10 Reasons NOT to Train at FirePower

(And 10 reasons we don’t want you to come)

10. They make you try out – Just having a credit card and pulse does not get you a membership.  You have to demonstrate your willingness and ability to train intensely enough to get results. Who wants to have to meet objective standards of performance?

9. They train too hard – You sweat and breathe hard in every workout.  You train at the edge of the redline which makes it too hard to read a magazine while “working out.” They won’t let you be a part of the program if you just want to go through the motions.

8. They coach you – You can’t just sit and peddle on the bike, they make you learn and develop skills. They video workouts so people can see what they are doing and coach you on how to improve. You have to learn how to move better, so you can lift more weight faster – which means you get stronger, faster and lift properly. Who wants to be coached to be stronger or faster?

7. They don’t like whining or excuses – Complainers and criers are shunned, ridiculed, run off and are generally treated like lepers.  They don’t consider the woe is me attitude to be a good thing or a badge of courage. It is the right of every human to paint himself or herself as a victim in everything so they can increase their popularity with their everything-is–wrong peer group.   Who wants to go to a place where you can’t complain about everything under the sun?

6. They teach you new things – They make people learn new lifts, workouts and training methods – And expect you to master them.  They teach and re-teach the fundamentals so you are good at them.  Who wants to learn and perfect movements in constantly changing workouts?

5. They don’t have mirrors, treadmills, machines, TV’s Etc. – They don’t have a place to adjust your make up or to flex while you stand around figuring out your next bicep exercise. You can’t check how your new outfit looks when you work out. There is no TV with Jerry or Montel or any other car crash program to distract you from your workout. They actually make you run to do your “cardio.” Who really wants to actually focus on training?

4. They tell you the truth – They tell you when you are not moving right, or babying yourself or going through the motions. They are do not praise you when you look like a space monkey having a seizure.  If you do something stupid in a workout they will have probably videoed it and put it on YouTube.  Who wants to be held accountable to actually do things right?

3. They expect you to get better and actually expect you to train – They expect you to add weight, go faster and maintain excellent form as a regular part of the training. They expect you to try harder to overcome the weakest links in your performance. They expect everyone who has a membership to actually come to the gym to workout. Who wants that kind of stress to constantly improve or show up?

2. They measure performance – They keep score and track your results. They won’t let you just go through the motions – They keep score on the results of your training. If your scores, weights or times are not improving, they want to know why. Who wants their performance to improve all the time?

1. They charge too much – They charge enough where you may actually feel compelled to show up and train. They think that if they provide a top level, fully equipped training space and expert coaches to coach you, it is of value to their members.  Who wants to pay for a fully equipped and professionally run training center that expects people to workout and requires people to get results?

Thanks to our friends at HyperFit – USA, Ann Arbor CrossFit!

Tonya’s Story: Building A Believer

Hi Crossfit,

I hope that everyone can appreciate the bravery it takes for a woman to publish her measurements but I would like to share my journey so far in the hopes of encouraging someone else to stick with it, there are lots of new faces lately.

My first time at Crossfit, I did a tabata workout with Kim, I almost died….I mean I thought I was literally going to have a stroke.  I could hardly walk for a full week afterwards.  It took me a month to get my nerve up, and my husband insisting, before I went back to really try it.  You see, Roland had already been bitten by the bug and was a full-on member of the cult.  He kept after me to come back and try it.  Took away all my excuses and made it possible that he would attend in the morning, and I could attend in the evenings.  Volunteered to take the kids, do the laundry, whatever it took to get me in there (thanks babe)…. That first class, was it ever hard.  I was in tears when I left.  It was brutal.  But I went back the very next day.  And kept going and going.  It didn’t take too long before I could feel it starting to take hold.  The addiction.  The punishment.  The feeling of pushing yourself and challenging yourself like never before.  Feeling strong, confident.  Mentally clear.  If I went a day or two without a class, I felt off-course.

