Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Workout of the Day:
Rounds of 21, 15 and 9 reps for time of:
Pull-Ups
Pendlay Rows (115/75 lbs.)
Ring Rows
(Keep your body PERFECTLY rigid from ankles to ears on the ring rows.)
and then,
Invictus L-Sit Challenge – record total time held for three attempts
(Standards – straight legs, heels above lowest point of your butt)

Who has the coolest chalk bowls in the world? We do. A huge thank you to Aaron Stine for his amazing work!

The Matthew Effect, 10,000 Hours and Opportunity
Written by Mike Hom

Here at CrossFit Invictus, we try to provide our members with the best possible service available. What we are attempting to do is give you guys and gals a leg up in your battle to maintain long term health. Whether it is teaching you mobility and flexibility drills you can perform anywhere and anytime, or programming for optimal results, the Invictus staff continuously strive to give you the best tools to improve your life.

If you have read Malcom Gladwell’s “Outliers,” you will know his first two chapters discuss concepts he calls “accumulative advantage” and “10000 hours.” Now, I’m not looking to go into a philosophical debate as to what he is implying, but let’s take some positive interpretations from his writing and apply it to your long-term lifestyle.

The Matthew Effect is a phenomenon that suggests those with advantages will continue to see greater success than those without. As I alluded to earlier, Invictus tries to give all of our members those advantages by providing useful information that will help improve their lifestyle over the years. We want you to start off with the best possible advantages. We want you to utilize the foam rollers and lacrosse balls to prepare your muscles for work. We want you to go through your personal pre-class warm-up for some initial mobilization. We require you to participate in the group warm-up to get your nervous system ready to hit the workout hard. And, of course, we want you to work on your flexibility after the workout to help your body recover for your next workout. All of these little things help you ensure success builds upon itself over the long haul. This is simply a type of “accumulative advantage.”

While we’re on the subject of accumulative advantage, no success can be realized without hard work. If you want to read up on the finer details of the 10,000 hour rule, go pick up Gladwell’s book. Here is the salient punchline: more practice = more success. Look, we all have lives to lead and CrossFit is just one aspect of it. However, we want to look at CrossFit as a LONG-TERM lifestyle, not a one-stop shop to get a six pack. We want to develop work capacity over broad time and modal domains. We want that broad, general, inclusive fitness, and for what? So that when we’re 90 years old, we’re still walking without a cane and able to play with our grandchildren (and hopefully give them a run for their money!).

To provide one more layer upon this, we have to tie virtuosity back in. Practice is better than no practice, but PERFECT PRACTICE trumps all. Chase excellence and success will always follow. In the end, we are all chasing world-class fitness and health, and 10,000 hours of CrossFit will let us live longer and stronger.

Let’s put it all together. We aim to provide you the best training and information we can to help you improve your lives in small and big ways that add up over time. We have a kick-ass venue that we try to improve in some way every day to help you achieve that success. We try to provide opportunities for everyone to grow, from rookie members to our seasoned vets, to our staff. We want to hear from you, our members, about what opportunities you would like to see at Invictus. What do you want to focus on or learn more about? You all are the reason we–the Invictus staff–love what we do and want to continue doing our best to provide you with an accumulative advantage.