Cart wheels, handstands and frisbee.

It’s gettin’ to be that time of year. Summer is winding down. School is back in session. The grill is cranking out delicious (paleo) foods. Everyone seems to have a little spring in their step on Saturday morning.

No, it’s not Georgia Football.

It’s the 5th annual Fight Gone Bad fundraiser! I know you’re super excited.

Set up your donation page now! This WILL be a huge event for us this year.We’re working on getting it hosted off site to maximize the public draw. Any of our greek students interested in co-sponsoring?

I like to think of this as “the fight” and “postmortem”.

Open Gym today 4-6pm. There will be a posted WOD, but you are welcome to work on anything, or make up your own.

Sorry everyone. Due to microbial interference, classes are
canceled tonight. See you tomorrow!

Tomorrow, Friday 28th – Early schedule, 4-5:30.

Monday, Memorial Day – Closed

For those wishing to carpool, we will meet at the Commerce Wal-Mart at 12:00. Feel free to call me if you have any questions. 706-424-4981

CHANGE OF PLANS

Beginning tomorrow all 12:30 classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday are canceled. Instead, we will be doing 1:00 classes on Tuesday and Thursday.  Also, the gym will not be open in the evening until 5:30. Everything else will stay the same.

THIS THROWS OUT EVERYTHING WE THOUGHT WE KNEW

Check out this story. Apparently this guy hasn’t consumed any food or liquid

for 70 years!

Starving Yogi (Breitbart.com)

CAPTION CONTEST

Person with the best caption for the photo below wins a Harden Up shirt! Post to comments. Awarded Monday.

PLEASE NOTE: 12:30 CLASS CANCELED

We apologize for the inconvenience. The 12:30 class is canceled for Friday, May 14.

GRADUATION PARTY INFO

So it seems most of our graduates are not going to be in town Friday night for the party. That’s okay. We’ll just change it to a party. Feel free to bring a side dish of your choice, or cooler filled with your favorite beverage. After the workouts we’ll fire up the grill and party in honor of our absent guests.

CAN YOU SWIM?

If so, great! If not, that’s okay too. We’ll keep an eye on you. Don’t forget to join us Saturday morning as we paddle down the Broad river in Madison County. It’s only about 20 minutes outside of Athens and loads of fun. Feel free to bring your favorite beverages, just remember that DNR has a STRICT no glass rule. Call Adam for more details.

WHY YOUR SQUAT SUCKS PT. 3 – HOW TO FIX IT

(Courtesy Mark’s Daily Apple)

How to Regain and Maintain Hip Mobility

Yesterday, I made a case for the necessity of good hip mobility in, well, everyone. Athletes will get faster, stronger, and more powerful. Lifters will be able to lift more weight and squat heavier without rounding the lower back. Regular folks will spare their lower back from the stress of chronic sitting and bending over to pick things up. Extensive hip mobility will improve your love life (seriously, think about it – hip thrust, range of motion!), your deadlift, your Grok squat, and your posture. If you own a set of hips, the ability to traverse their full range of motion will improve your life in many ways. They are the fulcrum upon which most activity depends. Treat them well, keep them well lubed and tuned up, and you will reap the benefits and reduce your chance of injury. That much is pretty clear by now.

So, how do you do it? How do you get hip mobility, and how do you maintain it?

Before you launch into a series of drills and exercises, it’s important to understand exactly what I mean by hip mobility. I briefly went over it yesterday, but here’s a short exercise you can do right now to get the feeling for your hips.

Stand up (or remain standing if you’ve taken my advice to heart and set up a standup workstation).

Pick an object on the ground, or place one there. A shoe, a hat, a piece of paper, anything will work.

Now, pick up the object. But wait – don’t squat down to pick it up, and don’t just bend over at the waist. Erase the word “bend” from your vocabulary. You aren’t bending; you’re reaching back with your hips.

Stick your butt backwards, as if you were reaching for a stool to sit down. All the while, maintain a tight lumbar spine. Keep your back straight, in other words. Don’t round your back. Keep your legs nearly straight, too, just enough to unlock your knees.

Stick your hips back until you can grab the object. Grab it, then come back up by reversing the hip motion. Thrust your hips forward, as if you were performing a NSFW activity, Um, yeah. Thrust your hips forward by pulling against the ground with your heels. Squeeze your glutes for good measure, too. Feel that pull in your hamstrings and glute muscles as you draw power from your heels planted firmly against the ground?

That’s how you use your hips, and half the battle is won. Simply visualizing this usage of your hips will get you pretty far and improve your hip mobility (because now you know what using your hips feels like), but you can go even further. You can’t have too much hip mobility.

Soft Tissue Work

Next, get your hands on a foam roller and a tennis ball, baseball, golf ball, or a lacrosse ball. You’re going to do some soft tissue work to loosen up the muscles that are keeping your hips tight. Unless you’ve got a live in masseuse, these are essential items for any active person anyway, and they’re cheap, so there’s no excuse not to have them. Do these after a workout, in the morning, or, if you’re super tight and in a ton of pain, every day. (Continue Reading Here)

PLEASE NOTE: 12:30 CLASS CANCELED

The 12:30 class is canceled for today.

GRADUATION PARTY

Nope. These are not CrossFitters.

Hey grads! I need to know if you’ll be in town this Friday. I’ve already heard from a few of you, but send me an email anyway if you’ll be here. No point in having a party in your honor if you’re not here!

