Chris Spealler is awesome. He took third place in the Southwest Regionals last weekend, clawing his way back into contention from 6th place. This all after doing Diane in 1:52.

Spealler has been in the CrossFit world for a long time, has weathered the test of time and is continually kicking much larger asses than his own.

Enjoy the vid, train hard today.

Today’s Workout:
AMRAP 7 Min:
6 Squat Cleans (135#/95#)
12 Abmat Situps
3 Min Rest
AMRAP 6 Min:
6 Shoulder to Overhead (135#/95#)
12 knees to elbow

What do art and the Battle of Thermopylae have in common?  Well aside from the fact that the Greeks had a hand in both, Steven Pressfield also wrote a book about each one.  I’ve read several of his fiction books but I’ve recently finished an excellent non-fiction work of his, The War of Art, in which Pressfield deals out a swift kick in the ass regarding yourself and that eternal enemy each of us faces every day, resistance.

I’m a firm believer that we all hold the tools to our own salvation but most of us go through life not even opening the tool shed.  Truthfully, it can be somewhat daunting to face down your own perceived inadequacy, constant stream of lame ass excuses, and inherent short comings, on a daily basis.  Pressfield blows open the doors, hands you the tools and personally reads aloud the manual for what you need to do everyday to be successful at whatever it is you do.

Pressfield reiterates the story of how he got started as a writer and the stream of dead-end jobs, failed relationships, and bad decisions that finally pointed him in the right direction.  He also talks about how he faces the everyday struggle to sit down and write.  What demons tug at him, trying to send him into a downward spiral of procrastination and resistance.  He shares with us the little tips and tricks he’s learned, through the occupational school of “hard knocks”.

The War of Art holds up a mirror, and in it’s reflection you’ll see, in what area, your lacking in being able to nail that presentation to your boss, bring in a healthy stream of clients, stick with your commitment to make it to Crossfit three times a week, or whatever it is your failing to accomplish because your just this side of greatness.

We all need a jump start from time to time and if your feeling like there’s something that’s tugging at you, trying to bring you down, I’d give this book a try for a little pick me up.

What do you use to motivate yourself?  Is it a quote from a book or poem?  Something a mentor once taught you?  Please, share with the class.

Today’s Workout:

20 Min AMRAP:

1 Rope Climb
6 burpees
9 Kettlebell Sumodeadlift High Pulls (1.5pd/1pd)
12 Box jumps (24″/20″)

Friday June 1st we're heading back to camp!

Those of you that have been with us since the beginning may remember this POST about Eric and I heading up to Los Prietos Boys Camp and putting the kids through an afternoon of working out. (yes, this was before Eric sat me down and gave me the “paragraphs” talk )

I still think about that day quite often and I’m sure that Eric does as well. It was exhausting for us both as we were the only ones there responsible for keeping about 80 kids moving and interested for two hour long sessions.

As I wrote about two years ago, the day was far more rewarding for two of us than I believe it was for the kids and we know that they got a hell of a lot out of it. I ended up writing two speeches about our experience up there and even used one as my competition speech last year for  Toastmaster’s International Speech Contest.

So what’s the deal with Los Prietos and why do we go? Great question.

Los Prietos Boys Camp is SB County’s housing facility for trouble boys. It provides a structured environment where the kids can learn about teamwork, discipline, and some of the life skills that are absent in their lives.

I first learned about LPBC through Toastmaster’s, as the camp has its own group called Toastmaster Soldiers where the kids learn how to express themselves through public speaking. It’s a kick ass organization run by Billi Jo Starr and JP Luvanvi (who’s delicious food you all ate this past Saturday).

We go up there because we can. We go up there because once you realize beyond the tough stares, the why the fuck should I listen to you’s, the neck tattoos, and hard attitudes lie young men and young boys. By the end of our hour with them, they had magically transformed themselves back into kids and we could see that even if it was only for an hour, they benefited from someone voluntarily caring about them.

These are young people that have grown up in far different environments than you and I did, through no fault of their own. No one tattooed me at age 13, nor did they tell Eric that being part of his family meant being in a gang. Once you hear what these kids have lived through, it’s easy to forget their wrongdoings and see the humanity in them that’s right below the surface yearning to come out.

This year we’d like to take a crew of CPC’ers up there with us. Anyone and everyone is welcome, we’ll be leaving CPC around 10am and be back around 2pm. The only requirement is that you come with an open mind, an open heart, and a willingness to help out.

