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 CFWSC ace Jocelyn Forest; mid stride on 8x200m repeats with a 45# sandbag. I was watching a buddy of mine lift the other day and I was struck by the change in his attitude when he began his lifts. Normally he is the nicest humble guy, but when he got his hands on the barbell he changed. He was still nice, but some of that humility disappeared and he got a little cocky. I asked him about it after his lifting session (during which he worked up to nearly a double bodyweight clean). He said that he needs to get a little cocky during his lifting sessions in order to make the lifts. He needs that boost that comes with greater self-confidence. He said that while he knows that in the world of Olympic weightlifting his numbers are nothing special, when he is about to attempt a big lift, he has to believe that he is a great lifter, that this lift is a great lift. He has to believe that he is going to make that lift. He has to fire himself up, thus he needs to get a little cocky.
But, when his workout is over, he is back to his old self. He knows that, as the saying goes, somewhere in China there is a 120 pound girl warming up with his best weight. Not to mention, he said, it’s just lifting weights after all. His cockiness on the platform is a strategy to get that weight overhead. It’s a tool that builds him up and gets his mind in gear, just as his lifting shoes are a tool for added stability and power. He takes off both tools when he leaves the training gym.
So, get a little cocky, boost up your self-confidence, because no matter what weight is on the bar, you are a great lifter, and whatever lift you are attempting next is a great lift.
How do you boost yourself up before a lift? Please post to Comments.
Workout:
Snatch Weakness Training
If you are having problems with the 2nd pull, work Snatch High Pulls.
If you are having problems with the 3rd pull, work Snatch Balances.
Then:
5 Rounds
2 Muscle Ups
3 Squat Cleans 185/115#
6 Thrusters 135/85#
10 Pullups C2B
200m Run
Post WOD time to Comments.
Posted by Jocelyn
It’s been 2 weeks since the start of Paleo 2.0. Around the box people share recipe’s from last nights dinner, this morning’s breakfast, and discuss their new found energy. I hear people giving tips on how to save time or money on Paleo meals, how to survive when they want to cheat, and how they look forward to our upcoming Paleo Potluck (more details on that soon). Many people have already lost upwards of 10lbs! That’s right, 10lbs in just two weeks by eating un-weighed, un-measured, real, unprocessed meats and veggies, nuts, seeds, and some fruit. And the recipes have been delicious. In fact, Sam just sent me four picture texts bragging about tonights delicious curry dish.
Everyone’s heard the quote out of at least one person’s mouth “I’ve tried EVERYTHING and I just can’t lose the weight.” But those people most likely have not, in fact, tried everything. Those people have probably tried some fad diet and resorted to restricting their calories to a small number for a couple of days, paying no mind to the quality of food they are eating, only to find that they are hungry all of the time, and thus cave in to nasty temptations like the pastries and sweets that line the shelves of coffee shops. What’s worse is that they never had the support they needed to begin with. And that’s what makes CrossFit West’s Paleo Challenge 2.0 so great. Think about how much support there is: 35+ people, all encouraging each other to keep it up, sharing ideas, experiences, and Paleo friendly dine out spots. It’s pretty cool.
So, Paleo challengers, we’d like to hear from you. How are you feeling so far? What have been the obstacles in getting started and how have you overcome them? How is your energy? Have you had a tough transition or has it been pretty painless? How do you keep it exciting and how do you stay motivated? What is the best part about eating Paleo?
Please post thoughts to comments.
Workout:
F.Squat
5×5
For time:
500m Row
50 Ball Slams (40/25)
30 K2E
 Mmmmmm Chicken–Cover with olive oil and sprinkle with garlic powder, oregano, Italian seasoning, and paprika. Optional seasoning is garlic or Tabasco. Barbeque for about 5 minutes on each side. You can alternately saute or broil.
Broccoli–Warm pan with olive oil, fresh ginger and garlic. Add broccoli with fresh ground pepper. Drizzle soy sauce and sesame oil, along with a dash of chili oil, and cook until broccoli starts to soften. Then turn up heat to high, add a little honey, and stir fry. Use just a little soy sauce, especially as it is not Paleo (we used gluten free soy sauce).
Leah’s Butternut Squash–Toss cubed squash, olive oil, onion powder, salt and pepper onto a pan and bake at 375 for 15 minutes. Then, toss on fresh minced garlic and rosemary and return to oven and broil until brown and crispy (be sure to stir and check it often).
All the ingredients were bought at Costco in bulk. The amount used cost about $9 (half a bag of broccoli, half a container of cubed butternut squash, and about 1/5 of a bag of frozen chicken breast tenders). The meal served 2 hungry Crossfitters with a smaller meal leftover. With the exception of the soy sauce, the meal is perfectly Paleo and really good.
Enjoy.
Workout:
Squat Snatch
10×1
Then:
21, 15, 9
Deadlift 225/155#
Burpee
Kettlebell Swing 2/1.5 pood
Post max snatch weight and WOD time to Comments.