Also, the Broad River Trip is this coming Saturday! Be there or be a not fun person.

WAY TO GO!

Chris and Brad were the only ones to show up at 5 on Monday. It was a real battle of the ages!

WHY YOUR SQUAT SUCKS PT.2

“YOU MIGHT WANT TO SIT DOWN FOR THIS”

(Courtesy Marks Daily Apple)

Or maybe you don’t. It turns out that sitting in a chair – that time honored tradition we commonly associate with rest, relaxation, and recuperation (don’t forget mind-numbing work, too!) – is actually bad for us. At least, the way we approach sitting is health harmful. The occasional dalliance with a straight-backed office chair probably isn’t a problem, but when we spend most of our waking life sitting (or, even worse, slumping over) in a chair, we invite disaster. Such sedentarism is a real problem, and a recent one. Grok certainly wasn’t bound to a desk. He may have had more off time than we do (if modern hunter-gatherers are any indication), but he didn’t spend it subjecting his body to extended bouts of unnatural contortions. And there’s the other big difference: the way we sit is completely unnatural. Instead of sprawling out, hands behind our heads, legs outstretched, we moderns “relax” in a chair – a piece of furniture with which we have relatively new relations.

From “You Don’t Know Squat” we already know that the modern toilet has only been in widespread use for a couple centuries, and that squatting to eliminate is probably healthier than the sit/strain method, but did you know that chairs with backs enjoy a similar history? Until the 16^th century, chairs were reserved primarily for the gilded classes. Kings, noblemen, and statesmen used them to conduct business and hold court, while your average serf or peon was relegated to sitting on (backless) stools, chests, or even the ground. Early chairs were ornate, exquisite things made from expensive materials like ivory, ebony, bronze, and acacia wood, and festooned with beautiful carvings and designs; there weren’t any latter-day Ikea-equivalents pumping out mock kings’ thrones made of particle board. Handcrafted works of art versus utilitarian products mass-produced in China. It almost sounds like chairs are the refined grains of the furniture world.

Or, perhaps more fittingly, chairs are like shoes. They are modern “conveniences” that force our anatomy into unnatural positions while purporting to correct flaws intrinsic to our bodies. It’s not enough to say that we’re merely imperfect (because we are); we also possess a fatal flaw that only manmade artifice can fix. But what chairs actually do is make sitting in a harmful, slumped-over position for a dangerously long period of time possible. We bypass our built-in feedback system (you know – pain, fatigue, a sore back) that would usually direct us to correct our posture (or even, maybe, stand up and move around) and we’re able to sit relatively pain-free for hours on end – but the damage is being done. We’re getting progressively weaker and more reliant on the backing of the chair, and when we’re in a sitting situation without added back support, we can’t handle it. Instead of sitting erect, shoulders back, back strong and straight, head held high, we just slump over and use the curvature of our spine to support our bodies. If you don’t believe me, start watching for it. Look around at your colleagues, family, and friends, and see how they sit. Most people slump. Can you imagine the average modern twelve year old, weaned on couches and cheap school seating, slumping over in the saddle as he tries to ride down game on his first hunting trip with the warriors of the tribe? It simply wouldn’t work. (Continue Reading)

CROSSFITERS IN ACTION

FETA & BEEF STUFFED MUSHROOMS

(Courtesy of Paleotron)

Looking for a Paleo part snack or appetizer. These are pretty tasty.

These guys may not look the best, but you’re going to love the way they taste!

From Feta Cheese Beef Mushrooms with Tapenade

I’ve been excited about making this all week. Stick with me with the pictures, I didn’t get everything photographed because I usually start off with a general idea about how to make a dish then make stuff up as I go. (Continue reading here).

WHY YOUR SQUAT SUCKS

Some of you have heard me mention the amount of hip mobility that most Americans have; as in they have none! Muted hip function plagues us all, and with a little bit of work we can overcome it. Check out this article from MDA.

(Courtesy Marks Daily Apple)

People are exceedingly mobile these days. We can jet halfway across the world at a moment’s notice, check email on our phones, hop in the car and be in another state in five hours, conduct business from anywhere, transfer schools, and shave while reading the paper on the morning commute. Social mobility, financial mobility, spatial mobility, information mobility. Mobile workforce, mobile phone, Google Mobile. Yeah, clearly, mobility is highly prized.

What about joint mobility?

Too many people discount, or even outright ignore, this crucial aspect of physical fitness. Raw strength, speed, and stamina are all important, especially to athletes or weekend warriors, but everyone of any age or fitness level needs the ability to move their limbs and joints through their full range of motion as ordained by nature. That goes for grandmothers, teens, and couch potatoes alike. Though not everyone will be picking up barbells or running sprints or long jumping, we all have to function in a three-dimensional world. We all have space and gravity with which to contend if we’re planning on enjoying and experiencing all life offers, and that’s accomplished by moving through spatiality and against gravity. To thrive in this environment, we require the full, unfettered use of our limbs, joints, and muscles. Losing the shoes is a big step; so is getting strong and fit. One of the biggest, in my opinion, is regaining and maintaining maximum joint mobility.

“Regaining,” because we are born with joint mobility. Ever watch children play? They’re bendy, flexible little sprites with perfect squat and deadlift form. And they don’t need formal training to get there! Attainment of joint mobility, then, is regaining what was lost, not inventing something new.

Regaining is the easy part. (Continue Reading Here)