CrossFit

One of the things I love about the holidays is holiday-themed WODs.  Here's today's workout.

“12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS”

Rep scheme follows the song: 1, 2-1, 3-2-1, etc. Anyone wearing an ugly Christmas sweater for the duration of the WOD may subtract two minutes from their time.

Last week I joined New Species CrossFit for a Paleo Thanksgiving, and then I gave a talk.  Total blast.  What other type of gym gets together on a Saturday afternoon for a Thanksgiving potluck?

I brought venison liver and onions from the deer that I shot the prior week.  I cooked the onions in grass-fed butter, cut the liver into fairly small strips, cooked quickly on medium-high heat (90 seconds or so on each side).  Added more butter to the finished dish.

Others made bacon-wrapped dates, seafood gumbo, salad, a big ole' turkey, deviled eggs, those sausages with half an egg in the middle (Scottish something?), and a bunch of other goodies.

Check out the awesome graffiti in their gym.

Thanks to everyone there, awesome crowd.

When I was at the CrossFit Games in Los Angeles this summer, they had a booth set up that couples were coming out of.  Naturally, I assumed it was a kissing booth, so I got in line.  Turns out it was a video booth where you could talk about CrossFit and what it means to you.  Not as fun, but whatever.  My video is about 3 minutes long, and I cover the following topics:

• when I first tried CrossFit
• getting looks for doing CrossFit workouts in conventional gyms
• getting into CrossFit through paleo
• [flirting]
• the biggest innovation of CrossFit

Just eleven days ago, on August 6th, 30 American special forces lost their lives in Afghanistan.  Their helicopter was ambushed while reinforcing an engaged group of Army Rangers.  As reported, "the 30 American deaths represent the greatest loss of U.S. military lives in a single incident in the decade-long war in Afghanistan that began in 2001."

As many of you know, each year thousands of CrossFitters around the world endure one of our most grueling workouts, Fight Gone Bad, in order to raise money for charities that benefit armed services and first responders.  On September 17, I'll be participating in Fight Gone Bad 6.  One of my charities is the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which provides assistance to the families of killed and wounded special ops forces, including (but not limited to) Navy SEALS, Army Rangers, Green Berets, and Marine Corps special ops.

If you'd like to help a good cause, you can donate here.  I'm also using what little is at my disposal to provide a few incentives for folks to donate.

• Any amount: Listed and thanked here on the blog, with a description and link to your blog or business. 
• $10 or higher: Entered into a raffle to win an NYCBR tech tee.  I will raffle off one tech tee for every 10 people who give above this amount, so your odds will never be worse than 1 in 10.  These tech tees are awesome, come in both male and female cuts, with a clean and simple design.
• $35 or higher: Send me an email on any health questions you might have, and I'll move you to the top of the queue and will respond personally and in depth to the best of my knowledge.
• $100 or higher: An hour-long phone conversation on any topic of your choice (well, any topic within reason) OR a couple leisurely rounds of gluten-free drinks at my NYC apartment OR a two-hour MovNat workout and/or barefoot running instruction in Central Park.

So if you give $100, then you get listed and thanked on the blog, get entered into a raffle for a tech tee, get an in-depth email response on any health questions, and an hour phone conversation on any topic / a couple rounds of drinks at my place / two-hour MovNat-barefoot running instruction.

As for what I'll be doing, let's just say it ain't no 17 minutes on the elliptical.

Fight Gone Bad

In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. Repeat 3 times. The stations are:

The 30 U.S. special forces who died on August 6, 2011. 

At the Games today.  If you're not, get a great start to the weekend by doing a hard workout.

This is the story of how I came to own a very tight Brazilian sunga.  And like all good stories, there will be a moral at the end.

Now, for those of you who don't read blogs about men's international swimwear, a sunga is essentially a Speedo, but cut a little bit more loosely to resemble -- slightly resemble -- a pair of shorts.  Brave/foolish readers will look at this Google image search of "Brazilian sunga" (technically safe for work, but do it when no one's around).  Though common in much of the world, these "shorts" are so tight that most American men would never wear them to the swimming pool.  You can find a similar cut called "boy shorts" in the women's underwear department.

