Here is one of Aero’s all-time favorite parkour parkour videos. TK17’s “Go”. Notice that this guy doesn’t have the typical light, thin, and wirey build of most traceurs. Instead he is a little bit chubby yet he is incredibly confident and precise. I think this makes the video that much more interesting because this isn’t about a famous traceur’s highlights, so much as about the fruit of one traceur’s training and his journey.
Hey crew, the demo is under way as well as preparations for the affiliate cup. Busy, busy, busy… so lazy blog post day today. Some of you may recall that Edgar aka “Street Mirage” (the author of our “What is CrossFit Marin?” video was up here visiting us about a month ago, and of course, he was hanging out with his video camera in hand. Well, here is the result.
Hugues, Kerry, Russ, Roger have been tearing it up doing most of the work in the Big Studio. Kerry was in yesterday with an electrician friend of his and the dismatling of the power system to the movie studio lighting grid was taken down. From the clients Tomio, Rich, Noah and others have taken a turn at helping with the demo. Here are a couple of pictures:
Roge & Russ figure out how to tear the green-screen tapered horizon edge off the floor. That thing was re-enforced with a metal sheet.
Kerry and contractor electrician friend dismantle the lighting power system for the big studio
I almost feel sad for the green-screen, but if all goes well, a rock-climbing wall is to come!
Get yo’ butt in here, bring some tools, and pitch in! Pretty soon we’re going to need some help with the priming & painting.
See you at the gym!
-Amadraeus
Oceans Of People Running The London Marathon
So here at CrossFit Marin our workouts are generally short. Brutal, painful, intense but short. We don’t expect you to spend hours in the gym. In fact unless you are spending most of your time doing very specific skill work spending hours in the gym is detrimental. Yes, spending more time in the gym can make you less fit.
A while back Nick made a post on the Neglected Time Domain. This was a very valid post, but there are reasons we don’t run long workouts on a regular basis.
1. We don’t have time. Our sessions are scheduled at an hour long. We can’t fit in workouts exceeding 50 minutes with warm up, setup and such. This is why we’ve periodically put together things like our new years day workouts that exceed an hour in length.
The next two are the important ones.
2. You do not need to train frequently in long duration workouts to have capacity in long duration efforts. As long as you occasionally hit a long slog you will have good capability in long efforts just continuing to train the way we do. Most of you would handle difficult long efforts just fine. We have a few marathoners and ultra distance athletes in our midst. They have improved by reducing their mileage in training.
3. Training excessively in long workouts reduces your strength and power. Yes, it’s true. If you do too much long slower paced work you will reduce your ability to apply maximal force, and apply force quickly. We have several folks in our gym that have seen first hand the positive results of doing less distance work.
This goes against much of the fitness industry. The vast majority of people who train at all do one of two things. Bodybuilding or long distance efforts. Neither of these modes is a great program to general general fitness. Short and intense workouts induce a much stronger adaptive response towards useful physiological change.
While some work in the neglected time domain is necessary, we need to take care not to spend too much time there.
Mr. Miyagi said it very well, “Best defense: no be there.” But if you aren’t aware that there’s a danger, you can’t bring that defense into play. One of the things that I stress about self defense is recognizing a dangerous situation before it becomes a fight. You could be the fastest, strongest most technically proficient fighter in the world and if you get into enough fights, you’re eventually going to lose. This is especially true of street fights where people often have friends and/or weapons and fight dirty.
But even if you have no training in fighting, you can still win by simply knowing what to do when danger presents itself. Half of this strategy is simply being able to recognize danger in the first place. Many of us are so comfortable going about our lives knowing that we are safe that when we’re confronted with violence we don’t recognize it until it’s too late.
This video is a sobering reminder of that fact. The man on the cell phone made a comment about the woman cutting in line. She became irate and began taunting him. He tries to ignore her, but when her boyfriend comes in, things get very ugly. Warning: this video contains graphic violence. If such things disturb you, don’t watch it. I put it up here because it’s very realistic and typical of what to expect in a real-world situation.
A couple of things to note.
1) The victim isn’t paying any attention to the danger that is right in front of him. He’s talking on the phone, and is actually distracted by it when he first gets hit.
2) Watch victim’s hands, they never leave his side, except when he’s looking at his phone.
3) Look at where the victim is standing. He’s basically cornered, with no room to move, keep his balance or escape.
4) Notice the four other men that are just standing around, watching.
5) The angry woman actually steps outside and yells to her boyfriend before he comes in. Pretty major warning sign right there.
If this poor guy had any street sense, he could have used any of those five things to his advantage and probably avoided, delayed or minimized the violence.
I’m glad that the police caught both the suspects, but that doesn’t change the fact that the poor victim was severely beaten over something so minor. Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of an attack like that.
The Run For The Gold event is over. We’ve moved everything back into the gym. There were a ton of people at the event. A lot of runners. The event went off without a hitch. Everyone had fun. Weather was fantastic, if not a little too hot.
