Wednesday 100331

"You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else."
- Albert Einstein

Warm-up:
As usual

WOD:
4 rounds for time of:
Run 400m
50 Squats

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Compare to 090521.

Tuesday 100330

Read 'High-Fructose Corn Syrup Prompts Considerably More Weight Gain, Researchers Find'

Warm-up:
As usual

WOD:
7 rounds for time of:
21 Squats
7 L-Pull-ups

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"Hard work is good for the soul, and it keeps you from feeling sorry for yourself because you don't have time. I think the harder you work, the more luck you have. If you want it bad enough . . . and try hard enough . . . you can get it. You can make your dreams come true." -- Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's

Warm-up:
As usual

Skill Development:
Chest-to-Bar Pull-ups
3x Max reps

WOD:
For time:
50 Push-ups
40 Sit-ups
30 Squats
20 Dips
10 Tuck Jumps
5 Burpees

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Friday 100326

"Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure." - Napoleon Hill

Warm-up:
As usual

WOD:
500 Double-unders for time.

Substitute tuck jumps if you are unable to do double-unders.

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Thursday 100325

Read 'It's Not the Recession, You Just Suck'
I know it doesn't necessarily apply to everyone, but it's a good lesson, regardless.

Warm-up:
As usual.

Skill Development:
Third World Squats
Work on form and max holds.

WOD:
'Anderson'
As many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:
5 Burpees
10 Push-ups
15 Sit-ups
20 Squats

Post rounds completed to comments.

Wedneday 100324

"Life is really simple; we insist on making it complicated." - Confucious

Warm-up:
As usual.

WOD:
'Air Fran'
21-15-9 rep rounds for time of:
Push-ups
Jump Squats

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Tuesday 100223

"Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome."
- Samuel Johnson

Warm-up:
As usual.

Skill development:
Perfect push-ups.
3x Max reps
A perfect push-up is chest-to-ground at the bottom, and full extension of the arms at the top, with no sag of the lower back/butt throughout the motion. Keep your core tight and your form strict.

WOD:
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 rep rounds for time of:
Chest-to-bar Pull-ups
Squats
Sit-ups

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Monday 100322

"People of character do the right thing even if no one else is, not because they think it will change the world, but because they refuse to be changed by the world."
- Michael Josephson

Warm-up:
As usual.

WOD:
2 rounds for time of:
40 Double-unders
30 Tuck Jumps
20 Knees-to-elbows
10 Burpees
100m Run

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Friday 100318

"You can adopt the attitude there is nothing you can do, or you can see the challenge as your call to action."
- Catherine Pulsifer

Warm-up:
As usual.

Skill Development:
L-sits
3x max hold
Use chairs, parallelettes, or anything else if needed.

WOD:
'Princess'
For time:
50 Double-unders
10 Handstand Push-ups
40 Double-unders
8 HSPUs
30 Double-unders
6 HSPUs
20 Double-unders
4 HSPUs
10 Double-unders
2 HSPUs

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Thursday 100318

"The courageous struggle for a noble cause is success in itself."
- John Wooden

Warm-up:
As usual.

WOD:
'Death by Pull-ups'
Do 1 pull-up the first minute, 2 pull-ups the second minute, 3 pull-ups the third minute, etc... continuing until you cannot complete the required number of pull-ups in the minute.

Post minutes completed to comments.

Wednesday 100317

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

Warm-up:
As usual.

WOD:
'Murph'
For time:
Run 1 mile
100 Pull-ups
200 Push-ups
300 Squats
Run 1 mile
Partition the pull-ups, push-ups, and squats as needed.

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Tuesday 100316

"Enjoy when you can. Endure when you must." - Goethe

Warm-up:
As usual.

Skill Development:
Freestanding Handstands.
Work for 10 minutes at freestanding handstands. If you've yet to master kicking up to a wall into a handstand, work on that instead.

WOD:
10 rounds for time of:
12 Burpees
12 Pull-ups

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Monday 100315

"Strength comes from within; not borrowed, bought or stolen."
- Byron Pulsifer

Warm-up:
As usual.

WOD:
7 rounds for time of:
20 Dips
20 Pull-ups
20 Lunges (alternating legs)

Post times to comments.

