Changing Racing Tires for Time

November 30   |   POWERED BY

Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up.

In today’s edition:

• Kristin Holte is crowned world functional fitness champion.
• Why gym owners should encourage their members to track their performance.
• How fast can you change four racing tires?

“If you believe something needs to exist, if it's something you want to use yourself, don't let anyone ever stop you from doing it.” - Tobias Lütke

Opinion: Why Gym Owners Should Care About Performance Tracking

In 2011, I walked into a CrossFit gym and was handed a notebook by a coach who told me, if I wanted to, I could keep track of my performance after each workout. As a previously avid weightlifter, I knew the importance of tracking results, but CrossFit was a new challenge for me.

In order to track my progress, I would have to write down complex workouts with varying types of results – weight, rounds, reps, time, and more. On top of that, the variety of workouts made it near impossible to find my previous results when we repeated a movement or benchmark (what’s my Fran time again?). Eventually, I gave up on the notebook and resigned to just scribbling my results on the whiteboard after each WOD.

As I continued on my personal CrossFit journey, I began to notice a revolving door pattern at the gym. Some would join for a few months and then leave and I couldn’t understand why. When I asked the gym owner, one of the explanations was that people weren’t seeing the physical (neither in the mirror, nor on the scale) results they were looking for. These people were clearly making progress as demonstrated by faster and stronger performances during workouts, but had nothing tangible to prove it, and therefore, felt like they were aimlessly trying to reach a goal.

That’s when I had an ‘aha’ moment. If there was an easier way to track performance then people would have the tangible results they were hoping for and stay a member of the gym for longer. In addition, if a gym owner or coach only had to enter the workout once into a computer as opposed to trying to manually record the leaderboard and all PRs on the whiteboard, I could save them a significant amount of time.

Over the holidays in 2011, I designed the tech platform, and in May of 2012, myself and a few developers built the first version of Wodify – a simple digital performance tracking tool. Over the next few years, Wodify would take off in CrossFit and strength & conditioning gyms around the world. We knew it was a helpful tool for gym members to record their workouts, but what we learned was that gym owners needed Wodify because it was a powerful retention tool. We had found a way to make gym owners more money and save them time, while also empowering their clients to reach their fitness goals.

That’s when I had an ‘aha’ moment. If there was an easier way to track performance then people would have the tangible results they were hoping for, and stay a member of the gym for longer.

Ameet Shah

I have heard some gym owners and coaches say that tracking results is only for competitors and that leaderboards create too competitive of an environment in their gym. While I understand where they are coming from, our data shows that a gym’s 90-day retention rate has the potential to increase by 20% if that gym goes from not having members track performance whatsoever, to then maximizing their adoption of performance tracking. We found that gyms that maximize their use of performance tracking have higher engagement, a closer community, and therefore, higher retention than gyms that do not. Therefore, when you are thinking about starting to offer performance tracking at your gym, you should broaden your perspective to consider the additional benefits, specifically retention – which is one of the most important metrics that separates profitable gyms from struggling gyms.

Today, Wodify does much more than just performance tracking. We have never had this many highly engaged and talented team members working at our company and we are working hard on some exciting things to come in 2022. I’m humbled that thousands of gyms around the world trust us to power their entire business operation and client experience. If you are a Wodify customer or user, I want to sincerely thank you for being part of our journey. If you aren’t yet, you can get in touch with our team.

Your Biggest Roadblock to Getting Lean

Take this quick, free quiz from Working Against Gravity to learn the biggest obstacle standing between you and your body composition goals.

In order to move forward, we need to recognize what’s holding us back. We have to “name it to tame it.”

With this quiz, you’ll identify your number one roadblock to getting lean, and we’ll provide tactical strategies to work through those challenges.

Find out what’s standing between you and the body you want.

🍿 The 2018 CrossFit Games documentary drops in exactly one week. Trailer.

Zelos Games new challenge is live: 100/75 Rogue Echo Bike calories for time. The winner will receive a YETI Roadie 24 cooler or equivalent in value. Must submit entries by Wednesday, December 1 at 11:59 PM ET.

The international Functional Fitness World Championship wrapped up over the weekend.

1. Mortiz Fiebig (Germany) | Kristin Holte (Norway)
2. Jan Matiaska (Switzerland) | Matilde Garnes (Norway)
3. Uldis Ipenieks (Latvia) | Seher Kaya (Norway)

Kristin Holte, who won the Continental Cup in 2020, which took place online, is now officially a world champion after a lifetime of elite-level competition.

