Saturday, April 28, 2007

New Members!!


You guys did a great job today, I was very impressed!! Tim I think you might have some competition!

Monday, April 23, 2007

Good work

Didn't quite finish the rope climb portion of the outdoor station. A snafu here and there, but almost! Hopefully we can knock the last bit out tomorrow morning. If not I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

Good push by Jon on todays WOD, grinding through the wallballs and pullups. Can you say another satisfied customer?

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Outdoor pull-up bars

We've worked on these both Saturday and Sunday. Only thing left to do is put up the rope climbing station, hopefully tomorrow. Not too shabby for winging it eh?


Here's the area before we started. This is to the left of the garage as you look at the house from the road.


Laying down the post and bars along the string line so we get the spacing for the holes just right.


Was going to rent an auger to dig the holes but decided to save us the $120.00 fee and use Larry D.'s post hole digger that he graceously let us borrow.


Making sure the post are all relatively the same height even though the ground slopes a bit.


Bracing them so they are dressed and level.


Mixing up the quik-crete. Wasn't sure how much we needed and ended up only using three 80lbs bags. Of course we didn't have the recommended 3x diameter of pole sized holes.


A blurry picture of us screwing in the pull-up bars.

Tomorrow we'll put up the rope climb portion, hang the rope (if Jimmy A. delivers!) and photo the whole apparatus.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Share your sauce

Hey all. We're gonna try something that Tim T. suggested to us today. In the general info column on the right side of our site we've added a Daily WOD's link. Hopefully we're able to post our two listed WOD's the night prior and every now and then post a special "pain and suffering" WOD. We're gonna encourage members (and anyone else) to post their times for whatever WOD they happen to do that day, even if it isn't one listed.

As Jimmy A. likes to say, "Share your sauce!" Sometimes it'll be strong, other times it'll be weak. That's the beauty of CrossFit; it doesn't matter how good or bad you do, only that you perform and then look to make improvements next time. Posting your sauce will also let you gauge yourself next to your buddies, even if those buddies happen to be in another state or country, as happens quite often with members in the military. Also, it's more motivating to chase after the scores of someone you know or have them gunning for your best times!

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Digital media issues

A good day here at CrossFit Clarksville. First Tim T. was in town for a visit. He stopped by and after a short chat with Jimmy A. and I he jumped on the rings and BAM! scored his first muscle-up. He then went on to knock out four in a row. Very nice. I've got video but it seems I'm having issues with uploading it. If I fix that I'll edit this post and insert it here. Flash! Finally got the video to load. Enjoy!



We also had four new members join today. Very cool. You'll know who they are when you see them pimping around town with their CrossFit Clarksville t-shirts! Jon and Paco were knocking out Cindy; Ryan and Dennis were getting on the CFHQ posted WOD and I took a few pictures while they worked out but of course they were all blurry or had big spots on the pics. Guess I need to clean the lens on my camera! Sorry guys, we'll get some better shots next time.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Scalability

If any of you read the CF message board you'll see a lot of good information on a variety of topics. One thread I bumped into was about upping the level of the CrossFit WOD's as your fitness level increases. The jist was "is there an "advanced" level of crossfit? Several members had some good answers. My take:

1. CrossFit is so diverse, that there is always some aspect of fitness that you can improve upon. Already a monster with the heavy weight? When's the last time you made a PR (personal record)?

2. How's your run or row times? Pull-up numbers? Muscle-ups? Those can always get faster or higher.

2. Starting to hit ridiculously high numbers or low times in the named met-con workouts (Cindy, Fran, Helen, Grace, etc)? How about adding a weight vest or more weight to slow you down?

3. Any workout is scalable, either up or down. Reading on the daily comments board (underneath each day's WOD), you usually see many people scale the workout down because their fitness level isn't able to handle the WOD rx'd (as prescribed). Occasionally you'll see a few scale up, such as the met-con machines that add a 20# vest to Cindy and still crank out twenty-something rounds or the bigger guys bumping up the weights, doing Fran with 115# or even 135#. This type of scalability will keep everyone challenged that wants to be challenged.

4. An interesting and good tool (I think anyway) is the CrossFit North's Athletic Skill Levels. The idea is to be able to accomplish all the different physical task of a skill level within 30 days of each other. They are diverse enough that all different aspects of fitness is tested. Unless you can knock out Level IV, there is always room for improvement. Is it perfect? No, but then is anything?

