April 2024
Swag: New Shirt release with the new logo, get you some Brodin in your life! Click HERE to order.
Upcoming Events:
Thunder Dome Engine Builder 3.0 kicks off 15 April. There are still a few slots open! Click HERE to register!
Rope climb clinics: Saturday May 4th and May 18th at 8 AM! $25 each, CB will teach all the magic of hauling your carcass 15ft in the air (and using your feet to do it!)
Quarter Finals workouts 18-21 April – Congratulations to our QF qualifying athletes! We are going to program and complete the QF workouts (released on 17 April) and culminate workout number 4 on Sunday afternoon with a little BBQ and potluck fellowship! Workout will start at 1pm with food and festivities directly after!
Finance 101- Ever had questions about basic Financial Wellness? Roth vs traditional 401k? Well, we are going to get together and talk shop, guest speaker John Taylor (friend of Gorilla) is going to drop some no nonsense finance knowledge! One Sunday afternoon in May, TBD
From the Desk of the Gorilla
Closing out the 1st quarter with a flourish, past the Ides of March, here we arrive in April. Showers, are we supposed to take showers this month? Something something May flowers, I promise to take at least 4 showers this month. Aside from the month of showers, other random gorilla thoughts for your reading pleasure:
Focus: that’s a tough word. Seems like everyone is being pulled in 17 directions at once, everyday is something different, but it’s always the same. The ability to focus and be in the moment in training, in work, in relationships, is a struggle at times. I think about how heavily we must rely on habits to keep balance. Habits become our identity. You can define a person by what they consistently do. Whether it’s 2 days a week or 7, you identify as a person who trains. A person who shows up and does the work, makes good choices day in and day out, and fights to live a life where they are formidable, strong, and capable. Absent of the metabolic conditions that plague our world today.
Trust– “To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved” -George Mcdonald. I Read this recently and it hasn’t left my thoughts. Being trusted means something, it means that there are a host of other words that can describe you such as, reliable, strong, consistent, dedicated… the list goes on, but you get my point. Trusting the process is also a big part of what we do. I remember, in my advanced training school for the Army, learning how to direct and fire Artillery, instructors beat into our brains “don’t ask why, just do it”. I thought they were just being asses but in fact, they were keeping us focused on learning the skills, the understanding of why would matter later. Much the same with physical training, there’s a need to push the end from the mind and FOCUS (see what I did there? You see it…) on the task at hand. The strongest, most trustworthy, fittest people I know show up 3-5 days a week and work their junk off for an hour a day. As we endeavor to be worthy of trust, be dedicated, be consistent, be reliable. Know that on the back end the results will be there, trust the process.
-Steve
Notes From the Programmer
Howdy, Gang –
It’s been a while, and I have been a little less present than I’d like to be. Lucky for you guys, you’re in the best of hands at CFI. That’s never changed. However, I’m checking in with you now to lay out the plan, both for the near future and the not-so-near future. I look forward to the end of soccer season and the arrival of summer so that I can bother those of you I don’t see a little more frequently.
Right from the outset, I want to make sure to let you all know how impressed I am with your performances in the Open. You all never cease to blow me away with all you’re capable of. I wish I had been able to share in more of the fun, but there is always next year.
Mondays have been and will remain a strength and power focused day. We are making our way through a snatch cycle, the focus of which has been positions, consistency, and confidence in our pull. We will conclude the cycle with a test of a heavy single because, well, why the hell not? Expect us to move into some overhead squats and overhead stability work after we check off the snatch cycle.
Tuesdays have been typical CrossFit-style workouts with the intent of improving our comfort in longer time domains. We will be shifting some of the focus to bodyweight movements as we near our annual Murph run-through. There will be a smattering of pull-ups, push ups, and air squats to make sure that our joints and muscles are prepared for such high contraction volume.
Wednesdays, at least for the foreseeable future, will feature a couple strength movements in particular. Though I appreciate the patience with the front rack lunges, we will leave those in the past in favor of a quick front squat cycle. Your front rack should feel strong and prepared to handle the rigor of a four week front squat cycle. We will move from sevens down to singles, allowing for an opportunity at the leaderboard. Expect that at the conclusion of the front squats, deadlifts will be on the menu, you lucky ducks.
Thursdays are for skills. Thursdays are for flows. Thursdays are for whatever the week calls for.
Fridays, since we have left the Open in the rearview, will be a mix of partner and individual workouts. There will be focus on CrossFit style workouts, so we can return to our roots. We will monitor the temperature closely to make sure there are no chances of overheating, but expect the workouts to be challenging and relatively high volume.
More than anything, I want to reiterate how much I miss all of you and how important you all are to me. I can’t wait for things to cool off so I can join in on the fun and suffer alongside my people again.
<3
WT