Trident Blog

Update

Posted by chriss on Thursday, January 5th, 2012

Just wanted to give you a heads up about Saturdays WOD. We will be hosting a CPC (Coaches Prep Course) this Saturday and Sunday so we will have our workout outside, don’t fret is forecast to be a lovely 58 degrees F so it should be fun. Constantly varied. We will also be utilizing our new space (right next door) while the Courser is in our main gym, so we ask that you come in the new door vice interrupting the CPC. No worries it will be marked for those of us who are touched with the Al-z-heimer. What does all this mean to you…. we will have normal class hours on Saturday 7th 8:00am, 9:00am 10:00am.

Happy New Year, of course everyone is making crazy goals to accomplish, well good on ya, but lets be realistic about how we go about it. Just like you learn in every Goal setting seminar your attended, a few rules must be followed
1. In order to turn and wish into a goal it has to have date attached to it.
2. Long range goals should be broken down into bit size pieces so they are easier to swallow.
small steps go a long way in achieving lofty goals, just keep leaning in the right direction and eventually you will get there.
3. WRITE THEM DOWN. WRITE THEM DOWN WRITE THEM DOWN. Make yourself and your crew accountable for the goals you plan on achieving, last I looked there are alot of forgotten wishes on the whiteboard that need to be revisited. If you have one up there make sure it has a date or rethink the wish, dont be afraid to erase and start anew. If you dont have one up there… put on up there, lets try and fill the whiteboard with goals this year and slay the dragon that holds us back from being great.

Looks like its Goodwill time, we will be adding more cubbies soon, but in the meantime feel free to take your belonging (and water bottles) home with you, they miss being at home with their other friends you’ve forgotten about. We will be making a Goodwill run on Jan 13th, If you want to donate we will have a donation barrel for you to drop your stuff in, or just leave it around and we will surely scoop it up.

Mike Porterfield, our world famous rowing coach is doing a great job training the Mid Atlantic Trident Rowing Team of 4 (Boo) to rep your gym. Basically this is free rowing instruction once a week and what the heck, you might even win a prize (or catch a quad cramp). We got a month of good training left. Legs-Body-Arms

Well that’s enough for one day
Chriss

P.S. sorry no pictures, but my computer newsletter skills are not that sharp (read volunteer)

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Paleo Challenge Results

Posted by cciri on Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

The Trident Paleo Challenge is officially in the rear view mirror. Now that it’s wrapped up, hopefully you’re asking yourself the right questions as you’re evaluating your results. You shouldn’t be asking yourself whether you ate strict Paleo for the last two months, but if you’ve improved your eating habits, and better yet, your performance and energy level.

All of the coaches have definitely seen noticeable improvements in ALL of the Trident athletes over the last couple of months. Those of you who really dialed in on your nutrition, you can be assured that your improvements were definitely boosted by the positive changes you made to your diet. If you ate like crap over the last couple of months but still made gains in the gym, imagine the possibilities once you get your nutrition in check!

So, it’s time to let the cat out of the bag with the winners of the Paleo Challenge. Almost everyone made huge improvements, so you should all be proud that you made sacrifices and committed yourselves to a healthier lifestyle over the last couple of months…

Second place goes to Tim Long. Those of you who have worked out with Tim have inevitably noticed the ridiculous changes he’s undergone in the last two months. Since October, he’s lost 20 lbs and 7% of his body fat…ridiculous! Also his work capacity on the assessment WODs increased by about 16%. Congrats Tim, it’s been awesome to see your improvements!

First place goes to…Sara Gillespie. While I don’t have hard numbers for Sara’s weight loss or body composition, she posted HUGE improvements on the WODs and her overall work capacity. Whether she ate 100% Paleo or not since the challenge started is irrelevant. She’s been super consistent with her training and has obviously made an effort to make some positive changes to her nutrition. She used to give me that look of fear when I encouraged her to throw more weight on her barbell. Now she just smiles and calmly walks over to the weight stack. She also nailed her first handstand push up over the last month. Amazing to see these insane changes Sara, congrats!!

