Stay Gold Pony Boy

Two solid athletes, same task. Take a look at their contrasting hand positions. Olliver on the left is going to have to bring his hands back up to receive the ball. Patrick is already set. If the two are exactly the same height, strength, ability,and have the same fitness, which one is doing more work? Small efficiencies aggregate and ultimately create large individual differences.

Coach K

Field of Dreams

Ahh, tuesdays in May. Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful sunset, in a beautiful park, on the beautiful bay, under a beautiful bridge, and also you feel sick from swinging a dumbell?

Great work all!

Coach K is back baby.

Inner Workings Of A Fight Gone Bad

Just wanted to thank you guys for a great few weeks...what a treat to work with such motivated, enthusiastic individuals!

I also wanted to commend you regulars who show up time and time again at odd hours of the day. Whether you know it or not, you're taking an active role in your health. Look around you; most of the people you see aren't. Most people are content to be in moderately good shape, or moderately good health. There aren't too many who make the conscious decision to push past the accepted bare minimum of wellness. You guys have. By showing up you have decide not to settle for 'good enough'. You are setting yourselves up for the future in ways you won't appreciate until you get there. That's a powerful thing.

Remember:

Sickness--------->Wellness--------->Fitness

We can do better than simply being well!

Bernard taking a pro-active stance against poor health.

Aneel enjoying the benefits of barrier breaking!














Anyway, Coach K is back in town, but you'll still be seeing plenty of me around...

Stay Strong,
-Bozman

Gangs of Three (and one of four)

Full crew tonight made for a full workout! Lots of familiar faces created a great team workout, followed by some more handstand work. You guys rocked the wall-ball so hard I had to reset the target...and that was just the warmup!
Awesome group as always. Nice job Tuesday crew!


Warm up...no really!


Aftermath


More oxygen please!






Great efforts all around!
Stay Strong,

-Bozman

A Case of the Crossfit Mondays

A nice little chipper to start off the week. Kind of a rude awakening for a Monday morning, but everything else about your day will seem effortless in comparison. Surprisingly, nobody asked for seconds ;).


Scott and Pam happily chippin' away...


Shoulder burning lunges.

A Little Vitamin O

Nothing like starting the day with a little olympic lifting. Today's task: 100 Dumb-bell snatches. All part of a nutritious breakfast (probabaly best taken on an empty stomach).

Good work gang!
-Bozman





Ahh the circle of pain, I mean burpees.



Daily recommended dose.

Nice to see such a large group out on Tuesday!
Strong showings all around with the deadlifts, sprints and dips. The two newcomers to the deadlift were pulling like pros by the end. Three basic points to remember for stellar technique:

1. Heels Heels Heels!
2. Back straight
3. Hips below shoulders

I'm also really impressed at the speed that you guys are picking up the handstand. Very very nice!

Stay Strong,

-Bozman


Warming up...


...and the requisite heavy things!


Bernard showing awesome handstand alignment. Ears in shoulders!!

Mind Over Matter and Body Over Head

6am. New coach. Gloomy morning. Handstand push ups!

Great job today everyone! Some new skills learned (and learned quick) by team 6 this morning clearly marked the importance of mastering that elusive overhead position. Give us a few months and we'll be staging the first ever SFCF hands-walking championships! Strong work.

Remember: shoulders in ears, wrists above shoulders above hips above feet.

As a bit of an aside, and since this is my first official posting here, I'd just like to let everyone know what a pleasure it is to work with such a motivated, friendly bunch. You guys truly have a great community developing and it's an awesome privilege to be a part of it!

Stay Strong,

-Bozman

Ps. If anyone needs to contact me I can be reached at adrianbozman@sbcglobal.net or 415.632.6980.

New Blood--Coach Adrian Bozman!

Hey Gang,
For those of you that don't already know it. SFCF is proud to welcome Adrian Bozman as our new coach. Adrian brings an impressive skill set that will significantly increase the things we can do at the center. With a back ground as a gymnast, acrobatic artist, good dancer, and all around good guy, we heartily welcome this man to our campfire! As I am engaged with family matters for the next two weeks, Coach A as the keys to the ferraris. (you guys)

And as an aside. I feel really good about leaving for a couple of weeks with the incredible effort, dilligence, and progress our athletes have been making since we started this project. The end of April will have been 5 months already! I'm very proud of the community we've been able to create and the mindful training that happens every time you guys bring it.

Thanks Coach A!

Coach K

Happy Travels

Should’ve known this morning would be a burner. Should’ve known that with two weeks of sunny beaches stretching out before him, Coach K would give us something to remember him by. Or was it just that with three finals today he wanted to share the pain? (Team 6 is that tight.) Either way, he did cut us a break by actually allowing rest during the rest periods between Tabata sets. At first there was some crazy talk about jumping rope for the 60 second intervals, which I was totally advocating for, of course, but that idea got tossed. Which was probably a good thing given the involuntary leg convulsions going on between the ball slams and the box jumps.

