From a Paralyzing Crash to Qualifying for Wodapalooza

Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up. Today’s edition is powered by Rx Smart Gear, the official jump rope of serious athletes.

Jump rope handles drop. A lot. Learn how to pick them up in style with our lead instructor, Nate KG, on Rx Smart Gear’s online coaching page.

“A setback is just a setup for a comeback.” — Unknown

From a Mountain Bike Crash to Qualifying for Wodapalooza

Some background.

In 2017, Josh Young was mountain biking with a group of buddies in Buxton Mountain Bike Park when he crashed during his last track of the day. Josh had crossed over the railing, gone over his handlebars, and had been flung about 16 feet off the track. He couldn’t stand up or feel his legs. 

It took medics over an hour to get down to Josh before he could be airlifted to the hospital. He fractured and dislocated his L1 vertebrae. When he left the hospital, Josh was a paraplegic. 

A life restructured.

His then girlfriend, Kati, was pregnant with their daughter at the time of the crash. They were also in the middle of building a home. Once Josh got out of the hospital, just five weeks before Kati was due to deliver, they had to move in with Josh’s sister while they made wheelchair modifications to the home they were building.

They had their daughter. They finished their home. They got married as planned. There was just one thing left.

CrossFit.

CrossFit Diamond Valley called him and told him if he wanted to come back to CrossFit they would back him 100%. So he did.

“He and his coach Nicky worked out how to adapt things to suit him and he started weekly sessions to build up some strength and slowly he got himself back into CrossFit,” Kati said.

Josh adapted his workouts to accommodate his chair and he got right back into training just as he always had, even doing modified rope climbs while belted in.

And now, Josh is heading to Miami after qualifying to compete in an international CrossFit competition. Josh came in eighth place in the seated mens’ adaptive division of the Wodapalooza online qualifier and is the only Australian adaptive athlete to qualify.

Coffee Break Conversations

So none of those “What to get for the person who has everything” lists are working for you…

Bacon. For free. You’re welcome.

What to say the next time someone tells you about their diet for the new year…

How about instead of diets in January we do something different? Like, focus on getting stronger? And by adding to our diets instead of further restricting? Sounds good to us. Here are four diet “must-do’s” to consider as you slide on into the new year new you. 

Things To…

WATCH: Dubai CrossFit Championship Recap Day One

If you weren’t able to catch the live stream archive due to the copyright issues, no worries. Armen from ArmenHammerTV recaps all of day one for you here in under ten minutes.

A GOOD START.

HEAR: Precision Nutrition and Brute Strength

John Berardi of Precision Nutrition joins the Brute Strength podcast to talk shop on wisdom and mentorship, the importance of goal setting, how to instill positive habits, kids and nutrition. 

A WEALTH OF INFO. 

EAT: Sugar Cookie Protein Balls 

These sugar cookie protein balls are festive for the season, but are still a great flavor year round. With sugar and cinnamon, they do just the trick for that holiday cookie flavor but with all the protein you still need to get day-to-day.

A PARTY FAVORITE.

WIN: FNX Truck and Lots and Lots More

The FNX truck giveaway is still going strong. You can enter to win a V8 Nissan Titan and hundreds of dollars worth of prizes from companies like Brute Strength, Born Primitive, Kill Cliff, and Rx Smart Gear. It’s one of the largest giveaways we’ve ever seen.

WE WANT THAT TRUCK.

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

DUBAI CROSSFIT CHAMPIONSHIP.

Day 3 Preview

Good morning from Dubai.

The first event of Day 3 kicked off a little more than an hour ago. You can watch the livestream on YouTube and we’ve put all the events and schedule together so you can follow along.