Post to comments if you’d like to join us for this.

- tb/em

Today’s Workout:

1 Round for Time
20 Overhead Squats (95#/65#)
20 Pullups
200 M Run
15 Overhead Squats (95#/65#)
15 Pullups
200 M Run
10 Overhead Squats (95#/65#)
10 Pullups
200 M Run

And to the community who gave me the strength to spread my wings and fly…

Crossfit Pacific Coast has been the most influential place for my life ever since walking through the door almost three years ago. I started as a quiet 17 year old, needing my mom to sign the contract to become a member of the gym. I am extremely fortunate to have been accepted into the community and treated with immeasurable love and support during my time here. Now, three years later, I bid you all farewell as I leave as so much more. With my head held high, I will conquer all challenges and take the next steps on my life-long journey… And I have my family at Crossfit to thank for everything.

The gym and the community that has grown immensely ever since the beginning became my escape from school, life, overthinking, and difficult emotions. It has been my second home and somewhere that I could always come and find people I care about, no matter the time or day. It has been my joy and happiness, and sometimes has been my frustration and anger. But everything that I have gone through has been a lesson in one way or another, and there is nowhere else I would rather have learned than here. The lessons, memories and friendships are something that I will always carry close to my heart, no matter where I go. Part of everyone here has helped to form who I am today, and a part of each and every one of you will be carried with me wherever I go.

As I began my departure from Santa Barbara, I have been filled with a mixture of emotions. For so long I’ve been ready to run from SB as fast as my legs would take me. I was ready to flee from college and leave everything behind. But as graduation approached, I was finally becoming more socially involved in our community, beginning with the fun-filled trip to Mammoth (and I will always treasure those 12 hours being confined in a car with Brogre, Andre and Bowers!). For the longest time I had a bittersweet feeling toward the social events, not yet being 21 and therefore isolating myself from the fun. In February I was slowly tearing down that wall I had built up and opening up to deeper relationships. As I opened up and became more social, I was closer than I had ever been to a large community that I truly cared about. How could I leave this all behind? Good-byes have always been difficult for me, so it has been harder to dive deeper into friendships with the knowledge that I will be leaving soon. The great friendships that I have built here have come at the cost of emotional farewells, but every last bit has been worth it, and they are relationships that will last a lifetime. Graduation seemed to come all too soon as I made excuses to stay longer, dreading planning the next steps of my life and leaving behind the people who have loved and supported me from the very beginning. If only I could put you all in my pocket and take me everywhere I go.

The emotions have been difficult; sometimes it seemed like it would be so much easier to distance myself as I slowly faded away. But what is life without creating all of these lasting memories and making every moment worth it, going out with a bang?

Following graduation, with the real world knocking on the door, I had to find a way to make the transition easier. What came out of it is this: I have come to accept that life is a never-ending journey. Of course, the concept has been known to me for forever; but what my next step has been, is accepting that Crossfit Pacific Coast is not my destination. Whatever energy is within me is restless, and I know I am meant to be out exploring the world, learning knew things. I’ve observed that many people are happy to settle down into a steady job and regular routine, but my greatest fear is falling into that routine and becoming bored. I know that having a regular routine and living somewhere for a long period of time is a great way to build a community within the Crossfit world. For the past few years I have insisted to myself that crossfit is the only thing for me and I haven’t been very experimental with new activities. Many crossfitters join and plan to supplement their other athletic activities with crossfit, in order to improve the other activities. But it seems that many people soon leave those other things behind, focusing solely on crossfit – their weights, their numbers, the PRs. These are so important, but I have learned that I need some time to play and try new things. Finally, I have been able to give myself permission to explore the world in other ways. I will always be a Crossfitter, but I am not going to treat it as my main activity any longer. As I travel the world, maybe I will learn to salsa in Spain, cycle through France, snowboard in Austria, snorkel in Australia, or backpack in Peru…. I will always drop into crossfit gyms as I travel, but I don’t think that I will have the stable lifestyle to build an experience like the one I have here. The family I have here is irreplaceable and the experiences that came along with that will never be able to be repeated, which is part of what makes the community here so incredibly special and close to my heart. This gym is my home and I know that if I ever come back to visit, you will all be waiting here with open arms.

