FREE CrossFit class every Sunday at noon! One mother's mission to spread the word about fitness and raise a healthy family.

7/29/11 WOD

Warm-up: Burgener warm-up for clean

Skill/strength: clean, 1RM until 35min into class.  I got up to 123 lbs - no PR today.

Met-con: for time:
10 power clean, 155 lbs (men)/ 105lbs (women), 25 ring dips
8 power clean, 20 ring dips
6 power clean, 15 ring dips
4 power clean, 10 ring dips
2 power clean, 5 ring dips


If you cannot do ring dips use a band, or do ring/strict push-ups.

***I finished in 13:02 with 105 lbs and the red band for the dips.

7/27/11 WOD - PR!

I trained with the 9:30 a.m. Elysium class today while Marlie played with her cousins who are visiting from Sacramento.  My brother came with and we had a great workout.

Warm-up: CrossFit warm-up x1

Strength: Split jerk - build up to your 1 rep max.  My old PR was 133 lbs and I got up to 135 lbs x1 and 140 lbs x1 today--WOO HOO!  I know my split form can be improved but it's nice to make gains after a few bad days in a row.

Met-con:  Three rounds for time of:
-10 jerks (or any shoulder to overhead) at 95 lbs
-30 box jumps on a 20" box

***I finished in 9:56 which I'll take considering I was aiming for sub-10 mins.

7/25/11 WOD

I trained alone today while Marlie was at school.  I didnt have much time since we've been going to swim school in the mornings so I did a quick met-con.

Warm-up: 400 m row and some leg stretches

Met-con: 4 rounds of:
-400 m row
-50 air squats

***I finished in 13:30.  That is pretty slow.  I've done this workout with a 400 m run instead of row a few times before and got better times.

7/22/11 WOD - One of THOES days

I trained with the 9:30 a.m. Elysium class this morning while Marlie was in school.

Warm up: CFx2

Strength: off

Metcon: 4 rounds for time, 40 minute time cap
-20 thrusters (95/65)
-30 deadlifts (145/95)
-40 push ups

***I completed 3 rounds plus up to 15 deads.

I really had to dig deep on this one.  If it weren't for the other ladies in my class, I would probably have given up.  I told myself on round one, I will only finish two rounds and then stop.  During round two I looked around the room and saw the looks of pain and frustration and thought to myself, "how will my teammates feel if I give up before the end?"  Then one person said, "I just don't want to pick up the bar."  I knew at that moment I just had to do what I could to stay in at least till the time cap.  At about 25 minutes in, two of us looked at each other and without making a plan, said, "five more."  We went on like this doing five thrusters at a time and 10 deads at a time.  When it was over, I felt SO thankful to have had that back up today knowing I probably couldn't have done it without them.  Just one of those days I guess.  Thanks ladies!!!
I trained with the 9:30 a.m. Elysium class and it was nice to be back in the gym today.

Warm-up: CF warm-up x2

Strength: Deadlift 1, 10, 1, 20, 1, 30

Met con: off

I scored the following:
263 lbs x1
215 lbs x10
273 lbs x1 - New in-gym PR
183 lbs x10 (did 10 twice but since they were not unbroken I just got to count 10)
278 lbs - fail
153 lbs x15

Here I am with my PR--yay!

Good article on sleep - very important for happy moms

Here are excerpts from a recent NY Times article on the value of sleep. At the end of the article Dr. Denise gives some pointers on what you can do to sleep better, both quantity and quality.

A Good Night’s Sleep Isn’t a Luxury; It’s a Necessity
By JANE E. BRODY

Studies have shown that people function best after seven to eight hours of sleep, so I now aim for a solid seven hours, the amount associated with the lowest mortality rate. Yet on most nights something seems to interfere, keeping me up later than my intended lights-out at 10 p.m. — an essential household task, an e-mail requiring an urgent and thoughtful response, a condolence letter I never found time to write during the day, a long article that I must read. It’s always something.

What’s Keeping Us Up? I know I’m hardly alone. Between 1960 and 2010, the average night’s sleep for adults in the United States dropped to six and a half hours from more than eight. Some experts predict a continuing decline, thanks to distractions like e-mail, instant and text messaging, and online shopping.

Age can have a detrimental effect on sleep. In a 2005 national telephone survey of 1,003 adults ages 50 and older, the Gallup Organization found that a mere third of older adults got a good night’s sleep every day, fewer than half slept more than seven hours, and one-fifth slept less than six hours a night.

