Coach Cahill – Games Athlete

Next week Coach Cahill will be competing at the European CrossFit Games Regionals in Copenhagen. Sarah has only been CrossFitting since mid-late 2011 so to qualify for this event is an amazing achievement.
As a director and head coach of In2, Sarah puts everything into the business and her coaching, she is absolutely dedicated. Around her busy schedule of admin, coaching and massage she still finds time to train. And TRAIN she does… She consistently works on her goats, works hard on strength, builds her capacity and just generally kicks butt.

If you see Sarah around the gym over the next week wish her luck, we all fly out Thursday next week – she is slightly nervous by the scale of the event (the spectators mostly). But know this Sarah, just being there is the most amazing achievement, anything you do while you are there is an achievement, there is no disappointment from here in, you will do amazing! We’re all so proud of you!

Thanks for everything you do for everyone, now it’s our chance to give you some support!

New Class Booking System

Dear In2 CrossFit athletes,

I’m one of the co-founders of teamup, which is going to be replacing Zenplanner at In2 CrossFit over the next week.  The switch will save Jack, Sarah and the team time by combining booking and membership payments into one system.  teamup also benefits you by making it easier to manage your memberships and class bookings, as well as improving the waitlisting process.  We are eager to hear your feedback and make changes to help improve the experience for both you and the In2 CrossFit team.

The changeover will not require much effort from you but here are some key details:

• Within the next couple of hours you are going to receive an email from the teamup system asking you to confirm that you are a customer of In2 CrossFit.
• You will need to follow the link in the email to create a teamup account that will be automatically linked to your In2 CrossFit membership.
• There is now a teamup calendar underneath the Zenplanner calendar on the class timetable page and all bookings for classes from Monday 30th April onwards will need to be made in teamup.
• You will automatically have membership privileges for bookings until 1st May when you will need to add your payment details (debit cards are best but you can use any credit card) to pay for May’s memberships and future membership payments.  You’ll receive an email with more details once you make your account.
• You can also make bookings from https://goteamup.com. From there you can also change your payment and contact details, and manage your membership status.
• You will need to cancel your current method of payment for your existing membership (standing order, direct debit, etc).
• The waitlist will now send you an email asking whether you want to be added to a class when a space opens up. You will have a limited period of time to accept the invitation (Jack and Sarah will set how long the period is). We are working on allowing you to do this via SMS too.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if any of this is unclear or you have any questions.  You can reach the whole team at team@goteamup.com and one us will get back to you as quickly as possible. You can also call me on 0797-067-6680 if you have any urgent questions or problems. I will be at In2 for a couple of classes over the next week so I hope to speak to some of you then.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Happy Crossfitting!

Rupert, Matt and Tom

‘WOD Drunk’

It’s fair to say that everyone has had a moment of being ‘WOD Drunk’ in their CrossFit careers…  Usually early on, but sometimes some people can’t help themselves even as experienced athletes.

Being WOD Drunk refers to a sudden inability to complete reps to full range of motion (ROM) or count reps correctly…  It is brought on by the will and desire to beat everyone else in the session and all of the scores on the whiteboard.  While this type of competition is a good thing if it drives your training to the intensity levels required to harness the benefits of CrossFit, it is actually detrimental if you are cheating reps and cheating ROM!

A couple of key elements of CrossFit are relative intensity and the idea that you are competing against yourself, not others.

Relative intensity is simple.  If that ‘big guy’ in the back is lifting 100kg’s and that ‘wee girl’ at the front is lifting only an empty 15kg bar it doesn’t matter.  For those two people, that weight is hard for them.  This means that each athlete is pushing themselves as hard as each other.  It hurts as much.  It feels ridiculously heavy to both.  They can’t wait for the 3 rounds to be over just as much as each other…  They are therefore getting the same stimulus from the WOD as each other.  And we should applaud them both to the same level and they should also be elated with their achievements in said WOD just as much as each other.  They were both giving it 100% which is all that a coach could ask and all that they could ask of themselves.

This is ONLY true however, when each athlete is being strict on their movement standards and reps.  When a pullup calls for the chin to be over the bar, then ONLY reps where the chin goes over the bar count.  If athlete 1 is doing 15 pullups, gets to 14 and tries for 15 but the chin doesn’t clear the bar, there is absolutely no excuse for not resting and attempting rep 15 again.  The rep was never completed and in competition this would be given a loud call of ‘no rep!’  Likewise, if an athlete is chasing someone in the gym and is trying hard to keep up with them but that person jumps down from the box and onto the cleans and athlete A still has 7 box jumps to go, there is absolutely no excuse for doing another 3 and thinking ‘that’ll do, if I get off now I can catch that guy’.  You get the picture.

Be proud of your dedication to your chosen sport, your full ROM, your ability to complete the task written on the board, your discipline to only count completed reps and not counting reps when you ‘almost locked out’ or your chest was ‘close enough to the ground’.  If you hold yourself to strict standards as we, the coaches, hold you to you will make more progress, faster progress and kick your own butt (because remember, you’re competing only with yourself).