Hopefully you all have used this experience to embrace permanent changes to your eating AND training habits. To keep it in perspective, it’s not about how much you can deadlift or power clean, or how fast you can run a mile. But it IS about striving to accomplish things that don’t come easy to you. All the lessons you learn in the gym will make you better as athletes, as professionals, and as human beings!

Big shout out to all who participated and to all the athletes who make the Trident community as kick-ass as it is!

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Paleo Challenge!!

Posted by cciri on Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Alright party people, it’s about that time to dial in on nutrition! I know many of you have been anxiously anticipating the details and criteria for the upcoming Paleo challenge, so here it is!

I realize that Paleo eating, despite being a trendy buzz in the Crossfit community, still may be a complete mystery to a lot of our athletes, so before I go into the details of the Trident Paleo Challenge, here’s a little snapshot of what the Paleo Diet consists of:

The modern dietary regimen known as the Paleolithic diet, also popularly referred to as the caveman diet, Stone Age diet and hunter-gatherer diet, is a nutritional plan based on the presumed ancient diet of wild plants and animals that various human species habitually consumed during the Paleolithic era—a period of about 2.5 million years duration that ended around 10,000 years ago with the development of agriculture. Centered on commonly available modern foods, the “contemporary” Paleolithic diet consists mainly of grass-fed pasture raised meats, fish, vegetables, fruit, roots, and nuts, and excludes grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar, and processed oils.

Damn, you bored yet? I’ll spare you my take on why Paleo eating is a wildly effective way to improve your body composition, lose body fat and make HUGE performance gains in the gym. If you want to go ahead and geek out on the science, it’s really interesting stuff, at least to us fitness geeks. A great place to start if you want some more scientific background is by reading The Paleo Diet by Dr. Loren Cordain and/or The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf, which is a more modern-day version of Paleo eating.

If nutritional science doesn’t interest you, then all you need to worry about for the challenge is eating meat, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, and some oils. If you take nothing else away from this, stick to those 6 things for your food selections and you’ll be on the right track. For the most part, if it has a mom, or you can grow it from a seed, it’s open game!

There are a few foods that fall into that gray area…deli meats, bacon, sweet potatoes, yams, honey, agave nectar, “paleo” desserts and a few others. I won’t argue with anyone as to whether they are actually Paleo friendly, suffice it to say that these shouldn’t be your go-to foods if you want to see major changes in the coming months. The way this challenge will be structured, you can get away with selecting these foods in moderation.

So how will the challenge work?

The challenge will begin on October 1st and will run through November 30th. Now, before you go planning your attack to hunt me down for ruining your Thanksgiving plans, hear me out on the details.

The challenge will simply involve sticking to pure Paleo eating as much as possible, no one will be “penalized” for occasional cheating or eating outside the Paleo pyramid. Unlike our last challenge, we won’t be using a negative point system every time you slip up.

So how will we know if you’re not sticking to the plan? Quite honestly, we won’t. The goal of this challenge is to get our athletes thinking about making better nutritional choices and integrating the Paleo plan as part of a permanent lifestyle change. It will give everyone the chance to experience how it can positively impact your overall energy level and your performance in the gym. To hold everyone to a strict 30 day plan with penalties just reinforces a lack of permanence, and no one will really benefit from temporary Paleo eating in the long run. Furthermore, perfection isn’t necessarily important in this challenge. If you eat 200 grams of sugar a day right now and by the end of the challenge, you’re eating 50 grams and are starting to make performance gains, then who cares if you slipped up a few times? That’s not the objective of this challenge!

That said, I encourage everyone to use a buddy system that works for them for extra accountability. Nutrition logging works great for some people and knowing that you have to show your log to one of your fellow athletes can help keep you on track (I’m happy to be your personal enforcer on this). If that doesn’t work for you, find something that does. The point is, be accountable to yourself! The “how to” is completely up to you as an individual.

