So this is something I have been thinking of for a little bit of time now and I decided to bring it up. Around Elysium we are starting to develop more and more strong & fast people. This past round of the CrossFit Open was fun. I got to watch many people set new records and perform beyond what they expected for themselves. As well, it was great to watch people really get competitive with themselves and with their fellow Elysium athletes. 

We started running our “Elite class” on sunday mornings several months back so we could give our more advanced members a time when they could compete head to head and to practice the more advanced lifts and skills. It has been great watching people attend and take part and get better at things that we can’t really program in the standard classes. Personally, it is fun for me because I get a chance to train with people who normally I don’t get to train with, since I normally coach when they train. 

Since the open has finished I have been looking forward to next year, because I think that Elysium has a lot of room to improve. I also think we have several members who are on the cusp of becoming some of our “competitive athletes.”  They show up very regularly, they spend time working on extra things before and after class and the give everything they have each visit. When they are instructed to make something more difficult they do it with little to no whining. Most of these people didn't come to Elysium as competitive level people, most of them joined and had to climb the ranks on the whiteboard like everyone else. 

One of the things that I want to make clear is that we don't want to change the environment of our gym into an agro competition gym. We like the “laid back but work your hardest” approach. If you don't want to be on the top of the board every day... that is a 100% cool. Just keep showing up and work to continuously do better than the day before. On the other hand, if you want to be the top lady or the top guy of the gym... If you look at coach Stacie or Coach P and think, “I want to beat them someday, I want to be that strong, fast or whatever,” then let's talk.

One of the best ways to start to speed up your progress is to scale up your warm-up. Many of the skills that separate people in the more advanced ranks are gymnastic movements. If you want to step things up, one way is to add the more advanced gymnastics skills to your warm-up: toes 2 bars, rings dips, handstand work, pistols and other such movements. Does this mean you might need to show up early for class sometimes or stay late? Yes, extra work is extra work - but if you look around you’ll see people doing this every day. Many people have a goal of getting a toes to bar or a pull up and they work almost daily to get closer.

If you still need to develop more strength in order to do more wod's at the rx'd weights, keep showing up and make sure you fight for every rep. What does it mean to fight for every rep? You might hear me yelling at people to “grind through” the rep. This means that when a rep gets sticky and the bar is barely moving you don’t just give up because it is hard. The people that fight for reps will hover in the middle of a squat for 10 seconds before letting it push them back to the floor. They take what seems like forever to push through the last 5 inches of the press over head. Ever watch Irene do shoulder press? That is fighting for your reps. If you are fighting for your reps you should be getting angry when you miss an attempt, you should be getting fired up to give it one more try. Instead of failing a rep and immediately telling yourself, “oh, I can’t do that.” 

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Some of you that have been to the sunday advanced class have probably seen me get this fired up from missing a pr before.This was my first attempt at getting 405lbs overhead ever. This is the kind of reactiion you should have when you miss a Pr attempt, becuase you want it that bad. After this attempt I went on the make the lift on the next attempt. 

On days that are heavier hitting, like squat, clean or deadlift days, make sure you are eating more fat and protein in order to help recover and repair better. Many of you that are training 4-5 times a week probably need to eat more, especially the ladies. Adding some extra fat and protein to your breakfast, having a post workout snack like milk, chocolate milk or some sort of protein shake will help recovery as well as having a solid quality dinner will increase strength faster.

Attending the Sunday class can also be a fantastic way to bump your training up a notch. However, the Sunday class is something that you need to ask about before showing up. If you aren't capable of most of the advanced moves and are not doing a majority of the wod's Rx'd then you won't be getting the real benefit of the class. Likewise, if you are someone who we have to continuously talk to about proper range of motion on basic movements, you probably aren't ready for the Sunday class. Like I said, the people at the Sunday class are there to compete against each other.