With advancing age, natural changes in sleep quality occur. People may take longer to fall asleep, and they tend to get sleepy earlier in the evening and to awaken earlier in the morning. More time is spent in the lighter stages of sleep and less in restorative deep sleep. R.E.M. sleep, during which the mind processes emotions and memories and relieves stress, also declines with age.

Habits that ruin sleep often accompany aging: less physical activity, less time spent outdoors (sunlight is the body’s main regulator of sleepiness and wakefulness), poorer attention to diet, taking medications that can disrupt sleep, caring for a chronically ill spouse, having a partner who snores. Some use alcohol in hopes of inducing sleep; in fact, it disrupts sleep.

Add to this list a host of sleep-robbing health issues, like painful arthritis, diabetes, depression, anxiety, sleep apnea, hot flashes in women and prostate enlargement in men. In the last years of his life, my husband was plagued with restless leg syndrome, forcing him to get up and walk around in the middle of the night until the symptoms subsided. During a recent night, I was awake for hours with leg cramps that simply wouldn’t quit.
Beauty Rest and Beyond

A good night’s sleep is much more than a luxury. Its benefits include improvements in concentration, short-term memory, productivity, mood, sensitivity to pain and immune function.


If you care about how you look, more sleep can even make you appear more attractive. In a study published online in December in the journal BMJ, researchers in Sweden and the Netherlands reported that 23 sleep-deprived adults seemed to untrained observers to be less healthy, more tired and less attractive than they appeared to be after a full night’s sleep.

Perhaps more important, losing sleep may make you fat — or at least, fatter than you would otherwise be. In a study by Harvard researchers involving 68,000 middle-aged women followed for 16 years, those who slept five hours or less each night were found to weigh 5.4 pounds more — and were 15 percent more likely to become obese — than the women who slept seven hours nightly.

Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist and sleep specialist in Scottsdale, Ariz., and author of “The Sleep Doctor’s Diet Plan,” points out that as the average length of sleep has declined in the United States, the average weight of Americans has increased.

There are plausible reasons to think this is a cause-and-effect relationship. At least two factors may be involved: more waking hours in homes brimming with food and snacks; and possible changes in the hormones leptin and ghrelin, which regulate appetite.

In a study published in 2009 in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Dr. Plamen D. Penev, an endocrinologist at the University of Chicago, and co-authors explored calorie consumption and expenditure by 11 healthy volunteers who spent two 14-day stays in a sleep laboratory. Both sessions offered unlimited access to tasty foods. During one stay, the volunteers — five women and six men — were limited to 5.5 hours of sleep a night, and during the other they got 8.5 hours of sleep.
Compliments of NyTimes

Dr Denise's Tips to Sleep Better:
1. Don’t eat within two hours of bedtime.
2. Make breakfast or lunch your largest meal of the day and try to keep dinner at 400 calories or less.
3. No TV at bedtime. Period end of story!!
4. Practice meditation before bedtime.
5. Journal at night – write down goals, affirmations, say them aloud; this is what will be on your mind when you go to sleep rather than what tragic current event you just watched on late night TV or what you were worrying about all day that you couldn’t get off your mind.
6. Shoot for 7 hours each night.
7. Make a night time ritual for the entire family so ALL members of your household place value on and get a good night sleep.
8. Read inspiring literature after dinner. There are so many wonderful books waiting to be read. I just finished: “From Disgrace to Amazing Grace, the life of John Newton.” This is what I’ve been reading right before bedtime…. And sleeping like a baby.

7/13 and 7/15/11 WODs

7/15 - Warm up; CF x2

Strength: off

Met-con: As many rounds as possible in 40 min of:
15- burpees
30- power snatch (75/55)
60- double-unders
rest 2 minutes

***I completed 4 rounds plus up to 21 snatches.


7/13 - Warm up: CFx 2

Strength/ met-con: 5 rounds for max reps (not for time)
-max reps 3/4 body weight front squats
-max reps toes 2 bar



***I used 105 lbs and scored the following:
13 squats, 5 toes to bar
10 s, 5 t2b
10 s, 5 t2b
10 s, 5 t2b
10 s, 5 t2b

This was a bad one for me, the belly is definitely getting in the way now.  

7/11/11 WOD - "Cindy"

I trained with the 9:30 a.m. Elysium class while Marlie watched "Tangled," one of her new favorites.

