Arte Et Labore

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By Ellory M.

Editor’s Note: For those not in the know, Ellory is my little sister. I got her into Crossfit and lifting weights a couple years ago, and she took to it well. This is her story.

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When I entered college as a freshman, I was concerned about appearances. I wanted people to think I was pretty, so I was wary to participate in activities I thought were unattractive. When it came to working out, I went to the gym to maintain my weight and that’s about it. I spent a lot of time on the treadmill running at a moderate pace.

My biggest concern about Crossfit was standing out. The idea of me walking into my college’s conventional gym and performing “Helen” at 100% effort was outrageous. I didn’t know anyone at my university. What would they think of me? When I started doing WODs the summer before my freshman year of college, I did them alone, in private–sometimes in my room, sometimes in my garage.

But slowly, I came around. I began going to my university’s recreation center to do some of the workouts posted on the main site. At first I only chose workouts with minimal equipment and always worked out with a friend. After a week I had befriended two older, more experienced CrossFitters. Over the course of a year, they helped me gain proficiency in all of the major lifts. I watched them crush workout after workout. Neither of them cared that everyone in the gym was watching them and whispering. In fact, they seemed to like the attention.

Soon enough, I felt comfortable going to the gym without my CrossFit friends to do a WOD. One night that spring I went to a party and met some new people. Four out of the five new people I met that night already knew me–they told me that they recognized me as the crazy fit girl in the gym. I took it as a compliment.

The next summer, I earned my Level 1 certification and taught CrossFit at an all-girls summer camp in Vermont. It was stunning to see the intensity with which the girls would approach workouts. After class, I would talk to my campers about body image and self-confidence. CrossFit, I hoped, would help them develop the confidence to raise their hands in class and to stick up for their friend to a bully. After a workout, one eight-year-old girl wrote in her notebook: “I feel great. I did my best!” I just about cried.

One year later, I was given the opportunity to learn a lesson from my campers. In what must have been an act of God, I was invited to train in my university’s Division 1 football gym. Only football players and football staff are allowed inside the facilities. The football gym is a CrossFit Mecca, equipped with twenty platforms, countless medicine balls, GHD machines, jump ropes, tires, etc. Most importantly, it comes with four of the best strength and conditioning coaches in the nation. I’d been singled out as ” a badass girl who loved to lift heavy things” by some of my football player friends. When meeting the football coaches for the first time, it was hard to hide my enthusiasm at the gym setup and the chance to have them coach my lifts. “You mean, it’s OK if I drop this weight from overhead?” I was in heaven.

I’m five foot three and one-hundred and fifteen pounds. Everyday I now workout with a Division 1 football team. Some of the football players are friendly–they smile and introduce themselves; others are ambivalent–they avoid eye contact and concentrate on their own workouts; others are sexist–they check me out when I lift and crack jokes to their friends; and still others are openly hostile–they loudly whisper to their teammates and ask me condescending questions.

Here’s the deal. I make outrageous faces. I make noises while I run, jump, lift and throw. I also know I am judged…but I don’t care.

CrossFit has given me the self-confidence to own who I am and what I do.

Strong is the new skinny!

Kelly Starrett’s new Daily Mobility Musings. Dig it.

About Mobility WOD

Problem: High rep and round workouts like “Cindy” are hard to keep track of. Uncorking a marker at the end of every round to write down your score is slow and wastes a lot of time.
Solution: Draw a line on a whiteboard near you. Put your initials on top. At the end of every round, use your finger to make a gap in the line. At the end of the WOD, count the gaps to get your score. No uncapping markers mid-WOD required.

Problem: You are stuck between a couple weights for a WOD. One weight seems a bit heavy, and one seems too light. Swapping big plates in the middle of a workout would take too much time.

Solution: Use more than one bumper plate for easy switching. Instead of putting 45 lb plates on to reach #135, put two #35s and two #10s. That way, if you have to switch, you can just ditch the 10s. Much faster. Anyone who has taught a large class will appreciate how much chaos this little trick prevents.

Barbells and Bacon WOD:

“The Newport Crippler”

Back Squat 225lbs for 30 Reps

Run 1 Mile

Goal is to finish in under 7:30

Congrats to My August Olympic Lifting Class!

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These are movement cues that can be used almost 100% of the time.

1. Weight on your heels. Wiggle your toes.

2.  Chest up. Chest Spread. Proud Chest. Big Chest (It’s all the same thing)

3. Low back tight and arched

4. Neutral head

5. Take a deep belly (not chest) breath and squeeze your abs

Barbells and Bacon Workout of The Day:

“135er”
For time:
50 bench press
50 back squat
50 deadlift
25 bench press
25 back squat
25 deadlift
**All exercises are done with 135# barbell Rx

A small selection from a piece by Walter Block of the Mises Institute. The rest of the article is found here. Before you comment, click the link and read the whole thing.

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The indictment is manifold: he (the Slumlord) charges unconscionably high rents; he allows his buildings to fall into disrepair; his apartments are painted with cheap lead paint, which poisons babies, and he allows junkies, rapists, and drunks to harass the tenants. The falling plaster, the overflowing garbage, the omnipresent roaches, the leaky plumbing, the roof cave-ins and the fires, are all integral parts of the slumlord’s domain. And the only creatures who thrive in his premises are the rats.

The indictment, highly charged though it is, is spurious. The owner of ghetto housing differs little from any other purveyor of low-cost merchandise. In fact, he is no different from any purveyor of any kind of merchandise. They all charge as much as they can.

First consider the purveyors of cheap, inferior, and secondhand merchandise as a class. One thing above all else stands out about merchandise they buy and sell: it is cheaply built, inferior in quality, or secondhand. A rational person would not expect high quality, exquisite workmanship, or superior new merchandise at bargain rate prices; he would not feel outraged and cheated if bargain rate merchandise proved to have only bargain rate qualities. Our expectations from margarine are not those of butter. We are satisfied with lesser qualities from a used car than from a new car. However, when it comes to housing, especially in the urban setting, people expect, even insist upon, quality housing at bargain prices.

But what of the claim that the slumlord overcharges for his decrepit housing? This is erroneous. Everyone tries to obtain the highest price possible for what he produces, and to pay the lowest price possible for what he buys. Landlords operate this way, as do workers, minority group members, socialists, babysitters, and communal farmers. Even widows and pensioners who save their money for an emergency try to get the highest interest rates possible for their savings.