The women of CrossFit Brea

First off I want to thank the ladies for not kicking my ass while I was filming you. I got a few threats but fortunately I came away unscathed. Here is a tribute to women who go against what traditional fitness guru's think. Keep spreading the word that women can and do train just as hard as men.

Girls Can't lift weights. from Erik Arevalo on Vimeo.

We will have one 8:00 class tomorrow, closed Friday and back to normal schedule on Sat.
We have been playing with our new toy the past several days and this is what we were able to compile in the short time we have had it. Don't worry ladies we will be posting a video for you in the next few days. Enjoy.

Thursday we will only have one class at 8am and will be closed on Friday. Regular schedule for the weekend.

From Percy Cerutty’s 1967 book “ Be Fit Or Be Damned”

There are two attitudes of mind, especially, that the older man must guard against. The one is – living in the past: his accomplishments of yesteryear: fantasies as to his boyhood: his athletic or sporting successes: his high-marked examinations. To do this is to admit failure as to the present.

In this age group there are still ‘championships’ to be won: feats of strength even outdoing the young: capacities and demonstrations just as good as he ever enjoyed, since all tings are relative.

The other is – projecting himself too much into the future: sacrificing today for a perhaps, nebulous, tomorrow. There must be balance.

Too many men have worked ceaselessly in order that they can enjoy a reward at 50, or 60, only to find that through lack of ‘practice,’ that is, keeping alive from week to week the thing they look forward to enjoying, they have lost the capacity for that particular form of enjoyment.

Further ...
In any case, whatever the attitude the approach to any problem, or difficulty, must be through the mind. In the matter of health and fitness, as in any other successful venture, the person must feel the need, the real and pressing need, for what he aims at, otherwise, most of his ‘aims’ will be found to be ‘wishful thinking.’

Unless there is ‘feeling’, a deep inner need and desire, a real interest, there will not be sufficient enthusiasm to carry through with the project, whatever it may be. The Will only functions as an expression of feeling. Of itself, it is useless, since will cannot will.

Where there is emotional content the Will will be aroused, and remain dominant, just as long as we are still emotionally motivated ...

Calling 'em out-Part II

All right Christmas is over, time to get started. "But wait Erik what about New Years?" Lets call New Years what it really is. A time for amateurs to go out and get drunk, make an ass out of themselves and promise never to drink again. In our minds the holidays are over and it is time to get back to business. Tamales, candy and alcohol need to be consumed once again in moderation and all the resolutions need to start today, not tomorrow.
We have had a number of people call us and tell us they want to come down and start training. We have yet to see one. Now if they decided to go to another CrossFit we will accept that, but if they are waiting to start for some day around the 1st of January we will continue to harp on you. That's right we are calling YOU out. We challenge YOU to start today, get something accomplished now!!! CrossFit Brea would like to welcome a few who did not wait until Jan 1st; Rosendo, RJ, Jennifer, Andy and Amy welcome to the family

"Lean, Sexy, and Hard"
by: John Berardi

I don't know about you, but I'm getting rather tired of all the stereotypical nonsense surrounding women and weight training.

"Deadlifts? No, no. That's a man's exercise; we don't want to hurt ourselves now do we? You better stick to this here butt blaster instead. Don't go too heavy now; that'll just make you big and bulky like those female bodybuilders. If you want to 'tone up,' you need to go for the 'burn' with high reps and just a little bit of weight. Okay, now over to the hip adductor machine. This one is great for targeting and toning up those inner thighs."

And as if the abundance of misinformation spouted out by the average lay person regarding women and weight training isn't enough, these words actually came from the mouth of a "certified" personal trainer. A man's exercise? What the heck is that? Are women so incompetent and weak that they can't manage to conduct exercises with barbells and dumbbells or something? Higher reps to tone up? Big and bulky?

Man, I wanted to clock this guy; however, instead of "laying the smack down" on his misinformed butt, I decided to write this article instead. Let's take a look at how a woman should train and at the same time dispel some of the common misconceptions regarding female trainees:

How Women Should Train...

