Mat at the NEQ,

Saturday WOD
75 Power Snatches for time (75, 55)

There is only 1 class on the fourth at 7:00 am.
No Classes on Sunday.  Enjoy the weekend.
 How is your nutrition this holiday weekend?  Don't be fooled.  Getting lean is all about  eating clean and training hard. 
You are only fooling yourself if you think doing "abs" and eating whole wheat bagels is the path to getting ripped.  Ask
Heather when the last time was she did "abs" was or how often she eats grains...

"Dead Push"
10 rounds of:
Deadlifts (135, 95)
Push ups

Big Dawgs: 15 reps
Pack:  12 reps
Pups: 9 reps

Saturday's Schedule:  Join us at 7:00am on July 4th.  No classes on Sunday.

Equipment Sale:  We are going to sell three of our treadmills.  These are commercial grade
and retail new for $5,994.  Check them out Here.  Each one was just serviced. 
We are going to sell them for $1,000.  Let me know if you are interested. 


The sixers rip through the Relay Race...


High Carb Diets Can Cause Heart Attacks
From Conditioning Research:
In a landmark study, new research from Tel Aviv University now shows exactly how these high carb foods increase the risk for heart problems.
Enormous peaks indicating arterial stress were found in the high glycemic index groups: the cornflakes and sugar group. "We knew high glycemic foods were bad for the heart. Now we have a mechanism that shows how," says Dr. Shechter. "Foods like cornflakes, white bread, french fries, and sweetened soda all put undue stress on our arteries. We've explained for the first time how high glycemic carbs can affect the progression of heart disease." During the consumption of foods high in sugar, there appears to be a temporary and sudden dysfunction in the endothelial walls of the arteries.
Read the article in Science Daily

"Partner Relay"
 20 rounds for time of:
12 Box Jumps
30 yard Sprint
7 Burpees
30 yard Sprint

In this workout teams of two will complete 20 rounds (10 each).  One athlete must rest while the other works. 

Mat is so committed to his nutrition that he got a tatoo...

Laura H!!!!  When did you get so strong? 

"Eva"
5 rounds for time of:
800 meter Run
30 KB Swings (70, 53)
30 Pull ups

This is not a typo.  Yes... it is 5 rounds.  Yes...the swings are that heavy, And Yes, you will be running 2.5 miles and doing 150 pull ups.  It has been said that "Eva" is the hardest of all CrossFit workouts.  Are you tough enough to take her down?

Schedule Update:  We will be holding one class at 7:00 am class on July 4th.

Congrats to everyone that hit a new Personal Record (PR) during th CrossFit Total.  
One of the more impressive PRs was Paul B adding 60 lbs to his back squat!

One arm presses and dead lifts...

CrossFit Total
Back Squat 1-1-1
Shoulder Press 1-1-1
Deadlift 1-1-1

Schedule Update:  For the summer (July and August) there will be NO Sunday classes, or 4:00 pm Classes during the week. 

Check out this sea barbells during the nine-30 1-arm push press - deadlift wod...


The following New York Times article is written by Gretchen Reynolds 

Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week?
A few years ago, researchers at the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Japan put rats through a series of swim tests with surprising results. They had one group of rodents paddle in a small pool for six hours, this long workout broken into two sessions of three hours each. A second group of rats were made to stroke furiously through short, intense bouts of swimming, while carrying ballast to increase their workload. After 20 seconds, the weighted rats were scooped out of the water and allowed to rest for 10 seconds, before being placed back in the pool for another 20 seconds of exertion. The scientists had the rats repeat these brief, strenuous swims 14 times, for a total of about four-and-a-half minutes of swimming. Afterward, the researchers tested each rat’s muscle fibers and found that, as expected, the rats that had gone for the six-hour swim showed preliminary molecular changes that would increase endurance. But the second rodent group, which exercised for less than five minutes also showed the same molecular changes.

The potency of interval training is nothing new. Many athletes have been straining through interval sessions once or twice a week along with their regular workout for years. But what researchers have been looking at recently is whether humans, like that second group of rats, can increase endurance with only a few minutes of strenuous exercise, instead of hours? Could it be that most of us are spending more time than we need to trying to get fit?

The answer, a growing number of these sports scientists believe, may be yes.

