Monthly: July 2011

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Outside the Games Bubble

Some people don’t do CrossFit, and Emily Beers discovers what they think of us and our antics.

The path to becoming a CrossFitter looks similar to most of us:

We rapidly get fitter, stronger, faster. We cut out gluten and sugar (although I’m still working on eliminating Skittles from my diet). We suddenly have more energy. We become addicted to personal bests.

Soon, we find that most of our friends are CrossFitters. We start dating a CrossFitter. We even develop a sort of CrossFit humor and jokes that make only CrossFitters laugh.

And sometimes we forget that our CrossFit bubble is just that—a world in a bubble. With a million dollars up for grabs this weekend and ESPN broadcasters on site, it often feels like CrossFit is officially mainstream. But there’s still a big world out there, and it’s full of people who haven’t heard of a thruster.

Never does this become more obvious than when you saturate one city with hundreds of CrossFit athletes, like this weekend in L.A.

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CrossFit Changed My Life: Sue Pepe

“Just show up” was the advice given to Sue Pepe by her son-in-law. After two weeks of CrossFit, she was at a crossroads of whether to continue or give up. Pepe decided to challenge herself.

“No matter what the workout was, I came and I just kept repeating that same message to myself: ‘Just show up,’” Pepe says.

Pepe is a 61-year-old CrossFitter at Hybrid Athletics, home of Rob Orlando.

“I had been sedentary for over 20 years and wanted to get physically fit and lose weight,” she says. “When I first started, I couldn’t even run. I was walking.”

Now she says she is able to run around the yard with her grandchildren and do things she never thought possible.

“I’m actually more fit than I ever was,” Pepe says. “That’s been the biggest thing for me: getting my life back.”

9min 14sec

Additional reading: Seniors and Kids by Greg Glassman, published Feb. 1, 2003.

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Movement of the Week: The Hadza Squat

Have you ever noticed that toddlers are champion squatters? They sit into the deep squat with total ease, hang out there for a while, play with some toys, look around aimlessly, eat some dirt, poop their pants, get up again, walk three steps, and then drop down smooth as silk into the deep squat again. And then over and over again, like twenty times in ten minutes, with no sense of effort or fatigue at all….

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SUNDAY 11.07.31

Garlic Shrimp Pasta with Red Peppers
Inherent Appetite

“First we gotta peel them shrimp! I don't bother with deveining but instructions are there for that too if you're interested. Heat a pan to low-med heat and put in some fat (olive oil, bacon grease, coconut oil, etc.). While that's getting hot poke a few holes in your spaghetti squash and throw it in the microwave for 10-15mins. Chop up your garlic and throw in the heated fat. We're trying to get some garlic flavoring into our fat here. Next up toss in the shrimp, powder with paprika and stir around for 2min. Toss the sliced red bell peppers in next and mix around. Once the shrimp are pink throw the contents of the pan into a strainer and let some of the fat drip off. Turn the heat up to med-high and dump in the can of tomatoes. Throw in some cayenne pepper and crushed red pepper. Cook this until all the liquid has burnt off and you're left with some tomatoes with a little paste. Turn the heat back down to low and pour in the shrimp mixture. W
hen the spaghetti squash is done in the microwave, remove and cut in half down it's length. Remove the seeds and then scrape out the insides with a fork. You'll find this looks very similar to spaghetti noodles. Throw this in the pan as well. Mix everything up, toss on some s&p, and let simmer to mix the flavors for about 10min. Serve. …”
…Read More!

Posted via email from thefoodee’s posterous

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Only in America

At the 2011 Reebok CrossFit Games, Canuck Emily Beers learns a few lessons from her American neighbours/neighbors.

I grew up believing—call it assuming, even—that the United States was the greatest country in the world. And I’m not even American.

As a child, I always thought of the United States as that friend you couldn’t seem to beat at anything.

I’m a proud Canadian; I really am. But there are two things I think we could learn from our neighbors that would make us more successful, as individuals and as a nation.

1. How to embrace athletics.

2. How to have self-belief.

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Inside a Strongman Seminar: Atlas Stones

What do kegs, yokes and concrete balls have to do with CrossFit?

Join Rob Orlando of Hybrid Athletics at San Francisco CrossFit as he takes coaches and athletes through strongman movements and equipment.

In Part 1, Orlando teaches the proper technique for lifting atlas stones. In a sumo stance with a flat back and the hips below the knees, you are in an ideal starting position. Just like a deadlift, your arms remain long for the lift off the ground. From there, your knees come in to create a shelf and you cradle the stone in a “cobra position.”

At this point, your back rounds, but you don’t lose tension.

“Everything is really tight. He’s trying to crush the stone into the center of his body,” Orlando says of his demonstrator, Timmy Burke.

The next step is getting the stone to your shoulder by rolling it up your body, not lifting it with your arms. Orlando explains it as using the power generated from your hips like whipping a rope stretched out on the ground.

“That’s the kind of energy we’re trying to create there,” he says. “The power should be so extreme that it should come up in one motion.”

In Part 2, the athletes take to the stones to practice the technique, and Orlando shares the common faults and how to fix them.

For those lifting with their arms, Burke has some advice.

“Stay with that roll. That’s what you’re looking for. You want that violent hip pop,” he says. “Everything’s in the hips, especially in strongman.”

Part 1
7min 31sec

Part 2
6min 48sec

Additional audio: CrossFit Radio Episode 135 by Justin Judkins, published Sept. 1, 2010.