March 2010 – Santa Cruz
I had a unique opportunity to take a vacation to Santa Cruz, California this past week. My ‘little-brother’, Cole, from my fraternity in college is
Cole and Chris
going trough a divorce and needed some support. I suppose those two comments, vacation and divorce might negate any fun, but, if you have ever been to Santa Cruz, it’s hard not to have a good time, even with a dark cloud like the end of a marriage hanging over you there is a lot of fun to be had. You may ask why I am posting the run down of my vacation here, but for those of you not up to speed on your Crossfit history, Santa Cruz is the birthplace of CrossFit. So, as an opportunist, I took it upon myself to keep up my WODs on vacation, mostly because I know Cole better than he thinks I do and knew I would have my mornings to hit the gyms. I’ll spare you the detail of our fun and concentrate on my morning workouts at the various CrossFit gyms – If you want to hear about the fun – ask me so I don’t have to write it down……..
Saturday, March 20th
I flew to San Jose on Friday night and drove down to Santa Cruz – Capitola if you are familiar with the area. You can imagine after not seeing your best friend for a few years, you don’t just go home and crash, especially in a fun town like Santa Cruz. Being a ‘East Coaster’ and one that usually wakes up at 5AM, even after a night of fun, I was up at 6AM and ready to go. The night before I had warned Cole that I was taking him to the gym with me in the morning, but not the 24-Hour Fitness Globo gym he does to, a Crossfit gym. He lives about a half a mile from the old HQ site and the current home of CrossFit Santa Cruz Central run by CrossFit icons that go by their first names only, Eva, Annie and other incredible trainers and CrossFit long-timers. With my luck, they give their introductory classes on Saturdays at 10AM.
We rolled up into the parking lot unannounced – the email address on their site had a full inbox and no one had answered my calls into the gym – so no one knew our back ground or even that I was a trainer. They had a surprisingly large group for their intro class 12 strong. I introduced Cole and I to the trainer, Gary, who although looks like he jumped off the cover of a Santa Cruz surfing magazine, was actually from Boston. We got our waivers signed and jumped into he warm up, 400m run and a squat, wall ball, PVC press demonstration. Helene the 2nd trainer had a few corrections for me with my squat. It seems that ‘out West’ they prefer a wider-than-landing position air squat. This was a bit uncomfortable for me, and caused me to roll underneath my squat and lose my lumbar curve, but was able to adapt quickly. We learned the burpee, the traditional
Cole's First CF WOD
burpee, which i don’t use, full squat to Pushup and jump back to squat…..that makes it much harder than just jumping to your chest and back up, and a lot slower.
Gary and Helene wrote the WOD on the board, a team workout”
3 Rounds – team member alternating movements each round (one does the wall balls, the other the burpees then switch)
200m Run
21 Wall Balls
12 Burpees
There was a odd number of people, so I volunteered to do 3 rounds, by myself. Gary and Helen weren’t sure about this….so I had to blow my cover and admit to being a long timer….
3-2-1-Go – We all started with the run. Cole, being a 110 hurdle High School State Champ from Tennessee, and 15 years ago, bolted off from the group of house wives and 40-somethings. I knew this was gonna be a great WOD…..especially the 2nd round. I did my first two round unbroken and that’s when Cole figured out why I did this….The burpees had beaten him. and his partner too. I finished my WOD in about 7 minutes, enough time to grab the camera and capture Cole introduction to intensity. Cole didn’t workout with me the rest of the week, but did ask about what a membership and the commitment might look like at a Crossfit Gym. I’ll call it a successful introduction.
Sunday, March 21st
Jocelyn Forest and Craft
Scheduled to be my of day and suffering from the fallout of a 30 mile bike ride after our WOD on Saturday it took a lot to follow through on the emails I had traded with CrossFit West Santa Cruz and take them up on their offer to come join the open Gym on Sunday. This was no mistake. The
day before they had held a throw down after their Section qualifier WODs were announced for next weekend, so they gym was quiet, empty
actually. I was greeted by Jocelyn Forrest. Unless you are Casey, you may not know who this is, but, she is definitely going to be one of the next Crossfit stars, if she isn’t already – a top 40ish finish in last year’s CF Games. A great coach and an even better athlete. I had a go a 5×3 Front squat, up to 245 and a few sets of kettlebell snatches. Good for a relaxing day at the beach. Just as I was finishing up, Sam Radetsky, the owner of
CFSCW and another gym in Los Gatos arrived. This is the kind of guy, like Travis at CFNA, you want to have a few beers with because the stories will never end. Sam was actually one of the original Crossfiters, working out with Greg Glassman in their martial arts studio in 1999. Sam also gave me some CrossFit history – Did you know that when they were at the original gym, they only had 1 barbell, 2-25lb and 2-45lb weights – notice all of the benchmark WODs use those weights.
