Sara Sigmundsdottir’s Message to Ladies

December 1   |   POWERED BY

Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up.

In today’s edition:

• Greg Glassman’s first published work since departure from CrossFit.
• Sara Sigmundsdottir has a message for you ladies.
• We review the new 2018 Games documentary + offer a sneak peek.
• MakeWODsGreatAgain is launching a campaign to get Adaptive Athletes paid.

“Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.” - Anne Lamott

Greg Glassman Authors Forward to New Book on Nutrition

CrossFit’s founder Greg Glassman authored the forward to a new book “Lipid Lunacy: Diet delusions and what really causes heart disease”, a collection of ten authors from members of THINCS: The International Network of Cholesterol Sceptics, including Zoe Harcombe, Malcolm Kendrick and Paul Rosch.

One big thing: This is the first written work that Glassman has publically produced since he departed from the helm of CrossFit in June 2020. Back in July 2021, we learned that Glassman was working with an author on a book sharing the origins of CrossFit’s founding, which may be released sometime in early 2022.

• Glassman has been a passionate proponent of counter-cultural thinking in terms of nutrition, especially against the high-carb perscriptions often promoted in the mainstream medical community.
• In the years immediately preceding Glassman’s departure and sale of CrossFit, he focused a majority of his public efforts bringing light to where he saw modern medicine has failed, namely that doctors continued to prescribe the wrong treatments for chronic diseases and tout misinformation in terms of what constitutes a healthy diet.
• During that time, Glassman had launched the MDL1, a CrossFit Level 1 Seminar course specifically for doctors, as well as quarterly health summits known as the Derelict Doctors Conference.

Reading between the lines: Knowing Glassman and his passion for this subject, it’s increasingly likely that he’ll continue to expand his public presence around health and nutrition as time goes on.

Some key excerpts:

• “The CrossFit nutrition prescription has stood in opposition to the high-carb, low-fat mainstream orthodoxy for decades…In the independent course of our daily business – physical fitness training – we came to the clinical understanding that high consumption of refined carbohydrates retards fitness and degrades health while fats and proteins and degrades health while fats and proteins have the opposite effect.”
• “Millions of CrossFit practitioners have observed and benefited from this knowledge in 15,000 CrossFit affiliates around the world. Mainstream dietary advice, consumed as it was with the frantic urging to reduce cholesterol at whatever cost, was irrelevant to our daily work.”
• “The disasters of mainstream nutrition science – specifically, in this case, the lipid hypothesis that guided millions of people toward chronic disease – are the result of corruption almost perfect in scope and reach. We use ‘corruption’ here fully cognizant of da dual meaning: corruption in terms of the spreading stain of special interests, financial motivation, and bad actions taken for personal gain…”
• “The ‘science-backed’ nutrition guidelines haven’t worked. The near-universal prescription of statins and other pharmaceutical solutions hasn’t worked. These panaceas and campaigns haven’t worked because the predominant conception of animal fat and cholesterol as deadly drivers of heart disease and other chronic maladies is not substantiated by the scientific evidence.”
• “The food, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries fund research favorable to their interests.”
• “Nutrition reporting encourages a popular understanding influenced more by the loudest voices than the most accurate.”
• “Consider the sheer gall necessary to pit oneself against the pharmaceutical industry, the food and beverage industries, and the governmental bodies that have allied themselves so closely with these powerful interests.”

The book is available for purchase on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

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MUST READ via Sara Sigmundsdottir: “On this platform I have here I have focussed on trying to encourage females to not be afraid to stand up for themselves. To dare to be independent and feel empowered in being who they truly are regardless of what society thinks.”

• “That message is authentic to me. I have many times found myself in a situation where I feel judged. Where it is made clear to me that I am not acting or looking as society expects me to. Thankfully this is changing to the better with every year that passes.”

Not CrossFit, but worth a quick read: “A Cure for Type 1 Diabetes? For One Man, It Seems to Have Worked” (via NY Times)…”A new treatment using stem cells that produce insulin has surprised experts and given them hope for the 1.5 million Americans living with the disease.”

A horse named Crossfit took first a the Rideau Carleton Raceway last weekend. This is his seventh race win this season, earning $210,356 total so far.

Annie Thorisdottir and Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson are going to be hanging out at the Madrid CrossFit Challenger event December 10-12.

• Gudmundson will do a workout and Thorisdottir will host a masterclass on Sunday, December 12. Both athletes will host a meet and greet.

Josh Bridges is hosting his first in-person PAYHIM camp over three days: January 28 – 30, 2022. It will also include a SEAL style beach workout.

Film Review: “2018: The Ultimate Test” + Exclusive Teaser

After a lapse of nearly three and a half years, fans will finally get a chance to see the long-lost 2018 CrossFit Games documentary, which is being released next Tuesday, December 7, worldwide on iTunes.

In a way, “2018: The Ultimate Test” is the lost CrossFit Games documentary, as the project was scuttled shortly after the conclusion of the 2018 Games when a vast majority of the media staff was unceremoniously let go over the course of several weeks.

Documentaries for the 2019 and 2020 Games would go on to be produced by Heber Cannon and Marston Sawyers, but CrossFit leadership at the time had locked away the 2018 footage, as well as dozens of hours of post-Games interviews, and no one was really sure it would ever be produced.

“Since I was laid off in 2019, Tyson [Oldroyd] and I had been working quietly behind the scenes to obtain the rights to finish the film,” director Mariah Moore told Melissa Yinger in a November interview.

“The Ultimate Test” is the first solo director performance for Moore, who has worked in several capacities on many of the previous Games documentaries like The Redeemed and the Dominant, A Decade of Fitness and Froning, all of which topped the iTunes best-selling charts.

