Good  Morning Monday. It was a tough weekend full of hard workouts and hours and hours of lawn work. There really is something to doing lawn maintenance each season so that it doesn’t all pile up — I spent over 3 hours raking and bagging leaves in my back yard and I am still not done. Then I had to lug the lawn bags out to the front curb — it was like a mini-boot camp.  So – if you take the lawn work into account, I did not have a rest day last week –and I can feel it.

I woke up to find out that the workout of the day was ‘MURPH’. I’m always up for a challenge, but somehow this just didn’t appeal to me. But once I got there and started the workout, I went into auto pilot.  You can also split up the reps anyway that works for you — so I did the pull ups in reps of 10, and push ups/squats in reps of 20  –but the problem came up at the end –when I had a ton more squats to do! But I got through it –and then headed out for a mile run with jelly legs.

I stayed a bit afterwards to talk to my friend Ryan. We were talking about how you really do get energized by working out with a group of people that are pushing themselves as hard as you are.

Think about it — you go to your local Gold’s gym and you basically workout alone — even in fitness classes, the instructor is at the head of the class and you do your thing with little interaction. At CrossFit — you workout with a group — we are all doing the same workout (scaled as necessary), pushing as hard as we can — and when you feel like you can’t go on, there is another athlete or the coach right there to push you on — to encourage, to ‘wake’ you up.  You aren’t alone on that treadmill — waiting for that 30m time limit to come.  It’s such a different approach to fitness — engaging, challenging, supportive! Think about how much better that is than the solo globo gym experience….

“Murph”

For time:
1 mile Run
100 Pull-ups
200 Push-ups
300 Squats
1 mile Run
In memory of Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, 29, of Patchogue, N.Y., who was killed in Afghanistan June 28th, 2005.

This workout was one of Mike’s favorites and he’d named it “Body Armor”.

Time: 47:13 (used blue band for pull ups)