CrossFit Rolls Out a New Website and New Direction

Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up. Today’s edition is fueled by Kettlebell Kitchen.

Kettlebell Kitchen is giving you the chance to get abs like Kari Pearce. Order between now and January 23rd and get $25 off your first two orders, plus Kari’s new Power Abs Course for free. Click here for details.

Just three little days until Wodapalooza.

“Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

EXCLUSIVE: Greg Glassman Opens Up About New Website

On New Year’s Day, CrossFit athletes everywhere woke up to a new CrossFit.com, a site months in the making, and one that shows CrossFit’s refocused energy on what Founder Greg Glassman has planned ahead.

“CrossFitters, my trainers, are going to do interventions with mom and dad in the living room,” Glassman shared in an exclusive interview. “I had a doctor show his mom one of these living room videos and she wants to join a CrossFit gym.”

The video Glassman is referring to is of an elderly woman standing up out of a chair without using her hands. Essentially, it’s the scaled version of an air squat but filmed inside the home instead of the gym.

The new site — which is lined at the top with five key sections: Essentials, At Home, Health, Sport, and Battles — is really designed for veteran Affiliates, flowmasters, coaches, doctors and anyone looking to learn.

The new site is going “to encourage people to do the interventions,” Glassman said.

For those 10 year plus affiliates, the move is obvious.

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Coffee Break Conversations

The next time your Mother complains that you never help her…

This again. You know what she should do? She should recruit some outside help. You know, like maybe dial up Hafthor Björnsson to help her as he did to all these lovely folks. When you’re the world’s strongest man, carrying a grown adult is a walk in the park…to feed some ducks…wearing another human.

Things To…

WATCH: The Athlete Mindset: Lindy Barber 

Learn all about Lindy Barber in the first of a three-part series produced with Shrugged Collective and the Active Live. Lindy covers how she trained with Team CrossFit Mayhem Freedom going into the 2018 CrossFit Games and how she managed training with recovery.

BEST SHE EVER FELT.

HEAR: What to Eat When with Dr. Michael Roizen

Dr. Michael F. Roizen is the Chief Wellness Officer at Cleveland Clinic, the co-founder of RealAge Inc, a five-time number one New York Times best-selling author and the Chief Medical Consultant on the Dr. Oz Show. He joins Dr. Julie Foucher on the Pursuing Health podcast with advice on how to know what to eat, how much, and when. 

IT’S ACTUALLY SIMPLE. 

BUY: ButcherBox Monthly Subscription

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EAT: Chocolatey Chia Seed Pudding 

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DESSERT FOR BREAKFAST IS A YES.

Today’s edition of the Morning Chalk Up is fueled by

Chalk Up Community

• ARNOLD STRONGMAN USA — This Saturday the 19th at the Santa Monica Pier Arnold Schwarzenegger himself is hosting the Arnold Strongman USA Championship. Tickets are $15 each and proceeds benefit CA firefighters. 
• FUNDRAISER FOR HOSPICE CHARITY — On Saturday, January 19, CrossFit Weymouth in Weymouth, England is hosting a charity fundraiser from 10:00 – 12:00 to benefit Joe Morgan, who passed away from bowel cancer in November. All proceeds go to Weldmar Hospicecare, the charity that cared for Joe. 
• A NEWCOMER TELLS ALL — Bill Lynch, a reporter for the Charleston Gazette-Mail is trying CrossFit for the first time. He’s documenting his first month, bloopers and lessons all, as he goes. 

CHALK UP IN 2 MINUTES (a highlight reel around social media of CrossFit pros and average joes)

Happy birthday Kelsey Schulte • Ben Bergeron will be giving a seminar talk at Fittest in Cape Town • Congratulations to Tia Wright and Aaron Cranford on their recent marriage • Five-year-old Princess P front squats 4X5 at 25 pounds • Kelly Wild gets a 346 pound back squat PR • Adaptive athlete Antonia went rock climbing with members of Adaptive CrossFit • Nina Ladvenicova gets a 259 pound deadlift • Congratulations to Karolina Hanus on getting her first strict pull-up • Jason Carroll registered for the 2019 Open • Ben Alderman gets a 310 pound snatch PR • Maddy Myers hits a 250 pound clean and jerk.

…and the next time you need a little help getting going, look to Brooklin Smith. 

Jason Khalipa on the Process of Improvement — Jason Khalipa was recently on the Short Stroy Long podcast hosted by Chris “Drama” Pfaff. Right after schooling Pfaff on what CrossFit really is, Khalipa talks about being realistic about the progress chart of growth.

— “Six months of hard work can’t make up for four years of slacking off, and that goes for any entrepreneur or any person out there. You can’t just go out and start a business and think that in a month or two months or three months you’re going to be successful. It’s an ongoing process. It takes a long time. You can’t make up for a decade of watching Netflix in a month. And it’s great that you’re taking a step forward, just be open and honest about the amount of work you need to do. That’s all.”

Wodapalooza Releases Another WOD — Wodapalooza released another WOD and it’s set to take place as Event One. Called “Baywatch” Workout One is the same for Elite Individuals and Elite Teams: a 5K run on the beach. Here’s the rest of the workouts and schedule that’s been released so far. 