“I get to own the vision now and it’s cool because it’s like I’m learning this whole new process of getting to decide how I tell the story my own way,” Moore shared with us back in September.

But re-surfacing three-year-old footage and resurrecting a vision first realized by employees who no longer work at CrossFit, and ultimately the story wouldn’t be complete without addressing the elephant in the room: The massive layoffs.

*** Spoilers Ahead***

The opening scene

The film opens with probably the least likely, least CrossFitty scene that has defined the booming drum beats and intensity of previous films.

Dave Castro is sewing in his workshop, presumably at the CrossFit Ranch in Aromas, CA. What he’s sewing is both unknown and unimportant. It’s perhaps enigmatic of Castro’s more recluse nature, a mad scientist tinkering and toying, playing in the minutiae. A creative paints and thinks on many canvasses. Perhaps today, a needle and thread are his tools of choice.

The scenes themselves, while brief, are important as they immediately address the creative approach for the 2018 Games, namely that it might be the last. And as history would reveal, it nearly was.

“I think the 2018 Games were some of the most creative visually and programmatically in terms of CrossFit events we’ve ever had, and that was really driven by the notion that this might be the last Games ever,” Castro said. “I put my all into that event.”

The two-minute intro transitions into an almost eerie feel. Dark, ominous skies are a harbinger probably for the bombshell dropped in the entire film: That top brass at CrossFit were aware of the sweeping changes coming to the Games as far back as March, a full five months before any staff would be notified and let go.

“In March of 2018, on the way to an Open announcement in Houston, we got a call and it said that our leadership wanted to change the structure of the Games next year,” said Justin Bergh, VP of Sport and Partnerships.

One thing that the documentary makes clear is that Games leadership staff hoped that they could save the Games by putting on a great show. The audience and fans know that it didn’t happen that way, but the undertone is still present.

MakeWODsGreatAgain Launches Campaign to CrowdFund Adaptive Prize Purses for Divisions Left Out of CrossFit Games

When the CrossFit Games announced their 2022 schedule last month, athletes in five of the eight adaptive divisions — vision, short stature, seated with hip function, seated without hip function and intellectual — found out they will once again be left off the competition floor at this summer’s CrossFit Games in Madison, WI. In response, MakeWODsGreatAgain founder John Wooley has launched a campaign to raise money to provide a prize purse, and swag for the adaptive divisions who’s last stop will be the online semifinals.

The details: Wooley is launching a campaign today — Join the Community, Adapt to the Competition — that aims to both bring more adaptive athletes into CrossFit, and help give athletes from the five decisions who won’t be competing in Madison “a Games experience” of their own.

The top three athletes from the five adaptive divisions who qualify to and compete at this year’s first-ever adaptive virtual Semifinals competition will receive a swag bag and a cash prize.

• So far, Wooley has received support and sponsorship commitments from Inov8, Rx Smart Gear, UCAN, O2, Doc Spartan, Hyperice, Abmat, Yeti, Junk Brands and ESC Sounds.
• “We will be fundraising for a cash prize, as well as having a swag bag provided by the sponsoring companies,” Wooley explained, adding that they will also be regularly featuring adaptive athletes on the Scale and Bail podcast and the Kettlebells & Cocktails podcast in hopes of generating more awareness.
• The prize purse will depend on how much money Wooley’s campaign raises in the upcoming months.

Feathers ruffled: Not surprisingly, adaptive athletes, such as Mike Witous, a short stature competitor and Steph Roach, the first Level 2 CrossFit trainer with cerebral palsy, weren’t thrilled with the announcement that they’ll be left off the competition floor in Madison this summer.

• “We aren’t looking for handouts, and never would ask for one. I just want an explanation as to how Crossfit thinks we can grow a division that isn’t in-person at the Games or even showcased on their media pages in any way. I don’t know how they expect it to grow past where it is currently without assistance,” wrote Witous on social media.

For what it’s worth: Wooley also said he understands, from a business standpoint, why these five divisions have been left out — because their Open participation numbers are too low — thus, another goal for the campaign is to help drive adaptive participation in the Open “with a goal of doubling year over year (participation),” Wooley said.

• Ultimately, Wooley is hoping that by “routinely showcasing these athletes on all of my platforms,” the adaptive divisions will grow and will soon be invited to Madison. “But (the) worst case scenario is that more people will be using CrossFit to focus on health and wellness,” he added.
• Alec Zirkenbach, executive director of the Adaptive Training Academy, echoed a similar sentiment in a sitdown with Tommy Marquez last month.

The big picture: Wooley is “impressed and excited” by CrossFit’s further commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and he’s hoping the Join the Community, Adapt to the Competition campaign will generate more awareness that CrossFit is a viable option for adaptive athletes of all kinds.

• And he is asking the community to participate by sharing these athletes’ stories “so we can attract more people to the community and help them find the same health, happiness and learning that we have come to love so  much.”

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

• Congratulations Christopher Ensign from Hammer CrossFit in Peoria, AZ on the 395 pound/134kg back squat PR.
• Congratulations Sabrina Atterbom from CrossFit Culmination South in Las Vegas, NV on the 210 pound/95kg split jerk PR.
• Congratulations Kaylyn Groce from Chaos Fitness in Berkley, MA on the 300 pound/136kg back squat PR.

More than 40 members of CrossFit KangaRocks in Brisbane, Australia rowed together to raise money for Movember. Here are a couple of fun facts from the event:

• Fastest solo marathon row was 3:02.
• Fastest team of two marathon row was 2:39.
• Fastest team of four marathon row was 2:37.
• Oldest rower: 72.
• Youngest rower: 11.
• Money raised: $700 AUD.

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