Friday, December 30, 2011

Learn & Play New Sports Regularly

Took Animal to the movies to play some Bowling and to let him do what Animal does best...



POUT...



DANCE...



AAAAAnd get just a taste of sweet SUCCESS!!! What a funny little creature Vin is, indeed!

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

2011: A Very Cochise Year In Review

As 2011 draws to a close I'd like to throw out a few highlights of my year. For me, these events helped to give shape to my 2011 experience and from them I'll always remember 2011 for a great year filled with time well spent with my family, my CFS comrades, and my ongoing pursuit of world domination.

January: Bring on the snow and dancing penguins!


February:


March:

CROSSFIT SPRINGFIELD finishes as XFIT League Season 1 CHAMPS!!!

XFIT League: End of Season One

League Results

Rank Box Points
1 CF SPR 16
2 CombatCF18
3 BHFIT 21
4 IM CF 25
5 CF 816 33
6 CF MAN 36
7 PFCF 36
8 CF 785 39
9 KCPD CF (NEW)0
10 CF MAT (NEW)0
11 CF LIN (NEW)0
12 CF TOP W

The 2011 "Groundhog Day" Open - I mean - CrossFit Games Open takes place. First 2 weeks: Perform WOD 11.1 as many times as possible. I win.

April:

CFS Hosts Olympic Lifting Cert with Coach Mike Burgener

CFS Prom

The 2011 Open Concludes:

The following men from CrossFit Springfield have placed in the top 60 and are now qualified for the North Central Regional May 27th-29th at Navy Pier in Chicago, IL (Out of 934 registered male competitors in the North Central region):5th, Macy Mitchell; 14th, Andrew Koch; 39th, Jeremy Mhire; 40th, Brian Llewellyn; 47th, Jon Newbold

The following women from CrossFit Springfield have placed in the top 60 and are now qualified for the North Central Regional May 27th-29th at Navy Pier in Chicago, IL (Out of 515 registered female competitors in the North Central region): 24th, Melissa Wistrom; 42nd, Kara Wallace-Racz; 59th, Kristin Anderson; 60th, Kathy Metz

In the Women’s Masters Competition, Cindi Little has finished in 5th Place in the 55-59 yr old division, qualifying her to compete in the 2011 CrossFit Games at the Home Depot Center in Carson, CA from July 29-31. Way to go, Cindi!!!

May & June:

Spring arrives! Daddy, Mommy, Vin, and unborn baby Emille head to the park!

CFS represents at CrossFit Games Regional Competition

CrossFit Springfield fields a STRONG team and manages to qualify for the CF Games World Finals in LA! As an individual competitor, I was able to qualify for the finals of regionals and placed 12th overall in the final standings.

Jenny's Baby shower for Emille at the Wistrom casa!

Clean Up in Joplin with Convoy of Hope

July:

Emille arrives!
CrossFit Springfield competes in LA at the 2011 CrossFit Games.

August:

Planning and preparation for HOA3 begins

September:

See August

October:

Fun fall festivities, pumpkin chucking, trips with the family to the pumpkin patch- all good times!

November:


December: My WARPATH to the 2012 CrossFit Games season has begun. Training is in full swing, LivXFit is beginning to gain greater exposure, and the gym is as busy as it's ever been. To top off an already exciting month, an article I recently wrote profiling 2011 CF Games Individual athlete and North Central competitor, Armand McCormick, was published today on the Games site: BOLDLY AGGRESIVE. December was a fun-filled month full of Christmas decorating, gift giving and plenty of sacred time with loved ones!

2012 has got big shoes to fill in my book. I'm thankful for all of the wonderful blessings 2011 gave me! Here's to the New Year!

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Making Off Season Strength Gains

This CF games off-season I've been very intentional about gaining overall strength. In recent weeks, there have been a ton of interviews and articles with CF games athletes who say they've also been working towards making strength gains in the off-season. In a November video of a conversation on the topic of making off-season strength gains between CFHQ coaches, Nadia Shatlia and Dave Lipson, there are some great points made- many of which I've noticed in my training over the last month:

1. In order to gain strength, you must be willing to gain some mass. If you place more emphasis on hitting the primary lifts using heavier loads, yet continue to repeatedly crush yourself in 15 to 30+ minute conditioning efforts, you'll likely diminish the effect of your strength returns. You've gotta pick your battles in the box. For me, this has meant to hit at least 4 or 5 strength biased workouts per week while only performing one or two 3-10 minute met-cons and 1 chipper style WOD per week.
2. Milk does a body good. Unless you're a strict Paleo person, are lactose intolerant (in which case I'd recommend Lactaid), or can't handle farting all day like a CHAMP (and, boy, does my wife know I can handle it), milk is one of the best ways to help you not only recover- but also to gain mass.
3. Eat lots and eat clean. On the first part- EAT LOTS: You need the calories to build back up that which your training has destoyed. On the second- EAT CLEAN: Keep it simple; avoid processed foodstuffs and sugars and stick to lean meats, fresh fruits and veggies, nuts and seeds, and little starch. Glassman said it best: "You won't perform like a high-powered machine if you're always pissing in your gas tank." Even doing this MOST of the time will result in improved overall athletic performance.
4. Determine if your lack of strength is due to neuromuscular insufficiency (technique, proprioception, mechanics, etc), the fact that you've tapped out your contractile potential i.e. you need to gain mass, or perhaps a bit of both. Over the past month, as I've PR'd on many of my primary lifts, I realized that for me, it was both. In many cases, I may have already had the strength to move the weight but what was lacking was the "learned" aspect of actually executing or successfully completing the lift. Bottomline: Slow down. Practice. Go through appropriate progressions. Warm up properly. Allow for gradual accommodation to larger loads. It'll all pay off.