Not only has it been a growing experience, but it has been an incredible learning experience for me. I’ve learned that strength is infinitely more important than being skinny. I’ve trained myself to live a (mostly) paleo lifestyle, eating healthy and taking care of my body. My life has improved drastically with such a simple lifestyle evolution. I will admit that sometimes I will get on a high horse, lecturing others about the unhealthy lifestyle that they are living. But then again, that what makes this community so special – we all get it. Through a rigorous training of both mind and body, we have all learned how to stay healthy and be the happy and fit person we all want to be. We have all the tools we would ever need to live a satisfactory life. I have been shown that I have the power to keep my life under my control.

I have also learned lessons that have made me a much better athlete than I ever was in team sports. True, I joined crossfit because I missed the competition of sports and the coaching that went along with it. I have had to tame down my competitive personality and learn to listen to my body. The most important lesson is that the best competition is with yourself. Often, comparison to others can only lead to disappointment and vanity. However, competition with others can still be fun if you know your own limits and the other person is within your personal level of fitness.

I cannot stress enough how important crossfit has been for me. To say that it has been life-changing is a huge understatement. I walked into the gym telling Eric and Traver that I wanted to look like Kate Hudson – after all, we all want to “look better naked.” Soon my values evolved and I discovered that strength, endurance, and stamina are infinitely more important than being skinny. Minutes, seconds, and weights are so much more relevant than pounds and inches on a scale. Life satisfaction is about how you feel, not how you look. You and I have been given the tools to treat our bodies as temples, thanks to our amazing coaches. We have every ounce of self control and discipline that we need to become the healthy and happy people we want to be. All we need to do is take the first step and listen to our bodies. The greatest part of all is that we have the support of over 150 other members who know what we are going through and want a similar lifestyle. The mind is a powerful thing and I’ve learned that it can make you or break you, but you must learn to embrace the human imperfection and keep on your feet. It has been a difficult learning process for me, and a huge lesson. I am learning now to give myself permission to let go, relax and go with the flow. We all have to learn to stop punishing ourselves when we experience some of that imperfection that is in all of us, loving our flaws.

College is probably the greatest period of growth in one’s life. Of course my family will always be important to me, but the people of CPC have become so much more than my family. Those who knew me from the beginning have seen my drastic transformation process, and I am so happy that all of you have been a part of it. What is more meaningful to me is that you have all cared so much to notice and appreciate my growth. Words cannot begin to show my appreciation.

Though I have gone through ups and downs, which I have not always been good at hiding, I am grateful that everyone has always shown me love and support. And though my time at the gym has sometimes been sporadic, whether with short breaks between semesters or three months backpacking through Europe, I have always been welcomed back with open arms by all the familiar faces and many new ones.

As anyone can see, Crossfit is so much more than part of a fitness movement. The community penetrates deeply into every aspect of everyone’s lives.

From this point on, I am taking whatever life throws at me and making the most of it.

I would like to extend my eternal thank you to Eric and Traver, who made this community possible. And thank you to our other great coaches, Baker, KJ, Zach, Heather and Fielding. You all know how much you mean to me. I love you so much.

I would love to stay in touch and keep everyone updated on the new and exciting experiences in my life. Feel free to come visit and have an adventure!
savannah_wishart@yahoo.com

Love Always,
Savannah

Today’s Workout:
4 Rounds for Time
10 Deadlifts (225#/135#)
50 Double Unders

Mastery. Not to be confused with the Masters division. Mastery of CrossFit is something that is challenging to write about because it is an ever-evolving stage. Much like the martial arts most people who have been training and training consistently in CrossFit for over five years have a very solid grasp on all areas of the game and then realize that the real learning has just begun.

This is the stage you enter when your understanding begins to evolve and the idea of self-expression starts to take over. Stealing from the late, great Bruce Lee at this point of the journey you stop doing the techniques and start “expressing” the techniques.

My squat clean is started out as Andy Petranek’s squat clean, then it had a little bit of Becca Borawski and Jeremy Jones’s squat cleans mixed in with it. Cill added her touch to it, so did Zeb and Eric. Now it’s mine. Now it’s a combination of everything that the above people have taught me coupled with my own ideas of how it should be performed, coupled further with my own physicality. Now instead of trying to do a squat clean, I’m working on expressing myself through my own.

Sound hokie? Maybe so, but it’s what happens. Mastery of a movement includes not only understanding the basics of the movement but also understanding how to break down and instill those basics to someone else, understanding how those basics can be applied to other lifts, and finally, understanding how those basics get applied to outside sports and the human experience at large.

