| August 2024 |
| From the Desk of the Gorilla I’m excited to share some updates, Fam! Lots of stuff happening in the House of Gainz! First, after years of pouring his heart into our programming, Coach Will is stepping back from those duties. We owe him a huge thank you for everything he’s done. Will’s impact here has been incredible, and we’re lucky to still have him as a coach. Now, I’m thrilled to welcome Jeff Barnett, our new Director of Training, to the programming role. Jeff’s no stranger to CFI— if you didn’t know, he’s the former owner and has 11 years of programming experience under his belt, along with being a CF Level 3 coach. He knows what makes us tick, and he’s going to bring a fresh flavor to our workouts that I think you’re really going to love. We’re also rolling out a new Boot Camp class at the HOG! Inspired by the wildly successful Engine Builder class (Shout out Dolla Bill) Impulse Bootcamp will feature machines, calisthenics, and some implements with a total work time of 40 minutes or so. For those of you already crushing it, this is some extra conditioning that fits perfectly with CFI programming. For new athletes, it’s, as King Leonidas said in 300, “a good start.” Start date is 2 September, Class times are @4:15/5:15 Mon/Thur and 7:30am on Sat. Pricing is $125 for Bootcamp and $199 for combined membership. If you need more information or would like to sign up, as the late great Stuart Scott said on ESPN “Holla at a playa when you see him in the street”. Random thoughts: As we celebrate 15 years as an affiliate, I can’t help but think about what that means—over 200,000 hours of training. That’s 200,000 hours of dedication to health and wellness, hard, tough work and so many good times and memories. It’s pretty incredible to think about the impact we’ve made together fam, I can hardly have a conversation where a memory of one of you doesn’t come up, what a story we are weaving! The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades, and I’m so glad you’re all a part of this journey with us. Thanks for being part of the CrossFit Impulse family! If you are reading this, why aren’t you lifting? -Steve Upcoming Training Fam, I’m truly honored to be trusted with your workout programming. It isn’t a responsibility I take lightly, and I commit to you that it will receive my full effort. First I have to thank Will for setting me up for success and keeping us the fittest gym in 3 states (thank God for Mississippi). I’ve seen him program some of the nastiest shit in the history of nasty shit, and I mean that as an immense compliment. Thanks, Will! What kind of programming can you expect from me? It’s not terribly different than what you’re accustomed to. I program classic CrossFit with a slight focus on strength, and I incorporate a lot of novel concepts I’ve learned through experience and education. Here’s what I focus on. Fun. My goal is to help people get stronger and fitter. I can’t help them if they’re home on the couch. To get them into the gym, I am not ashamed to say I make fun a priority. Can we all feel excited about every workout every week? No. Burpees still exist and Steve wouldn’t let me sell the bikes. But as a whole I want you to look at the week of training and be excited to come to the gym. I will also get you outside the walls of the gym from time to time. Some of you don’t care about the leaderboard, and that’s OK. Many of you do enjoy the competition of the leaderboard. Because the leaderboard is a big part of the fun, it’s important to me that the scoring and data entry in SugarWOD is smooth and intuitive for you. If you ever happen to see the scoring is jacked up, please message me immediately so I can fix it. With that said, while I enjoy keeping the leaderboard fun, you need to know that I care about you and I care about making you better. What I absolutely don’t give a shit about is ensuring you can turn in the “best” score for the conditioning workout each day at the cost of everything else. Effective. We are going to do classic CrossFit and we are going to continue getting strong. You will see a heavy lift + conditioning on more days than you’ve seen in the past, often about 2 days a week. This strength work will most often prime you for the conditioning work ahead. Do some googling on “post activation potentiation.” A heavy lift will make you faster and more capable for conditioning that follows. Sometimes you’ll also be asked to lift heavy during or after conditioning. That’s a skill that both makes you stronger and helps you learn your body’s capabilities under fatigue. You will often see one pure strength day. This is a staple of old school CrossFit. It’s also good for your strength development, and I care about making you stronger. The science on this is 100% crystal clear: When you are elderly you will need strength, mobility, skeletal muscle, and coordination in order to continue enjoying life. Being unable to run a 5k in under 28 minutes will not kill you. Stepping off a curb, falling, and breaking your hip will kill you from immobility and infection. Right now is the easiest it will ever be in your life to gain muscle and get strong, and what you build today you will carry with you for a long time. So let’s get to building, shall we? “Strength is painstakingly difficult to build and shockingly easy to maintain.”-Mark Rippetoe. Safety. I keep you safe by evaluating everything I program for rhabdo risk. If you haven’t heard about rhabdo, go read this article I wrote about it. Because it can kill you. I am sensitive to keeping your shoulders healthy by controlling your pressing volume in general and your overhead pressing in particular. I also aim to program 2:1 reps of pull: push, further keeping your shoulders healthy. Achilles strain is another thing I monitor by controlling your double under volume and requiring that you step down from every box jump. Rebounding box jumps seem to rupture Achilles tendons at the expense of increasing your imaginary internet points. Your Achilles tendon is real, not imaginary, so imma just make the call it’s more important than the points. With very few, specific, low-volume exceptions…you will never perform a rebounding box jump at CrossFit Impulse. I can elicit every single stimulus that rebounding box jumps elicit with much safer movements. In my 17 years of doing CrossFit, I’ve made some mistakes. You get to learn from those mistakes without making them yourself. I will never ask you to do anything I am not willing to do myself. And most days of the week, you can observe me doing it myself at either 11:30 or 4:00.So we’re going to stay fit, get even stronger, and have one hell of a time doing it. Next time I’ll share some specifics about our first new block of training after the front squat cycle has concluded: bench press. -Jeff |