 The 9am Posse  Nadia demos the rarely used uni-lateral leg weight. OK folks, Weakness Month has arrived. What is the weakness that you are going to address this month. Think small, rather than big.
Let’s look at some examples:
If you feel that the snatch is a weakness, do not focus on the snatch. It is too big. What part of the snatch is your biggest weakness? Dropping under the bar? Getting triple extension on the pull? Hips rising ahead of the chest coming off of the ground? Think small. You are just going to work on one of the above, not the entire snatch.
Maybe you are feeling pain in your wrists when cleaning. Why? Remember, think small. Are your elbows down due to shoulder, trap, and rhomboid tightness? Is the bar not landing in a good rack position because it is too far out in front of you? Not dropping under the bar at all? Think small.
Pick a weakness, talk it over with a coach, get some primary and assistance exercises you can do after class. We are not looking to change whole movements during Weakness Month, but rather conquer a single weakness. This has to be something you can do on your own and do after class when fatigued. Think small.
Good luck.
What weakness are you focusing on this month? Please post to Comments.
A huge congratulations to Leslie on getting her first muscle up!
Workout:
Rest Day
 Stuffed Peppers courtesy of www.paleobrands.com Paleo cooking never gets old and it’s so easy. I made these stuffed peppers featured on Paleo Brands other night and they were fabulous. If I can cook Paleo, anybody can! Check out the site for lots of fantastic recipes and other Paleo resources at www.paleobrands.com.
Ingredients:
2 lbs grass fed beef ground
3 whole eggs
1 teaspoon of garlic
1 teaspoon of orgeno
1 teaspoon. of basil
pinch of sea salt & pepper
1/2 of almond meal
1/2 white onion
1/2 cup of organic ketchup (no HFC)
6-8 whole red & yellow bell peppers
Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees
Combine all dry ingredients, add ground beef then eggs and mix together.
Cut tops off of peppers, clean out.
Add ground beef to the peppers and fill to top.
Cook:
Cook for 60 minutes at 350 degrees
While in oven keep covered for 30 minutes and uncover for final 30 minutes of cooking
Workout:
Press
5×5
8 Rounds
1 Muscle Up + 5 Ring Dips
2 Power Cleans (205/143)
100m Sprint
 Nadia; squatting for two.  Emily, with a pair of weightlifting shoes on the line, does Grace as Rx'd for the first time by clean and jerking her PR 30 times. Breakfast seems to be the meal that I get the most questions about from people starting the Paleolithic diet. Breakfast is the meal where grain is most ingrained (no pun intended) in us–cereal, whether hot or cold, pancakes, waffles, grits, toast, French toast, muffins, bagels, hash browns and home fries, and more. It just seems like breakfast is the hardest meal to eat Paleo.
Here are some tips that I use when it comes to breakfast.
Eggs are key. They are quick and relatively easy to make, and they lend themselves to a wide variety of preparation. And wide variety is the main point. Eggs can be prepared in a bunch of different fashions–hard boiled, over easy, fried, poached, etc. I usually scramble my eggs for one big reason. You can make scrambled eggs many different ways. And again, variety is what we are after.
A lot (about 3-4 a week) of mornings I have six eggs, four whole and two whites. Yes, it can get old. You need to get creative. You can change the taste of your scramble by using different spices. Salt and pepper, Creole seasoning, basil and oregano, Tabasco and Tapatio, for example. And garlic, lots of garlic. Different kinds of oils give unique tastes. Olive oils are available with different infused flavors, and I like the oil from a jar of sun dried tomatoes. If you are Paleo+dairy, different cheeses also impart different flavors. I usually throw in a vegetable or two. Mushrooms, a little onion, chopped up sweet pepper, olives, maybe a marinated artichoke heart or some sun dried tomatoes. Salsa and pesto (albeit not together) are great additions. That is a bit of variety right there and it really doesn’t take much time to prepare.
The key, in my mind, to a good scramble is the meat. When you are lifting heavy and training hard, you want more protein than six eggs. I like to throw some meat into the scramble. I might dice up something leftover from last night’s dinner (always cook enough for leftovers), such as steak or chicken. If there isn’t any available leftovers, I like canned crab and salmon, smoked salmon or lox, and shrimp (especially marinated). This stuff can be expensive, but it goes a long way if just used for breakfast scrambles. It tastes great and the price is worth it if it means you can eat Paleo for breakfast day after day.
A quick word about the egg itself. I buy my eggs in large bunches from Costco because I am poor (duh, I run a CrossFit box), but if you can afford them, organic free range eggs are just awesome. You get more white and the taste is great.
Between the above two paragraphs there is a lot of room for experimentation and creativity just with scrambled eggs. I also like turkey bacon (the Trader Joe’s stuff is addicting) and chicken sausages. While the turkey bacon is fairly lean, sausages can be kind of fatty and they will often have cheese in them. Other breakfast staples are grapefruits and apples.