We had several runners from CrossFit Marin participating. Martin Hoe, Melinda Wheeler, Brent Wheeler, Kela Cabrales, Susanna Wallenstrom, Turner Wallenstrom and Samantha Wallenstrom. If I missed anyone let me know and I’ll add you in.
We brought the gym out to Coleman for the kids (and some adults) to play in. A circuit was set up for the kids and weights were set out so we could demonstrate and explain what it is we do. Hopefully you’ll see some new faces in the gym from Coleman. Thanks to Susanna Wallenstrom for helping to get us involved in the event.
BTW Starting tomorrow 9:00am we’ll have demo going on, so come on down and swing a hammer…
Major demo has begun. All of the pipes that made up the light mounts for the studio are down already. This was a HUGE piece that had to happen before many other pieces could get started. On Friday I went out and picked up our scaffolding. Expect to see this looking much better in about a month and having a completely new role. The scaffolding was necessary to bring down all of the pipe. This was a large task, but thanks to the experience of Hugues and Kerry (These two did the same job last year) it got knocked out in just a couple of hours on Saturday morning. Rich jumped in and helped them finish up this task and cleaned up the pipes for storage. Then Carlos and Rob moved the pipes into the electrical room.
How can you help?
Check out the todo list in the members area:
http://www.crossfitmarin.com/members
There is also a physical members list taped to the inside wall. Just enter the big studio and turn right. Find a task that you are suited for (or not and we’ll help you) and go to it. We’ll be scheduling a few major work days over the next several weeks. We will let you know. The walls can start coming down. We’re going to preserve a bunch of the studs from the west wall to use for framing in the new east wall when this is all done. This is a huge job, but we have a lot of very capable folks getting involved. Any help you can provide is VERY appreciated. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for all of you, and we couldn’t move this forward without you. This is YOUR facility. Be a part of the next phase of growth.
THANKS!!!
Here is a video series of Jeff Martone, founder of ”Tactical Athlete“ performing Turkish-get-up’s and variations. In the 4th video he does one “bottom’s up” and then he Turkish get-up’s his wife! Some of you have heard Roger tell this story- probably several times. (He loves telling his stories and forgets that he already told you. If you find yourself in this situation, just hold up a hand, or two, showing him the number of fingers equal to the number of times he has told you this particular story. He will quickly proceed to blush and then walk away slightly embarrased.) There are several of you, (especially newer clients who haven’t practiced Turkish-get-ups or seen them in the skill training) who struggle with these ,understandably, since they aren’t included in the CFM foundations series. I suggest studying the movements and positions. It will give you a little head start for the next time they come up in a workout or for the skill training. One to three rep max Turkish get-ups in a workout are surprisingly fun.
Ok, so if you’ve been here long enough by now you may have figured out that I have a twisted sense of humor. I came up with (admitedly with a little help from Roge) a twisted variation of “Nasty Girls” a few years back.
Nicole Carroll & Eva Twardokens looking like their scorching selves.
Annie in triple extention executing a clean
For those of you who don’t know what “Nasty Girls” is, or are under the impression that it is a song, (it is a song by “Nitty”) in CrossFit speak it’s an old school bad-ass CrossFit workout that the three original “Nasty Girls”, Annie, Eva & Nicole (from Greg Glassman’s original gym, CF headquarters in Santa Cruz), came up with way back when. These beatifully strong women are CrossFit legends. Nicole Carroll runs the level 2 CrossFit certifications and currently works for CF Headquarters. Eva Twardokens was an Olympic skiier and a member of the U.S. National team for 12 years, and currently coaches at CrossFit Santa Cruz Central, Annie Sakamoto, who had the best time in the “Nasty Girls” workout, keeps the lowest profile and also coaches at CF SC Central. She is a metabolic machine and made a comeback to compete at last year’s affiliate cup after having at least one baby.
Ok, so back to my “Nasty Girls” variation. “Nasty Gymnasts”. First I need to explain what the original “Nasty Girls” workout consists of :
3 Rounds for time of:
50 Air Squats
7 Muscle-ups
10 High-Hang Cleans (135 lbs Men/ 95lbs women)
It is a wicked hard workout but fun and a great example of a balanced CrossFit W.O.D. with a gymnastics element (the muscle-ups), an Olympic lifting element (the high-hang cleans) as well as a metabolic element (I consider air squats to be more metabolic than anything else). So our “Nasty Gymnasts” variation is basically the same except for that you sub out the 50 air squats and insert 15 standing back tucks. (gymnastics speak for back flips) As for the spoof, I’ve always wanted to make a video of ”Nasty Gymnasts” with three of us dressed up as Annie, Eva & Nicole. (I’m not sure why, but I figured it would be hilarious!) Now that would be creepy. To make matters worse, since we have access to a green-screen (but only for a few more days now) we could actually shoot it in there and use the green-screen to fit in the original CF Santa Cruz Headquarters gym as the background to the video and be in the same positions as Annie, Eva & Nicole were during their own workout. How do you like that for CF comedy? It would be Gabe, Roger & myself starring as Gabannie, Rogeva & Nicoledrea. Eeeewwww…. Of course, we don’t neccessarily have to use the green-screen, since there are complications with that. We could do it under the CFM mezzanine, which looks kind of like the original HQ, but it wouldn’t be quite as funny and weird.
