Thank you to everyone who turned out on Zoom to join us for our 11th annual 12-Days of X-Mas event!  What a great turn out!  My highlight is always watching families complete this workout together: Jedi & Sydney, Iron Man, War Machine & Fury, Smash, HHH and their boys, DT synchronized with her girls, Peril & Dangers with Audrey doing actual HSPU’s between them, Riot & Dauntless, Fierce, She-Ra, Menace and Ollie, Radar, Hawkeye and their son!

It was also great to be joined by still Waters from Montreal, Gymkata from Saskatoon and a visit from Jersey from San Fan!  In a year where it is easy to feel pushed apart, Zoom has allowed us to an extent, to come together.

Kudos to Dan, a paddler friend of Thunder and Lightning who joined us for his first ever CrossFit WOD and made it all the way through!

The highlight of the event was of course when Thunder came on Zoom to join us and say a few words.  We were thrilled to speak with her and hear that her rehab is going well!

At the end we had a quick ceremony to recognize a few important accomplishments.

Class of 2015
8 members complete their 5th year at Empower this year: Auto, Dauntless, Crusher, Rowdy, Smash, Jet, Hammer & Sass.  Thank you for your continued support and for being part of our community!

20 in 2020
Inspired by Fierce’s achievement of completing all 272 programmed WODs in 2019 despite spending 9 months of that year pregnant and delivering Ollie, we challenged Empower members in 2020 to try to complete and track 20 workouts per month throughout the year.  Of course, we had no idea at the start what challenges 2020 would have in store for us.  But that was the point, after all, wasn’t it?  Can you stay committed to your training when the world interferes?

The seven Empower members who successfully completed the 20 in 2020 challenge faced all the same obstacles this year as the rest of us.  Some were also dealing with some serious set backs such as injuries and in one case not one but two surgeries!  I promise you each of them was tempted to quit this challenge many times this year – we all were – but what sets them apart is that they did not!

So I want to acknowledge each of these challenge winners for their amazing accomplishment and the outstanding example they set for us all!  Please congratulate this year’s 20 in 2020 winners:

Shades
Fierce
Sprite
Dauntless
Shine
HHH
Smash

Rest assured we will be running this challenge again in 2021 so those of you who missed out this year have the opportunity to claim your prize next year!  With vaccines on the way and Zoom firmly entrenched you can do it if you set your mind to it!  Make it your New Year’s resolution to maintain a consistent training practice of 20 workouts per month.  It won’t be easy but it will be worth it!

Finally I would like to thank everyone who generously donated to Lightning & Thunder’s Go Fund Me account.  Thank you to The Touch who programmed a great 12-Days WOD this year that was perfect for Zoom and for all his great video demos.  Thanks to Shades, Sprite & Fierce who came in early Saturday morning to set up and decorate our authentic, all-natural, plyobox Christmas tree, hang stockings and make our space festive and then after the WOD came to disassemble it all and clean the place up for classes!

And thank you to our great Empower community!  Happy Holidays everyone!

Monday WOD

Equipment: Dumbbell(s) or alternative

Warm Up
5 min AMRAP
10 Full Body Rocks
10 Air Squats
10 Ring Rows

Tech
Thruster
Pull Up or Pull Up alternative

WOD
20 min AMRAP
10 DB Thrusters
10 Pull Ups

Score = weight used x reps completed

Cool Down
Lat Stretch
Quad Stretch