Having Rip and crew come back to Milwaukee is a bit like coming full circle for me. The first Basic Barbell Cert I worked was here, with Ryan in his former location at CrossFit Milwaukee. I quickly learned that any uneaten food would never go to waste; that sleep is a precious commodity that I’ll enjoy AFTER the weekend; and that traveling around and meeting a whole new group of people who want to train and get strong is a pretty awesome thing. Even with the new location, Ryan is still the hard working, do anything for you gym owner that he was four years ago and he made sure we didn’t go without anything needed or wanted all weekend long. Special thanks to him from all of us for his hospitality.
We had a great group of mostly local folks with a large portion fairly new to barbell training. And yes, training only three years or so is still fairly new. Everyone worked very hard and there were improvements all over the room with each lift. There seemed to be an unusually large percentage of folks right off the bat who are used to squatting with a vertical back. One in particular whose had some major back issues and didn’t even know if he’d be able to attend this weekend fixed his back angle; recruited his posterior chain; and felt just fine afterwards. It was pretty cool.
It was nice for me to be local and know and recognize a lot of areas where people live and train. There seems to be a very cool Milwaukee contingent that hopefully can get together and train at times together. There were a handful from Madison that also have an opportunity to get together at Alex’s gym…you can even tan there. On a sunny day anyway. For those of you in the area, I can’t recommend Irina’s Kitchen enough. The corned beef will make you tear up and if you get her son talking, he’ll probably teach you some pretty good Ukrain swear words. A reminder to the Milwaukee crew, we have a date due for Highlander burger’s at McBobs. We’ll figure out a time. Thanks also to BobG for the great local brews, we enjoyed them while we “supported” Alex during his clean and jerk session. Heh.
Keep an eye out for Starting Strength training camps at CrossFit Milwaukee and later this fall at CrossFit Barrington outside Chicago. As always, keep us posted on your progress.
I snoozed when it came to good T-shirt shots this weekend. Clay takes the win, hands down, for most creative. I missed grabbing a picture of probably the best T on Friday night but got one of his on Sunday. In case you're wondering, the best seminar T-shirt of all time belongs to Jon down in Oklahoma.
Jon has been training in the same t-shirt for about 15 years now. It's full of holes but surprisingly enough doesn't put out a big stank. He showed up for one of my training camps at WFAC about a year after his seminar and sure enough, when it came time to get under the bar, his holey training T was worn. Pretty cool. In a weird way.
I need to give a big cheers to Laura for representing the female race as this weekend's only chick. She worked very hard and took away a lot of useful information that will help her train more effectively in the future. Wrapping up the pictures, Alex and Rip during an impromptu Clean and Jerk session along with his "support" crew enjoying some of Bob G's prizes. Here's a clip of one of his last lifts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-85x...ature=youtu.be
OH! You may have noticed the big Alex/lil Chris picture above. That's for Chris as a reminder that he promised me he'd gain 10# in a month to help his lifts continue to climb. (Dude, eat carbs.)
Milwaukee Recap
