East Canada Affiliates Set to Reopen – Rx

February 3   |   POWERED BY

Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up premium subscriber edition.

In today’s edition:

• East Canada affiliates set to reopen after fourth lockdown.
• Are CrossFit prize purses weighted too much in favor of the winners?
• Exclusive sit down with Noah Ohlsen: Teasing going teams and a new Monster beverage for CrossFit.
• What can be done to professionalize the sport of CrossFit?

“Be that as it may, being in the dark isn’t always a bad thing. Without darkness, we could never appreciate the beauty of the moon and the stars at night. Without it, sunrise and sunsets wouldn’t be a marvel of nature.” - Unknown

Quebec CrossFit 819 Owner Still Pursuing Legal Action To Prevent Future Lockdowns Despite Gyms Reopening

Quebec announced gyms will be allowed to reopen at half capacity on February 14, bringing the total lockdowns the fitness industry in Quebec has endured to four, totalling close to 400 days.

No reason to celebrate: While this might seem like good news, Shane Miller, the owner of CrossFit 819 in Gatineau, Quebec, a gym that has been mandated closed due to COVID-19 for 14 of the last 22 months, is skeptical this will be the last time he will be told to close his doors.

As a result, he’s continuing to push forward with his Charter Challenge—a legal challenge to the Canadian government, because he believes his rights and freedoms have been violated—in an attempt to show the court gyms are an essential service, and that it’s unconstitutional to close them down.

“We aren’t the problem,” he said. “We are part of the solution.”

• “If you just look back at the record… it was two weeks (of closures), and then it was another two weeks, then it was a month, then another month… they just do this over and over and over, so I totally don’t have any faith in the government (that this will be the last time),” Miller said.
• He added: “And it won’t change my Charter Challenge, because the bottom line is, that as long as they can keep doing this, we’re at risk of continually going deeper and deeper into debt… and if I go out of business, then I can’t help any of the people that rely on us. I also really want to make sure that in the future we can’t be shut down, so we can’t keep people healthy. Lots of people need it.”

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…21 days until the 2022 CrossFit Open kicks off. Register today.

• Want to see where you stack up against our Morning Chalk Up peeps when it comes to the 2022 CrossFit Open? You can join our leaderboard here and also compete for prizes each week. 💪

Get this, Gloria Gaynor, the “Queen of Disco”, loves CrossFit. Talk about surviving!

• “One amazing moment was shortly after starting CrossFit: I was dancing and singing through a concert and was jumping on stage. My band members were taken off guard.”

🎧 Liked the tunes at Wodapalooza? They’ve compiled all the tunes into a Spotify workout playlist.

Are CrossFit Prize Purses Skewed Towards First Place?

As the pre-season major events come to a close and the 2022 CrossFit Games season officially begins, there’s a lot of conversation around money in CrossFit.

It seems everyone wants to see more earning potential for athletes who are training and living as if they are professional athletes. The question is, if instead of looking for money elsewhere, could there be a way to redistribute money that’s already there to more appropriately support an entire field of aspiring professional athletes?

To help frame the question and see if there’s any merit to it we’ve employed a four-step process:

1. Graphically show how “major” CrossFit competitions have, on a percentage basis, chosen to distribute prize purses this past season
2. Graphically show how major professional golf tournaments distribute, on a percentage basis, their prize purses
3. Apply golf’s percentages to CrossFit competitions
4. Compare this new model to the one currently being used

Catching Up With Noah Ohlsen: Going Team at Wodapalooza, Signing with Monster Energy and Preparing for the 2022 Season

It had been a while since we’ve seen Noah Ohlsen on the competition floor – more than five months to be exact at the 2021 CrossFit Games. As many other Games athletes competed at off-season competitions like the Rogue Invitational and Dubai CrossFit Championship, you might have wondered where Ohlsen was.

Ohlsen returned to the competition floor at Wodapalooza this past January – one that he’s participated in every single year since its inception, and said 2022 raised the bar again.

“That was definitely one of my favorite competitive weekends ever.”

Rather than taking the floor solo, Ohlsen threw down with two dudes he considers some of his best friends, Travis Mayer and Chandler Smith. Whether you watched from the stands in Maimi or the Livestream on your couch, “The Boys” did not disappoint, ending the weekend on the top of the podium.

“We were going in it hoping we’d do well, and the fact that we won four out of the eight events, it was just such a pleasant surprise to us,” added Ohlsen. “L-bombs were being tossed all over the place. There was a lot of like, ‘I love you guys!’ It was just a lot of positive emotions, so that was really cool. We’ve been best friends for a while but I feel like that really bonded us.”

Professionalizing the Sport of CrossFit with Jason St. Clair and Justin Cotler

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Three Ways to Stop Your Caving Knees

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CrossFit Health Webinar: Managing Stress For Wellbeing

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A Bigger Back

Working your back may not be the Instagrammable workout you want, but it's going to pay dividends when it comes to your CrossFit performance. Try these three pulling variations a go to keep back training interesting.

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

• 💕 Happy anniversary Saxon and Taylor Panchik (Monday 1/31).
• 🤯 Leah Sophie Gallagher Støren from CrossFit Molde in Molde, Norway walks on her hands over an obstacle continuously for one minute.
• Ellia Miller from Cobra Command CrossFit in Basehor, KS hit a new power clean PR during this 225 pound/102kg Bella Complex at the KO in the OK Competition.
• Congratulations Josh Gmys from CrossFit MindFire in Sewickley, PA on stringing together these smooth reps of ring muscle-ups.
• In preparation for the Open, here’s a throwback to Luka Đukić‘s time of 9:13 on 21.2, which earned him the 7th fastest time worldwide.
• Colton Hoksbergen from CrossFit Phos in Sioux Falls, SD puts a jazzy twist on power clean and jerk sets of “silky smooth” rep work, with a performance bow at the end no less.

Viktoria Amarili from Truro, England is pledging to complete 3 million rowing meters and 18,250 burpees by the end of 2022 as a fundraising campaign to honor Emica Jackson-Miller, an 11-year-old killed in a car accident last November. Emica was the daughter of Viktoria’s good friend and the same age as Viktoria’s son.

• Funds raised will go to The Grand Appeal, the official charity of Bristol Children’s Hospital where Emica was cared for before she died.
• Those that wish to join can donate or pledge alongside Viktoria in meters and burpees.

See all upcoming events