An Ode to Open Gym, and You

JT Scott | 08/24/2014 | 7

Open Gym is one of my favorite times – watching a big crowd of self-directed folks is a dream come true. It’s a relief and a pleasure! Seeing you folks engaging in your own programs, chasing your own goals, supporting each other and sometimes even recruiting friends to hit a certain strength or metcon workout shows me that what we’re doing here is working.

I don’t just mean the physical stuff (though it’s obvious to us, your coaches, that you’re getting stronger and more flexible and losing/gaining/rearranging mass). I’m talking about the education of you about your own body – how it currently moves and how it could move. I’m talking about the education about exercise – how you can direct your own training to attack those goals. I’m talking about the strengthening of your spirit – waking up early on a Sunday to come in and improve yourself. I’m talking about the growing of your heart – making room to include the wonderful people you’ve met here and expanding your actual, physical social network of interpersonal connection.

And that’s what I’m trying to create here: a better world. We’re trying to fill it with more physically capable, more self-actualized, more dedicated, more interconnected, and more compassionate people… one workout/conversation/interaction at a time.

Regarding the strength: We’ve been spending a lot of time working on our overhead lockout positions in the past weeks. Today we’re testing that stability with the Overhead Squat. It’s not uncommon for beginners to be unable to even OH Squat a 15 pound training bar – and I know some of you are familiar with that issue. Let’s put together all our hard work on flexibility and strength to max out of this quintessential mobility test.

Regarding the WOD: It’s a chipper. One time through, a fine mixture of functional movements. I invite you to consider this as an example of what we’re becoming better at with all this practice: being functional. We are looking to be able to climb, squat, jump, run, and get up and down off the ground in this workout. Being able to do these things is basically the definition of a functional human. So let’s get functional! Today’s workout will help us identify weak points in our strength and conditioning, and simply by virtue of doing it we’ll get better at doing it next time.

Strength:
Overhead Squat 1RM

WOD:
30 pull ups
200m run
30 wallballs (20/14)
200m run
30 KBS (1.5/1)
200m run
30 burpees
200m run