Deadlift
5 @ 58.5% 1RM
5 @ 67.5% 1RM
Max Reps @ 76.5% 1RM
3 Rounds:
10 Back Extension
10 Toes To Bar
Trey and I joined CFES in May
2009 and since then have become some of your most vocal ambassadors to
our family and friends. We’ve both been active and athletic all of our
lives, but were never able to find, until now, the fitness program we
wanted to stick with for the rest of our lives. I’ve been an
equestrian, a distance runner, a kickboxer, and a boxer, but I was
always plagued by repetitive stress injuries that made me frustrated and
led me to look for something different to stay in shape. (That, and I
also decided that receiving repeated blows to the head was really not a
smart, long-term work productivity strategy.) Trey has been a BMX
racer, basketball player, kickboxer, runner, and now a mountain biker,
but he too suffered repeated injuries that forced him to lay off his
favorite activities to heal up. Add to that the fact that we both have
sedentary, but stressful jobs that require us to have a physical outlet
if we want to stay healthy and productive.
Saturday morning after driving by and curiously surfing the website. I
had read all about WODs, the CrossFit Games, and the philosophy behind
CrossFit, but I still wasn’t quite sure what I was in for. I was
treated to an awesomely challenging but fun workout and came home bright
red, sweaty and exhilarated. When I walked in the door, I told Trey,
“I found a place we’re both going to love. You’re coming with me next
Saturday.” He tried it the following week, loved it like I did, and we
both joined up immediately.
classes three to four times a week, religiously, and we’ve never been so
enthusiastic about working out. It used to be hard to drag myself out
of bed at 5:00 to go work out, but I did it out of a sense of duty
thinking that I had to get it over with so I could get on with my day.
It was one more obligation on my to-do list to check off. Now, although
it’s still hard to get out of bed, it’s because I’m tired or sore from
whatever we did here the previous day, but I get up because I can’t wait
to find out what we’re doing next. And it’s now the best thing I do
all day.
accomplish things here that we never expected to do, or ever realized we
wanted to do, but now we can’t imagine doing anything else. Before
CrossFit, I couldn’t do “real” pull-ups, or pushups, and I had never
done serious weightlifting. Now, I love heavy lift days, and I’m
thrilled to be able to deadlift 1 ½ times my body weight, lift 120
pounds over my head and see progress in the number of “real” pull-ups
and pushups I can do. Trey broke his kneecap into little pieces as a
kid and was warned never to do deep knee squats and told he might not
even be able to walk by the time he was 40. Now, at age 40, with proper
instruction on form, he’s doing heavy squats with no problems, and his
knees feel better than ever. Trey has also lost 25 pounds since May
just by following the Zone diet and doing these workouts. I’ve lost
about 5, since I’m not as strict about following it as he is (New Year’s
resolution!), but I’ve still seen significant changes in my form that
make me pretty happy.
very impatient with instructors who aren’t in better shape than us or
who don’t push us beyond our comfort zone. No worries with that at
CrossFit! Justin, Travis and Brooke strike the right balance of
inspiration, motivation, instruction and education. Having been screamed
at by riding, running and boxing coaches all my life, I’ve found
there’s a very difficult balance to be struck between coddling and
criticizing people to find what motivates them to be their best. Spare
the criticism and people get complacent. Praise too little and
criticize too much and people get discouraged and quit trying. Whatever
the right balance is, the CFES coaches have found it, which is why we
keep coming back for more.
the CFES and other CrossFit sites, I noticed a lot of talk about how
nobody needed to do anything but CrossFit to stay in shape for other
sports. We already understood the value of cross-training and
weight-lifting to excel in sports like running and biking, but didn’t
really appreciate how well this program has prepared us for everything
else until now. Trey’s still an avid mountain biker, and despite not
getting to go out and ride as often as he would like, he’s able to blaze
up steep trails with no trouble. I joined a relay team for the
California International Marathon, and despite not having run more than 2
miles at one time since May, I was able to run 7 miles in December with
no problem at a 9-minute pace, fast for me. So, yes, now we can agree
that you really don’t need to spend hours and hours pounding the
pavement, spinning to nowhere, climbing the stairmaster to
god-knows-where, or lifting little plastic Barbie weights 600 times to
get fit enough to tackle just about anything you want to do.
would be enough to keep us coming back, but one of the reasons we
l-o-v-e it here is the community of supportive, positive, and
interesting people. From day one, the coaches and students treated us
like we belonged here, regardless of the shape we were in when we
started. The other reason is that we’ve finally found something we can
do together, that we both enjoy, that we both excel at and can challenge
ourselves in our own ways. We’ve spent a long time (20 years!) trying
to find activities we could both like without much success until now.
Trey suffered through a few 50K trail ultra-marathons to be able to
spend time with me. I almost killed myself on a mountain bike to be
with him. Here, we don’t have to “put up with” doing anything we don’t
like just to spend time with each other. We plan on doing this together
for at least another 20 years, so we offer CFES a special thanks for
that.
