Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Workout of the Day:
Four sets of:
Bench Press x 6 reps @ 30X1
Rest 90 seconds
Walking Lunges with DBs x 20 steps @ 1010
Rest 90 seconds;
and then,
Four sets of 3-minute “Cindy” sprints (5 Pull-Ups, 10 Push-Ups, 15 Squats) – Perform as many rounds as possible in 3 minutes, then rest 90 seconds between rounds and pick up where you left off to start the next round.  Score total number of rounds completed.

An Athlete’s Perspective – Invictus is Awesome!
Written by Sage Burgener

I am 93% sure that CJ gets a million emails a day telling him how awesome Invictus is, but I am still going to write a blog about it because this is a free country and I can do whatever I want.

I’ve wanted to write this post for a while now, but have been putting it off due to the inability to find the exact words that will do the gym justice.  However, after the Games, everything kind of came together and I think I finally found what I’ve been wanting to say. Bear with me, this post is going to be all over the place.

A couple of weeks ago, my dad said to me, “Sage, my wonderful daughter whom I love so much, Invictus is one of the few gyms that I have been to that has succeeded in defining what a fitness family should be” (and trust me, he’s been to quite a few gyms in his day.  No, that is not an age discriminatory joke).  I could not agree more.

Let me break it down for ya’ll (insert beat boxing here) as to why I love Invictus even more (although I didn’t think that was possible) after The Games:

#1- The Prince and Princi (plural for princess) Treatment:

You know when you were little and alls you had to worry about was what friend you were going to play with next? Your meals were taken care of and you had no responsibilities other than just trying to have as much fun as possible?  In other words, someone was always there to take care of you.  This past weekend made me feel like a kid again, or what Michele, Nichole and I decided… “feel like princi”.  It was so nice to wake up in the morning and know that alls we had to think about was performing and everything else was taken care of.  The amount of people that came together and took care of us was absolutely amazing.  The Invictus family dropped everything they were doing to make things as comfortable as possible for the athletes, and I don’t want any of you to think that you are not appreciated for that or that it went unnoticed.  All the athletes feel spoiled rotten after this weekend with all of you being our temporary moms and dads.  No other gym in that affiliate cup “had it made” like we did.

#2- All you need is love

We’ve all experienced the internal pain that Crossfit workouts inflict and we all have our methods of coping with it.  One of my most memorable moments during the games was when I was doing dumbbell cleans in the track workout and when I was sure that my soul was being broken into pieces by the pain, I looked up at CJ and Krazy K and the huge sea of green and all of a sudden I had this overwhelming feeling that it didn’t matter if I finished the cleans or not.  All of the people standing in front of me would love me for me despite how I performed.  That feeling was the only thing I needed to push through and finish.  Thanks to everyone for viewing those of us on the team as more than just athletes.  You know and love us for ALL the things that define us as individuals, and not just for how we perform in workouts.

It’s the best feeling in the world when I have someone that I don’t even know come up to me and tell me how awesome our support group is.  I love our gym and I want everyone to know it, so I proceed to brag about it everywhere I go, but this time, someone came up to me.  That just solidifies the fact that our community at Invictus is rare.  I feel so blessed to be surrounded by friends and family everyday when I go to work.  Thanks to everyone who makes Invictus what it is: fergaliciously awesome.

One last thing and then I promise I’m done.  I just want to thank each of the people on the team.  Michele, Nichole, Nuno, Josh, Justin and Shane, it has been amazing training with each of you and getting to know just how amazing you really are.  You’ve all seen me in my weakest moments and still love me, no matter how loud and obnoxious I may be.  Thank you for allowing me to train and learn from you all.  To the people at Invictus, the people on my team are some of the most amazing athletes I have ever met.  Their physical strength is obviously incredible, but their mental toughness is something that I have seen little of.  I feel honored to have been surrounded by such strong, pure and genuine individuals.

I’ll stop now, but one last thanks to CJ for putting up with our crazy butts and for forming the most amazing fitness family IN ALL OF EXISTENCE!