Congratulations are in order.  Yesterday we received word that Sprite, Pepper & Shades qualified for the scaled team division at the 2020 CanWest Games!  This brings our count to 17 Empower athletes who will be representing us at this year’s Sanctionals, a 41% increase over last year’s 12.  As Shades has already qualified as an individual Sprite & Pepper will be seeking a replacement.  I’ve heard rumours that another CanWest Games veteran may be stepping up to help them.

Every Saturday we will be putting our team through some rigourous training.  Their first 15 minutes of training they will warm up doing 2 or 3 stations from The Gauntlet which many of you tested last make up day.  Then we’ll be moving on to a short, competition-style WOD.

We’ll be giving the rest of you an opportunity to test this WOD in today’s make up day.  I give to you the same prime directive as we give our competitors: Stay Healthy!  Scale movements and loads as suits your fitness level, pace appropriately to your physical condition, and on this one, protect your hands, tears are a very real risk!

HEL-ish is a diabolical twist on classic CrossFit benchmark workout Helen.  Enjoy:
3 Rounds:
20/25 calorie Ski, Airbike or Row
12 KB Snatches left @1/1.5 pood
12 KB Snatches right @1/1.5 pood
12 C2B Pull Ups

Our competitors’ homework before Saturday’s training session is to think through this WOD.  Which movement(s) are the rest?  Which parts should you do unbroken?  Where do you need to take breaks?  Where do you need to hustle the transition?  What size sets should you use?  When is it appropriate to chalk?  What is a sustainable pace?  How can you maximize your movement efficiency at each station?

Tomorrow we’ll be checking what answers our athletes come up with for this, their first training challenge, but today you can test it and come up with some answers for yourself.  Here are the standards:

Instead of Helen’s 400m run we’ve given you a choice between Row, Airbike or Ski.  20 calories for the women, 25 for the men.   Remember, you MUST reset the display each round.

KB Snatches replace Helen’s KB Swing.  Complete all 12 on one hand before changing hands.  At last year’s CanWest Games many athletes were challenged by the appearance of the KB Snatch.  It behooves you to learn good technique on the KB Snatch because it was a real separator.  You want to use your hips, not your shoulders to move the load and you don’t want to bruise your forearms at all! At the CanWest the weights used were 1 pood and 1.5 pood respectively for the women and men.  Our competitors should expect the same this year.  But for training purposes you want to use a weight that allows you to do at least 6 consecutive snatches per hand.

Instead of regular pull ups as we see in Helen, we’re doing C2B.  The goal here is not to do singles but to learn to do sets.  Competitors should strive for anywhere from 3 to 8 at a time.  Each round.  Hold yourself to sets until the last 6 reps of the final round when anything goes so long as it gets you across the finish line.

Each week our focus is:
Pacing
Transitions
Efficiency
Strategy

I tested HEL-ish yesterday.  I completed at 16:23 RX using the Rogue Echo bike.  Completed the snatches unbroken every round.  And broke the pull ups into sets of 6.  It’s a good one.  But nasty.  Now it’s your turn.

Train safe.  Have fun!