3.3

The Whiteboard Mentality... Part 2

     Compete Daily. Thats what we will eventually focus on. but first:

     History is important. Lineage is important. Lets talk about it.

     Crossfit in Oklahoma, in a competitive light (ok any light), is absolutely phenomenal.  We compete in a region made up of 11 states, but we contribute enough athletes for almost 1.33 states. Lets look at some facts.

     Oklahomans
3 Men have qualified for and competed at the Games as individuals
1 Masters Woman Games athlete
2 Teams have qualified for and competed at the Games

And this confusing chart

     All you need to know from this, is that our state sends 5 men, about 4 women, and about 4 teams to Regionals every year. For our Region, we send athletes as if we were one and a quarter states and our top competitors each year average a 4th place team, a 5th place female, and almost a 3rd place male.

     The overwhelming majority of these competitors have originated at one of two gyms: CFOKC or CF Jenks. GK and I have had the privilege of being members at both of these gyms. The owners Jason Boag of OKC and Breck Berry of Jenks have both qualified for the CF Games as individuals. To say that they set the tone for competitive Crossfit in Oklahoma would be an understatement.

     Now that we have some background, lets actually move on to this portion of the Whiteboard Mentality. I want to specifically focus on Jenks, today. Sort of.

     It was somewhere around the summer of 2009. The whiteboard had existed before this time, but not to the degree it soon would at CF Jenks. Breck Berry was competitive at heart. Everyday in the gym was an all out battle for him, and he was and is a machine.

     Everyday, as we raced to finish the WOD first, we would yell "TIME" upon finishing the WOD... and Breck would write our name (and whether or not we did the WOD as Rx'd) in his famous spiral notebook. The original spirals are rumored to still be in existence.

     I believe that it was this summer that he decided he would have a daily/monthly Leaderboard...and it was this summer that he would begin to create monsters. He made a whiteboard with 31 lines and placed it on prime "front and center" wall-estate. The premise was this: Win the WOD that day, get your name on the board. The competition was on. Everyday was a battle.

     Breck coached every class and ran every warm up. Essentially his methods would "standardize" the day. This meant that, for each class, the only variables that were different were the time, the amount of sun, and the weather.

     The Men fought hard daily in order to dethrone Breck from his regular spot atop the board. The Women did the same in the chase for GK's position. Here is what was amazing, they started doing it. Men and Women rose to the challenge. Breck and Ginny didn't get worse, they got exponentially better (forged from the fires of competition). Everyone else just happened to do the same. Iron sharpened Iron on a daily basis.

     It is my opinion that because of this "Compete Daily Whiteboard Mentality" CF Jenks can boast this: Almost 60% of the Oklahoma Regional competitors and around 80% of Oklahoma Games competitors got their start at CF Jenks.

     As I mentioned earlier, Breck ran his daily classes very specifically. For this reason a lot of controllable variables were controlled. He couldn't change the amount of sleep the athletes got. Or what their diet was like. Or whether they were mentally prepared for the WOD. He couldn't control which guys/gals were sandbagging the strength portion in order to do beter on the WOD. He couldn't control the temperature outside. Or any other of the thousands of factors that go into WOD performance. The "TIME" that he wrote down had no asterisk with a reference reading  "up all night studying/with crying baby", it was just a number (your result for this day). You received a number daily though, so everything seemed to average out over time. If you went to class at Jenks, you posted on the website. (I will cover this later) You also checked the website through out the day and for some reason you always thought "so-n-so" cheated (thats for a later post as well).

     And now with all of that in mind, lets fast forward this...the fall of 2009. I visited CFOKC. There was a plethora of competitive guys at CFOKC as well. I specifically remember one of the CFOKC guys being very interested in how Denver McPhail was able to post certain times on WODs. These CFOKC guys looked at Breck's programming on a regular basis and they also tried to beat the Jenks guys on a regular basis (future post). I loved the enthusiasm, but I realized very quickly that they were missing the intangibles, namely Breck's vicious "warm ups".

     The "Compete Daily" view that comes with this area of the "Whiteboard Mentality" is invaluable for fostering a competitive gym environment. Breck's whiteboard experiment proved that to me unequivocally. I watched Iron sharpen Iron and I walked Breck create fierce competitors.

     The question I will pose is this: Is there a gym to gym breakdown? If you are comparing yourself to someone from another gym, how can you be sure that you have both done the same workout. My answers are: Yes there is a break down, and essentially you cant compare....but more on this later.

To Be Continued...  

3.3

OLY STRENGTH

1. 3-Position Clean (floor, below knee, above knee) + 1Jerk

3+1 @ 60%, 3+1 @ 65%, 3+1 @ 70%, 3+1 @ 75%, 3+1 @ 80%, Heavy set

2. Clean Pull

4x3 @ 110% (of Clean)

3. Good Morning

3x5 Heavier than last week

COMP WOD

5 Rounds for Time

4 R arm DB OHS (60/30)

4 L arm DB OHS (60/30)

8 Renegade Rows 

          Scale to a weight you can use and still finish in under 10 minutes