Hello Team,
September is an interesting transition time for a lot of us – regular school, work, and recreation schedules begin to emerge as we let go of some of the wistfulness of summer. Each year as fall begins I always take time to reflect on what has transpired over the past year and what is to come on the horizon as it still feels like I’m preparing for a “new school year”.
Our CrossFit community has changed so much in the past year it’s hard to think back to how things were going even a few short months ago. One thing that has remained steady however is our pursuit to provide you with the absolute best all-round fitness training that we can possibly offer. This means constant revision of our ideas about how we can go about programming and providing coaching for our community that will keep all of us moving forward. Here’s a short list of what we’ve done over the past year that sets us apart as a fitness community and puts us (that means you!) at the forefront of all-round fitness.
1. In January we started an apprentice program to bring in more support for coaching classes as our membership grew. To date, we have added six awesome individuals to our coaching ranks (Justin M, Sean B, Tom J, France L, Heather B, Lucas P), with the last two having progressed to full coach status. This gives us a total of 10 coaches to help provide an excellent overall experience for you when you come in to train.
2. We have gone through three versions of a programming template to plan phases of training and frequency of major lifts to help our members gain consistently in all areas. Some of you may not realize that the majority of CrossFit affiliates do not do their own programming but rather rely on (the randomness of) crossfit.com to provide their members with appropriate fitness challenges.
By taking the programming into our own hands, we have become fully responsible for your fitness, which we take extremely seriously. Our new template takes into account planned variations in terms of the time and difficulty of metcons, frequency of major lifts, and even a periodized structure that provides you with a recovery and technique week in every month of training. This is the type of detail in planning that advanced athletes across all sports utilize so we figured why not offer the best to you as well.
3. We have integrated complimentary activities such as gymnastics, yoga, and weightlifting into our environment. Sean Lind was here through the summer and offered an excellent (daily!) beginner level gymnastics course that improved the movement skill and awareness of all who participated in it. We have invited a competitive Olympic Weightlifting group (the Pacific Weightlifting Club – more on them soon) to train with us, which aside from offering to help with setting up Olympic Lifting meets, will help us to improve our technique and understanding of the snatch and clean and jerk so that we can benefit in our CrossFit training. Lastly, we have brought in yoga instructors to give a new range to the services available to our members.
4. Through the benevolence and genius of one of our members (Sean Falconer), we have a website devoted to the tracking of training achievements (myfrantime.com). This is not only a very useful way of recording and evaluating progress, but also a forum in which we can discuss and share individual successes and friendly rivalries. Fitness is all about moving forward and this website allows us to be objective in the measurement of that progress.
5. We have started a series of our own in-house Zone Games, which provides a forum for open competition for anyone who wishes to test themselves more than in the daily WODs. This is a great motivator to step up consistency and intensity in training, brings our community together really well, and is an awesome springboard to other competitions that people may want to enter down the road.
6. Open gym will begin to change in the very near future as we have recognized this is the perfect time to help you hone your skills as a CrossFit athlete. At each open gym from now on, the first hour will be devoted to working on a certain skill (for example kipping pullups or rowing) with focused coaching and feedback outside of the intensity of a WOD. Look forward to seeing your efficiency and understanding of movements improve.
There are other developments in the works that can’t be divulged yet but I wanted to share with you how much time and energy we devote to your pursuit of fitness. When you come in to train at CrossFit Zone, you are getting the best all-round fitness programming and training experience that we can currently offer. We take no shortcuts and never stop improving and progressing. It’s great to have you all as part of this journey and trust me, there are amazing things to come!
Please reply with comments or questions in the “Comments” section.
Turts.
Today’s Workout
Buy-in: 3 rounds of: 50 skips, 5 goblet squats (progressively go deeper into squat). Coaches substitute technique work for members unfamiliar with the back squat.
WOD: Squatzilla
This is a two part workout, both components contribute to your score!
Part 1 – Back Squat 5 x 5. Sets 3-5 should be at or above 75% of your current 1RM
Part 2 – Tabata Fun
- Alternate Tabata intervals of the following exercises for 4 intervals each: Pullups, Squats, Situps
- Performing 20s of pullups, resting 10s, 20s of squats, resting 10s, and 20s of situps constitutes 1 round. You will be completing 4 full rounds.
- Your score is your total of your low scores for each exercise.
Combine your best back squat for 5 reps with the total of your low scores for your overall score.
Cash-out: Partner hamstring and quad stretching – 2x60sec each leg for each stretch
