Coaches' Articles

The CrossFit Open officially begins in two days! For some of us that means year 6 of The CrossFit Open and for others it may be your first taste. Today I want to run through some quick logistics for how to navigate The CrossFit Open at CFA!

The Announcements
Workouts are announced live every Thursday at 7 pm central time. Once the workout is announced, 2 high-level CrossFit Athletes then go head-to-head and compete in that workout. We will be hosting a viewing party for the announcements and projecting the event on to our main whiteboard on the following Thursday evenings:

Thursday PM – February 26th
Thursday PM – March 12th
Thursday PM – March 19th
Thursday PM – March 26th

The only exception being Thursday 3/5 (Open WOD 15.2) when the announcement event will be held live here in Austin.

The Workouts
We will be doing the workouts as a gym on Saturdays. This will be a part of our regular group programing throughout the month. Since we do not know the workouts in advance we may have special instructions for Saturday’s classes once the workout is announced, so check the website and Facebook for any special instructions on Fridays. Also, be  sure to reserve yourself a spot in class on Saturdays at either 9 AM or 10 AM. If you can’t make it on a Saturday, you’re free to do the workout anytime during Open Gym.

Official Scores and Judging
To have an officially validated score you must have a judged scorecard. Judges will be provided and available on Saturdays however, if you can’t make it on a Saturday you are responsible for finding your own judge to judge your workout. We will have official scorecards printed and available after the workouts have been announced.

Scheduling
Programming for our group classes will be designed to work with The CrossFit Open workouts each week. My suggestion is to maintain your current training schedule and simply use The CrossFit Open workout as your last workout of the week. We will make sure folks are prepared to do their best throughout the duration of The Open!
And last but not least, remember to have fun! The CrossFit Open is a great time to test yourself and push outside of your comfort zone, but mostly – its a ton of fun!

-Coach Wes

Time is a Valuable Thing.

I get it, making it to the gym can be difficult. You work 40-60 hours a week and have family obligations on either side of those work hours. There are only 168 hours in week. Understanding this time frame, we have the opportunity to formulate a plan which allows us to attack the week head-on, as we see fit. Again, time is a valuable thing and our higher life priorities get the bulk of that valuable time investment.

Over the next few weeks, I will delve deeper into the valuable aspect of time as it relates to protein intake and results in my following blog posts. Today, I want to shift our focus from time to some different categories of protein, and give us a foundation and common terminology to build upon for the next installment.

Consider this; if you invest your hard-earned money in stocks, bonds and the like…you do so hoping and expecting for a positive gain or return. Hopefully you did your homework to have some understanding as to where you are putting your money. Similarly, if you invest a portion of your monthly budget on supplemental protein, you want a gain or return. That “return on investment” comes in forms such as added muscle size and tone, increased performance and faster recovery to name a few.

Any efforts researching protein or asking questions and conversing with a coach will inevitably lead you to hearing about amino acids and how they are the building block of protein. So, let’s break protein up into a few different categories that use amino acids to distinguish the difference:

 High quality

 Low quality

 Supplemental

High quality protein, also known as complete protein, is considered high quality because of its high biological value. The biologic value is in terms of the unique amino acid pattern similar to that needed by the body. Complete proteins are of animal origin and include chicken, fish, red/white meat and eggs.

Low quality protein, known also as incomplete protein, are of low biological value and deficient in at least one of the essential amino acids. Examples of these proteins are vegetables, grains and beans. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not vilifying these foods whatsoever! Remember, for our purposes, we are examining protein quality.

Complete and incomplete proteins (high and low quality proteins) come from the food sources we eat on a daily basis (hopefully). Now what about my protein shake I drink post workout? This, as referenced above, will be called supplemental protein. As many of you know, the most common form of supplemental protein is whey protein. Any idea why whey? A quick search on the ‘ole Google machine should reveal that it’s a quicker, easily digestible protein, thus jump starting the recovery/rebuilding processes.