Here is the schedule for today:

— Individual Event 4: Max Snatch (1:00 – 2:11 PM GMT+4/Fri. 1:00 – 2:11 AM Pacific)

— Team Event 4: Max Snatch (1:32 PM – 2:19 PM GMT+4/1:32 AM – 2:19 AM Pacific)

— Individual Event 5: Under Pressure (3:00 -4:41 PM GMT+4/Fri. 3:00 – 4:41 AM Pacific)

— Team Event 5: Under Pressure (4:54 PM GMT+4/4:54 AM Pacific)

— Individual Event 6: Acid Bath (5:45 – 6:59 PM GMT+4/Fri. 5:45 – 6:59 AM Pacific)

— Team Event 6: Acid Bath (7:15 PM GMT+4/7:15 AM Pacific)

What to keep an eye on:

The leaderboard. This is a 10 event competition. With three events already completed, 700 points are still up for grabs. Remember, second place might get you a nice paycheck but only the winner gets a ticket to the CrossFit Games.

— On the men’s side, only 12 points separate first place Willy Georges and sixth place Matt McLeod — that’s basically the difference between placing first and fourth in an event. There will be a lot of moving today.

— The women’s leaderboard is firming up. Unlike the men, first place Sam Briggs is 61 points ahead of sixth place. Finishing anywhere in the top five will only continue to widen that gap.

The Scoring System. Dubai’s scoring system is much different than the CrossFit Games. In Dubai, there’s only a 33 point difference between placing first (100 points) and 10th (77 points). At the CrossFit Games, the differential is 40 points. Last place finishers at Dubai are awarded 33 points, whereas at the Games it’s only 4. This may not seem like a big deal but here’s why it matters: because the point spread is smaller there’s less punishment for athletes at the top who perform poorly. It also means less opportunities for trailing athletes to catch up.

Beware the DNF. A total of four athletes failed to meet the minimum work requirement on Event 1, which resulted in zero points instead of 34 points for last place. Event 5 is a dangerous combination of heavy yoke carry and deficit parallette handstand push-ups into box jumps and muscle-ups. Athletes must avoid failing to meet the minimum work requirement (20m Yoke carry + 15 parallette handstand push-ups + 1 Round) at all costs. A score of 0 will all but put an athlete out of contention to win.

Chalk Up Community

• CROSSFIT VICE HELPS THOSE IN NEED — More than 200 CrossFit Vice members and Coral Springs, FL community members came together last Saturday to donate and wrap gifts for kids in need this holiday season. Even Santa Claus made an appearance. 

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

Nine-year-old Sienna Burroughs works on a clean complex with coach Jason Bonnick • Cody Anderson gets a 330 pound clean and jerk • Steph Hammerman
benches 80 pounds • Chase Knight hits a 275 pound snatch PR blindfolded • Five-year-old Prisais Townsend makes a 25 pound power snatch • Chelsea McKinney, who is due any day, does scaled muscle-ups • Corey Lunney front squats 385 pounds • Tia-Clair Toomey has partnered with Schiek Sports for a Christmas giveaway. 

…and this throwback to Mat Fraser doing back handsprings with Katrin Davidsdottir wins.  

In the Mail: CrossFit Strength in Depth Invites– Qualifiers wrapped up last Wednesday for the CrossFit Strength in Depth event, the fifth sanctioned event to take place for the 2019 season. After three workouts, and four scored events in total, the top 30 men, 30 women, and 30 teams from the Qualifier have been invited to compete in the Strength In Depth Final in the Elite Division for a spot at the 2019 Reebok CrossFit Games. Here’s who got an invite and here are a few of the notable names on the list:

— Jacob Heppner, Lucas Parker, Dani Speegle and Laura Horvath’s brother Kristof Horvath.

— Don’t forget, they’ve reserved 10 male and 10 female invitations to be given out at a later date. 

Official Australian CrossFit Championship Roster — Qualifiers wrapped up, all the invites have been sent out and the roster is now set for the Australian CrossFit Championship, the third sanctioned event to take place for the 2019 season. Here are the top 32 men and 32 women and 16 teams who will be competing.

— Some Familiar Faces: Games athletes James Newbury, Dean Linder-Leighton, Zeke Grove, Matt McLeod (who’s competing right now in Dubai) Hilary Steele and Sam Briggs are on the roster. 

