Fitness Friday at Lucy's of Annapolis

We will be at Lucy's of Annapolis this Friday for a different type of happy hour. From 4-7 we will be hanging out, talking fitness with a workout thrown in from 5 to 6. Everyone who participates in the workout will leave with a packet of information suitable to start them on the road to fitness and will receive a free nutritional consultation.

Chasing Virtuosity

Usually Paul types the blog because I type something, re-read it, re-read it again, fix it, and the cycle continues for half the night. I felt compelled to post something tonight because of the amazing weekend that Paul and I had together. We attended another Crossfit Level 1 certification at Crossfit Fairfax in Virginia. It never ceases to amaze me how many wonderful people attend these certs. Everyone is so friendly and supportive! We had just come off the hopper challenge weekend where we met amazing people. My judge at the hopper challenge was a big part of why I was able to finish the workouts in the time allotted. I came into the challenge praying that God would just help me get through the workouts and not die! I mean I literally prayed up until they said 3, 2, 1, go. I never dreamed that I would do as well as I did. My judge for the two metcons, Andrea, had an amazing ability to energize you and make you feel like you could accomplish anything. She didn't know me, but she treated me like I was part of her family. She encouraged me to keep going while coaching me through the movements making sure I was using good form and had proper range of motion. You have to be an elite coach at the top of your game to elicit such a good response from your client or in this case, the competitor trying to get through a very difficult workout. She is the kind of coach who separates the good from the great! I could not have been more excited when Paul and I showed up at the cert this weekend and Andrea was one of the trainers. I got to experience her coaching techniques in more depth and I am better for it! Her passion for what she does drives me to be a better trainer. All the trainers this weekend were so awesome. Each had a different style, but was an expert coach who knew how to help everyone there become better. Sorry for the rambling, but I am still on a natural fitness high from a long, but enlightening weekend. Fitness and nutrition are such a huge part of my family's life that I can't help but get excited about it. I hope you can find a realm of fitness that motivates you to be the best that you can be!

Hopper Recap

The Hopper Challenge is over and we are both still standing, sore, but standing. I don't know if I told the whole story behind the hopper challenge. When the event was posted back in July, I signed Dawn and I up for it without asking or telling her. A couple of weeks after I signed us up she got an e-mail thanking her for registering and asking her for her shirt size. She had no idea and was worried, I'm not ready, I'm not strong enough, what if I can't do the workouts etc. Eventually she came to grips with it and started training hard and the experience could not have been more positive. The goal for Dawn was to finish all of the workouts in the allotted time, I was trying to see if I had it in me to attempt a run at the CrossFit games next year. A finish in the top twenty would be enough for me to give the games another shot this spring.

I am happy to report that we both met our goals. Dawn started the day off right by beating her personal record on deadlift, by pulling 230lbs off of the floor for two reps. I went right after her and was able to beat my PR as well getting 455 up for two reps. The next two workouts were longer gassers and Dawn worked hard to finish both off before the time limit of 15 minutes. I struggled a bit on the second workout finishing in 9 minutes, with a lot of failed reps, but recovered with a decent performance on the last workout. We still do not know the final standings, they have not been reported yet and we left before they announced the final standings. After two workouts dawn was in 31st place for the women and I was in 12th place for the men. There were 140 people competing. The whole experience was awesome and we are excited to find our next challenge.

There is something powerful about signing up for something that is out of your comfort zone and seeing it through. It resets what normal is for you and keeps you moving forward. The jolt that you get out of just being around a large group of people who are motivated by hard work and focused on being better is worth the time invested. Nothing stays still in life, you are either moving forward or moving backward and we both feel like we took a big step forward this weekend.
We would like to thank Pat, Mary-Brigid, Kate, Kim, Nick, Daira, Pete, Gui, Jerry, Kylie, Will, and my Mom for coming out to support us. Pat's experience in powerlifting was a huge help in the deadlift workout, and his calm shouts of encouragement got us both through that grueling second workout. Hearing the cheers of everyone helped us push through the toughest parts of the workouts.

