Let it not be said that CFDC can’t find a way to overcome even the most stubborn obstacles. No home? No Problem! To kick off a few weeks of gym-vagrancy, we took things out of doors this past Sunday for a long over-due guerrilla WOD. Pushing the start time back to 11am to let the temperature come up a bit, CFDC went old-school, skipping the equipment and rolling out Rock Creek Park at the intersections of Calvert St. and Connecticut Ave. The great thing about this corner of Rock Creek Park is the open space, selection of pull-up bars, and – of course – the hills!

Speaking of old school, those who played HS football or wrestled in their younger days may remember the Monkey Roll drill. Otherwise, it was a new introduction for those in attendance on Sunday to a 3-person burpee drill requiring teamwork, coordination, timing, and some good humor!

The basics of the monkey roll drill = 3 people stand side by side; the middle person drops and barrel rolls to their right; the person on the right dives over the roller, and commences to roll left; the person on the left dives over the roller and rolls to the right, where the first person (who started in the middle) has stood up and is ready to dive over into a roll to the left. Confused? Here’s two videos pulled from YouTube demonstrating the drill (as well as the typical results):

After everyone had a good roll on the ground, and laugh, it was time to take stock of what was available and craft the workout.

Since the pull-up bars were free, there was no way we could pass-up the chance to work on them. Working in groups of 3-4 people, teams were to complete 10 total rounds in which each team member did 5 pull-ups, then 10 push-ups, and then carry one team member for roughly 1 meter (.5 meters out and back).

Teams could elect to carry each other in whatever way was most comfortable, whether fireman’s style, over the shoulder, or piggy-back. The same person didn’t have to do the carry the whole 10 meters (nor did the same person have to be carried the whole 10 meters). Best carry of the day had to be Ami stepping up to carry 200lb+ Coach Salty piggy-back style for one round:

An awesome workout using what was available, including each other! Those fireman carry’s took a toll to be sure – nothing like hoisting up another human being and running around. But wait, what about the hill?

Post workout, the group migrated over to the base of the hill, and broke off into pairs for a little three-peting hill sprint. Simple yet devastating: partner 1 sprinted up the hill (roughly .5 meters), then turned and jogged back down to their waiting partner who then took off on the same sprint. A nice lung and leg burner to close out the day.

After that, everyone was released to go and enjoy the unseasonably warm weather, but not before we dropped the following announcement:

While we included a few options for people in our last announcement e-mail, we weren’t really satisfied with having everyone separated during our transience. As such, we have worked out a deal with the church to conduct classes at the newly named Gym of the Americas (ex-Balance Kalorama) until we open our doors! We will be teaching class 4 days of the week:

Tuesday (6-8pm)
Thursday (6-8pm)
Saturday (10am-12noon)
Sunday (10am-12noon) 

We are busy working out the details of how the weekday classes (Tue&Thur) will operate, but the weekend classes (Sat&Sun) will be 1.5 hour classes. We will be making a small donation to the church in exchange for the gym-time, and to cover the cost we’ll be passing the collection plate ($5/class would be much appreciated). There won’t be open gym time, and we will be working without much equipment when we get started, but we’ll soon remedy that second issue with a small order of equipment (a portion of what we had planned for the new gym). In the meantime, hope everyone is ready to get really proficient at HSPU and Double Unders!!

Let us know if you have any questions and we’ll update the blog tomorrow morning to keep everyone up to speed. Until then, get outside and enjoy this crazy weather!