatively even increments, typically warm-up sets will have relatively larger increases in loads. In the example above, the increases ranged between 20lbs and 30lbs. An advanced or elite level athlete would have much larger jumps between warm-up sets. For example, the following rep scheme is taken directly from my own workout log:

Deadlift 5-5-5-5-5

Warm-up sets
135×5
225×4
315×3
385×2

Work sets
395×5
405×5
415×5
420×5
425×5

Remember, this is always relative to your level of strength and the type of lift we are performing. Warm-up sets serve to help improve your proficiency in any lift as well as ensure you are properly warmed-up for the loads you will attempt to lift.

Workout of the Day:
Weighted Pull-Ups
3-3-3-3
and then,
Three rounds for time of:
400 meter run
25 Hang Power Cleans (95/65 lbs.)
25 Knees to Elbows

How To Tape Your Hands
Written by Calvin Sun

Every CrossFitter has experienced a torn callus but I think it’s completely avoidable if you take the proper precautions. Perform callus maintenance regularly, don’t use too much chalk, and avoid workouts with hundreds of pull-ups. But what’s a CrossFit athlete to do when the inevitable tear happens? Taping your hands is certainly a good option. The problem I see is that most people have no clue on how to tape their hands. The most common “technique” I see employed is simply taking a length of athletic tape and wrapping it around the palm several times. Without a doubt, this is the best way to waste athletic tape and do absolutely nothing to protect your hands. Anyone who has taped with this method can tell you, a few pull-ups is all it takes to turn this shoddy tape job into a rolled up bundle of tape, chalk, and skin. 

Most tears occur at the base of either the ring finger or middle finger, so it’s pointless to tape your palm. The best way to protect your hands and to prevent tears is to cover these hot spots. A former co-worker of mine was a gymnastics instructor and a few years ago she showed me this great way to tape the hands:

• Step 1. Take approximately 5 inches of standard athletic tape and fold it length wise. Wrap it around the base of your finger and overlap the excess. The ends should cover your tear/hot spot. 
   
• Step 2. Take another length of tape approximately 10 inches. Tape the wrapped section to one end of the tape and fold width wise so that the other end of the tape also covers the wrapped section.
   
• Step 3. You now have a grip for your hands. If you did it correctly, there should be enough excess below the wrist joint to secure it with tape. Simply wrap some tape around your wrist to hold it in place. 
   

Instead of having 1 or 2 layers of tape to cover your callus tear, you have 6 layers of tape over that spot if you use this technique correctly. You don’t have to wait until you tear to use this method either. If your callus is already showing signs of failure and there’s plenty of pull-ups in the WOD, you might want to consider taking some preventive measures.

Workout of the Day:
Three rounds for time of:
10 Bodyweight Back Squats
20 Pull-Ups
150 Meter Farmer’s Walk (Heavy)
Complete 3 burpees each time you set the weight down on your walk.

Lordosis rearing its ugly head in the press

A Quick Fix for the Press
Written by Mark Riebel 

When performing the press or other overhead lifts, it is not uncommon to see an athlete reaching his or her lockout position with a greatly extended spine and an anterior tilt to the pelvis (see above). Not only can this turn the lift into a standing bench press and artificially increase your numbers, but it can also really mash the facet joints of your spine and cause uneven loading on your discs – possibly leading to injury. This can be caused by a number of things from a weak midline to overly tight hip flexors, or even just being a really bendy ex-swimmer.

To combat this, the abs are usually focused on, and the athlete is told to contract the abs to force the spine into a more upright position. While this works and is a point of performance that everyone should use, I find combining that with maximal contraction of your glutes is a more effective way of getting you into the right position. 

The gluteus maximus is the major muscle that makes up your backside; it originates along the posterior surface of your ilium (the bony crest you can feel right above your butt) down to your coccyx (tail bone), and inserts both on your iliotibial band and the posterior surface of your femur. If it’s not immediately obvious, contracting this maximally will automatically pull the pelvis into a neutral position and set up a solid base for the rest of the spine (see below).

The Pretty Version

The next time you press, just think of pinching a coin between your cheeks or fending off a bully attempting to give you a wedgie. Your back just might thank you.

***Editor’s Note – Mark’s press is officially fixed. Today we witnessed him press 200 lbs. with perfect mechanics – and he probably had another 5 lbs. in him. Nice work Mark!