Week 1 at SICFIT Austin

SICFIT Austin is now open! It is a small garage gym a couple blocks south on Burnet from CFC. If you guys go looking for it, look for the Texas Hydroponics sign because there isn't a SICIFT Austin banner up yet. I told Zach I could make something pretty sweet for them - I'm thinking hot pink with some swirls, hearts and stars. Maybe some glitter. He said no.

When I got home from work before my first class I was feeling a little down. I thought I would be missing out on doing FGB with my girls because I love Crystal's 6:45 class a lot! My expectations of SICFIT Austin was that it was going to be a class full of seasoned crossfitters, mainly guys that could deadlift 400#. I didn't know what I was getting myself into!

I popped my Muscle Strength and Catalyst like a good #AdvocareAddict and trotted myself over to the gym only to find out... I am SICFIT Austin's first client! Coaches Zach, Winchester and Big Mike were there trying out the equipment and doing a wod of deadlifts, push presses and muscle ups. There were also 2 crossfitters from Chicago that were jumping in and Bekah, Mike's girlfriend was hanging out. The garage has a great, no-nonsense vibe to it and I can already tell that a lot of progress is going to happen in there!

Class began with Zach putting me through a brand new warm up and Winchester shadowing/videoing with his new flip cam. I can't wait to check out that video! The warm up is completely different from Central's - it didn't have any of the high knees, fast feet agility type stuff but more of getting your shoulders warm, legs loosened up. I don't remember all of it but we did about a 400m sprint to start, then jumping jacks, arm circles, donkey kicks, leg swings, hopscotch, a variety of push ups, and squats. Whew, I was like, "I'm sweating and we haven't even touched a barbell yet."

To be honest, I don't really like Oly lifting. That's why I signed up to do Zach's seminar and that lead into SICFIT Austin because I'm really bad at it. CrossFit teaches us to work on your weaknesses and I'm trying to chip away at mine. What I do appreciate about Oly lifting is that it teaches you such GREAT body awareness. I really try to get in tune with my body placement, how deep my knees are bent, if my core is engaged, where my shoulders are leveraged. The next thing we did in class after the warm up (or it kind of was still in the warm up) was PVC pipe work. The PVC pipe is where all the body awareness begins. I need to feel the hamstring stretch and the locked out position on top and it's great to learn this with a PVC pipe instead of a 45# barbell. There are so many smaller movements in Burgener's Warm Up that I have to be self aware because fixing the slightest body placement could give me that much more power in a lift.

From there, we grabbed a barbell and Zach lead us through progressions with the hang snatch. I've been working with him for more than a month now on Oly lifting and I could really feel my progress with the snatch. I wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as when I started with the weight overhead. It felt good but I still need to work on keeping the bar close to the body and pulling myself under it faster. Sometimes I get frustrated with all of the things to think about before a lift but Mike gave great cues of when I fixed something or when a lift looked a little better. I liked the combination of Zach and Mike as coaches. Zach is great at getting me fired up to be more aggressive and he's so knowledgeable about the breakdown of the movements to improve your technique.

On Wednesday, I was joined by Sally and Karen. I think Sally will be with me once a week and Karen still needs to sign up! I'm still surprised that SICFIT Austin isn't sold out with a bunch of muscle-y guys, who would have guessed that girls would fill the classes first? We went through the same extended warm up while Zach made female jokes, cursed his allergies, and told us to be more aggressive. He's a winner, I'm telling ya.

We worked on the first two pulls for the snatch. Pull number one is off the ground and it's slow and steady. When I watch videos/people of this first pull I'm like, "Why are they going so slow, how in the world are they going to get that overhead??" But it's supposed to be slow until the bar reaches the knee where the second pull of the shrug happens. I think, "Slow, slow, slow, SHRUG!" and I better freaking explode with as much power as possible or else Zach is there to call me out! First we did it with the bar, then 65#, 75# and finally 95#. 95# felt SO heavy and it was really hard for me to be explosive with that weight.

All in all, I'm really excited that I tried something new this month. It's really cool to be a part of the beginning stages of SICFIT Austin and see all the potential of what's to come. The coaches are awesome, the vibe is great for hitting goals and the small garage gym is going to be a huge success!