ACSM “CrossFit Study” Fraud?

Two-time Olympian Chad Vaughn details four areas of focus if you really want to add weight to your snatch and clean and jerk.

Most athletes dive into the Olympic lifts without considering what really allows someone to lift the heaviest loads and move efficiently through high-rep workouts.

I have four keys to lifting the heaviest weights and moving well in the snatch and clean and jerk. They… Continue Reading

On Episode 276 of CrossFit Radio, host Justin Judkins interviewed Carrie Rieger, who was recently crowned Mrs. Missouri. Judkins also interviewed Andrea Ager, SoCal Regional competitor. This episode was webcast live at 6 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, May 15, 2013.

5:02 Carrie Rieger trains at CrossFit Lee’s Summit in Lee’s Summit, Mo., and she recently won the Mrs. Missouri pageant. She explained how and why she got involved… Continue Reading

As a child, Annie Thorisdottir took ballet. It didn’t stick for long, though. Like her cousins, she wanted to try gymnastics. She made it to Iceland’s national team but quit to focus on high-school studies.

“Going from training 24 hours a week into training not at all didn’t really work out for me,” the 23-year-old two-time CrossFit Games champion says with her quintessential smile.

So she started ballet again, and dance. That, too… Continue Reading

You’ve seen the game on American Gladiators, now play it with your CrossFit Kids.

This kids version of powerball involves quite a bit less tackling than the TV version featuring muscled men and women named Laser and Siren, but the goals are the same: get a ball into a guarded bucket.

Kids ready?

Trainers ready?

Go!

Kim O’Reilly’s body is 53, but her kidney and pancreas are much younger. They belonged to her son, who donated them to her.

Her failing organs were a result of Type 1 diabetes, with which she was diagnosed at the age of 5. She reluctantly agreed to the kidney transplant in 2001, a couple of years after her daughter died following a similar procedure. Her son was 18 at the time.

“We both woke up from the OR with a… Continue Reading

At 13, Anna Tunnicliffe decided she wanted to win an Olympic medal in sailing. And she did, taking gold in the Laser Radial class at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

“(It’s) the most amazing feeling in the world,” she says. “Not too many people can say they’ve won one.”

Now 30, Tunnicliffe began training at CrossFit B&S in Miami about a year and a half ago.

“I was fit, but I was just not getting fitter. I wasn’t getting… Continue Reading

Alongside CrossFit Media’s Carey Peterson, two-time Olympian Chad Vaughn dissects his 315-lb. clean and jerk via slow-motion footage.

“Really the same for the snatch,” he says of his set-up. “I’ve just locked myself in here. I’m looking at the tension in the back, the back-angle maintenance, the shins coming back out of the way.”

With the shins vertical as the bar passes the knees, the clean becomes easier, says… Continue Reading

“Time to try some new food,” Lanette Doran tells three young children who are surrounding a large bowl of vegetables on a kitchen counter.

She’s taught children for many years how to eat well through healthy cooking. Now, with about five years of CrossFit under her belt, she’s teaching these kids about taste testing with carrots, kale and asparagus, among other items.

“Did you know you have to taste things 10 or 100 times to get… Continue Reading

For Daryl Roberts, CrossFit has been about improved health and relationships, so when he traveled in 2008 to Liberia and saw malnourished orphans sick with malaria and infested with worms, he knew what could help make them better.

“I love CrossFit so much and I saw how it improved my health,” explains Roberts, who trains at CrossFit Adrenaline in Cartersville, Ga. “I wanted our kids to experience that.”

Roberts started Orphan Aid Liberia… Continue Reading

Pull it higher or pull yourself under? Bob Takano explains how to get under heavy bars fast.

There are two components involved in getting a bar overhead or up to the shoulders from the ground.

The most commonly conceptualized component is to lift the weight up to the required height. The second component is to lower the body under the bar. In the sport of weightlifting, both components are combined simultaneously by… Continue Reading

At CrossFit Delaware Valley in Broomall, Pa., owner Rob Miller believes in a creative warm-up.