Anyhow, a couple years ago, I flew down to Brazil to visit a friend who was living in Rio de Janeiro.  Two of us made the trip.  It was the perfect way to visit a foreign city: knowing someone who lives there, not having to stay in a random hotel, and best of all, my buddy spoke fluent Portuguese.

He lived in a large, gated apartment complex in the middle of the city.  The apartment complex had its own pool, and anybody in the complex could use it.

There was only one rule: No Board Shorts.  Men had to wear a sunga.

"Why the hell do I have to wear a sunga?"  I asked my buddy.  "Do they really enforce that?"

"Yeah, man.  It's for hygiene reasons.  When guys wear board shorts around the city, sitting on busses and benches, they get all dirty.  Then they could come back and swim in the pool in their dirty shorts.  But no one is gonna wear a sunga around the city.  So they're cleaner."

Apparently, I had to buy a sunga.  So I figured that if I have to wear one, then I was going to do it with confidence -- blinding confidence.  We're talking shock and awe, avert your eyes type stuff.  I picked out one that was fire-engine red.  Among me, you, and the internet, let's say it looked like the photo at right.

And I did it.  I swam in the pool wearing my eye-catching, ultra-hygienic Brazilian sunga.  And ya know what?  The system worked: I didn't wear the sunga around the city.

And on that day, certain areas of my body got more sun than they had ever gotten in the rest of my life combined.  Ever gotten a sun burn on your upper thigh?  Not so pleasant.

Which brings me to the moral of the story: gym hygiene.

Recently, I was (kindly) informed that CrossFit NYC would start enforcing a "no barefoot" policy at the gym.  Previously, I had seen a few other folks working out barefoot, and I had done the same myself a couple of times.  But apparently a few people complained, saying that they didn't want to do pushups and stick their face near a surface where people had been walking barefoot.  It was unhygienic, they claimed.

Now, I get that barefoot goes against convention, but is it really less hygienic?  People wear shoes all around the city, picking up dirt, germs, dog shit, little bits of glass, and god knows what.  And then they wear those shoes in the gym.  And so when you're doing push-ups, you're sticking your face in all that stuff.  It's like wearing dirty board shorts into the pool instead of a sunga, but worse.

And when you look at the showers at CrossFit NYC, there's even a sign that says to take off your shoes before entering the shower area.  Why?  It's not so your shoes don't get wet.  IT'S BECAUSE SHOES ARE DIRTY.

And how often do you wash the bottoms of your shoes?  That's what I thought.

It's why polite house guests will take off their shoes at the door.  It's why people wipe their shoes on a mat.  IT'S BECAUSE SHOES ARE DIRTY.

If I had to guess, the complaints are an emotional response driven by a miscalibrated sense of disgust, not any rational calculus of what is actually hygienic or not.

Anyhow, I don't blame the owners of CrossFit NYC.  They're just trying to a run a business, they're reasonable people, and it's a good gym.

In this type of situation, there's really only one thing I can do: start going to workouts in my sunga.  With all those squats, it's only a matter of time until they lift the ban.

You know that old observation about the people who ride the elevator to the gym just to use the stairmaster?  Well, when you work at a gym and you have to update the website, then you might find yourself sitting at a desk in a gym.  But Allison Bojarski -- one of the trainers at CrossFit NYC and the communications director -- will have nothing of it.  Check out her DIY standing desk.

Allison, for your dedication to functional fitness, including functional web browsing, you are an Upstanding Citizen.  So folks, drop into the Black Box some time, and sign up for a session with Allison -- she's good.

Update: Wait a second, are you on facebook?  The prize committee is re-considering whether that can be called functional web browsing.

Update 2: False alarm.  That's the CrossFit NYC blog, not facebook.  The prize committee is mollified.