“There was a time when the scientific literature suggested that the only way to achieve endurance was through endurance-type activities,” such as long runs or bike rides or, perhaps, six-hour swims, says Martin Gibala, PhD, chairman of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. But ongoing research from Gibala’s lab is turning that idea on its head. In one of the group’s recent studies, Gibala and his colleagues had a group of college students, who were healthy but not athletes, ride a stationary bike at a sustainable pace for between 90 and 120 minutes. Another set of students grunted through a series of short, strenuous intervals: 20 to 30 seconds of cycling at the highest intensity the riders could stand. After resting for four minutes, the students pedaled hard again for another 20 to 30 seconds, repeating the cycle four to six times (depending on how much each person could stand), “for a total of two to three minutes of very intense exercise per training session,” Gibala says.

Each of the two groups exercised three times a week. After two weeks, both groups showed almost identical increases in their endurance (as measured in a stationary bicycle time trial), even though the one group had exercised for six to nine minutes per week, and the other about five hours.

Additionally, molecular changes that signal increased fitness were evident equally in both groups. “The number and size of the mitochondria within the muscles” of the students had increased significantly, Gibala says, a change that, before this work, had been associated almost exclusively with prolonged endurance training. Since mitochondria enable muscle cells to use oxygen to create energy, “changes in the volume of the mitochondria can have a big impact on endurance performance.” In other words, six minutes or so a week of hard exercise (plus the time spent warming up, cooling down, and resting between the bouts of intense work) had proven to be as good as multiple hours of working out for achieving fitness.

The short, intense workouts aided in weight loss, too, although Gibala hadn’t been studying that effect. “The rate of energy expenditure remains higher longer into recovery” after brief, high-intensity exercise than after longer, easier workouts, Gibala says. Other researchers have found that similar, intense, brief sessions of exercise improve cardiac health, even among people with heart disease.

There’s a catch, though. Those six minutes, if they’re to be effective, must hurt. “We describe it as an ‘all-out’ effort,” Gibala says. You’ll be straying “well out of your comfort zone.”


Hmmmmm....ever hear of CrossFit?

Beau at the CrossFit Games Qualifier in Alany.

Monday WOD
Two rounds of:
Right arm barbell push-press 12 reps
Left arm deadlift 12 reps
Run 800 meters
Left arm barbell push-press 12 reps
Right arm deadlift 12 reps
Run 800 meter

Have you gotten faster?  Eric has...


The following excerpts are from the article God's Workout by Virginia Hefferman in The New York Times.

The superfit walk among us. They saunter or strut, depending on whether they’re showcasing their magnificent agility or their oxlike strength. They ignore the chatter in the health media over treadmill technique and pedometer steps. They scoff even at seemingly rigorous practices like Mysore Ashtanga yoga and marathon training. They are America’s self-styled fitness elite, adherents of a punishing online exercise regime called CrossFit, which orders its followers to cultivate a distinctly martial — not to say paranoid — ideal of “physical preparedness.”

CrossFitters offer themselves as evidence that people are capable of more than merely giving up sugar for Splenda and taking the stairs occasionally; according to the CrossFit creed, they can and should also be prepared to fell trees, tame bulls and carry families of four on their backs. Olympians, soldiers, police officers, firefighters and devoted fitness amateurs convene on the site, reveling in max squats and circus-strongman stunts, which they repeat as many as 100 times per workout. This is exercise not for vanity or for longevity but for an imagined moment of heroism that may never come.

The enemies in the eyes of the CrossFit crowd are “Stairmaster chumps” (who log long, drowsy hours on the machines but huff and puff on actual stairs) and myopic “specialists” — athletes or exercisers who neglect versatility in order to refine one or two skills. The CrossFitters’ critique has chastened at least one specialist. An essay by a triathlete named Tom Demerly titled “How Fit Are We?” appeared on a biking blog, conceding that if triathletes “found ourselves in a jam that required overall physical fitness to survive, we’d probably be in trouble.” Further admitting that he could barely do a single pull-up, Demerly went on to praise the fitness of a CrossFit type he had met named Joe Sparks, who “gave a demonstration using a 50-pound kettlebell making it look like he was maneuvering a tennis ball.”

"Michael"
3 rounds for time of:
800 meter Run
50 Back Extensions
50 Abmat Sit-up

Get Off the Ibuprofen People

Good luck to everyone doing the Cohasset Triathlon on Sunday.

"Nicole"
Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
Run 400 meters
Max rep Pull-ups without coming off the bar.

Your score is the total number of pull ups you complete.

Forzen John scopes out the scene as Anne does the heavy lifting...


Laura leans into it as she pulls the 70 lb sled uphill...


A look at the AMRAP 20 Barbell Complex...


