During Tuesday’s WOD, I got a nice tip for dips from trainer Matt Moore.  This simple change made all the difference in the world for me and I wanted to share.

Normally, I would grab the “Bull Horns” towards the back half of the handles.  This felt natural as I wanted to make sure I had room to move up and down within the bars.  Matt noted to the group that doing so generally forces one’s elbows to protrude out as you dip down.   This results in a much more strenuous/difficult movement.

Moving your hands up close to the front of the bar allows your elbows to move back in a more natural fashion.  The results were quick and very cool.  Whereas I would normally use a small band when doing 20 or more dips, I was able to complete all 50+ dips in this WOD without any band.   I was also able to get all the way down into the dip as is required.

I wanted to pass this tip along and hope it can help others as well.  See you at the box!

The benefits of sports massage is more than a treatment for injuries, sports massage also produces overwhelming benefits for athletes physically, physiologically, and psychologically.

Without getting too out there, Sports massage is designed to prepare the athlete for their best performance, reduce fatigue, and relieve muscle swelling and tension. During physical activity—especially strenuous—muscle tension builds up in the body’s soft tissues. Due to overextension or overuse, minor injuries and lesions occur in these tissues that can cause a great deal of pain and poor athletic performance. Sports massage helps alleviate pain and prevent such injuries that greatly affect flexibility, mobility, response time, and overall performance in athletic events.

With Crossfit,  we often have heavily exercised muscles that lose their capacity to relax (ok I know that’s an understatement).   This causes chronically tight muscles, and loss of flexibility. Lack of flexibility is often linked to muscle soreness, and predisposes athletes to injuries– especially muscle pulls and tears. Blood flow through tight muscles is poor, which also causes pain.  A regular routine of massage therapy is very effective in combating these effects of heavy exercised muscles.

Do I need to convince you any more?  My goat has always been flexibility.  I used to be so inflexible that OHS and snatch were just impossible, now I can do them after a few massages.  Turns out I had built up scar tissue blocking me from those movements that sports massage removed.   So I want to share my very gifted massage therapist with all of you.    On Saturday, Feb 11th from 9am to 5pm Cheyanne Donald will be at CFSJ giving massage’s to our member’s.  Appointments will be in 30 minute blocks (yes you can sign up for multiple blocks).  Look for the signup sheet in the gym lobby.  Pricing will be listed on the sign-up sheet.

WOD

3 rounds of:

3 Muscle ups

9 HSPU

27 KB swings (53/35)

Nick

WOD

Tabata

goblet squat
anchored situps

This is really cool!

WOD
7′ amrap of:
10 Push Press 95/65#
10 Pullups
rest 2′
then 7′ amrap of:
10 DL 225/185
10 ring/fixed dips

and for those of you struggling with ring dips here is a ring dip progression to try

WOD

30 dball

30 dbl unders

30 wall balls

30 dbl unders

30 box jumps

30 dbl unders

30 burpees

30 dbl unders

100m fence run after each set of dbl unders

check the main site tomorrow, CFSJ should be demo-ing the WOD

Garret lunging rx

Jenna and John working hard

WOD
21-15-9
weighted OH lunges
pullups
weighted situps

Rod

WOD
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 reps of
Deadlift 1 1/2 BW
Bench BW
Clean 3/4 BW
another benchmark WOD to record in you log book that I know you all faithfully using to enter all your workouts

Don’t forget, Sunday’s you can bring a friend free. Workouts are programmed with the new person in mind.

WOD
Tabata 20 seconds on 10 sec off
kettlebell swings
pushups
russian twists
air squats

Heath working db thrusters

WOD
8 rounds of 20 sec work and 10 sec of:
pushups
rest 1 min then
8 rounds of 20 sec work and 10 sec of:
hurdle hops

The science behind tabata as appeared in Men’s Fitness, May 2004

The Tabata Protocol–named after Izumi Tabata, Ph.D., a former researcher at Japan’s National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya–is an interval routine developed by the head coach of the Japanese speed-skating team. (It’s called a protocol because Tabata and his team took the speed-skating coach’s workout and studied it to quantify just how effective it really was.)

In Tabata’s study, the researchers found that guys who used the routine five days a week for six weeks improved their maximum aerobic capacity (a measure of your body’s ability to consume oxygen–the more oxygen you can take in, the longer and harder you’ll be able to run) by 14%. What’s more, it also improved anaerobic capacity (which measures your speed endurance, or the duration you’re able to sprint at full effort) by 28%. So the Tabata Protocol is the rare workout that benefits both endurance athletes and sprinters–hard to accomplish. Consider: A study of traditional aerobic training–running at 70% of aerobic capacity for 60 minutes–for the same number of weeks showed an improvement in aerobic capacity of 9.5% and no effect on anaerobic capacity.