We will get back to posting actual fitness and nutrition info soon. Our hope is to guide you through what will eventually be our foundations class for new clients at our gym. We have to get through this last crazy week before the posts will be up on a regular basis

Hopper Challenge This Weekend!

We are gearing up for the Hopper Challenge on Saturday at CrossFit BWI. Dawn and I will both be competing in workouts throughout the course of the day. CrossFit's philosophy is that you train for the unknown and the unknowable and this competition follows in that philosophy. They literally have a big hopper with ping pong balls and they will pick the workouts out of the hopper Saturday just before we do them. We do know that there will be three workouts. Two in the morning and a final one in the afternoon. We will send out an update on Sunday.

CrossFit Affiliation

Sorry for the delay in getting posts out. There are actually three new ones. I put one up last weekend but forgot to send out the e-mail. The month of October is and will be the busiest month we have ever had and things are just starting to heat up. We had our daughters birthday last weekend, family fun day at her school this weekend, our fitness competition next weekend, My brother(Jason) graduating from basic training in Georgia on the 23rd, a CrossFit certification the weekend of the 24th & 25, Halloween the next weekend and Fitness Friday at Lucy's on Nov. 7th. That is on top of the everyday hustle of work, training and getting the kids to school,9 gymnastics, ballet etc. Whew. On top of all of that we just heard from CrossFit Inc. that we have been approved for affiliation, which means we have three months to get our stuff together in order to be recognized as a CrossFit Gym . All exciting stuff, but all require time and work. Our CrossFit gym will be called CrossFit New Dawn and will operate mostly from this blog until we are able to move into a space. Hopefully in June of 2010. Below is the application essay Dawn submitted with her affiliation application. We are forming under her name alone for several reasons, but mainly because I do not plan on quiting my day job, at least until we make our first 10 million. We are excited about the opportunity to chase our passion and glad you all are along for the ride.
Dawn & Paul

My husband and I have been active people and into fitness most of our lives. We were that couple at the gym who worked out together in the free weight section where women rarely went. We were both teachers. My husband teaches physical education and I taught 5th grade until I decided to stay home after the birth of my second child. I got back into shape quickly after both of my pregnancies and my friends started to ask me how I did it and if I could help them. Working with them, I soon realized I had a passion for fitness and in particular training. I got my ACE certification the spring of 2007 and started training. That same spring my husband’s co-worker called him one day and said, “This is one of those calls you are going to look back on in 10 years and say it changed your life. Go check out this web site crossfit.com.” It has only taken two years for that call to change our lives. We spent hours on the site and started doing the workouts immediately. We were humbled by what we thought we knew about fitness. In the spring of 2008 a certification was announced in our area and we jumped on the opportunity. I knew after that weekend what I wanted to do, but I also realized how much more I needed to learn. I have since immersed myself in CrossFit. From the site, to the journals, to local affiliates and certifications, I have become a student again, hungry for knowledge to make me better at what I love to do. I have attended Robb Wolfs Nutrition Certification, Greg Evertt’s, Olympic lifting Seminar, and Kelley Starretts Movement and Mobility Certification. I will be competing in the Mid-Atlantic Hopper Challenge next week and will attend my second level 1 Certification in Fairfax the week after that. I feel that I am now at a point where I am comfortable with my understanding of the CrossFit methods and progressions and am ready to share that knowledge with others. I have had a dedicated group of clients for the past year who have allowed me the opportunity to “practice” on them and we are all better for it.
My strongest motivation for wanting to share what I know about true fitness with others is my mom. She is a type 1 diabetic who had her second quadruple bypass surgery this past January. Watching her confidence grow as she becomes more capable at everyday functions through a focus on exercise and nutrition excites me about her future as a mom and grandmother. Watching her struggle with compliance in following such a strict dietary prescription and regimented blood sugar testing, reminds me of how hard it is to change certain patterns of behavior. Both of these extremes play themselves out, almost daily, with my other clients as well, but it never feels like work.
At 32 years old, with two children, I look, feel, and perform better than at any time in my life. That can only be attributed to my connection with CrossFit and how it has opened my eyes to what true fitness is. My husband and I share this passion and will work together to make our box a success, but he has no intention of giving up his day job of sharing CrossFit with his students. I have found a nice word of mouth niche in the new mom and just retired baby boomer market in my area and have a few clients now who have been able to experience the same physical, mental, and emotional growth that I have experienced over the past two years. I look forward to sharing this experience with many more.
Thank you for your consideration,
Dawn Kirk

