Friday, December 23^rd -Morning sessions only

Saturday, December 24^th –  Closed

Sunday, December 25^th- Merry X-mas!!

Monday, December 26^th – Morning sessions only

Tuesday, December 27^th-Regular Hours

Wednesday, December 28^th-Regular Hours

Thursday, December 29^th-Regular Hours

Friday, December 30^th- Morning sessions only

Saturday, December 31^st-Closed, New Year’s Eve

Sunday, January 1^st – News Years Day!

Monday, January 2^nd-Morning sessions only…Start your year with a workout!

Tuesday, January 3^rd we will resume normal hours.

http://myathleticlife.com/2011/10/crossfit-cheaters-anonymous/

CrossFit Cheaters Anonymous

CrossFit, My Sport — By Dawn Fletcher on October 18, 2011 9:11 am

Integrity:  Adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.

There are really only 2 types of athletes when it comes to integrity, those who have it and those who don’t. Yes, I believe that you fit in to 1 of 2 categories.   But remember, you can always change.  The first step is admitting you have a problem.

There will be CrossFitters who cut corners, go through the motions, and are okay with not fully completing a task.  There will be those that might lie just a little and only some of the time. Big cheating, small cheating, big lies, little lies, cutting some corners or just one, missing a lot of reps or a few reps, IT IS ALL THE SAME.

This topic has been discussed lots of times throughout the CrossFit Community and people often say “who really cares, because that person is just cheating themselves and their results.”  But maybe, just maybe, this article will help some individuals recognize what type of athlete they are, and the type of athlete they want to become.

When I am watching athletes or coaching it is VERY easy to tell what type of person I would want to surround myself with, who I would trust, and which athlete I would want on my team. What type of athlete are you? Are you okay with it?

Type I Athletes: Fully commit to whatever the WOD is for them for that day, whether it is on-ramp, rx’d, rx’d+, foundations or a warm-up.

Type II “Athletes”: Complain about a movement or two in a WOD, try to modify the on-ramp or tone-up/tone-down their WOD and quickly identify movements that “suck.”

Type I Athletes: Complete an extra couple of double unders, pull-ups or wall balls when they have lost count or think they may have missed a couple of full reps.

Type II “Athletes”: Think that when they mess up at 48 double unders, it is “good enough” and move to the next exercise before finishing the last 2 reps, or are okay with not getting their chin over the bar on the final hard rep.

Type I Athletes: Work up to the buzzer, even if it means they will only get 20 meters of the next 200m run because there are only 10 seconds left.

Type II “Athletes”: Finish the round they are currently on and lay down with a little time remaining on the clock.

Type I Athletes: Never ever would consider lying, not even 1 single rep when the coach asks “how many did you get” before writing the score on the whiteboard.

Type II “Athletes”: Justify lying that they got an extra rep, an extra round or lifted a few more pounds because they think “they could have, or should have” or don’t want to look bad.

Type I Athletes: Ask their coach to closely judge them, give them pointers and makes necessary adjustments when given a “no rep” call for not getting full depth on a squat.

Type II “Athletes”: Roll their eyes at a coach for correctly judging them, scoring them, or giving pointers on how to get full reps. They try to ignore the coach, hide from the view of a coach and continue to “sneak” through bad reps.

Okay, okay, you get the point. It is easy to cheat… we all get tired. Someone is beating you, the class is waiting for you to finish, you are sick of doing burpees, your elbows got close enough to full extension, or you forgot what number you were on.

THE LIST GOES ON AND ON PEOPLE. It is plain and simple: it takes a great deal of INTEGRITY to be a Type I Athlete.  The reward is also plain and simple, deeply fulfilling, gratifying, humbling and satisfying.  Not to mention the physical reward of becoming a faster, stronger, more dominating badass.

My Own Personal Promise of Integrity: I remember in 2005, when I did my first CrossFit WOD on my own with no one watching. I felt like I was going to die and I remember very distinctly how easy it would have been to cheat, stop or do a few less box jumps.  Right then and there, I had my first “aha moment” about this sport.  It was always going to be easy to cut the corners.  Upon that realization, I said a personal promise to myself right then and there.

“I will never cheat reps, cut corners or finish early no matter how bad I may want to – I deserve better than that.”  Commit today to your coach, your workout buddies, your box and yourself. Those of you who are already Type I Athletes, keep rocking on.