I think everyone scored in the 30s. Nice work, Team. It looked like an all-out maximum effort. Was it the music? (Btw, wouldn’t it be sweet if we could get a version of that techno Tabata CD with Kelly’s voice mixed in for those backyard solo workouts?)

Also, it's nice to see more dudes stepping up for the 6am challenge. Was it that you guys were afraid of the dark before?

Hasta manana,
Gretchen

Atlas? Bring it.

Ahh, the overhead squat. Crushing yet, devasting. The OH Squat is almost elegant in its ability to expose a weak link in the kinetic chain.
Team 7, givin' 'er hell.

coach K

Heavy Overhead

Team 6 got heavy this am with a little Split Jerk practice.
Putting weight overhead is one of the most important keystone functional exercises out there. We keeping talking about making the body "one piece". The key to pain free, high levels of function is integration.
Nice work this morning!

Keep it up, no one on this squad is going to need one of those little pincher/extenders to get the metamucil off the top shelf at age 110.

Climbing Up Out of Hell*

*(See the rowing video link for the reference.)

Nice work by the SF squad this saturday morning. Three rounds of a pretty legit task. Witnessed this morning: great depth, appropriate intensity, increased monkey bar proficiency, and an inch gained.

Try and explain your hands to your friends. Go on. Try. They will look at you like you are insane. You can try to tell them that you are attempting to regain some of the standard playground capacities of any middle school kid in the country. Or, you could tell them that you were working so hard you "didn't notice". Or, you could say "I made the choice to continue because I thought it was worth it."
You can try. But they most likely won't understand what you already know. Your hands will heal, and today, you collected another inch.

Brilliant gang.

coachK

Why Crossfit Matters

Hey Gang,
Cut and paste this link.
Don't come to class unless you are prepared to discuss.

See you tomorrow.

coach K

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMg75rY1dH8&search=Canada%20Row

Saturday Post Training Breakfast

Hey Gang,
You are cordially invited by Julie H. to join in for some post workout breakfast at the Grove immediately following our step class.

Hope to see you there!

Julie H

I know you can lay down in a machine....

And leg press an elephant, but can you overhead squat your own bodyweight? Fifty percent of your bodyweight. A lot of lip service is given to "core strength" these days with lots o' fancy balls and half balls out there. But, if you cannot maintain the your midline stability, that is, keep your spine stable in a variety of functional positions, you don't have "core strength." The overhead squat is the king of core exercises, or queen if all you Team 6er's prefer. The difference between what you can front squat and what you can overhead squat is a direct measurement of your true core strenth.

Nice work today Team 6!

coach K

Morning Glory

When the alarm went off this morning, I almost stayed in bed. Seriously. I say that every day, but today it was true. Late drive back from Tahoe last night after two days of pizza, beer, and pushing around several inches of sierra cement – I was not feeing fit, energized, or strong. “It’s okay,” I rationed. “Skiing is sort of exercise. You need a rest day. Okay, maybe not a rest day, but you’ll go running after work. Okay, maybe running and some push-ups. Okay, and maybe you’ll go to Crossfit on Tuesday night to make up for today. Yeah, that’ll work...”

I started to roll over for two more hours of sleep, when to my horror I remembered.
6AM parking.
What kind of A-HOLE comes home from Tahoe at 10PM, drives around the block, and then INTENTIONALLY parks in 6AM parking to sabotage her lazy old self? That would be me.

Driving down to the center, I consoled myself, “It’s okay, maybe today won’t be so hard. Maybe we’ll just do one max weight dead lift and call it a day. Maybe Kelly will have called in sick for the first time ever. Maybe a giant meteor will have crashed into the Center over the weekend and left nothing but a gaping pit…”

But no, my second moment of horror before 6:05 this morning was when Kelly said we’d be doing 10 rounds of Cindy “broken up” (as if it’s some kind of rest?!?!) by 100 dumbbell swings. So much for the meteor.

Bernard completed the workout in 3 minutes. Okay, not 3, but it seemed that way when I still had 4 rounds to go and was doing my less-than-full-range push ups of in sets of 3’s and 4’s. Pam and Christy also killed it, proving once again that Team Six takes no slackers.
-Gretchen

New CF article in LA Times

Hey Gang,
As if you didn't know. The link below is to the LA Times piece.

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-crossfit10apr10,0,4729165.story?coll=la-home-health


coachK

Only as good as your last workout.

Proving the maxim that you are only as good as your last training effort:
Monday 6am crew bringing it. Pam, Bernard, Christy, Gretchen

Pastry and Latte

Much Pastry and Latte was earned this morning at the CFSF Center.
Three individual events with different challenge flavors. How would you/did you fare at three very different tasks. Would your performances be congruent accross task platforms? Would you end up in the bottom cohort of one while dominating another? Our daily contention is to prepare athletes to be competent at anything and everything. Does your fitness allow you to put 65% of your weight overhead 70 times in 5 min? Can you then row 500 meters in under 1:40? Why not? Would you gas at these events, or be limited by your strength? Both? Neither? In what areas are you strong? In which areas do you need work? Why?
Today I witnessed people choosing to become better. Then, become better.