5. So do you need more than CrossFit? If you are working for something specific (triathlon, weighlifting meet, kettlebell contest, strongman competition, etc), then of course. If you are working for general fitness, I think it covers most of the bases nicely and exposes you to a wide variety of activities that you can train on to enhance your overall fitness levels by exposing your weaknesses.

6. If you're still not convinced CrossFit is enough, then start looking into some modified protocols like ME Black Box to mix in with your CrossFit workouts.

However you slice it, CrossFit is the best overall fitness program I've been exposed to. If you find something better out there, let me know. Good luck.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Memorial Day Challenge

I know Memorial Day is still more than a month away (28 May 07), but I wanted to get this up and out there so those that are interested can start to plan.

CrossFit Orange County is sponsoring a Memorial Day Challenge to send cooling vest to the deployed troops in OEF/OIF. You can read about it on their website.

The basics:

1. Teams are composed of four members, $40.00 each entry fee ($160.00 per team).

2. Register through Active.com or mail in to CrossFit Orange County and save on the $10.00 fee that Active.com charges.

3. Only two team members are allowed to exercise at any time.

4. The workload is 300 pullups, 400 pushups, 500 situps and 600 air squats done ala "Angie", meaning all pullups have to be complete before moving onto pushups, etc. CrossFit HQ has a video posted of a team of trainers doing the workout. It'll give you an idea. Click here.

I'd like to have CrossFit Clarksville represent, especially since we're tied to the Fort Campbell community. We also want to video each team (if we get more than one) as they do it. If we have a large turn-out, we might all meet on post (more pullup bars), if not then it'll be here.

If you're interested, get in touch with us and we'll start working on the details. As we get more info we'll be sure to update our site.

Friday, April 13, 2007

T-Shirts are in.

Our order of T-shirts just came in today. The local company did a great job of printing them up; fast, reasonably priced and convenient. We've decided to give a t-shirt to each new member, but extra shirts will cost you.


Jimmy A. after 17 rds of Cindy.


Getting ready for a squat single.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Muscle-ups!

Talk about a great day! Larry D. came over to drop off a piece of equipment for some gym expansions we have planned for later on and decided to try and get a muscle-up. He's been close and was working it while on this last trip, but as of yet it had elluded him. He steps up to the plate and BAM!, not one but two! Needing to follow, I chalk up on the rings and miss my first two attempts but three times a charm and BAM!, I score one. Both of us are psyched, especially since the muscle-up has been a goal of ours for quite some time. Feeling the need to share, I text Jimmy A. with the news. He rushes over to get some of that action and BAM! knocks out three in a row! A very cool feeling indeed. CrossFit Clarksville has three inductees into the Muscle-up club in one day! A little video perhaps?

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Legit!

Well it's official, we received the email from CrossFit HQ this morning and saw our affiliate listed in the affiliate listings. Very cool indeed. We're excited and are putting together the things that we have on our list for improvements and expansion. Hopefully this week we'll install the outdoor pull-ups bars. If we do, we'll be sure to post some photos!

Not sure how much traffic we'll be receiving as right now it's just word of mouth. We'll take it slow and hopefully manage any scheduling issues.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Almost there.

Well we're almost there, having just a couple more necessary paperwork issues to take care of before CrossFit Clarksville is legit.

For those of you just discovering this site, we (the wife and I) are starting up a CrossFit affiliate gym out of our garage here in Clarksville, TN. We've been doing CrossFit for a bit over 1 1/2 years and love it. The first thing we did when we bought our house was convert the one-car garage into our own gym, saving us the hassle of having to make due with the equipment at other gyms, none of which are really geared towards CrossFit. Of course we were making it work, but it was a pale substitute for having the right equipment available. Granted we started slow, not having a ton of cash to drop on all the things we wanted, but slowly we've built and bought most of the things that we needed.

A quick preview of what we currently have:

OLY lifting platform
One squat / bench / rack
One flat bench
One Pendlay 45# OLY bar
Two other 45# OLY bars
One 25# small OLY bar
360# of bumper plates (6x45#, 2x25#, 4x10#)
85# of steel plates (4x10#, 6x5#, 6x2.5#)
Dumbbell pairs: 5#-25#
Kettlebells: 5#, 10#, 8kg, 12kg, 16kg, 24kg
Homemade medicine balls: 20#, 15#, 10#)
Two pullup bars
One set pvc parallettes
Two jump ropes
One dip/pull-up belt (for hanging weights)
Plyo boxes: 12", 18", 24"
One Concept2 rower (Model B)
Lots of white boards

We've made a shopping list of the things we want to add. Most of it is getting more of the things we already have, but there are a few new equipment additions as well. As they happen we'll update.