Why are some runners so thin while others are so not?

by Claire Lunardoni

There is a lot of confusion in the fitness literature about the best kind of exercise to lose weight. Endurance sports expert Matt Fitzgerald recommends extra “easy” training sessions to improve an athlete’s body composition (fat-to-lean mass ratio) and thus performance in his book Racing Weight. The Crossfit camp snubs its nose at any kind of slow training, insisting that it’s “cardio” that makes you fat and resistance work is what really burns jiggle off your frame. General fitness magazines and articles love to quote studies that show that people burn more calories with interval training rather than “steady state” training, citing as the cause a combination of higher calorie output per hour and a longer “after-burn” (post exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC). Each side makes such a compelling argument that it’s hard to tell who to trust.

Burning fat is good, right?

Before we address the issue of whether your cardio is making you fat, let’s first define “cardio.” Cardiovascular exercise is anything that increases your heart rate for a sustained period, whether it’s high intensity resistance circuits (such as Crossfit) or your mom’s jazzercise class. Since heart rate correlates closely with energy expenditure (calories burned), the workout that requires the most heart beats is the one that will burn the most calories. A leisurely walk with your grandma can burn just as many calories as a high-intensity interval session, as long as you and Granny are prepared to walk all day. What differs between these two workouts is where your body draws its fuel from in each workout.

For any exercise lasting longer than a minute, your body gets energy from a combination of fat and carbohydrate. The harder the effort, the more energy comes from carbohydrate and the smaller the relative contribution of fat. So exercising at a low intensity and burning mostly fat should make you skinny, right? Not exactly. Just because a lower proportion of the energy you use is coming from fat, that doesn’t mean that you are burning less overall fat. High intensity training burns just as much or more fat, but it also burns way more of the other stuff. You can think of the fat as the same sized piece of a much larger pie. Burning more carbohydrate also means you get to eat more after your workout without your body converting the calories into a big fat ass. The catch is that even if you work out at a moderate intensity all day to burn more calories, if fat is your primary energy source then your body will begin to store more fat to support your workouts. Damn.

Also, overdoing your endurance training can stimulate a hormonal stress response, which will also lead to increased fat storage. Intense resistance or interval training in the neighborhood of your maximum heart rate accentuates the physiological disadvantages of carrying around a few extra pounds and stimulates your body to make small systemic changes to your appetite and metabolism that encourage your body to shed weight.

The Fat Marathoner. What gives?

If you have ever watched a popular marathon, you may have noticed that the frontrunners are skeletally thin, but toward the back end of the pack many of the people are… well… fat! In an event where a 150-pound man can burn one pound’s worth of calories between the start line and the finish line, how can a trained marathoner possibly be fat? It is because the novice runners’ bodies cannot handle both the increase in volume required to run a marathon while also running a lot of “speed work” (intense interval training). So beginning marathoners run a lot of “long slow distance” in their “fat burning” zone to build up their “base” fitness so that they can just finish. Experienced runners’ bodies are accustomed to a high running volume, so they can incorporate more speed work into their workouts. Even an experienced runner’s “slow” runs are at a much higher percentage of their maximum heart rate (remember: more heart beats = more calories). The same “slow and fat” principle is also true other endurance athletes such as cyclists and triathletes.

Does “cardio” make you fat?

With all the conflicting messages about workout intensity for weight loss, who can you trust? In fact, they are all different ways of stating the same thing: “keep your intensity high to avoid the ‘fat-burning zone’.” Interval training is most appropriate for the general population not highly trained for a specific sport. If you are of average to above-average fitness, then the most efficient way for you to burn massive amounts of calories is to intersperse high-intensity effort with some rest.

For those who pursue elite fitness,  some prefer resistance training while others are drawn to aerobic exercise. As my mom used to say, “That’s why they sell both chocolate and vanilla ice cream.” Neither one is “better” than the other for losing fat, it’s just which one inspires you to push your body harder in your workouts. Those who prefer resistance training teach their bodies to sustain an effort just above their anaerobic threshold (the line where if you keep it up for too long, then you’re going to puke on your shoes) for minutes at a time, followed by brief periods of lying on the floor panting. Experienced endurance athletes can sustain an effort just below their lactate threshold (the point where if you keep going for too long then you’re going to wind up walking home) for hours at a time. As far as body composition is concerned, both make you lean but the latter tends to burn muscle, while the former builds it.