Now that we have some base terminology of some different types of proteins (complete, incomplete and supplemental) we can move forward. Next time we will dig deeper, focusing on that valuable time aspect and why it is important as it relates to our supplemental consumption. In the meantime, just like a financial advisor would recommend, let’s diversify our portfolio and make sure our protein is coming from a myriad of sources so we can reap the myriad of benefits.

Stay healthy my friends,
Coach Garland

We Want YOU!!!

For your participation in the CrossFit 2015 Open

The 2015 Reebok CrossFit Open is upon us! For those who have been here in the past, you’ll attest to this energy filled time contributing to five consecutive action packed Saturdays. Not to mention, it’s my favorite time of the year! For those of you who are new and have no idea what the Open is, let me explain…

The Open is the preliminary qualifier for what we see on TV, the CrossFit Games. It is a world-wide competition, lasting five weeks with a new workout released weekly. Members of CrossFit boxes have the ability to compete against not only their ‘box-mates’ with each workout, but by submitting your score online you can compete with and see how you stand against other all over the world. During this period, the weekly workout will be CFA’s Saturday morning workout. Imagine these mornings with hype music and/or a DJ, a larger presence of our community cheering each other on, tons of chalk clouds from the amount of clapping, and multiple PR’s/higher levels of accomplishment from everyone! ‘Hype City’ at its finest while we fulfill our mission of making it BACK to Regionals for the 6th year in a row!

How does it work? Sounds like way too much fun to be a competition!

The first workout will be released Thursday February 26th by CrossFit HQ. A new one is released each Thursday until March 26th. Once the workout is released, you have until the following Monday (5 pm PT) to complete that workout and submit your weekly score.

NEW!! There are two divisions this year; ‘Rx’ for those interested in competing/furthering their journey and ‘Scaled’ for those who don’t quite have all movements but want to get the best of their experience. Each division will be ranked based on scores. Scores go towards both individual and team scores. However, if you want your score to count towards your team’s score or move onto Regionals as an individual, you must do ALL workouts Rx.

Wait, Leigh, rewind…there are TEAM scores and I can contribute?

YES! Each week, the top 3 gals’ and the top 3 guys’ scores are taken. These six scores and who we pull from may change weekly based on whose wheelhouse that workout is in. One of the workouts may be in your wheelhouse and we’ll need YOUR score to help our cause towards Regionals. Each week, the collective total amongst the six scores determines where we rank regionally (against other teams/boxes) and ultimately where CFA ranks at the end of the 5 weeks. If we make the cut, we’re off to represent CFA at the LIVE Regional venue.

We’ve had a group of individuals training with the sole focus to have a team at Regionals.  We know this year will be increasingly difficult and in previous years have used multiple CF Austinites’ scores to help on our road to Regionals, even if competing at Regionals wasn’t their focus. We’d like to continue this tradition as there are some of you who have skills to contribute to these workouts (cough, cough…Bradley, Janss, Dayna, Doug, Miguel, Cody and many others of CFA…no pressure 😉 ).

Yes, I’ve secretly been watching and would love as many of you to be a part of our journey towards the Games! Besides, regardless of signing up, you’ll be doing these workouts anyway! You might as well register! New to CrossFit and/or CrossFit Austin? Don’t let that deter you from signing up and doing these workouts with the community!!!

This sounds fun, how do I sign up?

Follow the link (below) to register. Fill out appropriate fields and when prompted, choose CrossFit Austin as your ‘affiliate’. Registration is $20 but is fully worth it! REGISTER!!! It takes a village and I’m recruiting!

Join us for an amazing 2015 Open season. Results?! A stronger community and seeing many of you do things you thought you wouldn’t be able to do! If you doubt your efforts, don’t! It’s a great experience and an awesome tradition at CFA to be a part of.

Let’s get CFA to Regionals for the 6th year in a row! #weare1 #roadtoregionals #year6 #ittakesavillage

Coach Leigh

CLICK HERE to register