How will the winner of the challenge be determined?

This is a performance-based challenge, so those of you who are participating will be re-tested on yesterday’s WOD at the beginning of September. We will compare the data on your overall output for yesterday’s workout with December’s re-test, and the athlete with the highest percentage increase will win the challenge. The final analysis of performance improvements will also take into account your rank for the workouts compared to the rest of the athletes. Without boring you with the details, this is simply a way to account for anyone who was sandbagging the workout from yesterday to show an inflated increase in 60 days.

There will be sweet prizes for the first and second place athletes. Not gonna let the cat out of the bag on what they are, but they’re pretty awesome!!

I had originally planned to make body fat assessments a part of the challenge and factor that into determining the winner. I decided against doing that, as it’s not necessarily everyone’s goal to lose body fat and there are some athletes that really shouldn’t lose any additional body fat from where they are now. That said, I still want to offer before and after body fat assessments for anyone who is interested. It’s a really nice gauge of your improvements as an athlete, so come see me (Coach Chad) if you’re interested. I’ll be using a 4-point skinfold assessment, which isn’t 100% accurate, but is effective in showing gains and losses over time.

What are the best resources science on Paleo eating and recipes?

Glad you asked! There are a million of them out there, so the coaches got together and put together a bank of what we think are the best ones:

www.robbwolf.com
www.paleoplan.com
www.thefoodee.com
www.health-bent.com
www.whole9life.com/ (resources tab has some paleo blogs)
www.theclothesmakethegirl.com/
www.chowstalker.com/
www.marksdailyapple.com/
everydaypaleo.com/
www.civilizedcavemancooking.com/
balancedbites.com/
www.catalyst-meals.com (a great local resource for Paleo delivered right to Trident, thanks to Patrick Smith)

These all range in content from nutritional science and biochemistry to functional Paleo eating tips to Paleo recipes. Many of these sites also have links to other Paleo blogs and educational articles. The resources are endless.

Your other best resources are right in your own gym! You can ask any of the coaches for nutritional guidance that matches up with your own individual goals. We’re all pretty well versed in nutrition, so don’t be afraid to ask any of us if you have questions. We’re in the biz of changing lives, so don’t be shy!

Hope everyone is ready to kick some ass over the next 60 days!

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A Chunk of Marble

Posted by chriss on Monday, August 22nd, 2011

Marble

by Scott Zagarino

Marble starts out as a chunk of stone rooted in the ground that resists removal from its station mightily. It takes brute force to uproot it from its place. Then as an ugly, stubborn chunk it has to be moved by heavy equipment to a place to be cut, shaped and polished until what was once an ugly piece of the earth becomes a beautiful, hard surface brought into service as a floor or a kitchen counter.

There is one more purpose it serves that rises far above the mundane household uses. What was once of the earth becomes of the spirit when it marks a life no longer lived. Most times it marks the cradle to grave passing of a person of the everyday accomplishment of a father, son, brother, sister or friend.

But occasionally there is a rock dug from the earth meant to mark an extraordinary and heroic life. Not long ago I stood before just that special piece of marble on a small piece of ground off the beaten path at the Special Operations Warrior memorial wall in Florida. As I walked from the parking lot and caught my first glance of the yards of cool black marble inscribed to honor and memorialize men and women who had given the most precious thing given to all of us, their lives, I began to feel. It was a feeling of appreciation that any words I write here could not begin to describe.

The black, veined rock had come to a confluence of rest with the souls of people who walk among us but not with us. There was one name I searched for because I knew at least a part of the story that caused the marble slab to bear his name. After walking around the memorial feeling more and more a mixture of sadness, appreciation and a kind of awe took over that I may have felt sometime before, but couldn’t remember when.

