Jon Allen XFT

20/05/2021

20/05/2021

Everything in its right place…

07/05/2021

One of the best videos I’ll ever share. Sara is already a legend of CrossFit. Having recently been injured, her coach decides to create a montage to show her two things; 1) How such adversity can be the birth of extraordinary achievements, and 2) Just how much the CrossFit world love and respect her. She’ll be back, and she’ll be a Warrior.

Rehabbing off the back of surgery is tough, but all the sweeter with friends like these… 🏆 👀 🙌 In this episode we follow along on Sara Sigmundsdottir’s Ro...

02/05/2021

29/04/2021

My CrossFit Box.

Being fortunate enough to have accumulated a solid collection of workout equipment at home, I’ve questioned many a time if it’s still worth paying the monthly subscription, and driving the impractical distance twice a week, to my Box.

Well I found my answer last night in Programming like this;

- 1 Mile Run
- 30 x 15ft Rope Climbs
- 1 Mile Run

Now our Trainer Josh is smart. I mistook the fact he hadn’t posted the Workout earlier in the day as laziness, however he knew exactly what he was doing. Who the f**k would sign up for that class? Not me, that’s for sure.

So there I was, a tight-calved, run-avoiding 39 year old (still recovering from a bicep injury), facing a workout that appears to be designed to finally write me off. Did I drive home and sulk? No. Because I’m a CrossFitter, and that kind of thinking does not appear in our repertoire. It’s widely joked that CrossFit is a mental illness, and who was I to disprove that theory 😂.

50 mins later I’m driving home having nailed the workout, not only completing all 30 climbs and the 2 miles of running, but also with a few of the climbs beginning on the higher rope with a legless ascent. By sacking-off tonight’s visit, and instead having a workout in my garage, I would have never learned the following;

💪🏼 My injury is nowhere near as debilitating as I feared

💡 I am still capable of 2 x 1 Mile runs at a decent pace

🧗 Several methods to vastly improving my Rope Climbing technique and efficiency

🙌🏼 The confidence I can gain by facing up to my fear of running

💟 The importance to me (intrinsically) of the social and altruistic side of the my Sport, that only further fuels my passion for it.

🦅 HE WHO DARES, WINS! 📿🏃🏻🥇

CrossFit BFG

27/04/2021

PROGRESSION PLANS:

With the ‘Burpee Box Jump Over’ showing up so regularly in Competition, it’s time to get to grips with it. Just practising the full
movement is not only dangerous, but can also be demotivating. Like anything in CrossFit, you need to gradually ‘scale-up’ over an appropriate length of time. To begin with I’ll be mastering the 20” Box Jump-Over (with a step down). Then I’ll move on to the next phase as appropriate.

21/04/2021

Average net Calories consumed for the last 7 days (i.e. Food + drink minus calories burned) - 1801. Actual calories burned according to my Whoop strap (taking into account my Basal Metabolic Rate* - 2099 = Average daily Calorie Deficit of 298 cals. Weight loss in week = 0.8kg. Despite weight loss not being a priority, understanding the science behind it certainly is! Didn’t cut down much on the alcohol intake, ate quite a lot of chocolate, but counted it all nonetheless. Again, it’s about educating myself to begin with. Not f-ing starving myself. 🍺🍕

* Here is how we calculate calories burned:

We first get an estimate of your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) using widely accepted formulas based on height, weight, and gender (note these are set in your profile information).
As your Heart Rate rises, we also add to the BMR estimate an additional increasing function of heart rate. That is, for heart rates above a certain threshold the formula becomes Calories Burned = BMR + function(Heart Rate). This formula is proprietary and we have worked on matching academic literature on energy expenditure at different levels of effort.

21/04/2021

Taken from the book ‘Chasing Excellence’ by Ben Bergeron, this saying struck a chord within me the first time I read it. It encapsulated positive thinking in such a bullsh*t-free way. So much so that I printed this and put it in the Staff office. What blew my mind is that I was told to remove it by the Manager as it was ‘too negative and could offend someone’. Yes it would, and so it should. If you’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with, then look around you today. Are these colleagues raising your game or mentally dragging you down? If not, are they willing to change? Of course. If you believe it, make it your screen-saver or phone background image and monitor how much negativity creeps into your day. It’s time to take ownership.

19/04/2021

If you fancy testing your Max Heart rate, then finish off your session with some Barbell Thrusters and Double-Unders! Scaled down to 35kg and skipped 2 Single-Unders to every Double-Under.