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If you were like us, and thought we might be doing something with 3 dumbbells for 17.3, think again.  This week we are going heavy, that is, if you are efficient at chest to bar pull-ups.  After focusing on endurance in week 1, and skill work in week 2, the focus this week is on strength.  This weeks workout is a couplet of chest-to-bar pull-ups and squat snatches.  It has increasing chest-to-bar-pullups reps and decreasing squat snatch reps, while increasing the squat snatch weight.  The workout also throws time-caps at multiple intervals, see below for the complete workout.

Prior to 8:00, complete:
3 rounds of:
6 chest-to-bar pull-ups
6 squat snatches, 95/65 lb.
Then, 3 rounds of:
7 chest-to-bar pull-ups
5 squat snatches, 135/95 lb.
*Prior to 12:00, complete 3 rounds of:
8 chest-to-bar pull-ups
4 squat snatches, 185/135 lb.
*Prior to 16:00, complete 3 rounds of:
9 chest-to-bar pull-ups
3 squat snatches, 225/155 lb.
*Prior to 20:00, complete 3 rounds of:
10 chest-to-bar pull-ups
2 squat snatches, 245/175 lb.
Prior to 24:00, complete 3 rounds of:
11 chest-to-bar pull-ups
1 squat snatch 265/185 lb.

*If all reps are completed, time cap extends by 4 minutes.

For the athletes that are fairly efficient with chest-to-bar pull-ups, this workout is all about doing a high weight squat snatch while being fatigued, but lets start with the chest-to-bar pull-ups.  You will want to do what is comfortable for you.  If that is butterfly, do butterfly.  If that is regular kipping, do kipping.  Don’t try something new for this workout.  This workout might be focused on snatch weight, but don’t ignore the the chest-to-bar pull-ups!  At the 8 minute mark, you will have completed 39 reps, which is only 6 less than Fran.  We all know what the pull-ups in Fran feels like.

On the squat snatches, DO SINGLES.  If you watched the games athletes complete the workout, Scott Panchik didn’t do more than 1 squat snatch at a time.  There is plenty of time to do singles and get through all of the rounds.  As you can see, the weights in the workout jump very quickly.  There is probably a round that you think “no problem” and the next round is “that is going to be tough.”  Treat that tough round as your goal round.

Expect to be fatigued, but pace yourself so that you don’t redline to the point that you can’t lift.  This workout is about being able to go as heavy as possible with a high heart-rate.  Before you start the workout, you will probably know which round will be your “tough” round.  This is the round that is closest to your 1 rep max.  The closer you get to this round, the more you will have to focus on technique.  Your goal, other than which round you want to get to, should be to not have any misses on the squat snatches.  Take as much time as you need to setup for the squat snatches, but keep mind of the time cutoffs.  If you are in the workout and are close to a time cutoff, push to get through the squat snatches so that you have another 4 minutes of work.  You can always take a break after finishing a round, but you can’t keep going if time runs out.

The key points of the workout are to keep your heart-rate down as much as possible and take the time needed to not miss on the squat snatches.  Keep pushing and good luck.

For the first week of the 2017 CrossFit Open, we saw dumbbells for the first time ever, so of course Castro felt the need to step up his game for week 2 and double the dumbbells.  Week 2 of the Open brings front rack walking dumbbell walking lunges, toes-to-bars and dumbbell power cleans, with a bit of a twist after round two by switching the toes-to-bars with bar muscle-ups.  Fu

Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 12 minutes of:
2 rounds of:
– 50-ft. weighted walking lunge
– 16 toes-to-bars
– 8 power cleans
Then, 2 rounds of:
– 50-ft. weighted walking lunge
– 16 bar muscle-ups
– 8 power cleans
Etc., alternating between toes-to-bars and bar muscle-ups every 2 rounds.

When looking at this workout, the first thing that comes to mind is “holy forearms.”  The only time that you get a break from holding something is between movements, or when you voluntarily take a break.  This is also the first workout that holds one of the higher skilled movements, the bar muscle up, which will slow down a lot of athletes.

As the bar muscle ups start in round 3, this workout is done different for athletes that are proficient in muscle ups vs. those that aren’t as good, or who have never done one before.  If you are the athlete that has never done a bar muscle up before, but might be close, push yourself to do the workout RX and get that first one.  You’ll never forget that feeling when/if it happens, and with the adrenaline of the Open, there is a good chance you might see it!  That being said, if you aren’t as good at bar muscle ups and think you might get stuck at the first set of 16, your strategy is to go as hard as possible until you get to the muscle ups.  This will give you as much time to work on the muscle ups and will also help with the tiebreak, which is the time at the end of the round.

For those of you that are proficient with bar muscle ups, as stated above, this is going to be a forearm buster.  The only place that you might have a chance to hide is during the lunges.  Try to find a position with the dumbbells that is comfortable so you can rest them on your shoulders to take as much of a break as you can on your grip.  Although there are only 8 cleans, this is something we would recommend you hook grip.