Then as if I had always been meant to stand in that place, I found myself standing in front of a small, square piece of black marble with the carefully carved inscription, “Lt Michael P Murphy.” I disappeared into a sobbing, shattered shadow of the person I had been when I’d woken in my hotel that morning. What was left of Lt Murphy was not a piece of rock, it was a reminder of the heights each of us are capable of rising to from one singular motivation. A motivation I, and most of us, rarely recognize, acknowledge or ever have the chance to act on. A motivation that is the very quality we each squander daily as we race through our lives of never enough. A motivation that makes everything else in the world pale and disappear into the background. The motivation wrought by our total and complete love for our brothers and sisters.

For Michael Murphy, that meant making the choice to stand up, as bullets flew through and by him, pick up a satellite phone and make a phone call that I am sure he knew would be the last act of this life. That phone call was a plea for anyone on the other end to please come to the rescue of his brothers who were being torn apart by enemy fire that there was no escape from. And then Lt Michael Murphy was gone.

But I met Michael Murphy. I met him on a wall sitting in a patch of grass in a small field in Florida. I met him, because that piece of marble that had been so stubborn and rugged would forever stand in that place to remind me, and anyone who stands before it, we all have a chance to rise. We all have a chance to give and serve something precious to us to someone and something bigger than ourselves.

Before I left that place, I rubbed my hand across that cold, dark slab and made a vow to Lt Murphy. Writing this now it may sound insignificant given what he’d given me, but I promised him that as long as there was a Fight Gone Bad I would do everything I could to make sure he was not forgotten, and that as many people as I could reach would not forget him either. At least for seventeen minutes once a year.

On September 17th, every one of us has a chance to rise above ourselves, throw some money in the hat for the people we can help, and say thank you to Lt. Michael Murphy for reminding us who we can be. He gave us the chance to be heroic in our own way.

Let us not, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “….be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Lt. Murphy will never stand or lie in that place.

I hope you’ll join us this year on September 17th.

www.fgb6.org

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Fight Gone Bad 6

Posted by chriss on Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

Unself Yourself

by Scott Zagarino

I’ve had the privilege of being present to a more than average share of people’s last few moments in this “mortal coil” and it never ceases to amaze me, at the time someone knows that each breath could be their last, how similar the moments that mattered were.

Almost universally the things that mattered most, the things that either brought a small smile of satisfaction, or a tear of regret, were small things that most of us take completely for granted when we’re alone with our daydreams. A child’s laugh on a summer vacation. A hug from a spouse at just the moment a hug seemed out of the question, the smallest things. Most of all, those last moments have been reserved for the savoring of the times when all of the chattering in their head about what they “needed,” was forgotten and replaced by those memories of what they’d given back.

As athletes, and I prefer to use that descriptor in the broadest sense that defines anyone who accepts a physical challenge and sees it through to the end, we all have just the kind of gift that we/I tend to hoard, as if this workout or that competition is the last one we’ll ever have. We tend to view those less fortunate in the physical world as signposts to spur us into a brief appreciation of our gifts, rather than as a note to the soul to serve rather than to seek even greater glory.

As the founder of the Fight Gone Bad event, I have witnessed countless episodes of the transformation of CrossFitters who start out the day all about scores and totals, and end the day teary-eyed for the realization of the fact that for one shining moment they had made a difference in the lives of a soldier, a family, or a child that they would never meet.

With that, I’ve come to appreciate my own moments. Not the ones I ever thought would mark my brief stay on the planet earth, but the unexpected ones when I was able to get out of my own way long enough to change a few minutes in someone else’s history for the better.

As it turns out, my gift to our community is just as unexpected. While Greta Rose and I worked insane hours those first years, and not much has changed in that regard, we thought we were working for the good of our beneficiaries. As it turns out, my own small smile when the lights are just about out will almost certainly be for our small part in providing the stage that Fight Gone Bad has become for CrossFitters all over the world to unself themselves, and maybe to give a few more of us the right to a smile at the end, rather than a tear for what we could have done.

