Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up. Today’s edition was chalked up while 500 miles off the coast of California sailing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
P.S. If you like Star Wars, you’ll enjoy this joke.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
CHALK UP IN 2 MINUTES
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOU HIT THE BOX
PurePharma launched a new product: Greens, a powdered mix of just parsley, kale and spinach. Alethea Boon does a double-under for the first time size rupturing her achilles at the 2016 CrossFit Games. Carly Fuhrer grabbed a new workout buddy for the day. Would you let Mathew Fraser shoot a can of Kill Cliff off your head? Ben Smith joins the Marc Pro team. Rich Froning’s daughter is already doing CrossFit. Thuri Helgadottir hits a 308 pound 6RM deadlift PR. The Nike Romaleos III are now online. Alyssa Ritchey hits a huge 224 pound clean and jerk PR. Can you beat Carleen Mathews’ 133 reps in this 7 minute AMRAP?
Priority Strength wants strong women to understand this one thing.
WHAT WE’RE WATCHING
ON THE RADIO
CHALK UP READS
This started for me when I was 13 years old. I remember standing on a scale, seeing “110” staring back at me, and thinking, “I’m so fat. I need to lose 10 pounds.” For some reason I had this number in my mind: 100. And until I reached it, I wouldn’t be happy. This internal pressure hit me at such a young age, like most girls, because of the perfectly photoshopped bodies in magazines and on TV, but I also heard comments from my parents. “I can’t believe so-and-so gained so much weight!” I knew being fat was a bad thing, so I devoted my entire life to becoming thin. I was constantly comparing myself to others and pinching and prodding at myself in the mirror, saying hurtful things.
Now at 40 years old, I realized that this trash-talk to myself hasn’t stopped. If anything, it’s gotten worse. While talking to my CrossFit coach before class one day, she said she too was obsessed with reaching a certain number on the scale. And she was constantly saying things to herself that she wouldn’t say to her best friend.
“A New Startup Incubator In Phoenix Helps Veterans Become Entrepreneurs” by Forbes
AJ Richards, 33, dropped out of high school to join the National Guard and ended up deploying to Iraq. When he returned to civilian life, he set up a CrossFit gym in Mesa, Ariz., and drove Uber on the side. Then, he got the idea of hosting fitness competitions. At first, he charged people just $5 to watch CrossFit athletes compete, but when large numbers of people showed up, he says, “we were like holy crap.”
Today, Richards’ startup, Rush Club, hosts competitions for lightweight and heavyweight athletes and for what he terms adaptive athletes, those who are missing an arm or a leg or rely on a wheelchair. In setting up the business, he was strongly influenced by the 2012 suicide of a close friend from his deployment and an increasing awareness of the number of veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He believes that his fitness competitions could be as helpful as therapy to many veterans. “When you watch someone climb a rope with one arm, it’s incredible,” Richards says. “These are guys who still want to be warriors, but they can’t actually be warriors.”