At this point you can pick out who’s lumbar region is weak, who’s over developed their chest, and who really needs to work on their mobility – all from how they bent down to pick up a box of juice at the grocery store.

In the gym, long gone are the days of five minute time drops on ten minute workouts, P.R’s over five or ten pounds, and radical physical changes. Mastery is where a CrossFitter spends his or her time wallowing in the beauty and elegance of the nuances of a movement, and in seeing the hidden message behind the programming of a workout. When performing a flawless snatch is far more rewarding than getting a 20 pound P.R with crappy form, you’ve moved out of adulthood.

At this stage of the game it’s time to delve into the deeper levels of human movement. Begin to study how movement effects the body, how movement or lack there of effects human health and the propensity for injury. You’ve put your time in, you’ve had your battles in the trenches – keep training, keep thinking, keep studying and applying what you’ve learned to your life.

The game doesn’t end here folks, as a matter of fact it’s just beginning. Keep enjoying the ride and the life that you’ve built around strength, health and wellness.

Today’s Workout:
Skill: rope climbs

Teams of 2-3
2 Rounds for Reps:
4 Min row for max calories
4 Min max rope climbs
4 Min wall climbs
*only one person works at a time and they must take their shoes off for wall climbs!

Gorgeous!

Welcome to adulthood. Yep, you’re now a full-fledged bad ass. Workouts that don’t involve some kind of body fluid being involuntarily emitted aren’t really considered workouts any more. You shit lightening (like a ginger!), eat nails, and have both a pain tolerance and an understanding of the human body that is far more evolved than your average bear.

By now you get it. You understand when to push, when to back off, the intricate balance between skill and strength, how important taking care of yourself is, and without a doubt there have been some shifts in your life.

At this stage your Fran time is still very important to you but the time has to be coupled with the integrity of your reps. Now you understand that a workout performed with missed reps isn’t really worth counting. Yes, you still want to be strong, still want to be fast, and still want to be awesome, but you have the secret knowledge that having great mobility, even better form and being violently protective of what you eat every day are the keys to the kingdom.

The gains will certainly still come, but they will be hard earned. Simply showing up and going through the movements is not going to take you anywhere any longer. The gains will most likely come on the workouts that involve more advanced movements such as muscle ups, handstand push ups, L-sits and the like.

This is a great time to take some stock of your game and really start attacking your weak areas. If double unders have been hit or miss, it’s time to spend time getting them to the point where you can do them blindfolded. If you can do them blindfolded, start to develop such an acute feel for the rope that you can speed it up and slow it down at will. 50 double unders for time will be one speed – max double unders in 50 seconds will be another one.

Working through your weaknesses during Open Gym hours or before and after workouts will continue to keep your mind active, your excitement levels high, as well as continuing your understanding of how everything ties together.

Now is a great time to get some outside coaching through seminars and certifications. Spend a few months focusing on Olympic Lifting, spend a few months focusing on gymnastics, dare I say it, spend a few months focusing on endurance running.

Additionally, really begin to be curious about human movement and outside sport. When you watch football, notice hip openings and closings, when you wrestle or play volleyball look for the connections between the movements that you do in your CrossFit gym and the movements of that sport. The big picture is getting bigger and even more connected.

By now, if you haven’t already, begin to share your knowledge. When it comes to explain a move in class to a small group, volunteer and see how you do. Nothing will sharpen your understanding of CrossFit like having to explain it in a clear and concise manner. If a stretch or warm up works well for you, pass that on. Remember that you got where you are via a lot of help from others and be eager to carry on that tradition.
Today’s Workout:

“Barbara”

5 Rounds For Time:
20 pullups
30 pushups
40 situps
50 squats
3 minutes rest between rounds

Yep, growth is coming!

Welcome to the fun part. Yes, you’re still getting sore, but not to where it feels like you actually might die during and after each workout. Now you know what all of the equipment and movements are called, have a really solid grasp of CrossFit’s 9 Fundamental Movements – dead lift, sumo deadlift high pull, clean, squat, front squat, overhead squat, press, push press, and the jerk.

By now you’ve also got a grasp of what midline stabilization is, what it means to both open and close your hip, where your posterior chain is and yes, most things you do for the rest of your life will now be “for time”. You know that spreading chalk all over the gym is for newbs and you probably have a hard time having a conversation that doesn’t involve talking about some aspect of your fitness or diet.