Take calculated small breaks.  Once your grip goes, it is going to take time for it to come back, so make sure to take small breaks.  As you may have seen with the games athletes, neither one of them completed all of the toes-to-bars unbroken and the dropped on the lunges after the first one.  Set the dumbbells down on each trip to give your self a quick breather.  If you are feeling good jump straight from the toes-to-bars into the cleans and set the dumbbells down on the SEVENTH clean.  This will give you a small break and have you use the 8th clean to get you into the front rack for the lunges.  It is ok to break between the toes-to-bars and cleans, but you should still set down the dumbbells on the 7th rep.

This will be a completely different feeling workout than last week.  Push, but make sure to take small calculated breaks to save your forearms.  If you are on the fence about scaled or RX, go RX.  Five feet of walking lunges puts you ahead of all scaled scores, and if you get that first bar muscle up, this could be your favorite workout.

There seems to be a common theme over the years of “go hard & fast” when athletes complete their CrossFit Open workouts.  We get it, it’s exciting to compete against everyone else, but it’s also difficult, especially in long workouts, to get the best score you can without any real strategy.  This is very evident when people redo workouts and get drastically better results.  This year we are here to give you strategies & tips for each Open WOD to hopefully help you get the best score you can.

The 2017 Open brings something we have never seen before, dumbbells.  That’s right, the first workout has dumbbell snatches, and lots of them.  It pairs the dumbbell snatches with burpee box jump-overs.  See below for the complete 17.1 WOD.

For time (20 minute time cap):
10 dumbbell snatches
15 burpee box jump-overs
20 dumbbell snatches
15 burpee box jump-overs
30 dumbbell snatches
15 burpee box jump-overs
40 dumbbell snatches
15 burpee box jump-overs
50 dumbbell snatches
15 burpee box jump-overs

This is going to be a long workout.  For some of the best in the biz, we saw scores in the 10 minute range for the women and 12 minute range for the men.  For the rest of us mortals, expect to go much closer to the time cap or hit the time cap.  With a workout this long, the biggest challenge is going to be starting out too fast and burning out.  Pick a pace that you can stick with for at least the first half of the workout and then re-evaluate at the 10 minute mark.  If you still feel fresh, pick it up a little.  If you feel like you are about to keel over, slow down a bit, but don’t stop moving.  The key to this is that you keep moving the whole time.

There are a lot of reps in this workout, which means that you will want to be as efficient as possible.  An inefficient movement that is performed over 200 times will result in a lot of wasted energy.  On the snatches, make sure that you use your hips for every rep.  At the beginning it might feel like you don’t need to do this, but by the end of the workout it will pay in dividends.  Focus on good reps and keep the dumbbell as close to your body as possible.  Place the dumbbell where you want it for the next rep.  On the burpee box jump-overs, don’t waste energy standing up on the box.  Use as little energy as possible to get over the box.  You can recover by slowing slightly on the burpees.

Again, pace, pace, pace and keep moving.  Good luck out there, enjoy the pain, and stay in it until you are done!

Each month Overland Park CrossFit recognizes a member who exemplifies our values and motivates others in the gym to push themselves with encouraging words. February’s Athlete of the Month is Bethanie White. Bethanie was chosen because of her consistency in the gym and positive attitude. It’s inspirational for other members to see someone’s hard work paying off! Learn more below about Bethanie!

1. What were your thoughts after your first CrossFit workout?

A mixture of “Am I Dying?” and “I can’t wait to come back tomorrow!”

2. What has been your favorite workout?

3. What is your favorite cheat meal?

Spaghetti and grilled cheese

4. Where do you work?     

Blue Dart Ventures in online marketing

5. What do you like to do outside of work?

I love home remodeling. I constantly have a project I am working on or I go stir crazy.

6. What advice would you give a newbie just starting at OPCF?

Show up often and just keep going – sometimes that is the hardest part.

7. What is your favorite lift?

The snatch. I am horrible at it, but that’s why I love it – it’s my nemesis. And just so darn sexy once you get it down 🙂

8. What’s your biggest “GOAT”?

Ring Muscle-Ups – 4 years in and still can’t nail one.

9. What changes have you seen in yourself since starting at OPCF?  

Other than physically I have eaten better and taken care of myself outside of the gym more than I have in the past.

10. What is your biggest improvement or proudest accomplishment thus far?

I hit a 100# snatch after only being able to hit about 70# prior to that because of form. The coaches here are so good!

11. What is something you have always wanted to do but haven’t yet?

Sky diving or going cage diving with sharks.