So stop worrying about what others are doing in the gym so much and look inward.  Be strict, be strong, be awesome.

Give this short article a read from CrossFit Lafayette, it’s very good and covers these points well.

Finally, we will be starting to use partners as rep counters (and motivators) during some of the shorter WODs to bring competition standard into our every day training.  This increases intensity and holds you all to the strict standards that you are all aiming for!  So good times!

Coach GCam

Get Amongst It!

Ok All… If you haven’t registered for the CrossFit Games Open yet, please do so this week.

The Open is an all inclusive event that gives everyone the opportunity to compete as a CrossFit athlete. And here’s the thing, YOU ARE ALL athletes! If you’re thinking ‘Gareth, what are you talking about?! I’m no athlete!’, well I’m sorry, but you are a mother f’n athlete! Do you hit every WOD hard? Do you compete against yourself and try and better yourself every session? Do you feel a sense of achievement after every WOD? Well there you go, you’re an athlete.

So that being said, every athlete needs to compete every so often. The purpose of the open is to:

• Push yourself harder than you would normally in WODs so you can see what you can achieve
• Be judged on your movements, this can often be a lightbulb moment for many, movement standards are key to improvement and success
• Be part of something pretty incredible
• Cheer on your fellow athletes from In2
• See how you compare to the thousands of people taking part worldwide

The Open WODs will be done in the gym, so you will be doing them regardless of whether you register or not, so you may as well pay the $10USD and officially be part of it – plus by registering under In2 it supports the box and we may win prizes!

If you’re nervous or unsure, come and talk to me and I will be able to convince you in 5mins why you need to join.

GET AMONGST!!!

Coach GCam

Tips for getting through FRAN

Fortunately(or unfortunately) I’ve been given the weeks Programming  at my box,  and this week, 4 Letters came up that set my heart racing… F R A N.   Every time FRAN pops up, I find myself scouring the net for tips on how to improve my time (mobility WOD, the journal,  google, youtube , etc).  One thing seams to ring true,  FRAN is a bitch and the only way to make her your bitch… is to increase your work capacity. In saying that, I thought I’d put all my findings together on one page – so that next time my heart goes from 50bpm to 200bpm on a Sunday night, I can refer back to this handy post. Suffice to say, there’s no substitute for grinding through this one… but these tips might help you nip a few seconds off your time…

BEFORE

• Mobilise
  http://www.mobilitywod.com/2010/09/gaming-system-hips-and-thoracic-prep.html 
• Activation:
• Glutes – 3 x (15 – 30 Sec Isometric Bridges, squeezing a medball with your thighs) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tuqGYnrb2k
• 5 x Heavy Single Arm Kettlebell Presses (each side)
• 5 x 60kg Thruster (nothing like tricking your body into thinking Fran is light….)

DURING:

• 1.Do not put the bar down during the thrusters!
  Drop the bar and you’ll have to clean it back up, wasting a lot of time and energy.  Rest as much as you need to during the pull-ups, where the penalty for taking a break is only a few seconds and little to no wasted energy
• 2. Don’t wait to have your breath back because it won’t happen or maybe it will happen but 20 minutes later.
  It’s a waste of time and if you can’t breathe anymore, well we all know a human can stop breathing for 2 minutes without dying . . . so we are okay.
• 3. Do butterfly.
  They are a lot faster than kipping pull-up and when they are done right you can almost take your breath back on those.
• 4. Never tell yourself that it’s hard.
  Your body is able to give you way more than what your head think. Human is a complicated machine and we don’t know our potential . . . so go on until your body breaks down. And if that time you don’t have a nice Fran time, remember that you improve and the next time you are going to be better. And you can’t be better than yourself so don’t compare with someone else, just try to beat you everytime and you are going to win everytime
• 5. Grind:
  It is all about second round… although 1st round is the highest number of reps it is not hard to complete non-stop. Second round is really when you have to bring it all on, you just have to push through it doesn’t matter how painful it is. Just keep pushing like no tomorrow… 
  then comes third round and life is easy again, it is just 9 reps to complete

I’m sure this list will expand – but this is what I found last night

Happy Wodding!
@Cheongy

Thanks Cheongy

Your gym, your music!

Team,

As much as everyone has enjoyed stretching and activating their glutes to Cheongy’s ‘making the love’ playlist….It’s time for some new music!  Its your Gym, so it should be your music.

We’ve purchased a Spotify premium account – and have made the following collaborative playlists – please subscribe and add your favorite WOD Tunes to the appropriately themed playlists below (If you have any suggestion for more playlists themes,  please let us know!

• In2 Rock
• In2 Stretch
• In2 Happy
• In2 Hip Hop
• in2 Rage
• In2 Dubstep

Happy Music Adding!

Oh… and Tom, your friend is banned from touching these playlists;)

Christmas WODs!

Going back home for Christmas to overload on oh so delicious non-approved paleo delights? Worried you might suffer from Crossfit withdrawal? Why not try out:

Cheongy’s Emergency/Travel WODs – make sure to comment with your times!