Coaching a class of athletes requires not only that you educate them and entertain them, but that you ultimately get them to move and to move better than they would without your coaching. Seeing faults in your athletes' movements is part of what is called the "coach's eye." However, bridging the gap between seeing those faults and fixing those faults and training your athletes to move better is both an art and a science.

A question we get a lot of at the gym is, "Should I buy a pair of weightlifting shoes?" Let us help you answer this question.

2012 is fast approaching. That means the 2012 Reebok CrossFit Games are around the corner. There are also going to be a lot of other competitions along the way. We must prepare!

We are very excited to have two new Reverse Hyper machines at the gym. These machines are unique in their ability to strengthen and stretch the back. They are great for warmups, cool downs and rehabilitation.

The 2011 competition season was the longest one to date. The Open Sectionals started in March and for 7 weeks we competed on workouts to determine which individuals and teams would advance to the Regional competition. Due to the extremely strong women in our gym and the help of some strong men, our gym placed 17th in the region and qualified for the team competition.

There are a lot of people that struggle with getting their first pull-up. There are also a lot of people that have managed to get a kipping pull-up but still cannot manage a good strict pull-up. Kipping pull-ups are great but it is of utmost importance that strength be acquired in the connective tissues of the shoulder before we go swinging on the bars like monkeys. Although I have given a lot of general tips on how to get pull-ups, I figured I should come up with a more concrete plan. This is a little upper body strength program designed to get you from zero pull-ups to one pull-up in a short amount of time.

Instead of leaving everyone to their own devices, we are going to go ahead and formulate some resolutions for the gym en masse. As a group we stand a greater chance of successfully making positive changes in our life. If we are all working towards the same goals then we can help pull each other along.

You need to warm up. Period. A proper warm-up can increase the blood flow to the working muscle which results in decreased muscle stiffness, less risk of injury and improved performance. Additional benefits of warming up include physiological and psychological preparation.

I recently stumbled upon this intriguing blog post by Seth Godin. Seth discusses how foraging animals exhaust the nuts and berries in a small area and then randomly walk to a new site and start foraging again. This foraging pattern is described mathematically as a "Lévy Flight." The Lévy Flight describes a random walk which after a large number of steps the distance from the origin tends towards a stable distribution. As you see in the picture, small clusters form around the starting point but none of the clusters is particularly far from the origin. There is a sort of localized and stabilized randomness to the pattern. Naturally, I began to think of this as it might apply to fitness.

What Next? Add Weight and Refine.
After people are moving with a modicum of proficiency, give them a little weight. Coaching and teaching is a refinement process. Nobody gets it right on the first try. If they do, then make them do Fran and see if they still get it right. We must get people moving. Then we can get them moving better.