It's inevitable that someone finishes first in a workout.  If you finish before someone else, what do you do?  Do you lay on the ground for awhile?  Do you immediately put up all your equipment?  Do you move as quickly as you can towards the door to leave? Or..... do you stop and cheer for someone else?  One of the amazing things about CFB is our community.  Let's face it, what we do is extremely difficult.  What makes it easier to handle is knowing that everyone else is here for you.  There are many times where my performance would've suffered if I didn't have someone cheering me on and telling me I could do it.

If you finish early, cheer someone else on.  Next time they may be cheering you on.  We are all here for each other.  Let's do our part to make a more awesome experience for everyone!

Do you cheer for people?  Has cheering ever helped you perform better?  Post comments below!

P.J., James, Tara, and Andy enjoying some kettlebells.  Click here to check out more pics on Flickr!

Many of you know how I feel about coffee.  I've posted blogs on it in the past.  I enjoy coffee.  I like the taste and the warmth and the feeling I get from drinking the caffeine.  I think many people can drink one or two cups of coffee a day in the morning and do just fine.  Caffeine is a stimulant though and should be used with care.  The consumption of caffeine causes a response from your Adrenal Cortex.  The same organ that releases adrenaline when you are scared or about to get into a fight (fight or flight syndrome).  That's why people feel the way they feel when they drink caffeine.  This is fine every once in awhile or even once a day for most people, but if you have hormone regulation issues you should probably be weary.  Either way, we have decided to start offering free coffee in the lobby for our morning class dwellers.  Enjoy it and have some fun!  Coffee or no coffee what's your preference? Post Comments below!

Diane enjoying some burpees.  Click here to check out more pics on Flickr!

Food quality is important.  Actually food quality is extremely important.  The better quality food you eat the healthier you will be.  Keeping that in mind, CrossFit Bartlett has partnered with West Wind Farms to do a Community Shared Agriculture.  Here's how it'll work.

Cost: $250 a month

Each Week WWFarms will deliver your portion of food.

Included in the delivery will be a week's worth of groceries for 2-3 people.  Meats will be chicken or beef all free range and grass fed.  Eggs that will be free range, and vegetables that are certified organic.

This is high quality stuff!

The only catch is you don't get to pick the cuts or the veggies you get what they bring each week.

We are looking forward to bringing this to you.  It should be an awesome experiment.

If you want to participate for February, please email me ASAP and I will need your money turned in by Thursday.

Maria enjoying some thrusters.  Click here to check out more pics on Flickr!

If I had $1 for every time I did a workout when I didn't really feel like it, I'd be a very rich man.  Sometimes it takes some pumping up to get ready for a workout.  When you walk through the door, see the smiling faces, and start to move around, that usually happens naturally.  The operative phrase in that sentence is, "walk through the door."  The key is to just show up.  If you are feeling that way, don't check out the website before hand.  Don't think about how hungry or tired you are.  Just show up.  If you give yourself an out, you'll take it.  If you just show up, you'll feel much better afterwards.

Moral of the story?  Whatever you do, just show up.  If you do that, you will feel like it when you get here.  What do you guys do to get ready for a WOD when you don't feel like it?  Post comments below.

Matt showing some determination.  Click here to check out more pics on Flickr!

Many people think they can't run.  I hear it all the time.  "I could never run a 5k, half marathon, marathon, 50K, 50 miler etc."  The truth is, running is about being able to stand the suck.  Many things that we do in CrossFit are hard.  Many times CrossFit is about being able to stand the suck.  If you can stand the suck you can get through the workout.

CrossFit teaches us to stand the suck.  That's why I was able to run a 50K and a 50 miler.  Once you get past a mile you have to say to yourself, "This feeling sucks, can I stand this feeling for however long I'm going to run?"  If the answer is yes then you can run.  If the answer is no, then you may have to walk.  Of course there's more to it then that, but this is a majority of it.

The next time you go running make a decision to stand the suck and see where it takes you.  What do you do to help you stand it?  Post Comments below!

Amy working hard! Click here to check out more pics on Flickr!

Be prepared is the motto of the BoyScouts of America, and has served me quite well in my life so far. I've applied this principle to everything from camping to public speaking. Probably one of the most useful ways I interpret it now is in the field of nutrition. Probably one of the biggest hurdles that I , and I'm sure many many others, face on a daily basis when eating paleo is the time to prepare the food. Unfortunately all those nasty preservatives we avoid are also the same stuff that enables to carry things around at room temperature with no problem. However I don't know how many of you have tried carrying around raw chicken at room temperature, but it gets gross quick.

Cooking healthy food takes time. However this time can be minimized and the time you actually must spend, can be maximized through the use of a few simple techniques.

1) Keep It Simple- I realize that some may have sophisticated palates, but as for myself I don't notice whether a pinch of cilantro is missing or not, from a recipe. One of the best and easiest paleo recipes that I eat on a practically daily basis is to brown 1 lb. of ground beef, and then season it with taco seasoning. Easy, simple, all of two steps, and it only takes about fifteen minutes depending on your oven.

