Changing Lives!

Hey everyone,

Even though the gym is closed, I decided to still make some posts on here from time to time about the fitness endeavors I have going on.

The most exciting one is that I’ve been training my Mom. She is has never been athletic in her life and is overweight. She was really afraid to workout with me, but I finally guilted her into it. We’ve been working out for about a month now and I can all ready see the results. We are going to have to work on the diet more to make significant results in the weight loss arena, but her ability to move has really sky rocketed. We’ve done squats, deadlifts, push ups, pull ups, presses, agility drills, and medicine ball drills. Sounds pretty intimidating right? Well, everything has been scaled. She uses the Smith Machine to help with balance on the squats and she does box squats. She puts the bar down at lower rib cage level for her pushups, and up a little higher for body row pull ups. She calls them “fake” but I’m really happy with her results in such a short time. I can see that even her quality of movement has improved, as in she moves more smoothly as she’s doing the exercises. I also had her working on standing on one foot with a bent knee and it was too much when we started. Today, I had her put one foot up on a step so she could keep using the back foot for balance and to take some of the weight off the lead leg. She ended up not needing balance assistance and pushed off the back foot to just stand on the lead foot. There is no way she could have done that two weeks ago. I’m so excited to see the progress she is making. She’s excited to. She invited one of her friends from work who is having trouble with some other issues, but it really comes down to lack of midline stability, poor mechanics, and general weakness. All things I think we can help with.

It’s not training the Steelers or competing in the CrossFit Games, but I couldn’t be more excited to working with these two and can’t wait to see the results we can get in the next month.

Arrived in Afghanistan

So, I'm in Afghanistan and wanted to let you all know that we are doing well. The good news is that the gym is right next to our tent. The bad news is that it is a weight room where you can't drop the weights. Actually, it makes sense because the floor is a thin plywood and I could see my "Grace" time severely hurt by the bar crashing through the floor.

I know there has to be a CrossFit set up around here somewhere, I just need to ask around.

In the meantime, I did Back Squats 3 of 5 and Shoulder Press 3 of 5 w/ 255lbs and 135lbs respectively. Not serious weights, but I didn't want to go all out after the plane rides and just getting loosened up again.

I'll have updates and pictures soon. Hope you are all doing well back at home and enjoying the freedoms and liberties you have as Americans in our beautiful homeland.

Merry Christmas

On Christmas Eve, I had the guys do our version of the 12 Days of CrossFit.

Just like the song, you do 1rep of the first exercise, then 2 of the second and 1 of the first, then 3 of the third, 2 of the second, and 1 of the first, etc.

1 deadlift

2 power cleans

3 hand stand push-ups

4 sumo deadlift high pulls

5 ring dips

6 air squats

7 box jumps

8 kettle bell swings

9 pull-ups

10 thrusters

11 burpees

12 muscle-ups

It looked like complete chaos putting 40 Marines through that at the same time, but it turned out well.

Hope you all are enjoying the holidays with you families and loved ones.

Hill Runs

We were on a machine gun range and had some down time while waiting for our turn to shoot.

With gear on:
50m hill run and back down
10 pushups
hill run
9 pushups
hill run
8 pushups
...
Hill run
1 pushup

most of my Marines finished around 8:30

Photo courtesy of Marine Force Reserve

Run: 90 seconds on, 90 seconds off x 6

Deadlifts then Burpees

He's just warming up

photo courtesy of CrossFit EastBay

Deadlift (DL) 2 Reps on the minute every minute for 10 minutes @ 85% of 1RM

Immediately following DL's 30 burpees for time

Combat Fitness

image from http://www.lancers.org.au

While I'm getting ready to go away and during the deployment, I'm going to use this blog to share how we are getting ready for the challenges we will face in Afghanistan and to keep people posted with how we are doing.

Keep checking back for updates. I hope that our efforts set an example that you all may follow to achieve elite fitness.