Just a few days ago, I celebrated my 1 year anniversary with CrossFit Linchpin. "They" are a real CrossFit affiliate but are completely virtual. With thousands of brick-n-mortar CrossFit affiliates across the globe, Linchpin is unique as its mailing address is a home in Washington state where only the owner (Pat Sherwood) and his wife (Emily) train. Today, I won't rehash the year or repeat the story of Linchpin, etc. but please feel free to read my first two reviews. The
first was 6 weeks in and the
second was 4 months in. Before I dive into my 1 year thoughts, take a look at the scattergram below. Focus on the vertical and horizontal axis. Notice a trend? Higher output at shorter time durations vs. lower power output as the duration grows. I'll get back to this in a minute.
The CrossFit Linchpin Community has continued to grow over the past year and more continues to be added to the bargain-basement $10 per month cost. I've also had the pleasure of helping out a bit as the new Private Track group on Facebook was launched last month. With over 600 Private Track members in there already (a portion of the total community), it's been awesome to see where people are from, where they work out, hear their stories, share successes, help and answer questions, and just GROW this awesome virtual community. From driveways to garages to affiliates to hotel gyms to basements. People are getting it in!
For me, I absolutely love it and won't be going anywhere anytime soon. In my core, I really believe in supporting things and people that resonate with me. The approach remains the same: Constantly varied, functional movement, performed at a high intensity. That's CrossFit, defined. However, there is no bias towards any one thing. Many programmers lean a certain direction, like towards olympic lifts or WODs or lifting heavy, for example. Here, though, it is extremely well balanced which points towards the overall goal of pouring our heart and soul into one hour a day that leads us to living a long and healthy life with the ones we love. Pat says it much better
here, if you'd like to hear the "heart" behind CrossFit Linchpin. Check out the data below from my last year as compiled by Beyond the Whiteboard (BTWB) that is also included when a part of the Community. Click on any photo to see it better:
That is balance. Add in a healthy diet, showing up daily, not cherry-picking the non-sexy workouts (ie: sprints, core work), and a positive attitude and boom, you have
fitness.
Here is my exact history since May 8, 2018. I have 667 logged workouts. Now that can be a bit deceiving. A "workout" is a WOD, an accessory piece, or something I entered manually that I did on my own as I often do in the world of rucking. The checkmarks are days that I put in the work and the others are rest days. Extreme consistency is how I'd characterize it. Thursdays and Sundays are traditionally my rest days and I, for the most part, follow them. I do slip, occasionally. :) All of this data pours from BTWB. This data is another reason to stay...not THE reason but dang, the data only gets richer for ME with every passing day. It helps me choose wisely the loading by showing me my past performances, previous personal records, and just creates lots of efficiency in the process. It's also a dose of reality. For example, I'm weak in a lot of areas, namely gymnastics and olympic lifts. I'm strong in other areas, too. Overall, it puts me just over mid-pack and this rarely moves more than two digits. Today, it's at a 59 and has been sitting at 60 or 61 for awhile. (Yesterday's hang power snatches, I'm sure, didn't help matters!)
So back to that scattergram at the top. That scattergram is me over those 667 "workouts." It tells a story and it tells the story as it should be. It tells me that I scale when I should to maintain the intensity and that I bring the intensity when I should. Shorter duration workouts are meant to do that. Monday's workout is exactly that. It's only 7 minutes! Outsiders might look at that and think: "how can it be that bad? It's only 7 minutes? How much "fitness" could possibly come from 7 MINUTES?! It's these workouts and others that we grind out over a half hour or more, the accessory work, the heavy days...it's all variance at different time domains, intensity levels and showing no bias towards any one thing. Except the L-Sit...Pat really LOVES the L-Sit and it often appears in accessory work. As he says: "I don't care who you are, everyone can work on their L-Sit." Truth. I don't know if my L-Sit has gotten much better over the last year but I never skip them. It's always "accumulate 2 minutes" and mine always go 20sec, then chunks of 10-15sec until I hit 2 minutes. Grip, core, and just good 'ol work. Love it!
Closing out today, I just want to say how thankful I am to have found Pat's affiliate and that I joined a year ago. It has brought balance to an area that is very important to me. I don't have limitless time to spend in the garage. I have max 70min. I must be heading in by 5:40am or I'll never make to work by 7am. So while 4:30am sounds early to 99% of the population, it is VITAL and protected. Further? My wife joins me every day. We're both 46 years old and are in our 27th year of marriage. We are both our fittest in our life and love living life together, exploring and having fun. We want to live healthy lives for as long as we can and this 60-70min a day we do together is but one tool in our marriage toolbelt that just WORKS. Then, we get to do fun things like we did last month in Columbus, OH, when we took 2nd place at the GORUCK 50 Mile Star Course! Weight on our backs and unsupported all the way, except for each other! Like I often say on my IG...
"Do what you love with the ones you love."
Thanks to CrossFit Linchpin for helping make that a reality...from the both of us.
Daily CrossFit Linchpin workouts and other "life" things thrown in here and there. :)