1. If you want to be lean, sexy, and hard, you should train with weights.

A desirable female physique is one that can only be achieved by moving some serious iron in the weight room! But what about all the talk about weight training making women big and bulky? First, it is physiologically impossible for you as a woman to put on large amounts of muscle mass; you're body's hormonal makeup is not one that will allow you to do so.

God never intended for women to look like men (go figure), so he made the chemistry of each gender's respective bodies different. Regardless of how you train, how often you train, how much protein you eat, etc, you're not going to even come close to the big, bulky physique of a female bodybuilder.

It will not happen. That look is only obtainable by one means: steroids. Because their natural hormonal profiles would never allow them to get that "big," they resort to changing their body's chemistry through the use of illegal drugs. Secondly, if the right training method is chosen, the hypertrophic (growth) response to resistance training can be even further reduced. This brings us to our next point.

2. If you want to be lean, sexy, and hard, you should train HEAVY.

Yeah, I know what they told you, lighten the load and go for the burn... hogwash. To comprehend why this is indeed nonsense, we have to understand a few things about muscle tone in general. There are two types of muscle tone; myogenic and neurogenic. Don't get thrown off by the sciency words; the first simply refers to your muscle tone at rest. It is affected by the density of your muscles; the greater the density of your muscles, the harder and firmer you will appear. Heavy training increases your myogenic tone through the hypertrophy (growth) of the contractile proteins myosin and actin (myosin and actin are by far the most dense components of skeletal muscle).

Training in higher rep ranges promotes more sarcoplasmic (fluid) hypertrophy, which in turn yields a "softer" pumped look. If you want to be hard, firm, tight, etc, the latter is certainly not the way to go. The second aspect of a muscles' tone is neurogenic tone, or the tone that is expressed when movements or contractions occur. Again, lower rep training comes out on top as training with heavy loads will increase the sensitivity of alpha and gamma motor neurons, thus increasing neurogenic tone when conducting even the simplest of movements (i.e. walking, extending your arm to point, etc).

Finally, as alluded to in point number one, training with heavy loads and low volume (sets x reps) is the best way to get hard and strong, but not big. Muscular hypertrophy is generally a response to a high volume work output; therefore, by keeping the sets and reps low with heavy training, you wont have to fear getting overly big (this really isn't even an issue due to the physiological reasons mentioned earlier).

Why then is it commonly recommended that women train with lighter loads? Well, there are a couple reasons. First, there is the typical stereotype that women are weak, fragile creatures who can't handle anything more than pushups on their knees and bicep curls with pink dumbbells. Try telling that to 123 lb Mary Jeffrey who bench presses a world record 275 lbs and you'll likely get smacked upside the head with a 45 lb plate. Give me a break. Secondly, the belief that high-rep training increases muscle tone is 100% myth.

Strength training guru and Muscle Media contributor Pavel Tsatsouline explains this quite nicely, "Your muscle fibers are like mouse traps... they go off by themselves, but need energy to be reset to contract again. A dead body is out of ATP, the energy compound that relaxes the muscles... A high rep workout exhausts ATP in your muscle and leads to temporary hardness... The only way to make such 'tone' last is by killing yourself." Hmmm, sounds like fun to me. Pavel goes on to note, "You better get on a first name basis with heavy dead[lift]s if you are after a hard butt!" This brings us to our third and final point.

3. If you want to be lean, sexy, and hard, you should train with compound, multi-joint movements.

Forget the butt blaster, forget leg extensions and leg curls, and forget "muscle sculpting" with Susie the hyperactive personal trainer. As stated in point number two, if you want to sport a hard body, you better start training heavy. Big, compound movements such as the deadlift and the squat are superior to machine, isolation-type movements for hardening up your thighs and butt as they allow you to use maximal weight while training a number of muscle groups simultaneously.

