http://www.vimeo.com/14336158Butterfly Pullups from Patrick Cummings on Vimeo.

Found this video through friends on Facebook and it it such a great tutorial I decided to share it. I’ve been working on butterfly pull ups half heartedly for about a year, but I think with these new cues I’ll have it by the end of the month. Why butterfly kip? Well the cycle rate is faster when you are doing pull ups in a CrossFit workout that demands lots of pull ups. It is more efficient than doing a standard strict pull up or a kipping pull up and the work demand is shared over more of the body than just your back and arms. Some of you will say, “Why don’t you just get stronger and just do normal pull ups”, it is a valid point and strict pull ups still have their place, but this is also a new skill and challenging yourself to new things and getting out of your comfort zone is also a part of CrossFit and life.

So my checklist goes from:

• I can do three pull ups strict
• I can do lots of pull ups
• I can do more pull ups by learning how to kip
• I can do lots of kipping pull ups
• I can do kipping pull ups
• I can do lots of kipping pull ups

So this is what I feel the progression is and it is not only about getting stronger, but it is about proprioception and gymnastics movements and controlling your body in space. There is no substitute for strength and all too often I see people who want to kip as a shortcut to getting more pull ups. This is a mistake as they often lack the pre-requisite strength to hold onto the bar as their kip becomes more violent and aggressive. So walk before you can run and show the solid strict pull ups before you move on, but have these goals in the back of your mind.

With the butterfly kip, I’d like to decrease my Fran and Angie times, as well as every other WOD that has many pull ups in them. I’ve put my time in, and have torn my hands with thousands of pull ups. I’ve paid my dues, i’ve got the strength, now to learn the skill, and this time I want it.

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Words are coming on this one, I am super excited to get a pair of these shoes to check out. They aren’t due out until March 2011. Vibram soles on a NB lightweight minimalist upper, sounds like a match made in heaven.  More to come…

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After just finishing a CrossFit endurance cert at FirePower Training this past weekend I had the privilege of meeting ex-NHLer Scott Thornton who has big new plans to open up a CrossFit facility in the outdoor mecca that is Collingwood. I think these are sound plans with Collingwood really changing with the huge investment from Intrawest into the Blue Mountain Ski resort area. All of southwestern Ontario goes to the best skiing in the province at Blue, and in the summer there are very few places that you can paddle, mountain bike and hit the cool little trendy stores, oh did I mention the beach?

For many years Dean Payne ran the Sea to Summit Adventure Races out of the Collingwood area because of it’s prime real estate, and I think that with the new development in the area, you will find more adventurous type moving to the area for the active lifestyle in the closest thing that you can find in Ontario to a ski resort mountain town. Some of the towns that I would compare Collingwood to would be like a Park City Utah or a Vail Colorado, or a Canadian example of Mount Tremblant in Quebec.

This is where Crossfit Indestri comes in. The local YMCA or the Goodlife (not sure if they have one) won’t really cut it for athletes who are serious about their training and have evolved to the High Intensity Training that is CrossFit. Chatting with Scott he told me that they are planning for a soft opening in the next couple of weeks with a grand opening launch a little while after that. We wish him luck and I’m sure he will do well.

Website for CrossFit Indestri

• 23 Stewart Rd. Collingwood, ON.
• 705.444.0006
• info@crossfitindestri.com

Here is a good article on teaching kids to ride. Right now i’m struggling with getting my girls off their training wheels, but there are some good tips in here.  I’ve found that the training wheels while good for balance intially are actually hindering my girls age 4 and almost 6 from progressing past to the 2 wheel version. They have taken a couple nasty falls because they can travel fast in straight lines, but watch out when you want to take a corner! They are up higher and the wheels don’t allow the bike to lean enough to counter the momentum that they are producing and then whaamo they are in the bushes or on the sidewalk with scraped little knees and elbows.  These push bikes look cool, but as it says in the article, why not just take off the pedals and lower the seat of a normal bike?