A trained athlete’s anaerobic threshold and their lactate threshold are usually only a few heart beats away from each other. Therefore, an athlete can burn just about the same number of calories by Crossfitting for 35 out of 45 minutes at 95% of her maximum heart rate, or running a 45-minute 10K at a steady 85% of her maximum heart rate. Experienced endurance athletes can lose additional weight by padding their training with extra “easy” workouts in the fat-burning zone because they have other interval and “tempo” workouts already built into their training plans that stimulate the body to stay lean rather than store fat.

How to know if your cardio is making you fat?

If your only goal is weight loss, then your “cardio” workouts should never last longer than an hour. Try to maintain an effort where you feel “winded” for as much of that hour as possible. If you can comfortably maintain a conversation, then your workout is too easy. Shoot for an effort where you can’t say a sentence longer than “on your left!” without needing to take a breath in the middle. If you can maintain this effort for an hour, then congratulations, you are fit enough that you can tell those elite Crossfitters to shove it. If you can’t maintain that effort for very long, then break it into chunks or “intervals.” If even the idea of lacing up a pair of trainers makes you want to puke on your shoes, then try another style of training such as high intensity resistance training circuits to burn massive numbers of calories and reap the cardiovascular benefits of exercise.

When in doubt, use this rule of thumb: If you can read US Weekly during your “cardio” workout, you’re probably wasting your time.

Claire Lunardoni is a personal trainer, long distance cyclist, and trail runner. She works at the Body Mechanix on Folsom St in San Francisco.

http://body-mechanix.com/2011/10/is-your-cardio-making-you-fat/

How to Surround Yourself with People Better than Yourself

• Let go of judgment. The first step in recognizing talent is recognizing talent! You can only do this if you are able to put aside your own issues and prejudices and see others for who they are. ie, if you’re starving, any chef is a 4 star chef. You’ve got to be able to compensate for your own “schtick” when assessing others.
• Let go of ignorance. Sifting through the self-promoters to get to what’s real requires that you have some education about the world around you.
• Let go of jealousy. If you’re jealous of what they’ve got, you’ll feel it, they’ll feel it, and badness will be inevitable.
• Let go of need. Needing others is only fractionally better than being jealous of them. Needing people leads you to make demands. Which amps up the awkward and ends painfully.
• Let go of labels. Strong people don’t need anyone to define a relationship with labels because they’re able to figure it out on their own. Trying to label a relationship can scare a strong person off. (Not comfortable with ambiguity? Keep that to yourself.)
• Let go of doubt. Great people want people around them who are even better then themselves. If you don’t believe you belong, you don’t belong.
• Let go of control. Great people will do things you don’t understand and can’t explain. Insisting on living in a world you fully understand will keep you from experiencing people who can open you up to new and bigger ideas. Great people approach their worlds with innocence, wonder, and curiosity.
• Let go of you. Help the people around you shine brighter. The strong ones’ll keep you around and start feeding your gift back to you. (The weak ones will show their true colors by trying to take advantage or assuming malintent on your part—easy to deal with once you’re prepared for it.)
• Let go of work/life distinctions. When the relationship comes first, it’s sometimes difficult to know if it’s going to grow into friendship, business, or both. Especially with great people who jump from idea to idea with ease, and make no distinction between a project that makes money and one done for fun. Be profersonal.
• Let go of self-esteem. The thing about surrounding yourself with awesome is, you are always being challenged. It’s with love and support, but they’re challenges nonetheless, and you must win, without help, without cheating, without rationalizing. And when you don’t win, you must bounce back quickly and confidently because you don’t want to fail twice in a row.
• Let go of ego. You love that local band? Accept that you’re just one small part of their success, and help them get big anyway. Make it your goal to enjoy next year’s conversation with that girl who claims she “discovered” the band on the radio “last month.”
• Let go of negative. Awesome people fix things or laugh about them. They see no third option.
• Let go of safe. Surrounding yourself with extraordinary people guarantees one thing: change. Scary, risky, life-altering change. No-more-comfort-zone change. For instance, if I were the worlds’ best matchmaker and we were hanging out, I could find you your true love. When I did, would you be ready? Great people requires us to abandon the safe harbor of our routines.

Did you get it yet? Greatness happens when you let go. It’s the ultimate “stone soup;” you bring only your true self and all the other ingredients you think you need actually are provided by others when the time comes. It takes an incredible amount of self-confidence and faith to play this game—but I never did say it was easy.