2) Cook lots- This is a favorite of several cavemen eaters, I've spoken with. Cook more than you will eat in one sitting. For dinner one night cook more than you know you will eat that night. That way the next morning, you can just grab the left-overs and take them for lunch the next day. Yes I know some may not be excited about eating the same meal twice in twenty four hours. As for myself, my tolerance for taste is directly inverse to the amount of time I spent preparing the meal.

3)Plan ahead- This is actually the foundation for the tip listed above, but it is important to mention anyway. If you know that you are not going to have access to anything but bagels and pizza at the office tomorrow, maybe you should go ahead and cook yourself a chicken breast tonight, or if you know you are going to be out late one night consider preparing everything but the final step for dinner, so you can just throw it in the oven when you get home.

I hope that at least one of these strategies, if not all of them, help you guys stick out the paleo diet. The results are truly worth it! How do you guys stay on the wagon?

-Chris aka TI

Shay showing a great back angle on her deadlifts.  Click here to check out more pics on Flickr!

At CrossFit Bartlett we focus on progressions.  It is always important to improve upon what you've done in the past.  That's how you become better.  That's how you become more fit and progress towards your goals.  As you may have noticed, we are very focused on numbers here.  Numbers are important to track progress.  Many times when we write workouts we put up a percentage of your max to use.  When we lift everyday we want to know what you did last time to make adjustments to how you will progress this time.  The only way we can track this is through YOUR JOURNAL.

We give journals to everyone who walks into our gym.  Not because we think they are pretty binders, but because we want no excuse as to why you don't know what your maxes are, or what you've done in the past.  It is of critical importance that you bring or have your book everyday.  Leave it at the gym on the shelf if you want, but always have it with you.  When you lift, write your stuff down.  When you do your warm up, write your stuff down.  When you do your WOD write your stuff down.  This will lead to better results, because we can accurately assess what you should be doing in the gym everyday.

What do you write in your journal?  Post Comments below!

Sherry and Kenzie enjoying the Share the Experience workout!  Click here to check out more pics on Flickr!

I've been getting this questions a ton lately.  I will talk about the rest of the warm up in another post, but today I want to hit up the burpee question.

First off, burpees are an excellent cardiovascular and conditioning movement.  There is no movement that moves your body through a greater range of motion.  Just think about it, you move from standing all the way up to flat on your stomach on the ground.

Secondly, it's functional.  The need to be able to push yourself off the ground quickly can arise in life.  In sports there are many times when you fall down on the field and you have to get back up aka burpee.  Outside of sports, if you happen to be running from someone and needed to get off the ground quickly just burpee. Ok, ok maybe that's a stretch.

Here's the real reasons....

They suck.  They are difficult to do.  They are mentally and physically taxing.  For those reasons, they are a goat for most people. (goats are things that people are not very good at.)  The only way you get better at goats is practicing them.  I would bet money that 99% of our members are not doing burpee practice during their biggest loser commercial breaks, so we are putting them into daily practice at the gym.

Most of all, we train to be fit and conditioned.  We do a metabolic conditioning workout every day to make ourselves fit and for most people to look better naked ;).  By doing burpees, it allows us to sneak in more conditioning volume without just killing you with another met con.  They also don't tax you enough to where they will negatively impact your met con work.  I guarantee that you would be hard pressed to find someone who can do 100 burpees in five minutes that isn't well conditioned.  You can also rest assured that they will most likely be happy with their body composition.

How do you feel about burpees? Yay or nay?  Post comments below

Marissa and her sis having fun during the Share the Experience Event!  Click here to check out more pics on Flickr!

Did you know that flexibility is one of the most trainable aspects of fitness?  I can hear the grumbles now.  It sounds something like, "grumble, grumble, grumble, I've just always been inflexible.  Grumble, grumble, I've worked on it.  Grumble, grumble, there is just nothing I can do."  I've heard it all believe me.  Truth:  there is something you can, but it takes a great deal of effort that most people don't want to put forth.

Did you know that if you are more flexible, your muscles will function better?  Do you know what that leads to?  Increased performance.  Decreased injury. Light bulbs should be coming on over your head.  Isn't that what we are about?  Increased performance and decreased injuries? There are plenty of resources to follow to help with your flexibility.  For starters, my degree is in Sports Medicine.  I am a Certified Athletic Trainer, and well versed in injury prevention and rehab.  This includes flexibility.  Secondly, there is a great website called www.mobilitywod.com . Kelly Starrett has taken a lot of what we learn in school, and put it into a CrossFit setting.  Brilliant!

Your goal this month should be a concentrated effort on flexibility and mobility it will only make you better.  What do you do to increase your mobility?  Which movement do you find most helpful?  Post comments below!

Having some inverted fun.  Click here to check out more pics on Flickr!