Money money money

Last night I was talking to Annie Bug-a-lug and money came up. Sometimes I have to give up certain things in order for budgeting to come out on the plus side. Crossfit + grass fed meat + organic vegetables = the big bucks. I'm not trying to be negative about this; I'm on board with paying the money to be healthy now rather than on antibiotics and medicine when I'm older. But it's true that this is an expensive lifestyle that I have to justify to people who don't eat real food or lead active lifestyles. Some would ask, "Well, why do you need to explain it to them?" When I get into conversations with people I care about about eating paleo or doing CrossFit it's because I'd love for them to join this crazy "cult" of ours too. It's life changing and it worked for me and I always think it could solve so many of their problems too. Like the woman I always hear cough on the bus on the way to work- if I could somehow slip an "Eat Real Food" flyer into her purse, it might be life changing for her too! That's a stretch, or maybe I'm just a fixer upper!

The Whole9 Life wrote a great article about how to summarize eating real food into a "Paleo Pitch". It's basically a short, to the point explanation of why we eat the way we do. I'm looking to come up with a great explanation of why I pay what I do. Because right alongside that conversation of a Paleo Pitch, or a CrossFit Pitch, is the "how much does it cost?" question. It's crazy to think that the money most young adults are putting towards shopping, alcohol and/or going out at night, I budget it to go towards Crossfit classes and food.

I read an article awhile back that said you could know what a person is like by looking at their bank account statements. Mine lists majority of purchases from restaurants, Sprouts/HEB/Whole Foods grocery stores, CrossFit Central, Advocare, among others. What does yours list?

Much needed quote

I love Again Faster!

Awesome from Patrick Cummings on Vimeo.

The men and women that decimate your times are not superhuman. What makes them different is not a gift, but an unreasonable desire to push self imposed suck beyond it's logical limits. What comes out the other side becomes legendary. Do yourself a favor and realize there is no technique in the world that will save you. There are no pills, no secrets, no passwords on the path to greatness. You've got to embrace the pain, push the threshold and feel the suck. And then you've got to muster the courage to go back six times a week.

In a Relationship with: Mr. Snatch

Mr. Snatch and I have a relationship comparable to those of high school sweethearts. When we first met, the bond between us was filled with awkward hand holding, googly eyes, giggles and flirty fun. Life was good and we were naive enough to not know what was coming next.

Then we went off to college together and our relationship changed. Our friends thought we were crazy as we would bicker and lash out at each other. There was more fighting, miscommunication and I may have cheated on him with Mr. Clean and Mr. Deadlift. Instead of all the fun and games we had before, we tried to be more serious with each other despite keggers and late nights. It didn't work though, and we broke up after our 13243th fight over the Hook Grip. Mr. Snatch rubbed my thumbs raw and I couldn't take it anymore.

We went our separate ways for awhile. Mr. Snatch played the field meeting some great people at Oly Lifting meets and I dated Mr. Running, Mr. Pull ups, and Mr. Box Jumps. But we came to realize that although we had our differences, life was better together than apart. Nothing can replace the feeling of the slow pull off the ground and fast drive underneath the bar. Mr. Deadlift might be disappointed but Mr. Snatch gives me butterflies!

Back squats and a fun wod!

Last night at SICFIT we worked on back squats. I am starting to love that little garage and everything about it, including the fact that I may have just showered upon entering only to leave covered head to foot in dirt. My neighbors have been asking me what in the world I get myself into on Monday and Wednesday nights because I always come home with dirt streaks, blackened knees and plastered hair. Beautiful. The concrete floor without black mats just adds to the rough around the edges feel of the place. It's great!

I wouldn't describe my back squats as great though, I'm always a little worried I'm going to decapitate myself. I think my dislike of them started with a wod including a run and 95# BS reps and its been growing ever since.
5x5 BS 95, 115, 125, 135, 140 (scratch at rep 3, finished the last two reps at 135).
My BS 1RM is 145# and I only got through that last set with an awesome spotter, Karen! She deserves a huge congrats because she was like a different person last night with a killer snatch and PR on back squats. She made Oly Lifting look easy!

This morning Zach's 5:30 am coed class did this:
1000m row
30 thrusters 65/95#
50 American swings 16kg/1.5 pood

I deleted my Twitter account so I didn't know the wod beforehand. It looked like fun, I'm a fan of thrusters and swings and I've been eyeing that 1.5 pood for awhile so I asked Zach if I could scale the wod up! I chose 75# for the thrusters and a 20kg and both felt like challenging weights for me. Finished in 11:41, not even close to top 3 but I'm really happy with how that wod was programmed and how everything felt! My new goal is to use a heavier KB whenever the 16kg is prescribed for women.

Total change of subject but tomorrow at work we're having a baby shower and I really want to continue my clean eating. What are some good ideas of a paleo dish I could bring that makes a lot of food without taking that much time? Everyone else is signed up for chips, cake, pasta salad type stuff and I need to bring something that will satisfy me (and maybe encourage some co-workers to eat something healthy!). Thanks for your help!

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!

Pictures

In the past few days I have found a few pictures that really stopped my day and made me think. Unfortunately I can't find the first one I wanted to share. It was in the news links on sicfit.com but Web must have already taken it down. The picture showed a pair of hands that had been battered by gymnastics. I complain about rips and blisters all the time but as soon as this picture loaded all I could do was say, "Wow". It represented so much dedication and hardship.

The second is a series of pictures that Mel linked on Twitter. It's a photo journal of a woman's fight against breast cancer.



(Regrave) <--- The whole story can be viewed there.


The third picture is more fun! I have printed this out and it is now in my workout log and on my vision board! I love it!




"The pain ends but the beauty remains" -Renoir

Weekend Discoveries

Jess K, Linds and I decided to kill our TeamLLcoolJ blog. It had a good run and we'll always be TeamLLcoolJ in spirit, just now not in blog form.

Anywhoo, I was going to post this over there but now I'm back here. I know, it's a tough life. But! I am about to reward my faithful readers (all 2 of you...) with some top secret information that I discovered this weekend!

#1 What do you get when you combine two of the most amazing paleo foods? Bacon + Kale = BACALE! This is my new favorite dish EVER!

Yum yum, here's how I did it:
1. Buy nitrate free bacon pieces and the curliest kale you can find. Curly kale is what makes it!
2. Throw the bacon into the skillet first, it needs more time to cook than kale.
3. As the bacon starts cooking and the fat rendering, tear the kale from it's stalk in bite size pieces and add to skillet.
4. Stir all the bacon fat into the kale. You can add some pepper to taste but it's pretty good as is too. Cook until kale browns a tinge and bacon looks nice and crispy.

#2 My second discovery is not really mine. Carey Kepler gave a great talk about cleansing and it inspired me to go buy a blender which I was somehow living this long without. I didn't want to make a fruit smoothie because I'm laying off the fruit so I made a smoothie out of: spinach, carrots, 1 egg, coconut oil, mint, and lemon. It sounds so gross and I was just throwing random stuff from my refrig in there but it tasted so good! I think it was the lemon that made it. I'm going to call these my Willy Nilly smoothies where anything goes!


Good luck to the Spartan and Trojans this weekend!