Friday 100312

"The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...
I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it."
- Charles Swindoll

Warm-up:
As usual

WOD:
7 rounds for time of:
Sprint 100m
10 Burpees
15 Tuck Jumps

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Thursday 100311

"I long to accomplish a great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker." Helen Keller

Warm-up:
As usual

WOD:
'Cindy'
As many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:
5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Squats

Post rounds completed to comments.

Wednesday 100310

Enjoy the nice weather outside!
ONLY 65 DAYS UNTIL EVENT 1!

Warm-up:
As usual.

Skill development:
Dead-hang pull-ups: 3 sets of 5
Close-grip chin-ups: 3 sets of 5
Wide grip pull-ups: 3 sets of 5

WOD:
Run 3km for time.

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Tuesday 100309

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."
- Mario Andretti

Warm-up:
Stretching & Joint Mobility Exercises
2 rounds of:
Run 50m
5 Burpees
10 Supermans

WOD:
25 Squats
25 Push-ups
25 Pull-ups
25 Sit-ups
50 Squats
50Push-ups
50Pull-ups
50Sit-ups
75 Squats
75 Push-ups
75 Pull-ups
75 Sit-ups

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Monday 100308

"We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once."
- Calvin Coolidge

Warm-up:
As usual

Skill Development:
Free-standing Handstands
Practice for 5 minutes
If you still cannot do handstands against a wall, practice kicking up to a wall.

WOD:
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 rep rounds for time of:
Pull-ups
Burpees
Jump Squats

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Friday 100305

"Ability is what you're capable of doing.
Motivation determines what you do.
Attitude determines how well you do it."
- Lou Holtz

Warm-up:
As usual

WOD:
Handstand Push-ups
Max reps in 12 minutes

Post reps completed to comments.

Thursday 100304

"Misfortune can force you into doing things you should be doing anyway. Lessons come from adversity. Anything can happen to anyone... You can find a new lease on life - more meaning than you thought possible in simple things... Let go. Live in the moment. Go forward."
- Christopher Reeve

Warm-up:
As usual

WOD:
'Death by Burpees'
Do 1 burpee the first minute, 2 burpees the 2nd minute, 3 burpees the 3rd minute, etc. continuing as long as possible, until you are unable to complete the prescribed number of burpees in a round.

Post rounds completed to comments.

Wednesday 100303

"Adversity is the first path to truth." - Lord Byron

Warm-up:
As usual

Skill Development:
Dead-hang Chin-ups (narrow grip, approximately 6" between hands)
3x Max Reps

WOD:
3 rounds for time of:
33 Squat Jumps
33 Walking Lunge Steps
33 Squats

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Tuesday 100302

New Patriot Love
By Stephen Brunt, The Globe and Mail Posted Friday, February 26, 2010 2:22 PM ET @
http://www.ctvolympics.ca/news-centre/columnists/bruntscorner/newsid=52870.html

Perhaps we are really looking into a funhouse mirror, and the country reflected back to us, bold and loud and overtly patriotic, is a thing only of this time and place. Perhaps from here at ground zero, surrounded by the happy, face-painted Maple Leaf-bedecked mobs, perspective is skewed.

But it certainly seems as though something new and different has been happening in Canada these past two weeks - at the very least, a sudden loss of national self-consciousness.

A home-country Olympics has been the catalyst, and everyone knew it was coming, like Expo 67, or the previous two Games held in Canada, or the various international hockey triumphs that provided obvious opportunities to wave the flag.

Not this many flags, though, or this many choruses of O Canada, in its many permutations, from homemade and homely to hip hop. And most remarkable of all is that, for all of the preparation, and all of the packaged, premeditated tugging of heartstrings, this hasn't really proceeded according to script.

It was supposed to be a simple, inevitable march to glory. Enormous amounts of money (at least in Canadian terms) were invested in our athletes to guarantee that what had happened before - gold-medal-free Olympics in Montreal in 1976 and Calgary in 1988 - would not happen again. Success would not be a faint hope, it would be an expectation. We would own the podium, we would top the medal tables. Though it might seem antithetical to traditional notions of the national character, the overt confidence, the swagger of those newborn champions would set a tone for the country. As they witnessed triumph upon triumph, at each raising of the flag and singing of the anthem, as they witnessed other countries - especially the United States of America - left trembling in our wake, citizens would be suitably inspired, emboldened in their own lives, feel moved to hit new heights, feel kindly toward the government of the day (the propaganda possibilities of this exercise have been obvious at least since 1936), and not question for a minute the wisdom of the entire Olympic enterprise.

