Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Happy 2014 Eternia!







Good morning Eternia! Now that the dust has settled after all the Holidays have passed us and we can get back to normal schedule, I figured I better write another blog post.  I know I know, all 5 of you that read this have been chompin' at the bit waiting for a new post to pop up.  Hahaha sorry for the delay.  To kick of this year I figure I would address a few questions that have come up over the past month or so.  So without further adieu.... here we go.

I've gotten the question allot if we are a CrossFit Gym.  The short answer is no, we are not a CrossFit Affiliate. Does this mean we don't like CrossFit. It sure as hell doesn't.  All of our trainers are CrossFit Level 1 trainers, as well as CF Olympic Lifting, and others.  It's not that we don't agree with CF on most things, it's more that we don't agree with how the structure is laid out.  I think the idea of you being able to do whatever you want with your gym and not having to follow any guidelines starts off sounding pretty awesome at first.  My problem with that is as CF gets bigger and bigger, more places continue to open what CF started as starts to get very far from what it was set up as.  Reminds me of this game we play sometimes.  You have a group of people start off with 12 blank flash cards.  One person writes something on the top card and passes it to there right.  The person on the right then reads what is on the card and then moves that card to the back. On the new blank card they draw what they vision the card  they had just read.  So for instance, Johnny goes fishing is written on the top card and the person draws Johnny on a dock with a fishing pole in the water.  After this the cards are passed again, the next person looks at the card with the drawing, puts it in the back and writes a sentence of what was drawn.  This goes on and on until you have your pack of cards back with the sentence you wrote. You can only imagine what last card drawing would be and how far off track it gets by the end.  That is how I feel CF is getting.  You can open a gym, pay HQ $3500 bucks a year so you can put that CF at the beginning or end of your name and call your gym a CrossFit Gym.  Whatever goes on after that is up to you.  If you feel like doing some kind of yoga/zumba/weightlifting you can.  Again, that sounds great that you can do whatever you want.  Problem with this is now everyone is grouped into the same group. When something negative pops up, you are now grouped into that as well.  My personal opinion is there are some really awesome CF Gyms out there, and there are allot of really bad ones.  We didn't feel like being grouped into anything.  Does this mean we don't like crossfiters and CF Gyms, heck no, we love em. We just feel that we could spend that money better on the athletes in our gym to better themselves then use the money to better our Google search standings.  

Now, the obvious next question is well what kind of training are you doing then. Are you doing CrossFit?  How I like to answer this is, our class structure is set up like your usual CF which is a warmup, some workout, and a cool down of some sort.  So I would say base structure could be roughly like that.  Now, CrossFit is a General Physical Preparedness program, or GPP for short.  Now, we do continue to believe there is nothing wrong with a GPP program in the least! They are great, we just feel there could be some changes made/added that can take that to the next level.  You will hear a lot of CF spots say they are a GPP program with a strength bias.  This is a great start, but we feel this comes up short again.  Two issues that can be fixed with this are more real strength work not 2 days a week of some kinda of squat and some kind of press and call it good, then doing 4 30 min metcons a week.  There also lies the fault of zero assistance work.  You want you members to get stronger and lift heavier weights, but many have zero lifting background. Zero assistance musculature to hold heavy loads.  You will hear, well these are full body, functional movements so they are working the whole body all musculature.  Check your injury rate and let me know how that's workin for ya.  How many shoulder injuries, how many low back injuries.  Time has come for letting your members use the gym for what they pay you for. You gotta build a solid base to assist holding heavy loads.  We are a performance gym, wanting to build performance athletes.  You can start from zero baseline and be one if you want to put the work in and we are happy to help anybody of any fitness level meet that goal as long and THEY WANT IT! We like to say we are a place for motivated people only, and that's what we mean by that. We are here to get you strong, fit, fast, athletic, lean, yoked, jacked, cut hahah whatever it is that you are wanting out of your fitness. We do this by making you stronger, faster and generally a more bad ass version of your current self.   

So what kind of training will we be doing then? Well, you will get to do all sorts of things.  You get to flip tires, drag-push-pull weight sleds, squat deadlift and press.  You will also learn the Olympic Lifts.  You will learn these in progression with light load, as in a PVC pipe until we feel comfortable with you putting weight on the bar. Sounds a lot like stuff you would see in a CF Gym right.  Well we differ from that just a bit.  You won't see those Oly lifts used in super high rep workouts.  You won't see super high rep box jumping over and over. You won't see over extended GHD sit ups. You will see more strict pull-ups than you will see kipping. We also will use things pulled from many other facets of the fitness/strength world.  You will Bench press... yes I know I said it you will bench.  You will do multiple variations of the bench press, as well as squat and deadlift.  You will pick up heavy things, carry them and put them down. You will get to pick up heavy stones and put then back down.  You will sprint, you will run, you will row, you will jump and you will ride.  You will also get some "bodybuilding" movements in your training as well.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Yep I said it. Assistance work to make you stronger in all your other lifts and well and pre-hab against injury.  I really don't think what we are doing here is anything new or revolutionary, I just don't feel it's done enough! 

Our goal is to build a community of people that want to really take this training as part of there life to better it.  We want people that all they can think about all day is getting to the gym.  We want people that want to push themselves and allow others to push them.  We don't care where you start, just that you have the drive to want it!

I hope this clears up a few questions or at least gives you an idea of what goes on behind those 3 big roll up doors in the world of Eternia. You may even get a glimpse when the sun is shining, doors are up, jams are flowing loud, and bars are slammin.  Next up I'll chat about the "Paleo" and clean eating.  Sleep easy Lions, weak you will not be!