A new one for CrossFit - Kid tossing was involved in WOD # 7

I’m pretty sure that the CrossFit main site at CrossFit.com is down, but if you want to find out who the winners are here they are:

Mens’ Overall

1. Graham Holmberg

2. Rich Froning Jr.

3. Chris Spealler

Women’s Overall

1. Kristan Clever

2. Annie Thorisdottir

3. Valerie MacKenzie Voboril

You can find the link to all the overall results from the 2010 CrossFit games here

The games footage exceeded my expectations and I was thrilled to catch it streaming live and the archives were great to catch up on the competitions I missed. I don’t really watch a lot of sports as I’d rather be participating, but this was my superbowl sunday and I tried to catch as much of it as I could. Well done CrossFit and well done competitors!

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So you have a Princeton Tec EOS headlamp. They are nice, functional, and bright. You want to ride your bike with it at night? Well people do it, i’ve

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done it, it is not optimal, but it can be done. The nice flashing feature on the EOS does give you a high visibility in an urban area where you can ride by streetlights. Princeton Tec makes an EOS that has a bike mount, but I think you can MacGyver an existing EOS to become a bike or helmet mount. Here are a couple examples. I took my Princeton Tec EOS and just slipped off the headstrap and ran zip ties around the head tube of the bicycle. I have since tested this and it has worked nicely. It is not a crazy amount of light, but it is always nice to have light on your bike that is out of the way and doesn’t take up handlebar space, lets not forget the aerodynamic advantages! A couple zip ties and this is a cheap inexpensive way to mount your headlamp and get some more use out of a sturdy great headlamp!

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Now onto mounting it on your helmet. Wearing a headlamp under your helmet is uncomfortable and the light shining through the vents of your helmet throws some weird shadows, so what we’ve done in the past is just run it on the outside of our helmet and then once again used 5 or 6 zip ties to mount the headlamp. The picture here is shown without them, but it works pretty good. Just make sure to put two zip ties as close as you can left and right of the main headlamp. You could probably get away with actually taking the headband right off and using a combo of electrical tape and zip ties to make this happen on your helmet. It will tilt your helmet forward when your head gets sweaty, but hey unless you want to tape a rock to the back of your helmet as a counter balance, then don’t complain about it.

Good luck!

Have a look at the ongoing project to mount 4 more headlamps to my bike to create the ultimate adventure racing bike.

While adventure racing at night – Light = Speed. In less than a month I will be racing overnight in a 24 adventure race in Ontario. What do you do when you need lighting for 10 hours? It gets dark early in the forest and by 8:30 you are probably going to need some lighting.

I think of the bike parts designer Keith Bontrager and his famous aphorism: “Strong. Light. Cheap. Pick Two.” With some of the high tech lighting systems that throw some serious light enough to light dry grassy fields on fire you can spend a small fortune. These fancy lighting systems that throw a HID beam (the same as high end cars like BMW) and they can be 500 to 700 dollars. For AR, you need it to be tough, reliable, and bright and I think I have found a solution that doesn’t break the Hark Events bank.

For our Trek or Treat Night Race we have a great fleet of Princeton Tec Eos headlamps. They make these for riding on bicycles with a mount, but I don’t have that mount, all I have is the headlamps and quite a few of them. So here is the prototype design for the use of the headlamps and this is sure to provide enough light throughout the night while we are on our bikes. I’ve ridden with one Eos on singletrack at night when the batteries weren’t so bright, so if one or three of the systems crap out, i’ll still be ok, and to to add a whole bunch more would be great and create a completely redundant independent lighting system.

This is how we are planning on doing it. This is great in theory, but we will test it a bunch before the race and see how it works in the field. With your EOS costing about $50 MSRP this make shift lighting system isn’t exactly cheap, but I’m going to use what i’ve got to make it work.

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I’ll keep you updated on our progress. I see some challenges, but I think it just might work!

This past weekend out staffer Vin climbed Mount St Helens. Mount St. Helens is an active stratovolcano located in Skamania County, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Check him out as he makes a quick decent down the mountain and tries to destroy his camera! Nice work Vin!

Also more info: CrossFit Endurance offers a $100 discount on registration for the Endurance Cert for Fire, Police, LEO, and Military. That’s some good stuff there!
Article in L.A.S.F. CrossFit Endurance