Another benefit obtained by performing multi-joint compound movements is increased confidence. With strength comes confidence. Also, there is nothing like claiming your ground in the gym by loading up the squat bar and proceeding to execute a few heavy, crisp repetitions. After all, 90% percent of the guys in your gym probably don't squat, and those of them that do most likely resort to using the smith machine and/or doing partial repetitions.

Know why? Because free squatting with a full range of motion is hard. It takes will power to get under that bar week after week and squat all the way down. Simply put, most people fear the squat and the deadlift (along with anything else challenging in life). So, after that macho guy gets done barbell curling in the squat rack, throw the bar up on the J-hooks where it belongs and show 'em what kind of woman you are!

Huge turnout today, 27 people, that's out of control!

Thank you everyone for the gifts this morning, we really appreciate them. We hope everyone has a great Christmas. We really enjoy working with each and everyone of you, and look forward to another great year. Thank you.

Holiday Massacre workout tomorrow morning at 8:00am. See you there. Also we will be closed Christmas day and the 9:30am class on Sat morning will be canceled. There will still be a 10:30am class Sat & Sun.

TGU

We had several attempts at the the 106# but fell short. Soon we will have a few people breaking through barriers and hitting new PR's on this lift. Great job guys. The massacre will be at 8:00 am on Christmas Eve. I made a mistake yesterday and put 8:30.

Holiday Massacre

We are having another Massacre on Christmas Eve @ 8:30 am. Please let us know if you plan on attending. Thank you.

We are hearing some concern over the Brea 8K. Some feel that they are not ready for it. This is a great way to get out doors and push yourself. We do not care if you win it or finish last. We just want to see you finish. The "I am not ready for it attitude" is an excuse not to do it. Walk the damn thing, who cares but at least you can say you did it.

There are some more pics in the photo section.

Tomorrow's 9:30am class is canceled, there is still a 10:30am class. See you at the Christmas party tonight!!!

Tomorrows 9:30am class is canceled, however there is still a 10:30am class. See you at the Christmas party tonight!!!

New Years Resolutions.

New Years resolutions are upon us. What bothers me about these is that people will actually wait until January 2nd to get off their ass and start making a change. I had a conversation with a guy the other day and he stated that he wanted to come workout with us. I said "cool when are you coming down?" He looked at the ground and mumbled " In a few weeks." I thought it was financial as to the reason for the delay. Upon further poking and prodding as to why the wait his answer was, "I have some big parties to attend and I want to start my New Years Resolution after the first." For those of you that know me you can imagine the look on my face, I figured I better leave it alone and start talking about another subject.

I am not a fan of the New Years resolution. Why wait? Start now! When was the last time you heard someone say I am starting today, right now, this very minute. No one starts on Sunday, everyone waits until Monday. But in actuality you can start in your office, house, or even a park. You do not need a gym to do a 100 push-ups, sit-ups and, air-squats. You can run around your block or walk a hill. Start now...your time is ticking.

The holidays are a tricky time within the year. It's very easy to let it all go during this time. You see that a lot with athletes, once they are done with their event or season they take time off and lose everything they worked so hard for. The holidays for some are the off season. Self discipline is hard when everyone around you seems to have a crack like addiction to shitty food. The goal is to stay with it, keep your focus, and keep your goals in sight.

CrossFit Brea will not offer some crazy promotion to coax people in to working out. You either want it or you don't. We have a facility full of people who want it. Those people that start down the road are wasting time and it's another excuse on why they should not start today. We have members in here with knee replacements, shoulder replacements, 1 lung, no thyroid the list goes on and on. They do not make excuses, they just find a way to get in here and get it done. Train hard and stay focused- Erik

This is how we welcome Noah to the CF Brea family

Jimmy using the barbell as a pillow

It's not unusual to find Bake sprawled out like this after the workout

A sneak peak inside the box

Nabil 215# OHS for 3 reps!!!

Calling em out!!!