Strength in Depth Confirms Two Athletes — Strength in Depth, the official sanctioned event taking place in London in March, confirmed both Jessica Griffith and Alec Smith to their roster. 

“Foundations of CrossFit Health,” by CrossFit

CrossFit Health isn’t about your health. CrossFit Health is an investigation into the ills of modern medicine and the willful abuse of the public’s trust in science. What would motivate such an inquiry? And what are our qualifications to put forth on the subject?

Nearly 20 years ago, in an article titled “What Is Fitness?” CrossFit articulated the physiological reality that what we eat and how we exercise—fundamentally lifestyle choices—are the independent variables in control of the dependent variables measured by medicine as manifestation, predictor or cause of chronic disease. These dependent variables include triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein, A1C, blood pressure, body fat, bone density and muscle mass.

A business was seeded and a global fitness and health revolution sprouted from a prescription of constantly varied, high-intensity functional movement leveraged by meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar.

The certainty and fidelity with which that prescription increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains while improving all health metrics have been the driving force for the success of CrossFit and CrossFitters. That revolution comprises 14,500 CrossFit Affiliate gyms around the world, 132,000 credentialed CrossFit trainers and millions of CrossFit devotees. Within that group are the CrossFit physicians, numbering over 20,000 in the U.S. alone.

The inexorable rise of chronic disease, which is taking 70 percent of lives needlessly and prematurely, has two root causes: excess carbohydrate consumption and sedentarism. From the onset of this epidemic, official response from our universities, our government institutes of health and our very own doctors was to promote a high-carb, low-fat, margarine-greased descent into ever-worsening disease and death. Little has changed in decades beyond worsening global health and CrossFit’s ascendancy.

1/10 – 2/4: Row’d Royalty (Online)

1/17 – 1/20: Wodapalooza (Miami, FL)

1/19: New Year New Throwdown Event (El Mirage, AZ)

1/19: Warrior Affiliate League Fantastic Four (La Puente, CA)

1/19: Battle for the Axe (Baxter, MN)

1/19: Great Lakes Games 2018 (Detroit, MI)

1/19 – 1/20: Chiang Mai Throwdown (Chiang Mai, Thailand)

1/20: Det. Deidre Mengedoht Hero WOD (Louisville, KY)

1/21: Helen for Hounds at CrossFit Pretoria (Pretoria, South Africa)

1/25 – 1/27: Australian CrossFit Championships (Queensland, AUS)

1/25 – 1/27: Judgment Day Hawkes Bay (Napier, NZ)

1/26: The Force Wars 2 (Pembroke Pines, FL)

1/26: Lost River Rumble (Bowling Green, KY)

1/26: The Blizzard Bowl (Little Canada, MN)

1/26: 2019 IceBreather Classic (Springfield, IL)

1/26: ATCF Cancer Crackdown: Revival of The Fittest (Pasco, WA)

1/26: Hung Like Coff at PFC CrossFit (Las Vegas, NV)

1/26: Steel Rail Shootout 2019 (McComb, MS)

1/26: Woid Beast Fitness Challenge (Cham, Germany)

1/26: Brick NY Midtown Throwdown (New York, NY)

1/26: Fifth Annual Cold Steel Classic (Oswego, IL) 

1/26: New Year’s Revolution (Seminole, FL)

1/26: Three Rivers Throwdown (Rome, GA)

1/26 – 1/27: Cougars and Cradle Robbers (Salem, MA)

1/26 – 1/27: Game Day Eau Claire (Eau Claire, WI)

1/26 – 1/27: NorCal Masters (San Rafael, CA)

1/27: Big Dawgs Athlete Development Camp (Letchworth, England)

1/29 – 2/2: Fittest in Cape Town (Cape Town, South Africa)

2/1 – 2/2: Battle of the Brave III (North Kansas City, MO)

2/2: Golden State Games (Stockton, CA)

2/2: Left Coast Classic Competition (Laguna Niguel, CA)

2/2: Golden State Games (Stockton, CA)

2/2: A League of Their Own (San Antonio, TX)

2/3: Coffland Hero WOD (Norwalk, CT) 

2/9: Valentine’s Day Crush (North Hollywood, CA)

2/9: The Garage Games Master of the Masters (Suwanee, GA)

2/9: Cupid’s Roar Partner Competition (Melbourne, Australia)

2/9: 3rd Annual Black Ops Partner Competition (Wheaton, IL)

2/9: Bedrock Heart Breaker (Calgary, AB)

2/9: Battle of the Ages (Jacksonville, FL) 

2/9: Battle for Bae 2019 (San Mateo, CA)

2/9: Battle of the Fittest 6: NYC Throwdown (New York, NY)

2/9: My Bloody Valentine (Vidalia, OH)

2/9: 2nd Annual Battle of the Ages (Fruitland, ID)

2/9 – 2/10: The CrossFit Circus (Des Moines, IA)

2/16: Valentine’s Day Massacre (Kilgore, TX)

2/16: The Garage Games Xs & Ys (Valdosta, GA)

2/16: Couples Clash 2019 (Pensacola, FL)

2/16: Tuff Love (Boulder, CO)

2/16: Valentine’s Day Massacre (Selma, TX)