20 December 2008 - - Crossfit St. Charles is Most Excellent

9am Xfitter's at Crossfit St. Charles (left to right; Kelly, Kim (owner), Sean (behind Mr. Slammy), Matt)

On Saturday, I got myself out of bed, put down some breakfast, threw on a rather funky shirt that reminded me I played hockey the previous night, and made the trek out to Crossfit St. Charles.

Wonderful time.  For those of you that are unaware, Crossfit St. Charles is one of the more recent affiliates in the St. Louis area. Great space, lots of rings, bars, weights, pull up area, and of course the best feature is, room to move.  As an added bonus, something that makes me wish I lived right next door, they occupy a room situated in a gymnastics facility, Generation Gymnastics.  

As our workout was going on young girls and boys were practicing various gymnastic skills.  I was jealous.  I have grown to love gymnastics and body weight movements in the past year.  But, instead of jumping, tumbling and twisting I was pushing and pulling some weight that made me retaste my breakfast.  Just as good. 

Xfit St. Charles WOD:

Warmup:  As Nothing To It'ers know, I don't like to warmup.  This warm up consisted of three rounds of run for one minute and ten repetitions of pullups, ring dips, back extensions, situps, overhead squats, ring rows and a few stretches had me hiding and biding my time looking busy and thinking to myself 'maybe I'll just make this a social call...let's get it on already'.  Note:  Just search, there is a ton of material out there on the benefits, and disbenefits if you will, of warming up. Static stretching bad. Dynamic stretching good. No stretching for heavy work better. Going 'cold' into metcon work and good luck. I have gone 'cold' into a match and played brilliantly and I have gone into a similar test thoroughly warmedup and done the opposite.  If it were that simple, I would not have to say...and vice versa.  Personally, I believe, that if your body is not significantly of kilter, then it is mostly mental.

Anyways, back to the WOD...

As Many Rounds As Possible in Twenty Minutes of...

10 Thruster #65 Men & #35 Women

10 Pullups

Get it on we did. To be honest, I am not a fan of As MRasP WOD's, maybe it is the clock being in control of me instead of me being in control of the time, but this very simple and very brutal workout got me good.  The thrusters went well much to the delight of my 'Shrinking Ass', but the pullups really got to my breakfast around round six.  I was kipping hard then, substituting butterfly kips and C-kips to keep as fresh as possible, and though the strength and desire was there, something funny in the belly was going on. It did not play a significant effect on my end time of eleven rounds plus seven thrusters, but it did mess with my head as I have never 'unloaded'* due to a workout and did not want to do so on my first visit to Crossfit St. Charles.  I wish I would have gone harder, but I pushed through it. 

Brett: 11 Rounds + 7 thrusters  (guess what WOD we are doing next time!)

BTW: Kelly was chasing me the entire time, and keeping her in the corner of my eye, she pushed me beyond my then comfort level.

After the WOD, to top things off, we all went for a Deadlift PR.  My previous PR was #300 and two reps at that (~1.85BW at the time) so my goal was to match that at one rep being now #10 lighter. When it came time for max effort, I went for #305 after hitting #275 soundly, but missed, and though I was not too far off I felt that that was that.  Matt had a great 'bouncing' PR effort, Kelly did great work, and Sean showed us all up. 

Great meeting, great workout, great conversation.  Visit and talk about Crossfit St. Charles.  Kim is a charm. 

*Unloaded during Pitch A Tent 7's Rugby Summer 2006, but that was after the first match after little sleep due to an unlimited keg fest in a field.