LONG READ: How Greg Glassman is Amassing an Army of Doctors Trying to Disrupt Health Care — Julia Belluz with Vox just wrote a great long read on Greg Glassman and CrossFit Health. You can (and should) read the whole thing but here are some notable portions.

— “Medicine is supposed to be about helping you through the accidents — the misfortune of a genetic disease, the misfortune of a trauma, the misfortune of some pathogen,” Glassman said. “Nobody went to medical school to babysit someone through a life of self-inflicted misery because of two deadly habits: sedentarism and excessive consumption of refined carbohydrates.”

— “The new endeavor, called “CrossFit Health,” is the future of his business, Glassman said. It might also be his legacy. By amassing and coaching an army of doctors, through CrossFit’s 15,000 affiliates around the world, he envisions nothing short of a global disruption of the health space. “[Doctors have] gone back [from the CFMDL1 training weekends] a little bit militant. More eager to talk to one another and their colleagues; more likely to take a patient by the hand and bring her into the gym.”

— “What’s the antidote? Naturally, Glassman believes, it’s CrossFit. ‘If you do not restrict your consumption of unnatural carbohydrates, and if you don’t take all of your joints through a full range of functional movement that gets you breathing hard and sweaty on the regular, you’re not going to have a normal life,” he said. ‘Every day, a new person comes into the gym and gets the right answer in a distributed model that’s working like few things have worked in modern business times.'”

“Dubai CrossFit Championship Day 2 Recap,” by Tommy Marquez, Morning Chalk Up

Day 2 at the Dubai CrossFit Championship consisted of only one event, but it was by far the longest the athletes will face over the course of the four days. If you were sleeping while the event took place, you can rewatch the archived footage on their YouTube page.

An 8 kilometer run through the arabian desert on varying terrain presented a technical challenge for athletes who weren’t familiar with running in sand. Rocky soil at the start quickly changed into hard pack sand during the first kilometer, but as the race progressed the landscape gave way into rolling sand dunes of soft sand and steep inclines and drops leading up to the turnaround point.

From the start Sam Briggs and Mikaela Norman separated themselves from the rest of the pack of women and were neck and neck when they reached the turn around point and ditched their weight vests.

“Once we got rid of our vests, I felt really good and knew I could push it harder and try to get ahead of Sam,” said Norman. “Towards the end of the race I had no idea where she was behind me, so I just kept running like she was right behind me all the way to the end.”

Norman had built herself a sizable lead that she maintained through to the finish to win the event, and outduel one of the sports best runners in Briggs.

For Briggs, who came into the event as the overall leader, a 2nd place finish was more than enough for her. “I saw the distance between us and the energy it would take to catch her, but I didn’t know how (Mikaela) she was feeling, so I didn’t want to risk it,” Briggs revealed “I knew I had 2nd secure, so I just kept it nice and easy to the finish.”

Continue reading. 

12/12 – 12/15: Dubai CrossFit Championship (Dubai, UAE)

12/15: Masters Mania (Oklahoma City, OK)

12/15: Team Luke Fundraiser (Marlboro Township, NJ)

12/15: Santa Slam Toy Drive and Community WOD (St. Petersburg, FL)

12/15 – 12/16: Nightmare Before Christmas CrossFit Competition (Albuquerque, NM)

12/22: The Flanders Throwdown (Zedelgem, Belgium)

1/5 – 1/6: KO in the OK (Tulsa, OK)

1/10 – 1/13: Feats of Strength Online Meet (Online)

1/11 – 1/13: CrossFit Fort Vancoyver Championships (Vancouver, WA)

1/12: Granite Games Throwdown at New Ulm CrossFit (New Ulm, MN)

1/12: The BrickYard Brawl (South Windsor, CT)

1/12: Hometown Throwdown 4 at CrossFit 534 (Poplarville, MS)

1/12 – 1/13: Scaled Flames (Amsterdam)

1/17 – 1/20: Wodapalooza (Miami, FL)

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

1/19: Battle For The Axe (Baxter, MN)

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

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

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