I started measuring myself the first time almost a month into it.  Here are my results so far:

Date:                                    Oct 25/09                                    Nov 5/09                        Jan 8/10

Waist                                    37”                                                36.5”                                    35.5”

Hips                                     41”                                                40                                    39.5”

Bust                                    39”                                                35.5”                                    35”

This of course is nothing compared to my ability and improvement in my squats, weights, and running.  I still have a long way to go.  I have goals set and once I reach those, I will have new goals.  This is a lifestyle that my husband and I have now adopted and are completely committed to.  Crossfit may be the hardest thing you’ve ever done but the rewards to your health and well-being are immeasurable.  The team atmosphere, the support of the trainers, and the encouragement of the members I have been lucky enough to meet have been such a tremendous source of inspiration.  I thank you for getting me back on a path to feeling healthy and strong.  You guys rock!

Tonya Link

FirePower Note: This is from January 2010.  We’ll get Tanya to keep us posted of her progress and update for March. We’re SUPER PROUD of you Tonya!

WOD Febuary 19

Big dan’s turn…partners i love it!

Dan Albergaria’s Partner/ Competition WOD

Each person chooses a partner of similar athleticism and they go head to head at each station.

6 Stations, 2 min per station with a 1 min rest before doing the stations again. Total WOD time: 25 min including rest.

1) Row for meters
2) Box Jumps 20″
3) Wall Ball 20/12lbs
4) KB swings Multi/ Orange
5) Jumping Pullups
6) Push ups

At the end of each station competitors compare score and the person with the lowest score gets a point. A point is a penalty! At the end of the WOD you must do 5 burpees for every point you accumulated. If you lose every round you are responsible for 60 burpees.

If anyone is coming to the fights on either Friday night or Saturday night, location is Century Gardens Arena 340 Vodden St. E Brampton, ON 905.874.2814.  Cost will be approx $12pp.  Good action starts @ 7pm both nights!  FirePower coaches Savard & Houle look to lead the team to victory!!

To chalk or not to chalk

Recently some people have been suffering from blisters.  They are are painful, especially when they tear.  Here is some advice from Freddy C. of Crossfit One World:

“1) Cut the chalk! All that chalk is not helping your pull-ups and is not going to make your grip stronger. Chalk serves a purpose, to dry the hands so you can get better grip. I occasionally put a little chalk on my hands, then I make sure to rub my hands together until I no longer see any chalk. My hands are then dry, and I can grip the bar. When you heavily chalk your hands, your hands stick to the bar. You start kipping and all that violent movement transfers to your hands. If your hands don’t slide a little you tear. People with a very pronounced kip tear even more when they use excessive amounts of chalk. I often hear people say that they have to chalk heavily because they sweat profusely through their hands. Try drying them with a towel and then lightly chalking them as I described.

2) Take care of your callouses! If you are building up huge callouses on your hands, at some point they are going to tear. Knock those callouses down! You can use a nail file, cuticle cutters, or my favorite: a Dremel tool with a grinding stone on it. Jolie turned me on to this good advice: buy a good pumice stone and use it on your callouses in the shower when your callouses are warm and soft.   And don’t forget- your significant other will appreciate the fact that your hands do not feel like a cheese grater when you give him/her a massage!

3) Practice pull-ups with no kip! Dead hang pull-ups are an excellent way to build the strength to do pull-ups without a violent kip and make your kipping pull-up more proficient. ”

Freddy C. CrossfitOneWorld

Post your thoughts or suggestions to comments.

WOD Febuary 16

We start off “Trainer’s Week with SHAWN CLOSE or what he likes to call:

” Shawn’s Painstorm ”

• Run 400m
• 50 Wallballs
• Run 800m
• 50 Pullups
• Run Mile
• 50 Burpees
• Run 800m
• 25 Thrusters 95/65
• Run 400
• 25 Pushups

Shawn is currently in Vancouver for the Olympics.  Send him a special thank you for this long distance Pain through the comments section.  Can’t wait to have you back Shawn!!

On another note, check out today’s CrossFit Main Site, Affiliate Blog…Looking Good Heather!

6 Things You Didn’t Know About Belly Fat

– And How to Make it Scram

Politicians, gossip columnists, doctors, your best friend — they’re all talking about the same thing: fat. Especially belly fat. The great thing about belly fat is that the better you get to know it, the easier it is to make it vanish (if only spam e-mail worked the same way!). Digest these stomach-flattening facts.

1. All fat is not alike. Eat more calories than you burn and the extras get packed away in one of two places — long-term storage depots beneath the skin (subcutaneous fat) or short-term bins deep in the abdomen (visceral fat). Visceral fat is what we call omental fat — that is, fat in your omentum, a piece of webbing that hangs off your stomach just beneath your ab muscles, sort of like a mesh apron.