If you are Paleo+dairy, breakfast is even easier. Cottage cheese is probably the quickest breakfast to make. I like mine with lots of berries. Greek yogurt with berries and a touch of honey makes an appearance now and again too. Be warned, dairy in general, but especially in the morning or evening will bulk you up.
One of the biggest complaints I get about Paleo breakfasts is that they are so repetitive. I hope that I have been able to show that this really isn’t true. Also, Paleo or not, breakfast is the most repetitive meal of the day and most people eat the same old thing for it most of the time anyway. So, give some of the ideas above a try.
What do you eat for breakfast? Please post to Comments.
Workout:
Back Squats
5×3
5 broad jumps for speed and distance between each set.
Then:
3 Rounds
8 Box Jumps 24″
6 Push Jerk 135/85#
5 Pullups
3 Kettlebell Swings 2/1.5 pood
Repeat the 3 (micro) rounds 4 times (4 macro rounds) with 2 minutes rest between each of the 4 macro rounds.
(WOD courtesy of CF Unlimited. Thanks Austin.)
Post each macro round time to Comments.
 OK, someone needs to come clean about this. This cup partially filled with a pink sugar drink was found in the box over the weekend. Fess up.
Due to the overwhelming popularity of Saturday morning training, CrossFit West Santa Cruz will be offering a new Saturday class at 11AM starting IMMEDIATELY. Saturday morning has been a blast with a great mix of people and tons of energy- now there’s room for even more. Hope to see lots of faces in class tomorrow!
Saturday schedule:
8:30AM
10AM
11AM
Workout:
Push Press
5×3
Box Jumps
5,5,5,5,5
4 Rounds
12 OH Lunges-6 each leg (95/65)
2 Rope Climbs
200m Run
 Jocelyn nails 228#,  And narrowly misses this 233# jerk.  Great to have you in class, John. By Jocelyn
Many of you have taken us up on our free “goals assessments” which have been a huge success. The staff here at CrossFit West couldn’t be prouder that so many of you are getting serious about taking training to the next level and taking advantage of this excellent opportunity. The goals have ranged from wanting to do workouts Rx’d, refining technique in Olympic lifts, and getting stronger, to learning kipping pull ups, hand stand push ups, and muscle ups. What I have found is that no matter what the goal is, the answer from me has been essentially the same–use your journal.
But what does it mean to use your journal? Sure, we urge everyone to keep track of their numbers–know your Back Squat 1RM, for example, and all 1RM’s for major lifts, keep track of your WOD times along with the weight used, and log all loads and reps lifted during our strength training sessions. But it has occurred to me that many people have resorted to simply logging 1RM’s and named benchmark WODs in order to simply use the journal to reflect whether or not you’ve PRed on something lately.
Now, that’s great if all you care about is finding out after the fact if you’ve gotten any better at today’s benchmark or major lift. But how about using the journal to have control over your fate of getting better every day, and being able to say ahead of time that today, when I go for my 1RM on my Back Squat, I’m going to PR and it’s going to be by 20lbs? The real magic happens when you use your journal as a “weapon” (Sam’s metaphor).
Here’s how it works:
Let’s say we are doing Back Squat 5×5 today (worth noting: the Back Squat is one of the most important lifts for getting strong and it will come up about once per week). You should:
1. Pull out your journal and flip to the last 5×5 Back Squat and check your loads.
2. Increase the load by 5lbs this week. For example, if you lifted 150lbs for 5 sets of 5 this week you will be doing 155lbs.
3. Continue this 5lb addition each week.
If the last time you Back Squatted you pyramided up in weight each set (ie: 140lbs, 145lbs, 150lbs, 155lbs, 160lbs) then try to finish your last set 5-10lbs higher than before, again using your journal to do this. Furthermore, if the lift is being done in a different rep range, find the page in your journal that indicates the last time you were in that rep range and add 5 lbs to that. This can be done with most lifts (except perhaps the Olympic lift in which technique becomes a bigger issue than strength- expect a post on this at a later date).
Imagine how many weeks it would take you, at this rate, to smash your old record. Eventually you will be doing your old PR for sets of 5 and when it’s time to re-test you will be able to say that, without a doubt, “my new max will be at least 20lbs heavier.”
Random strength training does not work beyond beginner adaptation. Eventually your beginner adaptation will run out and if you are arbitrarily loading the bar with weight there will come a point when you absolutely WILL NOT get any stronger. Using your journal to track your loads will help guide you in making calculated jumps in weight on a regular basis. As Louie Simmons of West Side Barbell says, “lifting weights and getting stronger is mathematics and bio-mechanics.” There’s nothing arbitrary about it. Train harder, train smarter, get stronger. Use your journal.
Workout:
Weighted Pull Ups
1,1,1,1,1
Weighted Ring Dips
5×5
For time:
100ft Broad Jump
5 Rounds
5 Deadlifts (275/185)
15 Wall Balls
then
100ft Broad Jump
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