Exercise, an overview:

We have spent a considerable amount of time harping on nutrition for the past couple of months and for good reason. If you have not gotten this concept by now, you may be doomed to a life of fad diets and crazy weight fluctuations. NO AMOUNT OF EXERCISE WILL OFFSET POOR NUTRITION! As a society we have been fooled into this notion that if we just move a little bit more we can eat what we want and that is just not true. Think of it this way, diet controls the health aspects of your life and exercise controls the functional aspects. Both are important and one without the other will leave you deficient in some area.


The prescription for exercise we have settled on with great success is based in CrossFit methodology. The idea is to do constantly varied functional movements and perform them at high intensity. The movements we prescribe are foundational to activities you would perform in your daily life. Dead lift, overhead press, jumps, squats, lunges, carrying large loads etc. The goal of any exercise program should be to produce some sort of adaptation or change. This can only be done through intense effort. It is not easy. People have spent countless hours and money on trying to find an easy way to get fit and it just does not exist. The good news is that it does not have to take long. Our workouts take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. In this post we will explain how we structure our workouts. We will soon begin posting workouts, that anyone can try on their own.

We start all of our workouts with a warm-up, which most of our new clients confuse with the actual workout. We use the warm-up as a way to raise the core body temperature as well as prepare the body for movement. We also use the warm-up as a way to practice the movements we use in our workouts. After the warm-up we move in to the fundamental period of our workout. This is usually done with a PVC pipe or broom stick and we learn or practice a skill. This portion is followed by a strength period where we will perform a certain number of sets and reps of a particular strength movement, squat, clean, dead lift, press, etc. The workout concludes with a metabolic conditioning workout where we will combine movements in a series of rounds and perform them as intensely as we can.

This prescription has proven effective in working with division 1 college athletes looking to make their college team, as well as grandmothers wanting to carry their grand children. We will provide examples of these workouts in coming posts.

Good People

We had the opportunity to attend the University of Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame Banquet this weekend. Dale Castro, my high school football coach, former colleague, and friend was inducted into the class of 2010. It was an honor to be invited and share the experience with him, his family and a few other former colleagues. While I sat there listening to the speeches, I kept thinking about good people. Probably because I was surrounded by them, but for whatever reason that's where my thoughts drifted. Dawn and I got to talking about it on the ride home. Good people are people who have a purpose in life, a passion, and a drive to work towards that purpose. They also understand that it is not a solo journey and, in life, what matters most ultimately is the effect you have on others, not just what you achieve. As we get older and wiser these good people are who we find ourselves spending most of our time with. We are grateful that we are surrounded by so many good people. How many good people are in your life?

Don't really know where that post came from, I'm not even drinking, but there it is. We also wanted to share with you a poem that was in the program that might be a help when things start backing up on you and you feel bogged down.


Staying the Course By BJ Gallagher

Our journey of life is about progress,
Not perfection.
It's not about doing one thing
100% better -
It's a matter of doing 100 things,
1% better each day.

Progress is evolutionary
Not revolutionary,
And most days we measure our progress
in inches, not miles.

What matters most
is showing up for your life
Whether you feel like it
Or not.

Ask yourself,
"What two or three little things
Can I do today
That would move me forward?"

You'll be amazed
at how much distance
you can cover
by taking it in increments

The little things add up;
The inches turn to miles;
And we string together our efforts
Like so many pearls
Before long,
Look what you have -
A whole strand!

Ah...beautiful