Master Your Fitness Game: In-Depth Gear Guides and Workout Tips by TuffWraps

Benchmark workouts have been around for what seems like forever. “Girls” like Annie (50­40­30­20­10 reps of double­unders and situps), Grace (30 clean and jerks for time), and everyone’s favorite, Fran (21­15­9 of thrusters and pull­ups) show up on whiteboards all over the CrossFit world and even make their way into competitions like the CrossFit games. These workouts are the truest test of one’s fitness, according to the CrossFit community. They can range from all bodyweight movements, like Annie, or heavy barbell complexes, like Grace.

It's summer, which means a lot of people are traveling and taking vacations. For a lot of people, vacation doesn't always mean taking time off from the gym—especially when it often DOES mean indulging in foods and drinks outside of their normal diets. It can be difficult to find the time to make it to an actual gym or to find a gym to go to. Here are some suggestions for making your workouts happen, even when you're on the road.

We’ve all heard of the “seven year itch.” This issue of the “honeymoon phase” being over can happen to our relationship with CrossFit as well. The first year or so is filled with PRs, learning new skills, and discovering an inner athleticism that you never knew you had. Around the eighteen month mark, however, things begin to shift. PRs become less and less frequent (or non-existent). You begin feeling run down, and workouts that used to relieve the stresses of the day actually make it worse. The love and passion you once felt as a CrossFit newbie is waning, and unfortunately, it seems as if you have hit the proverbial “wall.”

FOMO, or the Fear of Missing Out, is a term usually used to describe interactions within social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. The feeling can come from missing actual activities with friends (and constantly “checking” social media), or it can come from a broader source, like feeling as if you are missing out on a potential type of life. Social media outlets are great ways to keep in touch with people from your past, but they can cause feelings of jealousy (I want his/her life) or regret (I wish I had…). This fear of missing out can also be applied to activities themselves. In the case of CrossFit, FOMO can occur because an athlete has worked so hard to adopt a certain lifestyle and missing certain activities, like WODs, can prove to be a huge detriment to their mental, physical, and emotional health.

This week at CrossFit we were working on finding our one rep max for cleans. I was pretty excited when I successfully completed a rep at 155—a ten pound PR for me—and added five more pounds on for another attempt. I stood at the bar, bent over and ready to go. Then I stood back up. I did this approximately a million more times before finally lifting the bar off the ground. I made it to my waist, and that's as far as it went. It had nothing to do with my physical ability, as I knew I had more gas in the tank after 155. It had nothing to do with fear, because I knew rationally that I wasn't going to hurt myself on the attempt. Every sport has a huge mental component to it, and CrossFit is no exception. Mental blocks happen to even the best athletes. You reach a point and your brain just says, “nope, I'm not doing that.” It's frustrating and discouraging, and I'm here with a few suggestions for overcoming those dreaded blocks.

Our hips and shoulders get a lot of use in CrossFit, like those of many other people so passionately involved in functional fitness. But due to the greater complexity of the shoulder, they often times get put into overdrive and overuse and as a result, it is not entirely uncommon to hear complaints of shoulder pain or discomfort in the CrossFit community…maybe you have even experienced these frustrations yourself. But it doesn’t have to be this way! These 3 simple tips can help you not only be shoulder pain and injury free, but increase your performance in and out of the box.

Living in an East coast beach town, my box gets quite a few drop-ins, especially during the summer months. Just as gyms have their own rules, commonly known as “box etiquette,” guidelines for drop-ins are just as important. Here are the ten most important things to remember when dropping-in to another box.

More and more athletes are cross training to improve overall performance in their main sport. Some runners may be concerned that heavy strength training can produce too much muscle mass and hinder their speed. However, most studies show no adverse effects on aerobic power from heavy resistance exercise. Kraemer and colleagues reported that women who performed both resistance and aerobic endurance training had greater aerobic development than those who performed aerobic endurance training alone.

How many days a week do you RX the wod? Every day? None? Somewhere in between? According to an article on mensfitness.com, to RX a wod "means the athlete performs all modalities using the prescribed weight and reps." My number is typically 4. Four out of 5 wods I do in a week, I can RX. Should I be satisfied with that?

What do Talayna Fortunato, Emily Bridgers, and Camille Leblanc-Bazinet have in common? Aside from the fact that they are incredible CrossFit athletes, all three of them also have a background in competitive gymnastics. Even Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, tumbled his way through his teenage years. As a retired gymnast myself, and someone who has been doing CrossFit for just over a year, I can say without a doubt that my experience with CrossFit would be completely different if I didn’t have twelve years of gymnastics under my belt. It doesn’t matter that I’m ten years out from competitive gymnastics or that I am unable to do a lot of what I used to do, I truly believe that my transition into CrossFit was made easier by the fact that I spent a good chunk of my life upside down. Here are a few reasons why.

All CrossFitters are innately competitive. Whether you thrive on the feeling of competition at a local, regional, or national level, or you just like to be the first to finish a workout in your class, we all have the competitive “gene.” I believe that it one of the things we all have in common as people who love fitness as a sport, and even though sometimes we do not like to admit it, we all get that urge inside of us to excel when the WOD is posted. What we are reluctant to admit, however, is that we are not only concerned with our own workout performance but also the performance of our “nemesis.”

CrossFitters are always looking to improve performance by working on weaknesses. (At least that’s what they should be doing.) Rowing is most likely one of them.

Why is rowing a part of CrossFit anyway? The best answer is taken from The CrossFit Journal Articles: “Rowing engages all the major muscles of the body and works multiple joints through a large range of motion in a natural, powerful sequence in a no-impact manner”. That’s what CrossFit is all about – using functional movements to work multiple joints.