Fitness Blog - September 2011

We went down to Lynnwood, Washington last weekend to attend the CrossFit Powerlifting course. The course was held over 2 days at CrossFit Lynnwood and was instructed by elite powerlifters Mark Bell and Jesse Burdick.

I didn’t know very much about the sport of powerlifting before I took the course and wasn’t really sure what to expect but I absolutely loved it! It was the most enjoyable specialty course I’ve done so far. I picked up a ton of new training tips, programming ideas & cues and the instructors were awesome!

You could tell Mark and Jesse absolutely love powerlifting! They were so passionate about the material they covered and passed on as much of their knowledge as we could absorb! They’ve both been lifting for years and have trained in some of the best gyms with the strongest athletes in the world so it was great to be able to pick their brains and ask them any questions I had.

Over the course of 2 days we covered the mechanics of the box squat, the deadlift and the bench press as well as proper warm-up sequences and all the accessory exercises. We learned the Westside Conjugate Method, developed by powerlifting guru and Westside Barbell owner Louie Simmons, and how to properly implement his dynamic and maximum effort training days into our own weekly routine.

Stan Efferding, a world record holding powerlifter and IFBB pro bodybuilder came in on the second day and gave a brief talk on nutrition and the importance of recovery. He had some great insight and really drove home the importance of good nutrition and proper rest between heavy workouts. I learned a lot in his short presentation and will definitely be paying more attention to my diet and the volume of training that I am doing each week.

Strength is something that I’ve wanted to improve for a long time so the programming that we left with at the end of the course is going to be invaluable to me. I can’t wait to get going and will be starting a 12 week strength program next week! I’m going to diligently keep track of all my training & progress along the way and am really hoping to see some big gains in the next few months!

If you want to get stronger and you’re interested in taking this course, send me an email: ben@trainwithmeonline.com - and I’ll pass on all of the contact and course information. It was an excellent course with great coaches and I would STRONGLY recommend it to everyone!

Marlaena, my friend Jordan and I competed in our first CrossFit competition last weekend. It was the second annual Nutts Cup hosted by CrossFit Vancouver and was in honor of Lt. Andrew Nuttall, a former CrossFit coach, who lost his life while serving in Afghanistan.

The Nutts Cup was a team event this year. The teams were made up of 2 guys and 1 girl and the event consisted of 3 different workouts throughout the day. The first workout was a squat snatch workout where each team had to choose a weight that they could do 6 times every minute on the minute for ten minutes. The team that was able to complete all 10 rounds using the heaviest weight won. The second workout was total number of muscle-ups completed by each team in 5 minutes. And the final workout was a modified version of the original Nutts Hero WOD and consisted of 40 handstand push-ups, 40 deadlifts, 40 box jumps, 75 pull-ups, 150 wall balls, 150 double unders and a 550 meter plate run. 

We did pretty well in all three of the workouts and really pushed it hard in the last! Jordy did the 45lb. plate run in the final workout and barely made it across the finish line! I was so proud of our team for pushing so hard! It was awesome!

It was an unbelievable day and I had so much fun! The Nuttall family was in attendance, the Canadian Military was there to lend their support and to present the Nutts Cup trophy to the winning team. And there were plenty of family and friends there cheering everyone on!

We were hoping to finish in the top 15 and actually finished 11th out of 28 teams! We felt really good with our performance and did everything we were hoping to. There were some pretty good teams and we were more than able to hold our own! I had such an amazing time and definitely think that Team Party Rockers will be back to do it all again next year!