Sooo…. Roger said he is willing to do it, but he is not going to allow the delay of the demolition of the big studio at all. The video guy that was going to help us with the project has not returned my phone calls. He’s probably too busy preparing for the CF Games assignments. Roge-Air is going to pick up the scaffolding tomorrow to start taking the piping down from the ceiling. Which means that if we’re going to make this happen, we might have to do it really, really soon and we’re going to have to do it ourselves. In conclusion, if you want to see me, Gabe & Roge make complete fools of ourselves, and dress us up in drag (I know some of you CFM moms are giddy about the idea already) all you have to do is go shopping for clothes and sports bras and wigs that pretty much exactly match what those three were wearing in the “Nasty Girls” video. {please make sure that my breasts don’t fall out while I’m doing a back flip} If the video turns out to be too creepy, or in bad taste, then we’ll just watch it in the gym for a good laugh and delete it foreva. If it turns out to be creepily hilarious, maybe we’ll send it to CF HQ and see what they decide to do with it. Ahhh… I don’t know why I come up with these ideas to complicate my life. I hope this doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass too hard- but then things wouldn’t be quite as fun if we never dared to do anything kinda crazy… after all, that’s how the gym got started!
Kristy G. coaches an inverted pike on rings
Ok, everyone, here’s a reminder…
We’re only 3 days out from the big fitness event at Coleman Elementary School. We’ve got a bunch of our crew showing up for this.
Straddle-walk line on the parrallel bars.
A few of the families that have kids at Coleman are:
Wallenstrom: Susannah, Turner, Samantha & Lucy
Wheeler: Malinda, Lucas & Katie and of course,
Cabrales: Kela, Carlos, Amelia & Gaby.
All the proceeds to benefit the PTA-sponsored Music, Art & Phys Ed programs at Coleman Elementary School. Remember to register online on http://www.active.com/running/san-rafael-ca/coleman-run-for-the-gold-2010#Summary by the 23rd. It’s only $20 for adults or $15 for kids. Day of Registration is $5 more. The run itself starts at 9am and we will be in the gym at 6:30am to take off to the school and set up between 7-8am. Also, we will be loading the truck the day prior. Come help us if you can!!
Some of the other families and friends that have already signed up include:
A little birdie support on the low bar
Martin Hoe & Baby Grommits (Greyson & Dawson)
Jill & Gloria teaching rowing technique on the erg
Emily Cookson & Dean? & Space & Cosmo Grommit
Patricia McCormick, Carlos Echandy, & others.
The whole CFM coaching staff and many volunteers will be there. We’ll be teaching parkour, gymnastics, CrossFit, Rowing, and playing all sorts of games with the kids.
Little Will Sprague gets surprised in the Box Cubby Cave
I decided to dig up some more pictures from last year after adjusting the resolution for our blog:
L-Hang on Rings under basketball post!
Mrs. Sprague shows us a handstand on the parrallettes
Lucy and Grommit shoes in front of the parrallel bars.
Jill overlooks the parrallette walks.
Coach Gloria J. teaches a DL
Amadraeus demonstrates an Oly-Jerk
Little girl having fun on a pull-over with Russell coaching
The Box is the perfect cubby-cave!
The Big picture at the school field.
Coleman Elementary Tigers!
Parrallette Balance walks
Future Firebreather
Baby boy Pommier arrived April 19th at 2:44pm! 7 lbs 14 oz, 21 inches long. Name is pending. Mommy is doing well after a long (3 days of labor) delivery.
Here’s a message from Steph:
“Hi everyone!
Our beautiful baby BOY arrived yesterday, Monday, April 19th at 2:44 p.m.! He was 7 lbs. 14 ounces and was 21 inches long! We are still determining a name. He is absolutely perfect and I’m not just saying this because I’m his Mama:) We had a looonnnnggg journey to get here. He was due on April 1st and I was in labor for 3 days before he was ultimately delivered by C-section. But it was worth every moment to look into his sweet face. It’s going to be a long recovery, but fortunately I have the best partner I could ask for in Nick, who is the most doting father I’m EVER seen:)
We hope to leave the hospital on Wednesday (please God!) or Thursday at the latest, and will look forward to introducing our little guy to you when we are up and moving again. As you can guess, the immobility I’m feeling is hard for me to handle; I can’t wait to move freely again! But in the meantime, thank you for all your support and love and we will be in touch!”