So we had some great times today. One was too good, Jeff fininshed in 7 min and some change. It was however brought to our attention that he forgot to do his last set of sit-ups. I say forgot because Jeff is a very hard worker and I have never known him to skip out on reps. That moves Tatiana to the top with a time of 7:55 and Bake to 2nd with a time of 8:00. Tatiana also finished with a hang power clean of 130# and Nabil came in and destroyed today with a hang power clean of 255#. Nice job girls and boys.

Mon 6:00 A.M

We are adding a Mon 6:00 a.m starting tomorrow. The details of the X-Mas party will be emailed this week.

Renegade Row

Some of us struggled with our balance on the Renegade Row today. Here's a great video from Jeff at Art of Strength on how to balance yourself when performing the row.

DL, DL, and more DL's

Today's training session:

A warm-up with the D Ball and a partner.
DL:
1x10 @50%
1x7 60%
2x5 75%
5x1 85%

Followed by 10 DL @45% + 25 Box Jumps
3 Rounds for Time

Thank you Mark Twight for this workout.

Putting in 100%

Guys and gals, just a little reminder on our circuits. Don't compromise form to get it done faster or do a half-ass rep so you can beat the clock. Don't cheat yourself, we're here to finish and finish strong. If you're the last guy/girl to finish don't worry about it, we're all cheering you on. We're family here at CrossFit Brea. The goal is to finish by putting in 100% and if that's what you're doing-great, pat yourself on the back. I know we all have days when we've put in 80% (myself included). But if you think about it , what's one hour of our time to make ourselves healthy, stronger, and of course look better. So, keep up the good work and keep on pushin' hard. You all make us proud with your accomplishments. You inspire us to keep on thinking of different ways to train. We get a lot of you that thank us for what we have done but in reality it is all of you that are here day in and day out making that commitment to train hard. So I want to thank you all for taking the initiative and working hard. You all are a great group of people to be working with.

100 what!!!!

Today's workout was another mental and physical test. Some were mentally defeated as soon as they looked at the board. Others challenged themselves to see if they could complete all the reps and keep the weight they started with. Some finished this workout and realized they could have gone heavier while others folded under the pressure and gave in to that uncomfortable feeling and peeled off some plates. Some were just not physically able to finish with the weight they started with and that's o.k for now...we will get you there. No matter what end of the spectrum you were on you absolutely learned something about yourself today. I feel that the majority pushed as hard as they could and achieved a great deal out of todays workout.
We have some individuals that seem to think we have a complaint department. We don't lie to you to sell memberships by telling you this is easy. They are no gimmicks here, this is blue collar work. We are not the high priced trainer who will run over and dab the sweat off your forehead and tell you how great you are. Are role here is to encourage and push you into better health. We will never degrade, embarrass, or disrespect you. Your role is to come in give 100% and not complain. We held nothing back on your first day in here. We told you this was going to be hard, and you made the choice to be here. We have your best intrest in mind, and we want you to understand that we do care about each and everyone of you. Do not take it personal if we push you a little. Its out of love not hostility.
I was You Tubing today and I looked up an old video we did in our first building. You can see how far we have come, some of the tools in the video are very primitive. Other tools shown were never touched, I will let you guess which ones.

pungent aromas

We are all for good hygiene, no one likes to work out next to someone that smells like an onion. At the same time too much cologne, perfume, or body lotion can be equally offensive and the lotion makes barbells, kettlebells, med balls etc.. slippery and hard to use. Also, if you enter the box and there is private training or a previous class still working out, please quietly find your way to the lobby and hang out. One of the best parts of our box is that we are all friends, we hang out outside of training, we like to laugh and talk to each other. Please don't do it while training is going on, it's a distraction for the athlete, the coach, and very hard to coach over.

We would like to wish a happy birthday to Matt, can't wait to see you back in the box Matt, have a great B-day!

Quote of the day.

