I am proud to announce that I have a new feature on my website that will load a new paleo recipe everyday.

It is on my CrossFit website www.crossfitkensington.com.au

You just have to scroll down and it is on the left hand side of the page.

It is an awesome feature to help you guys maintain a healthy diet as all of the recipes will be based on paleo eating, which means no artificial food!

Jump across with this link and bookmark it and check in on the recipe everyday.

Enjoy!

Thanks to everyone who came down on Saturday to help celebrate the grand opening of CrossFit Kensington. All of your support is greatly appreciated and I think everyone had a great time with a hard workout and some yummy food.

The workout on the day was only 12 mins, to prove to people who had never experienced CrossFit before  how hard you can actually work in 12 mins.

My point was proved by the reactions immediately after the workout and 24 hours after the workout too. Everyone was smashed after the workout, but I caught up with a  few people 24 hours later and they were in agony. Hannah included, even though she does a hard workout 5 days per week. It all comes down to how hard you push yourself in any given workout!

The days of boring old 1on1 gym sessions are over, they are no match for the intensity you can experience with CrossFit and the motivation you get by training with a group.

I’ve posted a few photos below, but all the rest can be found by clicking here

The studio is complete and it is time to celebrate and showcase the place to everyone.

On Saturday the 13th November, I will have the grand opening. I am inviting all of you to come along and check it out. Even if you are a regular there, let’s get the place buzzing for a few hours on Saturday morning.

I will have free workouts every 30 mins for everyone who would like to participate.

Fitness challenges running throughout the morning for everyone who is up for a bit of fitness competition.

There will be prizes for the best in the workouts and the best in the fitness challenges.

The party will be on 8:30am till 11am on Saturday the 13th November.

Please invite anyone you know who is interested in fitness, no matter who they are or where they live. I want to spread the word of CrossFit and show everyone what it is all about.

I would love it if you could let me know if you will be coming, by putting your name in the comments below. Even if you just stop by for 10 mins, I would love to see your face there.

Thanks everyone, looking forward to seeing you all then.

One more thing, the new CrossFit Kensington website is up and running, so check it out!www.crossfitkensington.com.au

Well the studio has been open for 3 weeks now and whilst we have been operating classes, there has still been some work going on.

I am happy to say that the place is now complete, all the equipment is in and we are now and official CrossFit affiliate.

The name is Fitta Bodies CrossFit Kensington and the website will be up very soon.

If you have never experienced what CrossFit is all about, I can tell you that in the past 10 years of being a personal trainer, CrossFit is the best thing I have seen in the way of improving overall fitness, shredding bodyfat, gaining real overall strength, becoming more co-ordinated and skilled and actually enjoying the exercise routines that change daily.

There are many CrossFit affiliates world wide and each one is different in their own little ways.

I am hoping to make CrossFit Kensington one of the great affiliates by putting my own touch on all of our workouts.

I can say that at this point, our main focus will be met-con workouts unless I have specific clients that want to focus on Olympic lifting strength. Weights will generally be scaled by gender, fitness level, age and body weight, so a 95kg fit man won’t be lifting the same as a 70kg fit man, and the 70kg man won’t be penalised for lifting a lighter weight.

I am hoping to build a great base of clients who embrace the CrossFit style of training because I can tell you, it is the way of the future in the fitness industry, so get on board now, with a trainer who has trained this way for nearly 18 months now.

If you anyone would like to trial the classes, I am extending an offer of $50 for a 3 week trial of all the scheduled group CrossFit classes. This offer is not applicable to anyone who is currently training in the studio and may only be used once per person.

Looking forward to seeing you all in the gym very soon!

Last week I was fortunate enough to discuss CrossFit style training on 2SSR 99.7fm’s health and fitness show Total Vitality.

The day after the interview I trained the presenter Julia Achilleos at my studio in Kensington and needless to say, she felt the benefits of CrossFit style training over traditional gym workouts or going for a jog!

Here’s a link to the radio station’s blog with the entire interview, you just have to scroll down a little bit.

You can also read Julia’s blog post about our training session here.

If you haven’t tried our high intensity cross training classes yet, please check out our studio website here and book yourself in for some classes.

Last weekend marked the 3rd Annual CrossFit games held in Aromas California.

Congratulations to Aussie, Steve (Commando) Willis for finishing up the games in 4th place. What an awesome achievement!

Here are a couple of video links showing the first and last events of the games. Check out the intensity!
1st event, day 1mov file
1st event, day 1wmv file
Final event, day 2mov file
Final event, day 2wmv file

Why do I think CrossFit is the future of exercise?

Because it makes sense!

Walking into a gym filled with 10’s of thousands of $$ of useless machines, being bombarded by people in suits trying to sell me memberships and lying to me about what each wonderful machine will do for me does not make sense.

Walking into a gym where I can pick heavy things up, lift my own bodyweight up, get more balanced and coordinated and work my cardiovascular system without wasting hours on a treadmill does make sense.

