The Weekly Forecast
Good luck at Regionals this weekend Colin! Full effort, full victory!
DO YOU KNOW THESE PEOPLE?
WELCOME NEW WCSC MEMBERS!
Here are the new clients that became members of our WCSC family this week!
We’d like to welcome you publicly, and wish you all the best!
———
Benchmark Alert!
Monday’s Benchmark will be….
Annie
50-40-30-20-10
Double Unders
Sit Ups
UPCOMING EVENTS
Mark your calendar for the following events held here at WCSC!
“Weekend Warrior Rumble!”
Saturday, June 15th @ WCSC
From the Archives: Learning
ROPE CLIMB ALERT: Friday May 17th- we will be climbing. Wear pants, bring tall socks or something protective.
written by Colin Jenkins
I have been training with CrossFit non-stop for over 6 years, and I am still being completely obsessed over it. There is just something so in-depth about it, so many factors to consider, and so many variables to study when creating a program to develop a fitness that is so broad and inclusive.
Whereas in most sports, athletes must learn 1 or 2 gears across a small number of modalities, CrossFit require LOTS of different gears consisting of a much wider assortment of movements. Take Soccer or Basketball for example. You need to jog and sprint on your feet for a set amount of time (and be able to kick HARD, and throw some shoulders). In terms of Strength & Conditioning, that’s about it. The sport is technical for sure, but in terms of the strength and conditioning aspect, simple to train for.
Now consider CrossFit. A test in the sport might take 3 seconds, 90 seconds, 5 minutes, or 90 minutes (oh yes…just wait) and it could consist of running, rowing, wall balls, pull-ups, power cleans, or any combination of any functional movement you can think of! All of these modalities require different levels of pacing, regardless of the time of the test. Even just changing one factor such as the weight on a barbell can change everything on how you need to pace yourself.
When we train at our facility, most times we are not asking you to go with 100% intensity. We need to train smarter, build our capacity, and learn much more about our bodies and engines in the process. This is why you’ll see some days labeled as “Training” and some as “Testing”. During “Testing” days, we expect full effort of our athletes.
I understand how difficult it can be at first when we ask you to do repeats at 50%, 80%, 97% effort, or anything in between. You may not even understand what different levels of pacing feels like yet since many of us are so used to going 100% on the clock each and every day. That’s alright. Don’t worry. You will become better at training and more disciplined over time. Some movements or combination of movements may be more difficult to learn how to pace than others (thinking too long about how to pace your Double-Unders may just blow your mind!). If you end up going to fast, and not maintaining throughout the session, that’s not a big deal. Just make sure to then take that experience and use the learnings from it for the next session.
Fitness is a life-long pursuit. Use each session as a learning experience, and you will gain tremendously from it. Learn to use and develop your different gears. It will take your fitness to another level.
Alicia Ketola – 1 Year Committed Athlete
Q&A with Alicia Ketola
Occupation:
Critical Care Registered Nurse
Type of training before CrossFit:
I was extremely active growing up and played a few sports in high school. I became quite sedentary during college and did not play any sports or go to the gym. A few years ago I did a year Travel Nursing, moving every few months so I felt like that was a valid excuse not to join a gym…
Favorite Workouts?
Anything that involves Rowing, Box Jumps, Dead lifts, Squats or KB Swings!
I definitely struggle with running and pull ups!
Any hobbies you have outside of the gym?
Traveling, hiking, reading, cooking and finding new recipes
Something about you that not too many people at WCSC know?
I am Canadian and my husband is from Finland! We had a small international wedding last September in Ventura 
Any words of advice for newer members at WCSC?
Push yourself every single day. A lot of it is mind over matter, telling yourself that you can do it. I had to force myself to do things that I hated (i.e. running, air dyne) in order to make improvements! Sometimes progress is slow and you do not see immediate results, but just enjoy the process!!
Colin Jenkins – Regional Athlete
Check out Colin Jenkins represent WCSC this weekend during the Crossfit Games Socal Regional! While not all of may be able to be cheering him on in person, we will be cheering him on from home!
Check out CJ’s article on the Crossfit Games site written by our own Jaala Thibault!
“In 2012, at the Southern California Regional, Jenkins came the closest he ever has been to competing in the Games again with a seventh-place finish. However, after cramping up severely in the fourth workout and falling five places in the standings from second overall, his dream of making the Games was shattered for the fourth year in a row. He knew he needed to do something to change the pattern in 2013.”
Good Luck Colin!
Baby Time!
I wanted to write a quick post this week to let you all know that this Wednesday will be my last day coaching group classes for a while.
Our baby is due in just about a month (yikes!), and I need to start dialing back on my extra activities so that I can focus on other things… like stacking diapers and folding impossibly tiny clothes.
I will definitely still be around the gym quite a bit, working out and harassing everyone as usual.
And I’ll be back coaching before you know it. Once I’m back post-baby, I’ll finally be able to demo the olympic lifts properly again, without my gigantic belly getting in the way.
In the meantime, keep getting stronger and faster, and train hard!
The Weekly Forecast
DO YOU KNOW THESE PEOPLE?
WELCOME NEW WCSC MEMBERS!
Here are the new clients that became members of our WCSC family this week!
We’d like to welcome you publicly, and wish you all the best!
———
Benchmark Alert!
Surprise Benchmark on Monday!
UPCOMING EVENTS
Mark your calendar for the following events held here at WCSC!
“Weekend Warrior Rumble!”
Saturday, June 15th @ WCSC
Tips for “Jackie”
written by Colin Jenkins
Today, the workout for our CrossFit classes the class benchmark “Jackie”.
“Jackie” is:
1000m Row
50 Thrusters @ 45#/33#
30 Pull-ups
I love this workout and I think it is a great test of fitness. You must be strong and powerful to do well on the row, must have great muscle endurance for the thrusters (50 Thrusters with the barbell sounds easy…until you get to rep 30), and have great gymnastics capacity to get through the pull-ups quickly.
Here’s a few tips to help you out for those of you taking “Jackie” on today:
1) Pace the row. You may feel like this is the place to go hard and make up time, but trust me, it’s not. Don’t set any 1K PRs here. In fact, you should probably be rowing at a pace you can hold for at least a 2K, if not a bit slower. This will ensure you are not too fatigued going into the thrusters.
2) Break the thrusters up in your head. It is important you don’t think about doing 50 thrusters when you pick up the barbell. That’s too high a number and can break you down mentally you when it starts to get tough. In the video above, even though I did the reps unbroken, I imagined in my head that I was doing them in sets of 10-9-8-7-6-5-5.
3) Relax your grip. The thrusters can take it’s toll on your forearms which make the pull-ups really difficult. Make sure you don’t make this even worse by holding onto the bar too tightly. Instead, try to relax your grip as you perform the thrusters so that your pull-ups won’t be affected as badly.
4) Pull-ups. You pretty much have them or you don’t in this workout. But even if your pull-ups arn’t great, make sure not to give up on the workout. Pick away at it and try to limit how long you rest between sets. Give it a good effort and try to finish strong!
Good luck today and let everyone know how it went to comments.