Nice work today athletes.

coach K

Fighters Gone Bad

Hey Mellisa, got any thoughts about workout tonight.
What was that one fight thing workout?
Fight gone Bad.
Yeah, that one. I wanna do that one.

Four people improved their FGB score thurday night. Aneel, Adam, Mellisa, Patrick.
Brilliant.
Great first time efforts for Dan and Pam. Pam posted in the 170's first time!

One Cup or Two?

This morning, in my eager anticipation of the workout, I accidentally downed a little too much coffee. Fifteen seconds into jumping rope, the waves of stomach-turning nausea washed through me. Bleech. Seriously, I consider this a critical question: How does one maximize caffeine intake as soon as possible while steering clear of the early morning, coffee-induced, work-out-exacerbated nausea? The easy answer – get off the drug - is clearly an unacceptable one.

Today was great. Weighted Tabata squats (totally weird, but maybe you eventually get used to hugging a freezing cold 35-lb weight to your chest) and lots of sit-ups. Way to go Julie, who may or may not have kicked ass doing somewhere between 40 and 190 sit-ups in 10 minutes.
-gw

Tues Night Soul Patrol

Brilliant effort tonight Gang! Great first time performances and stellar repeats.
Big shout out to Aneel and Adam with huge PR's . FAF

The Heart of Darkness

It was particularly hard to get up today, given that it’s Monday, that day light savings has plunged us back into the hole of darkness from which Team Six was just beginning to emerge, and that this god forsaken, never ending rain from hell is STILL dumping. But as I pulled into the parking lot at 5:55 this am, I was once again amazed that I was not the only psycho who was up, awake, and psyched to lift cold, heavy metal things under a wet tent in the dark. In fact, there were six psychos. (Seven, if you include Coach K, who I used to think was just very committed and tenacious, but after witnessing yesterday’s couch incident, I now know is a total animal. And yet, he’s an animal with a complex mind with an exceptional ability for spatial understanding… but I digress.) Point being, everyone did an impressive job at the workout for sure (i.e. Pam, with eight rounds of 20 tabata squats (TWICE, I think), Adam with 22), but on days like this, I just think we all need to give each other props just for even getting ourselves out of our warm beds at all. (Or, if that’s too soft for you, how about just giving ME props for getting MYSELF out of MY cozy bed.) Then, how about some extra double superstar props to all for the 300+ squats and 50+ hang cleans put away in 12 minutes. Yeah, Team Six.
-g.w.

Get fit in just 4 simple moves!

Team 8-Sat
Quien Es Mas Macho?


Terrific effort by all the athletes that joined us this morning. Special shout out to all the athletes that stayed even for the entire time--Adam, Mac Daddy, JStar, Mcjohnson (sorry if I missed you anyone else.)

Push Press This

Can someone please explain to me why it is so much freaking harder to do push presses with dumbells than with a bar? I am thinking that it has to do with keeping them in line, obviously, but does that really account for HOW MUCH harder they are? Or are dumbells secretly heavier, and this is a weightlifting secret no one has let me in on yet? (Or does no one know what I am talking about, and I was just having a bad morning?)

Anyone else still sore from Wednesday?
-gw

Surf Fitness

Hey Gang,
Paste this link about using crossfit programming to up your surf game!
www.icebase.com/reader.ice?20060330101210133245&skievat@aol.com&m2812#test

Deluge Goddess

Gretchen Weber, Strong and Capable

Team Deluge

The fierce athletes of Team Six (six am, that is) once again revealed their remarkable commitment, tenacity, and downright bad-assed-ness this morning. Gathering, as usual, in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn, today the team witnessed the ominous, black sky threatening to crack open with something of biblical proportions. They warmed up - jump rope, squats, push ups. And then it came. Tabata. Did they flee? No. The fierce athetes stayed the course with 8 rounds of squats, jumping dips, ball slams, and sit ups. Christy and Piera kicked butt with ball slams using 20 pounders. Julie smoked the squats. Dylan, the newcomer, far from fleeing in the face of this terrific challenge, finished the workout looking great. Part way through the sit-ups the deluge came. (Wait, where did the Bridge go?) The roof held strong, the team stayed dry, and the resident worms are happy. Another challenge, put to bed by the Sixers before 6:45. Go Team.

Um, where's my coffee?

-o.k.

Tues Crew

Melissa R,
Weight on Heels, Back Straight. This is a strong, functional position.


Thomas, Bringing the Heat


Ollie is a tall athlete, here he is moving through an incredibly large range of motion.

Rain or Shine, It's on!

Hey Gang,
Class is still on even if we get rained! Dress appropriately, the big winds could be coming!
Coach K

Other Highlights From the Week

Grrrtease
Team 6
Big Gun Lauper

Saturday Elliptical Workout

Aftermath Saturday

Legit!

G Unit

The G getting some early practice.

It's finally here!

Finally, a place to showcase the hardworking super-athletes of San Francisco Crossfit!