Monday, March 22nd
A weekend at the beach….no sleep, no nutrition to speak of..what to do. Go seek out one of the hardest workers CrossFit has to offer – SOLD
Cole and I had another friend joining us, from Atlanta coincidentally. Chris, another fraternity brother was flying to Oakland, about an hour away for a job interview. We were to pick him up at 2PM,and Cole had to make a sales call at noon in San Jose. I had Cole drop me of in Santa Clara to join the lunch crowd at CrossFit Santa Clara, Jason Khlaipa’s gym. For those of you that don’t know, Jason won the CrossFit games in 2008 and was 3rd in 2009. I had no idea he was such a great coach too.
Jason believes in a hard warm up, hard workouts and lots of rolling around on the floor afterward. He definitely follows through with the CrossFit mantra of “Our warm up is your workout”
Warm Up – 3 Rounds
500m Row
10 Good Mornings
20 GHD
20 Hip Ext
Then……
Khalipa and Craft
Wall Ball Shuttle runs, 1 Arm Wall Ball waiter caries, Wall Ball push ups….Handstand Practice
OK..now for the WOD. Jason seems to think there are some holes in the Tabata protocol, namely the rest portion of it. So how do you fix that? Replace the rest with other movements.
So, the Khalipa Protocol was born:
WOD – Rounds of 8, 20 Seconds ON, 10 Seconds ON of:
Jumping Pull Ups, Mountain Climbers
Push Ups, 24 inch vertical jumps
Push Press(45lbs), Rest
Air Squat, 10m shuttle runs
Tuesday, March 23rd
I made the trip across town to visit Hollis and Danielle at CF Santa Cruz. Hollis had just gotten off a plane from assisting CrossFit Stockholm with some coaching and their sections in Sweden, so Danielle was left to handle the gym. Another great coach, not that I expected anything different but, I have been so lucky to be exposed to such great people on this trip. By the way, not only a great Crossfit coach, she is the only female Division 1 water polo coach, Men and Woman’s teams….I’m impressed.
Danielle and Craft at CF Santa Cruz
However, Danielle wasn’t very impressed with my back squat or my mid-line during my squat, but a few corrections and I was good to go. After a pretty light warm up, we started with 3 rounds of rowing and back squats, to prepare for the WOD. Just like my air squats at CFSC Central, Danielle wanted me to get a little wider, mostly to help keep my shins more vertical.
WOD
Row 1000m
Then…
30 Body weight Back Squats
With my new stance, I decided to drop 10 pounds from the back squat, probably turned out to be 15 pounds with the way I was eating out here. a 3:24 Row and finishing just under 6 minutes for the entire WOD. I was ready to wrap up my California CrossFiting for the week, so were my legs.
Wednesday, March 24th
Wait Craft, you said you were ready to wrap up your CrossFit for the week? I was.
Greg Everett and Craft at Catalyst
I had scheduled an hour with one of the most powerful men in California, Greg Everett. With only an hour, we decided that we should work through the Snatch and progressions I can use and take back to my athletes to master this. Although we didn’t do anything that wasn’t in his
book, the experience of watching someone like that coach, was worth the time and cost. I didn’t pick up anything over 55lbs, but learned what it will take to teach this lift and be able to apply those concepts to any other lift or exercise. I won’t spoil the surprise for my athletes just yet, but I’ll let you know when I am borrowing from Greg.
We also talked about Met-Cons as well. A suggestion for myself that met-cons with the barbell are affecting my single lifts and might want to consider using dumbbells or kettle bells for met-cons as not to compromise learning the technical movements. More to come on that.
Recap:
An awesome week in California, again, I wish I had gone under different circumstances, but it was great to spend time with my friends and to explore the roots of Crossfit. In both regards, I think my life will be just a bit better,