That was the narrative arc everyone anticipated, not just sports and Olympic administrators, but also those in control of the massive media consortium, which paid an unprecedented amount for the rights to the Games and was betting heavily on being able to wallow in Canadian success.

Instead, the show got off to an unequivocally awful start. Hours before the cauldron was lit, a luger was killed during a practice run, raising questions about the safety of the state-of-the-art track built specifically for these Olympics. A technical glitch marred the climactic moment of the Opening Ceremony, and freakishly warm weather threatened to melt the Cypress Mountain venue, forcing cancellations and eventually mass ticket refunds. The much-hyped Canadian hope for a home gold medal fell short on the opening day of competition, and the opportunistic overseas press corps focused in on every glitch, pronouncing the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics a failure and an embarrassment to the host country even before they had really begun.

It would have been no surprise in those circumstances for the country to curl up in the fetal position, to experience a great national cringe: We weren't good enough; in the big moment, we hadn't come through; we weren't up to the task; we should never have become involved (or spent the money) in the first place.

What happened instead were the streets of Vancouver filling with huge crowds, young, pan-ethnic, the very image of the place, decked out in national colours, patriotic gear the fashion statement of the moment, and that became the story. From across the country came reports of other gatherings, more modest naturally, and then the first television numbers, showing that unprecedented numbers of Canadians were tuning in. (And the changed medium itself was also part of the equation - the immersive effect of having everything from the Games available at all times on multiple platforms; watching hour after hour of the Olympics, following sports that otherwise aren't exactly top of mind, has always had a narcotic effect, but this time it was possible to inhabit virtual-Olympic-world 24 hours a day.)

Apparently, it wasn't all about flawless execution and it wasn't all about winning medals and it wasn't even all about sport. It was about providing an opportunity, a platform, an excuse, to let loose pent-up feelings of national pride, to express, without apology, with a spirit of joy, a national identity, hitting emotional notes beyond the usual touchstones of climate and geography, of politeness, tolerance, universal health care and hockey. It was fun (especially for those too young to have experienced the epiphany of the Canada-Soviet hockey series, 1972 - or even the Ben Johnson run of 1988) and it was liberating and it felt good, the power of collectively giving a damn.

By the time moguls skier Alexandre Bilodeau won that first Canadian gold medal in Canada, in so many ways the perfect poster boy for everything the Games are supposed to be about, it was becoming clear that the country outside the Olympic bubble was setting the tone, and not vice versa. During those distressing moments mid-Games when it began to dawn on everyone that the Own the Podium goals could not be reached, when several Canadian athletes seemed to buckle under the intense pressure, bureaucrats and reporters were busy counting up the medals and fretting over whether it was really a good idea to shoot so high, while outside the flag-waving proceeded unabated.

It wasn't until skeleton athlete Jon Montgomery's victory a week ago last Friday (following immediately on the heels of fellow slider Melissa Hollingsworth's teary disappointment, which was the Games' athletic nadir from a Canadian point of view), and his triumphant stroll through the streets of Whistler, grabbing a pitcher of beer along the way, that the Olympics caught up with the mood of the country. Then came Thursday, with four medals won and the one-sided hockey victory over Russia, and the stage was set for a weekend like no other.

Come Monday morning, come the weeks and months and years after that, who knows if there will even be a hint left behind of what has happened here beyond a short hangover? Whether all of those jerseys and flags and maple leaf hats will gather dust in some closet, like artifacts of a graduation, of a wedding, other signpost moments that are over, and gone.

Public displays of patriotism would seem unlikely to become the norm. But given the opportunity, given the excuse, who would be surprised now if this happens again? The want seems to be there, the need seems to be there, and maybe it has been there percolating all along - the desire to join together and celebrate ourselves, to be a tribe.

Warm-up:
As usual

WOD:
For time:
21 Pull-ups
2 Handstand Push-ups
18 Pull-ups
4 HSPUs
15 Pull-ups
6 HSPUs
12 Pull-ups
8 HSPUs
9 Pull-ups
10 HSPUs
6 Pull-ups
12 HSPUs
3 Pull-ups
14 HSPUs

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Monday 100301

Canadian Olympic Pride.

Warm-up:
As usual

Skill Development:
Handstand holds
3x 1 minute total hold against wall

WOD:
3 rounds for time of:
25 Burpees
100 Squats
35 Sit-ups

Go hard and don't stop. This WILL be a tough one!

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