For those who had returned from their holiday binging by Thursday night, we had a near-grinder planned in order to elevate the heart rate and get some perspiration going to see if we could sweat out some
of those  _      (insert your source of over-indulgence here)     . 

A fairly simple and straight forward met-con for the day. Everyone had 15 minutes to complete as many rounds as possible of 15 push-ups (either full or knees down), 30 double unders, 45 air squats, another 30 double unders, and then 15 sit-ups (legs butterflied or together). The DU sub for the day was 30 alternating high knees followed by 30 single skips.

Immediately at the close of the 15 minutes, everyone worked through a cool down of easy skipping, both forwards and backwards, side shuffles, toe & heel walk, and walking knee-to-chest stretches. This was to help bring the heart rate down slowly and steadily, as opposed to doing everyone’s favorite “CrossFit flop,” sprawling on the floor and rolling from side to side while you try to gulp in oxygen into a pair of compressed lungs. After that, we had a quick two-part finisher with the bands.

We did a pretty in depth review of the Paloff Press and why it’s so important to include in our training back in October (“A NOT SO SILENT PARTNER“) which is worth a read. The short of it though, is it’s about learning to lock down the trunk in order to resist rotational forces. After two sets of ten Paloff presses on each side, partners then traded the band back and forth until each had completed 50 band pull-aparts in as few sets as possible.

For the band pull-aparts, it’s important to (1) ensure that the shoulders are kept packed down away from the ears, and (2) that the movement is initiated with the shoulder blades pulling together before the arms begin to pull-apart. Also, when pulling on the bands, remember to keep the elbows extended, pulling the band apart, rather than back.

Right now, it looks like the worst of tonight’s weather will miss us, so we’re planning on having class Saturday morning, but be sure to check back later on to be safe (we’ll also send out an e-mail announcement). We’ll definitely be having class on Sunday, as well as class on Tuesday. Yes, we do realize it’s New Years Day on Tuesday, but that won’t stop us from having fun. More on that this weekend. See you all soon!