For those of you who follow the CrossFit scene pretty closely you might have noticed CrossFit NorCal placed 3rd in the Affiliate cup competition of the CrossFit Games. I’m both impressed by our athletes achievements and proud of their hard work and sacrifice. Now, it’s time to say thank you to the folks who are/were instrumental in not only this success but the success of CrossFit NorCal overall. The first person to thank is…my wife, Nicki. I’m the more public, vocal persona of the gym but Nicki is an outstanding coach (she has been running our Olympic lifting program for some time) and she literally keeps the whole circus running. My efforts would be nothing without her support and ability to piss me off at times!
Another round of thanks goes to folks like B-mack, John Wellbourn, Rip, Burg and Greg & Aimee. All of these folks have been good friends and have influenced my coaching in important ways.
My main focus in this post however is to say “thank you” to the work of Michael Rutherford not only for his friendship (ask rut about the term “schnauzer”) but for his influence on my training and coaching. I did a little write-up about how we have used his Max-Effort Black Box methodology to amazing benefit in our gym. CrossFit is an incredibly powerful tool, especially when the proper strength and power base has been established.
Rut and Eva-T
Hey Robb,
I have just started to use ME in my training and I really like it. Do you use the CF, ME, CF model or the 3 day a week M, W, F model? Really enjoy your blog man. Looking forward to the book. Keep up the good work!
P. S.- are you going to do any nutrition certs in the DC, Philly, NYC area in the future?
George-
We do a ME move, a gymnastics skill move and then a classic CF met-con every class. Our folks come 2-3 days per week for the most part. 5 day a week folks split time between CF and OL classes. We should be out your way sometime soon!
I would have to add a huge ‘ditto’ concerning all the folks you mentioned above. Robb, you and Nicki are right up at the top of my list. Thanks for all the generous access to your knowledge and experience going on almost five years now.(damn, time flies)
Got a bottle of Vitamin “T” with your name on it.
Until next time,
Rob
How do you integrate new clients (after they complete the onramp class) into your classes…Do they just jump into the MEBB cycle with whatever move/rep scheme the rest of the class is doing or does each client do their own ME move/rep scheme before moving on to communal skill work and metcon? Hope this makes sense.
Thanks for this great resource.
William-
Here is part two, ill let you track down part 1:
http://www.cathletics.com/articles/downloads/onRampCurriculum.pdf
thank my wife for that.
I know there are a lot of people that have tried various versions of intermittent fasting, after establishing a solid paleo/zone/clc diet and have found performance/health improvements. I just finished reading your interview with Dr. Seyfried and saw he thinks fasts of 4-10 days in duration (wow thats a long time!) are likely necessary to reach a therapeutic dose regarding cancer. I also saw mention in that interview of some athletes finding both strength and endurance gains following a 7 day fast.
Here is my question: What are your thoughts on the efficacy of less frequent longer duration fasts regarding health/performance vs. more frequent shorter fasts?
Are you aware of any studies on the amount of lean body mass typically lost during longer duration fasts (i.e. say 2-10 days in length)?
Sorry for the essay here!
– Loni
Loni-
Not really familiar with the data for either question…will look at that for the book.
“…(565sqt, 565 DL, 345 bench at 181lbs)…”
Holy Shit Robb! You’re a Beast!
I was happy when I finally reached 400# DL and that when I was 211.
Nathan-
I have a little game when I’m in shape!
Robb:
Congrats on your affiliate cup result, and thanks for your blog.
When you incorporate gymnastics movements into the MEBB template, how do you program them, and on which moves do you focus? I’m currently on Pierre Auge’s template, but am considering moving back to a MEBB template incorporating ME work and gymnastics movements.
Best,
Chris
chris-
The stuff we value are: hand stands, HS walking, front rolls, back rolls (both extension and basic back roll to hand stand) cart wheels, hip overs, rope climbs and elemental ring skills such as skin the cat, back roll to support and shoulder stand. A typical level 1 class might have our clients back squatting, then doing handstand walks for 5-10 feet, then exiting into a front roll on a mat. this is what you can do with people if you progress them in a systemitized manner, have stratified skill classes and prioritize quality over beating the dog-piss out of people. We wrap up with a met con…it’s fun and works damn well.
I have seen first hand experience of Robb and his coaching skills, class drills and programming and though it was only an hour I seriously can’t tell you how much I learned. He has had a serious impact on the way I train and coach. Every single word, piece of advice and tip was on the spot and sooo important/useful….and then I met his wife…wow, what a team. Separate, they are amazing, insightful inspirations, together they’re life changing. And like they say “behind every good man is a good woman” they certainly stand side by side and are amazing together.
Since you said coach that you were using CF Football and ME Black Box I started checking out the sites more frequently and then just started implementing the program and like everything else you do and say, it works like a freaking charm. Im putting up numbers I have never been able to do before and its awesome.