Bear-crawl musical chairs, for example, is among his choices.

“Now when I stop the music, you have to put your butt on top of one of these med-balls and claim it as your own,” he explains to the class.

The first person who cannot get his or her butt to an open ball does 16 burpees, the next does 14 burpees, then… Continue Reading

As they ride to the gym before the announcement of Workout 13.4, Chris Spealler tells Director of the Games Dave Castro, Rory Mckernan and Graham Holmberg that he got no-repped on his fourth rep in 13.3, which began with 150 wall-ball shots.

Spealler can’t figure out how the ball hovered just off the wall for a no-rep but still seemed to bounce back to him. It’s a physics problem a host of athletes are pondering in the post-Open period.

Castro says … Continue Reading

Krista Guloien is an Olympic rower who brought home a silver medal for Canada last year. She’s also now a CrossFit athlete.

“Working with and for other people was the key to me doing as much as I did or going as hard as I did,” says the rower who competed in the women’s eights in London.

She adds, “(That) extra something ... was about not letting my teammates down.”

Guloien says working with and against others in… Continue Reading

Kids and Kale? Believe it, says Lanette Doran, who gets her three young helpers to assist her as she prepares this simple dish.

First the kale leaves are stripped from the stems before they are rolled into balls to make chopping easy. The chopped kale is then steamed while cashews are put in a blender with some onion powder. The kale is cooked until it’s bright green, and then it’s mixed with… Continue Reading

Countless hours went into producing the unveiling events for each of the five workouts of the CrossFit Games Open. In Part 1 of this series, take a look at everything that happened before Director of the Games Dave Castro finally broke the suspense and released the events during the live broadcasts.

Included are tidbits like the old-fashioned barber-shop shave before 13.2 with Castro, Games Head Judge Adrian Bozman and CrossFit… Continue Reading

Affiliates have many options for integrating new members. Emily Beers talks to five gym owners who explain what they do and why.

CrossFit affiliate owners are free to run their businesses any way they like as they pursue excellence and bring fitness to their clients.

They can make their own decisions as to how they integrate new clients into the gym, whether they’re going to offer specialty programs, how they’ll develop and compensate coaches… Continue Reading

“It was horribly hard (when) I realized I’ve been a widow longer than I’ve been a wife,” says Ann Schmalstieg, an artist and a coach at Oceanside CrossFit.

Her husband, Marine Staff Sgt. Justin Schmalstieg, was killed Dec. 15, 2010, while serving in Afghanistan. The 28-year-old bomb-disposal technician had previously served three tours of duty in Iraq. On Dec. 15 in Helmand province, he was clearing a path… Continue Reading

When former track-and-field star Marion Jones-Thompson stepped into CrossFit Texas, the coaches were perplexed: how do you coach such an accomplished athlete?

The answer was simple: treat her just like everyone else.

“I don’t expect when I sign up for there to be, like, balloons and all of that,” Jones-Thompson says with a laugh. “I’m an athlete. I wanted to work out.”

Also a former basketball player for the Tulsa Shock of the… Continue Reading

In 2010 on the streets of East Oakland, Calif., a gang member shot Fremont police officer Todd Young in the pelvis. He suffered injuries so severe that doctors thought he would die.

Young woke up after 19 days in a coma. The shot to his iliac artery had also taken out 40 percent of his bladder and left holes in his intestines. He found himself with a colostomy bag, a catheter and tubes in his stomach, which… Continue Reading

CrossFit HQ General Counsel Dale Saran explains why a local throwdown is not a “CrossFit competition.”

CrossFit’s growth has produced a number of interesting side effects, most of them positive.

One byproduct of CrossFit’s spread and the continued business success of CrossFit affiliates has been the growth of the Sport of Fitness. This has significant consequences for CrossFit Inc.’s intellectual property, all CrossFit affiliates and the entire CrossFit community.

There is a… Continue Reading