2. The fat you don’t see is the most dangerous. The soft, superficial stuff that ripples your thighs and tummy may be a bikini spoiler, but if you can pinch it, it probably won’t kill you. However, if you have a solid “beer belly” . . . well, you’re likely headed for more trouble than a politician hooked up to a polygraph. That’s because too much deep fat churns out supersize amounts of hormones and proteins, which can lead to big hazards. Among them: lousy LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels; high blood sugar and blood pressure; insulin resistance; and widespread inflammation. All are instigators of many diseases — including dementia, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. But often you can get a “do over” and it doesn’t take that long and isn’t that hard, if you know what you’re doing. So don’t stop reading!

First, don’t rely on your scale. As you start to reduce risky belly fat, your weight may temporarily go up. So ditch the scale in favor of the tape measure. If you’re a woman, your waist should be 32.5 inches; if you’re a man, 35 inches. Creep past 37 inches for women or 40 for men, and the health dangers increase.

3. Stress makes you fat. Not only does stress lead you to eat Haagen-Dazs straight from the carton, but it also triggers the release of cortisol, a stress hormone. When stress becomes unrelenting, the omentum attempts to control cortisol flow by sucking it out of the bloodstream. Nice try, but cortisol fights back once it’s in the omentum and turbocharges fat there. That sets off other chemical reactions that leave you feeling hungry . . . and looking for the Haagen-Dazs again. Fortunately, any kind of stress reduction, especially exercise, will help short-circuit this stress/fat cycle. Feeling tense right now? Go for a walk the minute you finish this column.

4. The fat you eat affects the fat you get. When monkeys munched on trans-fat laced diets for 6 years, they developed more deep-belly fat than those who went trans-fat-free, even though both ate the same number of calories. Physiologically, we’re close enough to monkeys to extrapolate that trans fat doesn’t do anything good for your waist or your arteries.

5. Blasting belly fat isn’t hard. If you’re not overweight but still have an oversized waist, the fastest way to shrink your omentum is by walking. Taking a brisk 30-minute walk each day will keep those fat cells from expanding. Pick up the pace some, walk a little longer, and you can give your omentum a makeover, turning a flabby apron of omental fat into sheer mesh again. After 30 days of walking, start doing resistance exercises as well to add muscle and lose inches — otherwise you’ll hit a plateau. No dumbbells? No gym? No problem. You can get an excellent workout in 20 minutes by using your own body as a weight to stretch and strengthen all of your major muscle groups.

6. Whole grains scare away belly fat. If you and a friend go on a diet but you eat whole grains (meaning brown rice, steel-cut oats, and whole-wheat pasta, not whole-grain Pop Tarts) and your friend eats processed grains (anything made with white/enriched grains and flours, cupcakes to noodles), you both might lose the same amount of weight, but you’ll shed more belly fat and lower your levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of damaging inflammation. And your food will taste better, and you’ll feel full longer. AND you’ll have a flat stomach!

Source:  Realage.com

New KettleFit – 4 week Introductory Session

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If you are into training for the long run you have to take time to address your weak links and build up different forms of strength such as muscular endurance. One very fun and effective way to keep training interesting, address your weak links, and take your muscular endurance through the roof, is to incorporate kettlebell training into your routine.

Join FirePower Training’s Daniel Sonsini for

KETTLEFIT

4-Week Introductory Session: Saturdays @ 11am

January 9th to January 30th

Special Price of $40 + GST

Sign-up Online (max 10 people)

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What is a Kettlebell? They are the ultimate Russian fitness tool used for endurance, strength, and overall conditioning. Training involves compound exercises that work multiple muscle groups simultaneously, thus developing a healthy body that is strong, toned, lean, agile, and has tremendous muscular endurance.

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Kettlebells for women: Women are the fastest growing users of Kettlebells. If you want to improve your cardio and get a lean, toned body there is no better fitness tool.  Kettlebell swings will get your legs and glutes looking better than they ever have. You can tone, shape and do cardio all with one tool without any excuses. Kettlebell presses will give you a sculpted body with movements that are similar to yoga but with the added benefits of resistance training.