Unfortunately, words of Coach Wolfs are not being spread fast enough:
http://food.yahoo.com/blog/yahoofreshpicks/12434/why-you-should-get-over-your-fear-of-carbs/
but like its been said, we need the bad advice in order to make our good advice shine. Im just getting a little cranky of dealing with all the inflamed shoulders, elbows, knees, Gut irritation, weight gain and no weight loss issues. No pressure, but I think the world needs that book a lot faster than assumed. IN the meantime, thanks for posting so frequently (almost daily) your responses and posts are “fraking amazing!”
take care!
(trying to plan a pilgrimage up there at the end of august, but Ill talk to you way before that if its possible to stop by or not)
Chris! too kind brother, thank you.
Robb,
I understand the importance of keeping the met con in that 5 to 15 minute range but how often do you skip the gymnastics and/or the ME and do a longer 20-40 minute met con?
Matt-
Perhaps 1/month. Not a fan of the longer met-cons…starts looking suspiciously like step aerobics, not what I have envisioned as CrossFit. I think many affiliates default to these longer WOD’s all or most of the time because they do not know how to coach the lifts to get people stronger the gymnastics basics to get people stronger and more skilled, so it just becomes a 45 min chipper or something along that line. this is our general programming and it works damn well. If we are prepping for something like the Games we just bump up the time index to peak folks for the longer events. People need to have SOME conception of an “in season” and “off season” programming schedule if they want to stay in the game long term. this should be a front page post to really expand on this, it’s important stuff.
Robb-
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I have read both articles about your on-ramp classes (actually learned about it through Dutch’s seminar) and have started implementing this concept. My question was more about when the clients have finished on-ramp and are now ready to integrate into the main class. Since the main class is on-going they would be somewhere in the MEBB cycle – not necessarily at the start of the cycle. So, how do you start those coming into the main class. Do you just have them start in wherever the class is, in other words the move/rep scheme the class is doing?
Thanks again!
AHHH! Gothcha, Just keep it simple. We use simply linear progression on a ROTATION of movements. When folks get fairly advanced we just shift into classic MEBB progression.
Good stuff Robb. I vote for you to start Tweeting.
tom-
I’ll give it a shot…it just strikes me as odd. “im crapping”. “I’m eating”. That right there constitutes 85% of my day!
Hi Robb,
I came across this article in Forbes about buying from local farmers. I am interested to hear your take. I find it interesting that the author leaves out grass fed beef and assumes that the only way to feed is with grain.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0803/opinions-energy-locavores-on-my-mind.html
PK-
It’s a good article and I really the full accounting of the energy of food production…it’s not always as easy as “buy local” and all the problems go away. The Economist had a great piece showing how truly inefficient a farmers market is at distributing food vs a mega-food approach. What I do see is buying local forcing issues of better food quality, but it certainly is not a fixative for all problems. The reality is that we have vast populations centers far afield from the places we raise food, this raises a few issues but it is actually not that far removed from our optimum resource management: a few large cities with efficient distribution networks. We may end up that way but that’s a whole other blog post.
Hi Robb,
I’ve just got a hold of the Gymnastic Bodies book and Coach Sommer talks about Steady State training where you pick a challenging weight for an exercise and then keep the weight and reps constant for 8-12 weeks before moving up in weight or reps.
Any experieince with this and how do you think this would compare with MEBB?
Cheers,
Chris
Chris-
Coach Sommer is a GENIUS. I’ve played with this just a bit in things like press to HS on rings, levers and a few other goodies. It works, but I think it’s just a different method from ME BB. When you are looking at moves which are challenging to progressively load and progress may be glacial, I think this is the place for this technique.
Gotcha. I really like the MEBB template. The M W F progamming really fits my recovery ability (which sucks) 🙂
Robb, thanks for reminding me (again) that my chronic weakness, lack of strength, needs specific addressing. I’m back on the MEBB wagon as of yesterday, for as long as it takes this time.
While you’re on the theme of thankyous, thank YOU for the generosity of your time and thought here on this blog. It’s truly one of only a few blogs where the comments regularly live up to or exceed the expectations set by continuous great posting.
I’ve been following the adventures of you, Coach Glassman, Eva, Coach B etc since 2005 and though we’ve never met, collectively you’ve changed my life and challenged me physically and intellectually more than almost anyone I can think (amazing wife and new child excepted).
I can’t wait for the book man. Keep it up, and one day maybe I’ll get over there and get to shake some of your hands.
Steve!
Very kind of you thanks. I’m looking forward to that damn book being done too!
I have been doing crossfit for a year great gains but i just decided to dail in my diet, i ate pretty well but loved the sugar. Three days ago i stopped eating sugar and refined carbs basically going paleo no dairy, I felt like I needed to go to rehab, my wife at one point during the weekend threatend to shove a loaf of bread down my throat. How long will this go on and will one cheat meal a week kill my progress. I weigh 244 and have alot of fat around my mid section really want to lean out.
kccycle-
a week to ten days for getting off the crack. Cheat meals are dodgy as they tend to spin many people off course. Hang in there for 30 days.
Thanks i will do that and I am a fan of the podcast so you can up the number to nine, i listened to all the podcasts in two days while patroling. Keep the info coming thanks again
another question sometimes I haveto work long hours and i take a bag of jerky, almonds and dried cranberries to get me htrough the detail should i eleminate the fruit and get the carbs elsewhere?
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