September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month


cancerToday we worked on the 2nd position for Power Cleans. I have struggled with my cleans for a very long time, pulling too early. Today, for some reason it was clicking. Coach Dan said the last sets of cleans, for some reason it looked like you weren’t thinking and it was working! I love how he gives me encouragement – and then he went on to say, throw out whatever you are thinking and keep doing that. I am such a thinker that it’s hard to just quiet my mind and let it fly. Practice is the key! It was a breakthrough/win for me this morning! Yahoo.

So I am not sure if any of you have seen the article about CrossFit’s secret, discussing Rhabdo but I wanted to take a minute to put my thoughts out there. Rhabdo is a really serious condition but CrossFit workouts per se doesn’t cause Rhabdo to happen anymore often than any other sport/activity. It’s the combination of poor programming, inexperienced coaching, and a dash of the athlete’s ego that sets up a ripe environment for it to happen. Long distance runners get rhabdo, strength and conditioning athletes get rhabdo, it’s not exclusive to CrossFit.

I am not one of those people that says it’s exclusively up to the athlete to be aware of the signs and know when to pull back. New athletes don’t know what they don’t know and they come to CrossFit gyms with a certain perspective. It’s sold to be different than any globo-gym. You are going to get oversight, coaching and experience. And many have never done workouts quite like this, so they are super sore and how do they know the difference between normal sore and dangerous sore. Sure, they need to listen to their body and inner voice we all have. But CrossFit gyms have a responsibility to ensure the safety of their members too. In the end, it’s not a CrossFit issue though so anyone that writes a post claiming it’s a CF dirty little secret is looking to bolster traffic to their website – period.

CrossFit seems to be a hot topic for any controversy and with such a passionate audience, people will write things to incite discussion, which helps their traffic stats, which makes the money! So just know that when you are reading certain controversial topics and themes out on these there interwebs.

Now on to more important topics – September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. 

childhoodcancerEach year around 13,500 children are diagnosed with cancer in the US, that’s more than a classroom of kids a day! Donate, volunteer, help out however you can. Cancer sucks, but it sucks really, really bad for kids. And remember, cancer never goes away. It filters every day life for entire families.

I know how hard and emotionally draining it was personally to fight Scott’s cancer battle. I can only imagine how hard it is for a little kiddo and his/her parents to go through treatment. It takes a lot of faith, courage, strength and love. My heart goes out to them each and every day.

 

Strength
5×2 Clean (2nd position) 93/103#

WOD
EMOM 12minutes
2 manmakers 20#db
5 strict pullups or 5 ring rows

First round, I did 5 pull ups. Subsequent rounds – it was two pullups, three ring rows. This was brutal.

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