Warm up: CF x2

Strength: Deadlift 3x3.  I subbed 3x5 since I'm not going to maxes on DL while pregnant.  I got 203 lbs x5, 223 lbs x5 and 233 lbs x5

Met-con: "Cindy" as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:
-5 pull ups
-10 push ups
-15 air squats

***I completed 13 rounds plus 5 pull ups.

WOW, what a difference twenty extra pounds makes.  I got more rounds doing this workout in 15 minutes a year ago than I did today in 20 mins.  I just have to keep reminding myself that I'm in this now to maintain strength and have a more comfortable (and hopefully speedy) labor and delivery.  I'm not here to set PRs or win a race.  It's also nice to be able to burn off some of the cake and other delectable treats we've been enjoying.  So far so good...

7/6/11 WOD

First day back in the gym in five days. I trained with the 9:30 a.m. Elysium class and it was a great group of girls.

Warm up: CF x 1

Skill: handstand practice. If you have handstands already go for max duration or start working on handstand push up depth.

Strength: clean, go for a new 1RM.  I'm not going to maxes right now due to my pregnancy so I went for a 1 rep max power clean.  I got up to 123 lbs.  My max is 133 so no PR today.

Met-con: AMRAP 10 mins of:
-10 overhead squat, 95/65lb
-10 wall balls, 20/15lb


***I completed 4 rounds plus up to 2 wall balls. SO slow today.

7/1/11 WOD - Alessandra's birthday workout

I trained with the 9:30 a.m. Elysium class and we had three out-of-towners visiting--fun day at the gym.

Strength: Front squats- 3x3.  No where near my PR...I got 93lbs x3, 103 x 3, 113 x1.  Horrible (PR is 125 lbs x2)!

Met-con: AMRAP 3 min, rest 1 min, 4 rounds total.
-3 clean and jerks, 115 lbs men/ 75lbs women.
-4 thrusters, 115lbs men/ 75lbs women.
Rx'd is with 115/75lb, "pregnant Rx'd" is with 20 additional pounds... (in the belly--135/95lb).  ***I went with 75lbs plus 17 belly lbs and completed 9 rounds plus 3 clean and jerks.  Pretty slow today, the heat was getting to me more than usual.


Happy Birthday Alessandra!  

BIO

I discovered at an early age that being active and fit feels great, so health and fitness have always played a major role in my life. When I was younger I was into dancing, track and field, rollerblading and bicycling. I enjoyed running and skiing all through my teens and twenties, and ran on the cross country team at CSU, Chico. After college, I trained for and ran several competitive races including the Silver Strand Half Marathon. Later I joined a big cookie-cutter gym, heavy on machines, where I designed my own workouts based on out-of-date methods I learned in college.

After my daughter, Marlie was born in early 2009, I really turned up the heat on my workouts to get back in shape. I followed my usual old routine including a moderate diet but was never able to quite get back to my original shape. A friend who was also a new mom invited me to her home a few times where they had a CrossFit garage gym. I was hooked after the first workout! It was different, intense, and best of all, not monotonous or boring. They were constantly doing something new. In only a few months, I had my pre-pregnancy body back and it was even better than before—this time I was stronger than ever, despite my previous attempts on the weight machines. Another great motivator is that the workouts are generally 30 - 45 minutes including warm-up and cool down, NOT 90 minutes like my old workouts. As a new busy mom, this is very important to me. It didn’t take long to realize this is the best thing I have ever done for my health.

I made more gains and improvements in my level of fitness during my first year of CrossFit than I had in the past 15 years of working out. I am now in my mid 30s and can easily say I am in the best shape of my life. I owe it all to two things, CrossFit and good nutrition. A healthy, well balanced diet that provides adequate sources of high quality protein, low glycemic index foods and the proper fats and oils will dramatically change your overall well-being and improve your workouts tremendously.

My successes inspire me to want to share this lifestyle with others. Health and nutrition have always been frontrunners in my life and those who value the same are invited to join us. I believe that if you’re going to do something, you should do it right; and when it comes to fitness training, that means CrossFit. CrossFit has been proven to work by measurable, observable, repeatable facts that we call “evidence-based fitness” so it's only a matter of time before you can see the results if you put the time in.

One of my mentors once told me I was training to “not suck at life.” I challenge you to do the same! Come by or email me and let’s get started!

Certifications/ Education-

- CrossFit Level I Trainer certification - 2009
- B.A: Journalism with an Option in Public Relations from CSU, Chico
- Minor: Health Sciences from CSU, Chico
- Basic Life Support (BLS) certified
- PADI Open Water Diver certified

Email: stacie@crossfitelysium.com