• Holte: “In 1999, when I was 13 years old, I wrote in the School Yearbook that in 10 years I would be a World Champion. It did take me an extra 10+ years, but today it FINALLY happened. Never stop dreaming and never stop believing. I am so happy that I can now (soon) retire with a good feeling because these Norwegian girls are more than ready to take over.”

Update on Cassandra Moorad, wife of CrossFit Games athlete Will Moorad, who was diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of months ago at the age of 30:

• “Cass is officially half way done with planned chemo treatments. The tumor appears to still be shrinking and breaking apart, so that’s great news.”
• “She is in the process of having consultations with breast and plastic surgeons to determine the best fit for her. Surgery should hopefully be mid February if all goes as planned. After surgery she will have 11-12 more treatments of targeted therapy to attack her HER2 receptors.”

🤯 Andrew Hiller does 200 ring muscle-ups in 39:07, which is the most we’ve ever seen in a single, unpartitioned effort.

Changing Tires for Time: How CrossFit and a Focus on Stability Keep Rearden Racing’s Crew Chief Competitive

CrossFit has become a training style for people that want to better tackle their day-to-day lives. For some, this means doing a 12-mile hike or helping a friend move at the drop of a hat. Jason Jannetti uses CrossFit to perform well for a race team.

One big thing: A former affiliate owner, Jannetti now works as a crew chief and a tire carrier for Rearden Racing, a team that competes in the GT World Challenge America Pro-Am series. He plays a key role in whether the No. 91 Burton Lumber Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO achieves success at some of the most prestigious road courses on the schedule like Watkins Glen International, Road America, or Circuit of the Americas.

• The 2021 season featured seven race weekends, starting with Sonoma Raceway in March and ending with the famed Brickyard, Indianapolis Motor Speedway in October.
• Rearden Racing did not compete in every round of the season but ended the year seventh overall with a best finish of sixth at Sebring International Raceway.

Lift heavy, move fast: As a tire carrier, Jannetti has an important task. He has to get the massive tires from the staging area to the tire changer on pit road. This forces him to carry a tire in each arm while wearing a full fire suit with a helmet and balaclava.

• “Regular drive tires with the wheels. I think they’re exactly 50 pounds apiece,” Jannetti says. “The rain tires are miserable. They’re — they’ve got to be like 70-75 pounds — I absolutely hate doing those but they’re good to train with when you go from rain to drive. When you go from drive to rain, it feels like you are carrying 100 pounds.”
• “I kind of felt like it was my responsibility to make sure I could go out there and cruise with those things … After you get the right front on the car, everything else is carrying. You’ve got to run around the car with basically 100 pounds worth of wheels and tires in your hands.”

The GT World Challenge America Pro-Am Series pit stops take place at a slightly slower speed. These aren’t the stops where teams change all four tires in a matter of seconds as in NASCAR or Formula One. There are driver changes that take place while the pit crew uses a more methodical approach. However, they can’t afford to have any mistakes.

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UCAN for Smarter Energy

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How Your Health Can Flourish In A Digital World

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A Free WHOOP Strap 4.0 And First Month's Membership

Start tracking your body's performance with a free WHOOP Strap 4.0 and first month's membership. WHOOP measures your body's data over 100 times a second to provide personalized feedback on your recovery, strain, and sleep. Giving you the data you need for your top performance.

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Over 40 Delicious Leftover Turkey Recipes

That 20lb turkey seemed like a good idea at the time right? If you still have leftover turkey from last week, get it into some of these delicious recipes today to use it while you can.

Celebrating a PR, hosting a fundraiser, this, that, or otherwise. Send us a tip.

• Andrea Nisler hits two back squats at 345 pounds/156kg.
• Khan Porter hits a 265 pound/120kg hang snatch PR while competing at ELFIT in Egypt.
• Bronisław Olenkowicz does five touch and go clean and jerks at 286 pounds/130kg.
• Congratulations Alex Reynisson from Reykjavik, Iceland on the 375 pound/170kg clean PR.
• Congratulations Matt Stambler from The Swamp Gym in Swampscott, MA on the 315 pound/143kg push press PR and the 350 pound/159kg split jerk PR.

Ryan Montemurro, coach at CrossFit Casco Bay in Portland, OR completed 550 burpees — one for each item of food donated — and it took him just over an hour. The food items were donated to Preble Street, a local organization helping to provide support for those facing homelessness.

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