Overland Park CrossFit is very much symbolic of what the sport represents which is continually evolving to be the best version you.  In the past couple weeks, Overland Park CrossFit has continued to change with new renovations which we believe will to help us accommodate our growing community and their needs.  We are excited to share this new space with our members and hope to see lots of new PRs to break the space.

With the new renovations, we thought it would be fun to take a look back as many of our members might not remember the “good old days”.  We thought we would use this as a time to take a trip down memory lane and also thank all the members that made where we are today possible, especially the ones that have used their “functional fitness” to help.

To the OG’s (Original Gangsters) that started with the park WODs, these first pictures might look a little familiar. OPCF took over our current building from a gymnastics facility, hence the crazy colors and mirrors.  Before that, it was a place called “Wacky Banana”.  Could you imagine if we were called “Wacky Banana CrossFit”? As you can see from the pictures below, there was a lot of work that was needed to make this into a CrossFit gym. We actually went 2 months without a rig, so no pull ups or squats racks.  Lots of body weight movements, which we all know can sometimes be worse!

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After a few months of hard work, we ended up with what you see below. A fully matted gym with our trusty wall-mounted rig. You actually might recognize the rig from our recent remodel ;). We used the wall mounted rig for a little over 3 years, until we got the rig you all know and love today, Ruby.

When we got Ruby, we didn’t get rid of our first rig. How can you just forget about your first?  Instead we held onto it, honestly not knowing when/if we would ever need or want to use it again.  Luckily our hording tendencies paid off and with our recent renovations, we actually brought it back to life!  We now have almost twice as many squat racks and a great place to do all our goat and accessory work. If you haven’t seen it, you need to get back to the gym or if you are not an OPCF member, you might just become one if you come check out this space.

We are excited about the new changes at OPCF and after looking back at where we started, we’ve said it once, but we’ll say it again to all our members… THANK YOU! Thank you for your help in building OPCF into the best community and gym around!

Have you ever thought about how much time you spend at work verses your free time?  If you haven’t, maybe stop reading, and don’t do the math, because you might have a mid-life crisis or quit your job and never come back.  The reason for this, is I’m about to tell you that almost half of your waking hours each week are spent at your job.   In general, people spend 40 hours at work (the lucky ones) and 50-60 hours using their free time on evenings/weekends.

For active people, this can be a jarring number when you think about how immobile you are throughout the day, especially if you sit at a desk for your job.  Sure most days you might be able to squeeze in a workout, but do feel that you are just offsetting the damage that you are doing all day by sitting verses actually improving your health?  What if I told you there are ways to take back your work hours?  No, I don’t know how to not have a job and get paid (if someone knows, let me know) but it’s just about finding the time, whether that be 5 minutes or 15 minutes during each day and taking them back from the man!  Below are a few ideas of how to be more active during the workday.

• Park at the back of the parking lot. If you are like the rest of us, you are probably already late.  What’s 5 more minutes?

• Take the stairs. Have to dress up for work and think I’m crazy? I took 7 flights of stairs, every day, for 4 years after college in heels.  It can be done, and yes I got lazy and started taking the elevator with the “rest of them”.  Let’s go back to the stairs together.

• Start a health challenge at work. Rather than spend your time complaining about your boss, why not talk about ways to get healthy with your co-workers while taking a walk.

• Go to the meeting instead of dialing in. Yes, I know, technology is a beautiful thing, but IT’S KILLING US.

• Exercise at your desk or in a meeting without people knowing. Flex or tighten your abs and glutes for 30 seconds and repeat 5 to 10 times.  Multitasking on a whole new level.

Do you hear rowing is in the workout and immediately think “this is going to be bad”, or worse yet, “I’m going to skip that one”? Instead of skipping a WOD, why not learn some tips to help alleviate that fear, get you through rowing WODs, and possibly, dare I say, “enjoy” them. Learning simple concepts like the appropriate foot position, damper setting, and pace to shoot for can all improve your success on the rower.

Foot Position

During a WOD, do you get on a rower after someone else and leave the foot position where the last athlete left it? Did you know your foot position on the rower should be relative to your height? The taller you are, the lower your feet need to be to the ground. If your foot position is too high, your legs will limit your stroke length at the flywheel. If your feet are too low, your leg drive won’t be optimal. Once you find a position that is good for you, setup on this every time you jump on a rower and create consistency.

Damper Setting

As you pull on the rower handle, it pulls the fan (flywheel) inside the rower. The damper will control the amount of air that is pulled into the fan on each stroke. A low damper setting will allow less air into the fan, which makes it easier to spin. The converse is true if you increase the damper setting, more air is allowed in the fan, which makes it harder to spin the fan. The more air that the fan takes in, the quicker the fan will spin down. Think of it like rowing a boat on the water. The heavier boat correlates to a higher damper setting. It takes more powerful strokes to get the heavy boat moving quickly whereas a light boat would require quicker strokes with less force. Again, this is something that you will want to play around with to get comfortable with and it will depend on the workout. A lower damper setting will hurt the lungs more and a higher damper setting will tax the muscles more. Think about what other movements you are doing in the WOD and experiment.