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Kettlebells for men: Kettlebell training is one of the best fitness regimes addressing strength, endurance and weight management. Kettlebell training builds functional strength, stamina and explosiveness that are ideal for sport. This kind of training is a fun, safe way to get in shape and stay in shape.

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Your Trainer: Daniel Sonsini, Level 2 Agatsu KB Instructor

Daniel Sonsini

Daniel has been involved with “Functional Training” for 10 years including a background in CrossFit, Kettlebells, Sports Specific Training, Pilates, and Nutrition.  He’s the youngest person to receive a Doctorate of Natural Medicine (DNM) through the Examining Board of Natural Medicine Practitioners (EBNMP).  His certifications include: Level 1 CrossFit, AKC, CPTN-CPT, DNM, and Pilates (Mat Work & Vertical Intensive). He’s also part of Usana Health Sciences, which is one of the top and most respected nutritional companies in the world.

Daniel is extremely passionate about Health and Fitness. He strives to help any individual reach their goal(s) through “Functional Training” and working the 10 essentials of fitness: Cardio Respiratory Endurance; Stamina; Strength; Flexibility; Speed; Power; Accuracy; Agility; Balance; Coordination.

“Obsessed is just a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated.”

WOD DEC 9

“CINDY”

: 20 min amrap

• 5 pullups
• 10 push ups
• 15 squats

or

“MARY”: 20 min amrap

• 5 hand stand push ups
• 10 one legged squats ( alternating legs )
• 15 pullups

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Housekeeping stuff:

1. Hoodies:  If you would like a FirePower hoody before X-Mas, email Andrea your size by TONIGHT!
2. Christmas Holidays:  FirePower will be closed Dec 24 to 26.  We will have open gym on Dec 27.
3. New Year’s Eve @ FirePower: For all you non-party’ers on NYE, you are all invited to drop into the gym for a FirePower get-together.  Just a simple Pot Luck, BYOB, and some tunes.  Maybe a little Rock Band too!

Kids @ FirePower

So, it’s time to rein in the free-reign kids at the gym.  As you know we are a family-friendly facility, but lately this is getting a little too relaxed.  We welcome our members to bring their kids , but it must be clear that kids are NOT allowed on the training floor during workouts.  We have created a kids area upstairs and kids are welcome to play in the boxing area while not in use. If both classes are operating, all kids MUST be upstairs.  They are interfering with safe operation of the classes and the enjoyment of other members.

Also, parents, please do not let your kids play with the water dispenser and take all the cups!  We don’t mind sharing a small drink with them, but the water use is getting out of control and there are multiple floods on the laminate from kids playing with it.  We don’t buy the water for your kids.

Please do not let your kids take the good whiteboard markers, they are few & far between at the gym. And lastly, do NOT let them play in the chalk. It’s unhealthy and super messy!

We want to keep the facility family friendly and need parents to be responsible for their own kids.  It’s been unfair to the clean-up crew, and other members to be encumbered with so many kids running wild.  By the way, this includes the Savard twins too.  We all need to do a better job in this area.  Thanks for you help!

FirePower Hoodies – First Print Order Due Dec 9

We promised they were coming!  Now that the snow is here, it’s time to get your hoody.  We are taking orders for the first batch and hoping to have them for Christmas!  A little sweet talking to the printer always helps…

About the Hoody:

• Gildan Ultra Cotton Hooded Sweatshirt, 17oz 80% Cotton 20% Polyester
• Front Design: FirePower CrossFit logo
• Back Text: “CrossFit, Forging Elite Fitness”

Cost: $35+tax

To order, email Andrea with your requested size(s) by end of day Wednesday December 9th.

FirePower CrossFit Launches New TeenFit Program

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FirePower Training Presents

FirePower TeenFit

An after school CrossFit program just for teenagers…

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Are you bored after school?  Do you like sports but haven’t found where you fit in?  Do you play sports and want some superior conditioning?  CrossFit can change your life.  It will shatter your comfort zone!  Sign up at the gym or online.

For teens age 13 – 17yrs

Mondays &Wednesdays 4pm to 5pm

5-weeks: November 16th to December 16th

$120 + GST

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Download FirePower TeenFit Flyer

Download FirePower TeenFit Registration Form

Please note registration & release form still required for all PayPal registrants.  Must accompany teen at first session and be signed by parent or legal guardian.

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