Written by Patrick Cummings of AgainFaster.com
I was sitting beneath the judge’s tent at the Northeast Qualifiers, in a beach chair real low to the pavement. A hundred yards away, barbells and bumper plates crashed to the ground. I could hear the pull-up bars shake under the momentum of kips. Rafael lowered himself into the seat next to me.

 

I don’t remember how we got to talking about it, but eventually he mentioned his father. He said there was no way his father could get in and out of a chair like the ones we were in. He said, “I love my father, but I don’t want to end up like him.”

If he isn’t already, Rafael is close to turning forty, though you’d never guess it. He’s a fighter, a trainer, an athlete, and a constant stream of encouragement. You’re always just a little bit better when Raf is nearby, and as we sat there, the irony of what we were talking about didn’t escape me.

It was a weekend to celebrate athleticism, to marvel at the virility, viability and ferociousness of youth, and we were talking about what it was like to grow old. All around us wandered the chiseled bodies of young gods and goddesses, but Rafael and I were talking about nursing homes. We were talking about our fathers.

My father isn’t in bad shape. He’s in his fifties and stays active. My mother sees to it that he eats relatively well, and when he’s not battling some knee or shoulder problem, he gets to the gym a couple times a week. I’ve tried to introduce him to CrossFit, but he’s a man of routine. Twenty minutes on the stationary bike, some seated shoulder presses and leg extensions and he’s happy. Every now and again, he’ll call me and tell me he got on the Concept2 at the Y, just like I showed him.

So maybe I shouldn’t be worried, but I am. I’ve watched his mother start showing signs of Alzheimer’s. At dinner with her, I’ve watched him put on a smile as she tells us the same story she told us ten minutes prior, and I can’t help but wonder if that smile will be mine some day. I want him to stop eating pasta and bread, but I’m fighting against years of homemade Italian cooking and I don’t know how hard to push. I don’t know how to tell him it’s because I don’t want him to end up like her.

Rafael and I are sitting in beach chairs real low to the pavement and he says, “I love my father, but I don’t want to end up like him,” and I start to wonder if my old man could get in and out of the chair. I don’t know the answer.

It’s so easy to get lost in the vanity of now. In the mirror’s reflection. It’s so easy to focus on the Fran time and the max deadlift and the consecutive pull-ups. What’s harder to remember is that we aren’t doing this for today.

It’s nice to look good with your clothes off, but it’s nicer to know that for the rest of your life you’ll be able to take those clothes off without the assistance of a certified health care provider. That you’ll be able to get across the street without the assistance of a traffic cop. 

The choices we make in youth give color to our future selves.

What we’re doing, it isn’t about today.

"Team Crusher" in action.

Friday WOD
As Many Rounds As Possible in  20 minutes of:
3 Thrusters
6 Hang Power Cleans
9 Deadlifts

Men:  135 lbs
Women: 95 lbs
Scale weights as needed.

We had six women do thier first rope climb today!!!

A whole lotta people got a whole lotta stronger today.  Great job on the 3 rep front squats.

"Team Crusher"
Teams of 3 complete the following for time.

1200 meter Run (400 m. each)
3 Rope Climbs
400 meter Sled pull
300 Abmat Sit-ups
1200 meter Run (400 m. each)

Only one athlete may work at a time.  The other two athletes are responsible for holding a 45# plate.  These athletes can pass the plate back and forth or partner up on the plate, but there is a 21 burpee penalty (per team) if the weight hits the ground. 

Wow.  What a team of rockstars...


A number of our athletes are competing in the Cohasset Triathlon this Sunday.  Brian Smith and Susan Singer (both awesome people) are looking for your support.  Here is a note from Susan...
 
Hey Crossfitter's,

This Sunday, many of us will be driving to Cohasset, Massachusetts, in the early morning hours, to enter and race in the 2009 Cohasset Triathlon  http://www.cohassettri.com/index.php.  This race is part of a series which is partnering with JDRF - Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, to raise money to help find a cure for Type 1 Diabetes. 

Brian Smith and I are part of Team MND.    Our team name has grown from those we wish to support: Mya (M) is a lovely, vibrant 8 year old girl who was diagnosed 2 years ago and is Brian Smith's daughter; Norma (N) from Needham, MA, is a wife and mother of 2 terrific children whose husband John will be racing for her; and David (D), my nephew, whose story is an inspiration to me.  Together, they make Team MND, and together they motivate us to swim one more lap, pedal one more mile, and run our hearts out!

Please go to our secure link HERE and read our stories and consider donating to such a worthy cause and terrific event.  All of the proceeds go to benefit JDRF.  

Thank you so much!!!



Brian Smith and Susan Singer