"I am not reinventing anything, I am just rediscovering it. "- Carl Gotch

There is nothing new about what we do here. It is old school ideas being brought back to life. Do not let any trainer tell you this is a new way to train. There is nothing under the sun that has not been discovered in the world of training.

756

Today was a "slow" day compared to most days at here at CF Brea. It consisted of reviewing the OHS with PVC pipe. Some strength and explosive power with BS and box jumps. Then a short 5-7 min conditioning circuit with KB's and a 100m at the end. Nothing too crazy, strength then conditioning, pretty much the definition of what we do here yet Andrew's nifty little wrist watch said he had burned 756 calories in the hour and he couldn't believe it. How many reps of bench press, cable fly's, or curls would you have to do at "globo gym" to get that result? How many hours would it take? You could spent a short lifetime in the gym to get that. We did it in an hour, with tons of rest, good coaching, and great attitude's, that's the definition of efficiency. Moving large loads over long distances quickly. You mix that type of training with a well balanced diet and you know what you get? RESULTS!!! Keep on grinding.

Thank you to everyone who participated in today's WOD, we had a huge turnout. Stay tuned for new classes being added at new times!

"Lumberjack 20"

20 Deadlifts
Run 400m
20 KB swings
Run 400m
20 Overhead Squats
Run 400m
20 Burpees
Run 400m
20 Pullups
Run 400m
20 Box jumps
Run 400m
20 KB Squat Cleans
Run 400m

On Nov. 5 at 1:34 p.m., a terrorist named Major Nidal Hasan attacked fellow soldiers and civilians at Fort Hood, Texas. When the shooting ended, he had killed and wounded 12 soldiers and one civilian.

Spc. Frederick Greene, 29, of Mountain City, Tennessee, Pfc. Aaron Thomas Nemelka, 19, of West Jordan, Utah, Pfc. Michael Pearson, 22, of Bolingbrook, Illinois, and Spc. Kham Xiong, 23, of St. Paul, Minnesota, along with eleven of the wounded were active CrossFitters in the 20th Engineer Battalion, home to Lumberjack CrossFit.

This workout is in honor these soldiers, one month after the murderous rampage. We are asking the CrossFit community to make donations in honor of these soldiers at cflumberjack.org.

Who did what?

We have a very small group of women who seem to be afraid of showing how strong they actually are. Today while testing our DL max one of our beauties pulled 275# easily. This pull would be her final. Why? I firmly believe in modesty and keeping a humble spirit, but within the confines of these walls let it out.
Some women believe that if they lift weights they will turn into these roided out females you see in bodybuilding magazines. Not true, it takes years to look that way and thousands of dollars of anabolic's to achieve that look. No matter what the workout is you should push your self to the absolute limit of what your body will allow.

YOU CAN!!!

Dam right

Paulo pulled 535 today. He beat his old PR by 50#'s. I love this. Cory came in and pulled 133. First time ever Dead Lifting heavy. Vicki came in and ripped 165# and she only weighs 114#. This is what it is all about. Hard work, good technique and everything will fall into place. I would also like to give a shout out to 6:00 a.m class who is still training even though it is 50 degrees out. I would take a pic but I feel the women of 6:00 a.m would kick my ass for doing so.
Operation Santa Claus is in full effect. Please bring in an unwrapped gift for infants to seventeen. Thank you.

It's a long road.

When the load is light concentrate on technique. The first 10 min was not meant to kill you. It's design was first to warm you up, second to test your discipline. Could you execute that many movements with perfect form? Lets understand that we are not going to change the workout because you do not like it. The road to development is not always a fun one, but trust in what we do and things will fall into place.

Yes, your rest is the run.

Its crazy to think that your rest could be running. That was the case tonight, Derek wrote another great workout that not only tested physical but mental strength. For those that are new here do not mistake our training for a boot camp or your traditional gym workout. That message was clear today, so make sure you do not workout right before you walk in this door. We balance our strength and cardio giving you every reason to quit your gym.