Anyway, that's about enough of my musings for one night...Here's what my past couple of days of training have been like: After hitting yesterday's CFS strength piece of Thruster 4-4-4-4-4 (I reached 230lb x 4 and 235lb x 3), Andy Koch and I did the conditioning WOD of 16 minutes of Wallballs (20lb) for max reps. One person works at a time. Our strategy was to perform sets of 35reps for as log as possible. We made it through 5 full rounds each (Actually 6 for Andy) until at rep number 26 I finally hit the wall and dropped the ball. At this point there was about 3 minutes remaining and it became more of an all out gut-check- at least for me. Andy caught what he called a "second wind" and continued to forge through sets of 20-35 and I managed to trudge through smaller sets of 15-25 all the way to the finish. In 16 minutes the medball touched the ground only twice. Our transitions were always seamless. We switched out by passing off the ball mid-air to the next person who would slide in and continue working. Our grand total was 522 reps of 20lb Wallballs in 16 minutes. Needless to say, today I'm wrecked.

With this in mind, for my training today I decided to go for 30 Muscle Ups for time. My hope was to beat my previous best time of 4:56. As always, I flew through the first 20 and then slugged through the last 10. However, today I slugged 11 seconds faster and PR'd with a time of 4:45. Here's the video of my effort:

Sunday, December 11, 2011

300lb Ham Nuggett

Last Friday the CFS strength component was Power clean 1-1-1-1-1-1-1. My progression was 245-265-275-285-295f-300f-300PR. Rest assured, it was a gnarly looking power clean, but i picked it up regardless.

I had an amazing weekend relaxing with the family! Vin put on Christmas concerts for us:

And Emille was her usual snuggly little self :)

I'm lookin' at the HAM in the mirra!!!

Monday, December 5, 2011

500m Row PR & My Olympic Games Moment!!!

Rowed 500m today in 1:26. One second faster than my previous best 500m row. It hurt. Ooooh, did it hurt. Not sure if it was the cold December air or just me being a pudwhacker (you're right-definitely both), but this felt like one of the most uncomfortable things I've done in a while; even more uncomfortable than that time back in 1940 when I competed in the Summer Olympics...



HardyHarHar. I'm only joking, of course (about me being a pudwhacker). I'm more just a plain 'ole sissy at heart. Anyways, rowing 500m for time just goes to show you how deceivingly difficult the simplest of tasks can be.

I also did 5 x 1 deadlift today...did 335-400-470-505-540(f). I wanted to attempt the 540lb or maybe 535lb again but I did 5 x 7 backsquat yesterday and my hamstrings were strung, if ya know what I mean. They are RIPE, ripe, I tell you.

Happy Monday!

Sunday, December 4, 2011

The Act Of Refusal

I REFUSE to be manipulated, refuse to be digraced, refuse to be mistreated, I refuse to be replaced

But who really wins if I refuse to extend GRACE?

I refuse to talk things out, refuse to confront the PAIN, refuse to accept FORGIVENESS, refuse to accept my mistakes

But who really wins if I'm walled up by my SHAME?

I refuse to be a man, who, in living only for myself, would refuse to OPEN MY HEART to the burdens of someone else

And I refuse to find any comfort in a quiet or DARK, "safe" place

For the LIGHT still beckons me, and I refuse to not give chase.

~Cochise

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Going Back To The Well

Tuesday's 245lb Snatch miss left me with a feeling of unfinished business. I went to bed last night and woke up this morning with an insatiable desire to stick the lift and stand it up. My plan: After a good warm up, I'd take just 5 snatch attempts with progressive loads up to 245lb and let the chips fall where they may. I had to work for it but my more patient approach (This time I forced myself to take 1-2 minutes between each attempt) and strategy paid off and on my final lift I successfully snatched 245lb for a 10lb PR! Here is a video of the lift:



WooHoo!!! Very thankful to have hit it and appreciate the coaching and encouragement I received from Cole Samuelson and the rest of the noon crew! Immediately following the 5 x 1 Snatch work, I did "Isabel" (30 reps of Snatches @ 135lb for time). Not exactly sure of my previous best time but I'm pretty confident I've never gone sub 2 minutes on it. Today I did and finished in 1:52:


Great training day!!! Here's a video of the entire snatch progression I took towards 245lb: