Hey Old Cityzens!
I hope you had a great weekend, maybe watched some sports ball, and that your favorite team won. Yeah sports!
Speaking of sports, shout out to our members who competed this weekend! Morning regulars (who sometimes partake in an evening class) Aaron F, Carolyn, Pat, and Lindsay competed in the 3rd annual True Paw at True Core CrossFit in Annapolis, MD where Pat is a former member. Both teams competed in the Rx division and did a great job of representing Old City!
Your fearless blogger participated in a half marathon row at an indoor rowing competition called Erg Sprints in Alexandria, VA on Saturday. First taking place in 1986, the event has grown over the years and hosted many indoor champions. It is open to young and old with the 2,000m row being the premiere event. Having tackled the 30 min row three times already, Jen made it a goal not only to compete in the half marathon, but to finish it under 90 minutes. Need more proof? Check the goals board. BOOM! Hard work pays off. She’ll be reviving the ‘Jen Does Stuff’ blog series and writing a report documenting the event and her training leading up to the event.
*Okay, enough writing in the 3rd person.
We’ve got a lot coming up this month, so be sure to keep reading.
“Spring” Cleaning
-Coach David
Hey all – we know that gym cleanliness is an important part of being able to enjoy your time here at Old City Crossfit, and it very much is for us as well! We are always looking for ways to improve our physical space and provide you all with the well-polished experience that you expect from a premier fitness facility. With that, we are looking to do a deep cleaning of the front cubby space the weekend of Feb 16th. Therefore, we humbly request that all equipment, clothes, shoes, gear, water bottles and anything else that gets left by the cubbies be removed by Friday, February 15. Anything that gets left behind after the deadline will be donated away.
Following that, we will likely be instituting some new rules and guidelines for item storage in the front space. We want to strike the right balance between providing easy access space for you all (especially considering the extremely cold weather we had recently), and letting things pile up into a big ball of mess in the front (which makes no one happy). We ask for you patience and understanding as we make these adjustment that we think will help make the space more enjoyable for everyone on a daily basis!
Open 2019 – Friday Night Lights
-Coach David
Open Season 2019 is officially upon us! What is the Crossfit Open you ask? It’s an incredibly fun and challenging way to test your fitness and mechanical mindfulness for all things Crossfit! The Open is five workouts taking place over five weeks, and it starts with 20.1. Open workouts are identified by their year and the order in which they appear. The workouts will be released every Thursday night during the five weeks of the Open, and you can watch the live announcement of the workout that will be streamed on the CrossFit Games website or on Facebook.
Official Open workouts are judged, so every rep you do will have someone watching you closely ensuring that you complete each rep to the highest of Crossfit standards. Don’t panic though! If you can’t do every single movement yet, there are scaled version of every workout for those who need it, so you won’t be expected to master handstand walking by the end of February.
To sign up for official judging, go to https://games.crossfit.com/ – the cost is $20 to sign up, which goes to Crossfit HQ. There are no extra fees to participate with us once you are signed up on the official page! You should select ‘Old City CrossFit’ as your gym, and Coach David as your judge.
We will be programming the Open workouts for each Friday during these 5 weeks. If you want to have a chance to try them out ahead of time, or just can’t make it for all 5 workouts this year, come in to your regularly schedule class time on one of these Fridays and you’ll see these WODs.
The Open will run from Feb 21 – Mar 25. Official judging for those signed up will be happening Friday nights starting at 8pm sharp! Try to be at the gym by no later than 7:45, as we will be going over all of the movement standards, rules, and judging assignments so that we can get started by 8. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS IS BACK, Y’ALL!
For any questions, comments, concerns, or anything else, please email Coach David – [email protected]
What’s on the Whiteboard
*repost as it was left out from the newsletter
This month we have the benchmark girl WOD “Barbara” going down the week of February 11th. This is a long workout comprised of four bodyweight movements – pull ups, push ups, sit ups, squats.
We’ll transition from back squats to front squats. We’ll start off the month with 3s before jacking up the volume with a week each of 10s and 8s before settling in at 5s for three weeks.
Instead of the alternating bench press and push press, we’ll be doing high-rep double kettlebell press, super setted with core or pull up work.
We’ll start off the month finding our deadlift heavy 1 next Friday before going back to 8s, 5s, and 3s.
Our double strength day won’t see the same primary movement twice this month. We’ll be doing some split snatch, high hang cleans, glute bridges, and power snatches. The secondary movement will still be an Oly assistance work, or an ‘odd lift’ that will include more bent over rows, heavy dball and DB carries, and jerks from the rack.
As a reminder keep using Zen Planner to record your workouts and interact with other members. And be sure to add 2-4 goals to the chalkboard. Let the coaches help you meet those goals and set some PRs along the way.
More updates and announcements can be found in the newsletter that went out on Friday, February 1st.
Speaking of announcements, let’s see what’s coming up this week..
Monday – Double strength day – power clean/hang power clean combo and some glute bridges. KB swing cashout (opt.) to light up those glutes a bit more!
Tuesday – Long day with some rowing and DBs — dumbbells AND dballs. Oh boy!
Wednesday – Back to some strength work with front squats on the schedule. Keeping the KBs in the working with some Turkish Get-Ups.
Thursday – As you’ll see for the next few weeks, we’ll be repeating some past CrossFit Open WODs, and we’ve got a 20min AMRAP from 2011 ready for ya!
Friday – Deadlift heavy 1. Bring the muscle, the smelling salts, and the trap slaps today and get ready to pick up heavy shit. We’ll spend the whole hour on the deadlift, but there will be a few NFT (not for time) movements programmed as a cashout of sorts. These are a few things you could even add to your weekly training especially if you have low back issues.
Saturday – Pushing heavy shit today with a push press heavy 1 – keep those knees locked out! I’m not going to kid around and say the workout that follows will be fun, but it nicely complements the strength component. How about that?
Sunday – Open gym + Gainz club + HeroWOD + Yoga
Let’s have another great week, and set some PRs!
-Jen-