CrossFit will get you ready for what life has to throw at you, be it picking something up, sprinting for a bus, getting up off the ground if I fall over, pulling myself over a fence, jumping over a puddle, running away from a mugger or anything that life can throw at you, because life is unpredictable.

I have heard it said that “CrossFit teaches you not to suck at life!”

So…

The basic description for CrossFit is Constantly Varied Functional Movement at High Intensity.

Breaking that down;

Constantly Varied – One of the main points of CrossFit is to specialise at not specialising. Become good a everything, thus building great overall fitness.

Here are the 10 avenues of fitness as defined by CrossFit;

1. Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance
2. Stamina
3. Strength
4. Flexibility
5. Power
6. Speed
7. Coordination
8. Agility
9. Balance
10. Accuracy

What other fitness program covers that many bases?

With the constant variety you receieve a broader experience thus creating better General Physical Preparedness!

Functional Movements – Real functional movements, not standing 1 legged on a wobbleboard with a medicine ball in one hand and body blade in the other…

Functional movements are;

1. Natural. Its ingrained in our brains and bodies to pick things up, move things around and move our own bodies at any angle and in any direction. 
2. Compound movements, yet irreducible. Multi jointed. 
3. Core to extremity. Core training is midline stabilization. Extremities are your arms and legs. Strong core, moves larger loads.
4. Essential to Independant living. Picking things up, putting things on shelves, playing sport
5. Safe compared to non-functional movements. How often we hear of injuries from the pec dec and the leg extension…
6. Can move large loads, long distances, quickly. This is one of the main points of the program.

High Intensity – Putting it simply, this is the independant variable which will either get you fit or not. You get out what you put in!

Power = Intensity

What is power? 

Force x Distance / Time = Power

Ok, so away from the science lesson. Lets say Force is your body weight and Distance is you standing up. Now, Time is how long it takes you to stand up. So power is how long it takes you to get your body from the ground up.

Simple and it makes sense.

Am I fit if I can bicep curl a weight in my hands 15 times x 3 sets then sit and chat in between sets without raising my heart rate?

or

Am I fit if I can do 120 squats in 4 minutes and have my heart rate through the roof without stepping foot on a treadmill?

Make sense?

I have so much to say, but I don’t want to bore you, so I will finish with one more comment. Nutrition is at the base of what you can do to your body by training correctly. Train hard and don’t nourish your body with the right food and you are wasting your time.

I will expand on many aspects of the program in future entries, but for now focus on training large movements at high intensities, regularly and in different ways combined with a diet rich in protein and vegetables, avoid sugar and you are on the road to success.

If you have any questions, please enter your comments and I will get back to you asap.

For more info straight from the horses mouth visit www.crossfitcom

Yours in Fitness

Troy Shipsey

Your favourite Personal Trainer in Randwick and Centennial Park

Wow, what an exciting weekend I have just had.

I spent 2 full days at CrossFit Brisbane getting certified as a CrossFit instructor/trainer.

click to enlarge

The weekend was full on an well worth it.

We sat through 17 hours of lectures and practical workshops. Add on top of that the 3 workouts they decided to throw in to show us what “intensity” is. We completed bottom to bottom “Tabata” squats Saturday morning. “Fran”  Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon we did 10 minutes as many rounds as possible of 7 Medicine ball cleans and 7 chest to ground push ups.

So what does this new qualification mean to you my clients?

Most of you already know, or should know by now where my principles lay. I believe in whole body functional movements, high intensity workouts and eating according to the caveman diet incorporating a diet heavily based on protein and vegetables, some fruit, little alcohol and minimal caffeine.

Now here is a couple of the principles of CrossFit; 

What is CrossFit? Constantly Varied Functional Movements performed at High Intensity.

Why do we CrossFit? For Increased Work Capacity across Broad Times and Modal Domains.

What do CrossFitters eat? Meats and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar.

Sound familiar? It seems that I’ve been on the right track all this time, I just need to refine my processes.

So you’re probably wondering what I learnt and why I had such an awesome weekend…

What did I learn? Heaps! So much more than I thought I would! This I will impart to you in coming entries.

Why did I have a blast? I really felt what intensity is, during the workouts I took part in and by watching the instructors demo workouts. I do make my workouts high intensity, no doubt as most of you will know, but there is nothing like being around some of the fittest individuals you’ve ever met and working along side them and being pushed by them to further yourself.

I have already implemented 1 new thing that we focussed on with my Centennial Park guys by making them break horizontal in their squats. In 2 minutes, they went from barely reaching horizontal if we are lucky, to everyone breaking horizontal with their thighs and maintaining good lumbar curve.

I am not going to bore you any longer today, but I will be writing several blogs over the coming days/weeks/months to get you up to speed with what CrossFit is all about, why I think it elicits the best results in fitness and weight loss, why CrossFitters claim to be the fittest people on the planet, why I love it and why I think it is the new frontier in fitness. 

I can also tell you now that I soon intend to run training in the CrossFit style 4 nights per week in the form of small groups limited to 3 people per group. If you are interested, please let me know ASAP as I anticipate those spots will fill fast. 

Stay Fit Everybody

Troy Shipsey