I hope you’ll join us this year on September 17th.

www.fgb6.org

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“Murph Day”

Posted by chriss on Thursday, May 19th, 2011

“Murph Day” benefit WOD for Navy SEAL Foundation

3rd Annual Navy SEAL Memorial Challenge – AKA “Murph Day 2011“

Presented by SEALFIT and Windy City CrossFit

Benefitng the Navy SEAL Foundation

Facebook page

In honor of Medal of Honor recipient Lieutenant Michael Murphy and all fallen veterans, Windy City CrossFit joins gyms nationwide to host “Murph Day 2011″ on Saturday, June 4th. Proceeds will go to the Navy Seal Foundation. Any size donation is required to participate, and this event will be open to donations from supporters and spectators as well. All donations are tax-deductible, please donate online, and be sure to direct your donation toward the “Navy SEAL Memorial Challenge” and specify your CrossFit or other gym in the comment section. Be sure to bring your receipt to the event as it will serve as your ticket to compete.

SEALFIT, Windy City CrossFit and the participating gyms (listed below) are proud to host this event for the 3rd consecutive year. Our goal is to raise $100,000 in total. Last year we raised over $14,000. In addition to the event there will be food, drinks, and lots of fun!

This is a fantastic event for a great cause, so please do everything you can to get friends, family, and the greater community involved!
The Workout:

In memory of Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, 29, of Patchogue, N.Y., who was killed in Afghanistan June 28th, 2005. This workout was one of Mike’s favorites and he’d named it “Body Armor”. We will honor a focused warrior and great American who wanted nothing more in life than to serve this great country and the beautiful people who make it what it is.

“Murph”
For time:
1 mile run
100 pull ups
200 push ups
300 squats
1 mile run

Partition the pull-ups, push-ups, and squats as needed. Start and finish with a mile run. If you’ve got a twenty pound vest or body armor, wear it.

When:

Saturday, June 4, 2011 from 8am – Finish

Current Participating Gyms:

USCrossFit / SEALFIT

Windy City CrossFit

CrossFit Austin

CrossFit Invictus

CrossFit Dallas Central

CrossFit Virginia Beach

Medal of Honor Citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as the leader of a special reconnaissance element with Naval Special Warfare Task Unit Afghanistan on 27 and 28 June 2005. While leading a mission to locate a high-level anti-coalition militia leader, Lieutenant Murphy demonstrated extraordinary heroism in the face of grave danger in the vicinity of Asadabad, Konar Province, Afghanistan. On 28 June 2005, operating in an extremely rugged enemy-controlled area, Lieutenant Murphy’s team was discovered by anti-coalition militia sympathizers, who revealed their position to Taliban fighters. As a result, between 30 and 40 enemy fighters besieged his four-member team. Demonstrating exceptional resolve, Lieutenant Murphy valiantly led his men in engaging the large enemy force. The ensuing fierce firefight resulted in numerous enemy casualties, as well as the wounding of all four members of the team. Ignoring his own wounds and demonstrating exceptional composure, Lieutenant Murphy continued to lead and encourage his men. When the primary communicator fell mortally wounded, Lieutenant Murphy repeatedly attempted to call for assistance for his beleaguered teammates. Realizing the impossibility of communicating in the extreme terrain, and in the face of almost certain death, he fought his way into open terrain to gain a better position to transmit a call. This deliberate, heroic act deprived him of cover, exposing him to direct enemy fire. Finally achieving contact with his headquarters, Lieutenant Murphy maintained his exposed position while he provided his location and requested immediate support for his team. In his final act of bravery, he continued to engage the enemy until he was mortally wounded, gallantly giving his life for his country and for the cause of freedom. By his selfless leadership, courageous actions, and extraordinary devotion to duty, Lieutenant Murphy reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

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