Rowing Pace

Now that you have a good feel for how to setup on a rower, you want to find what a good pace is for you. This is probably the most important thing to get right when there is rowing in a workout. A rower can turn into a torture device pretty quick if you pick a pace that is too fast. A good way to find a pace that is good for you is to row 500 meters as fast as you can, while keeping the pace on the rower within a 5 second window. If you try it one day and start your 500m at 1:50 and end at 2:15, don’t count this. Come back another time, start your pace at 1:55 and see if you can complete the 500m without going over a 2:00 pace. Once you find a pace that will push you in a 500m and maintain a 5 second window, you can use this as your baseline pace. It will depend on the workout that you are doing, but if the workout has a shorter row, say 250m, try and stick with your baseline pace. If the workout calls for a longer row, you will want to slow down your pace. Again, this will take a little trial and error before you find something that works for you on short and long workouts. Either way, if you have other movements in the workout and you push too hard in the row, it will take much longer to recover before you can jump back on the other movements. Try slowing your pace by 5 or 10 seconds to feel the difference in your recovery and see if you can get back to the other movements quicker.

Rowing is a trial and error exercise to a see what works for you, but once you get the foot position, damper setting, and pace figured out, you will hopefully feel more comfortable when a rowing workout is announced. You might even come to enjoy them. Good luck testing!

Each month Overland Park CrossFit recognizes a member who exemplifies our values and motivates others in the gym to push themselves with encouraging words. January’s Athlete of the Month is Louis Palma. We consider ourselves lucky to have a hard working, consistent, and positive athlete like Louis represent OPCF! Learn more below about Louis!

1. What were your thoughts after your first CrossFit workout?

Holy sh*t I’m not in shape.

2. What has been your favorite workout?

 

3. What is your favorite cheat meal?

Chips. I love chips.  Man, do I love chips.

4. Where do you work?     

TD Ameritrade.  I manage mobile trading. 

5. What do you like to do outside of work?

Spend time with my family.  I have a 4 year old (Wesley), and a 3 year old (Lucy).  They are the best things ever.  My wife is pretty great too.  I love movies and TV as well.  I’m working on becoming a professional screenwriter as well.

6. What advice would you give a newbie just starting at OPCF?

Scale everything.  Learn proper form, then increase weight and reps.  Seen too many people blow themselves up.  Start slow.  No need to go 6 days a week in your first month.

7. What is your favorite lift?

Snatch.  When you do it right, which is rare for me, it’s effortless and a thing of beauty.

8. What’s your biggest “GOAT”?

Pistols and hspu’s.  My knees hate pistols and hspu’s are just awful.  Maybe because I’m too lanky.  All I know is I hope I never see myself do a hspu.  Its got to look ridiculous.

9. What changes have you seen in yourself since starting at OPCF?  

Going back to my answer on question 1.  I’m now in shape!

10. What is your biggest improvement or proudest accomplishment thus far?

My proudest accomplishment is that after 7 years I’m still able to do CrossFit and hit a PR or two every now and then.  I love CrossFit.  I hope to do it forever.

11. What is something you have always wanted to do but haven’t yet?

185 snatch.  I’m getting it this year… hopefully before Vince.

Living in middle of the U.S. we get to experience all the seasons.  How lucky are we?  Well, maybe we’ll ask again during those perfect two weeks before and after summer!  Regardless, right now it’s January, and its football season which means two things, cold weather and the Chiefs made the playoffs.  Everyone (minus those few who root for others) in Kansas City are excited and most likely already knows where they’ll be watching the game this weekend if they aren’t the lucky few in a suite at Arrowhead.  Yes, I said suite as the rest of you that will be in the freezing rain are what we call “die hard” fans!  Power to you!

If you are like the majority of us and have a watch party to go to, I’m sure you are looking forward to watching the game with friends and family but also looking forward to all the good food that comes along with it.  But my question to you is, why does socializing always have to mean crushing your diet to the point where you have to say “I’ll start again Monday”?  What if I told you I found the perfect chili recipe to go with cold weather and a Chiefs win?  Not to mention, it’s also very easy to make.

So put on your Chiefs gear, and bring something to they party that not only tastes good, but is good for you.

Turkey Chili Ingredients:

• Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
• White or Yellow Onion
• Garlic
• Ground Turkey
• Petite Diced Tomatoes
• Tri-Bean Blend
• Jalapeño
• Paprika
• Black Pepper
• Dried Oregano
• Chili Powder

Get the full recipe and instructions here.  Added bonus, along with the recipe, the macro breakdown is also provided and it’s a great balance of a high protein, low carbohydrate, and low fat meal.

GO CHIEFS!

source: www.tigerfitness.com