This is the fun part because as the title says, you’re about to really take off. It’s not until the basics are mastered that the real joy of adding weight, dropping workout times, and the subsequent physical changes in your body really begin to happen.

In this stage you’re going to see massive increases in the weights that you’re using, you may cut workout times literally in half, and instead of fearing the gym, it has now become a place that you look forward to going. You’ve got friends that are as interested in health, fitness, nutrition, and the ridiculous as you are and life is good.

You may start to be interested in competition and seeing where your real potential lies at this point – go for it! Competition is a great way to see where your strengths and weaknesses lie as well as a fantastic way to continue to live outside of your comfort zone.

Continue to focus on the basics here. Master them. Understand them on as many levels as you can and begin to see how each movement affects another. Start to see that an overhead squat is how you come out of a snatch, a deadlift is how you start a clean, and a front squat is how your finish one. By beginning to connect the dots between movements you’ll start to see the beauty behind the bigger picture.

If you haven’t already, this is the stage to really begin to play with your diet. You know what we’ve taught you about Paleo and the Zone, but now you’ll have the honest feedback from your workouts to analyze the results from personal dietary experimentation. You are now your own personal guinea pig.

Keep educating yourself, pushing your training, and focusing heavily on stretching, yoga, and mobility. The increased demand that you’re now placing on your system needs to be coupled with adequate rest, recovery, and support from some kind of healing modality such as acupuncture, chiropractic, and massage.

Ride this wave for as long as you can, it’s a beautiful time to be a CrossFitter!

Today’s Workout:
Skill Work:
Inverted Hang
Front Lever
Back Lever

15 – 12 – 9

Overhead Squats (95#/65#)
Burpees

Step 1.

Ok, you’ve done it. You bit the bullet, swallowed your fear, ignored the ignorant detractors, and took a leap of fitness faith. You’re now a fledgling CrossFitter full of trepidation and excitement.

If you’ve joined a gym worth its salt, you’ve now taken what is probably the greatest step towards increasing your overall fitness levels, strength, cardiovascular endurance, health, nutritional education, sense of community, and zombie apocalypse preparedness.

You’re probably terrified every time that you step foot in the gym, have to make deals with yourself about just getting in the car and driving there (We do know of people that drive up, park, and then drive home. cough…Hannah….cough….Parrish), spend most of your time praying that you don’t have a bowel movement right in the middle of the workout, and are pretty sure that everyone in the gym is some kind of genetic freak and you are not.

Worry not little camper, all of the “genetic freaks” once stood in your shoes, Eric and myself included. Now is the time to forget everything that you’ve been taught about exercise and start to listen.

Listen carefully to your coach and remember that form is always far more important than strength. If you’re bringing your ego in with you instead of leaving it in the car (you can always pick it back up there), it’s most likely the thing that’s going to get you hurt.

Make learning the form, learning it properly, and getting to know your teammates your number one priority. The better your form is the faster you will improve and the less chance that there is to get injured. The better you get to know your teammates the more incentive you will have to continue training on the days when you don’t want to. Trust us on this one – your team is everything.

Begin suckling on the CrossFit teet of knowledge by getting very well acquainted with the CrossFit Journal, Kelly Starrett’s Mobility Website, as well as learning the requisite nomenclature. It’s hard to think about a push press if you don’t know what one is.

Begin to educate yourself as best you can in all things health and fitness. Those genetic freaks that you see eat differently than you, they move differently than you, and they think differently than you do, all because the know differently than you do. The reason they do is because they’ve spent hours and hours educating themselves and burning that education into their tissue through trial and error. They KNOW what they can do because they’ve tried and failed over and over –  just like you are about to do.

For the first three or four months your job is to show up with an open mind, without an ego, try your hardest, and don’t quit. Enjoy how ridiculous everything is from the shitty music to the Top Gun themed workouts. Enjoy the freeze tag, the handstands, and if we haven’t said it enough, the people that have chosen to be with you on this wild and crazy journey.

Today’s Workout:
Push Press:
2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2
1 Minute Between Set

4 x 40o M Run @ 80-85% Effort
1 minute rest between runs, goal is to stay within 5 seconds on each 400 run.

Fitness hell.

Unlike the martial arts with its belts and sashes, CrossFit has no formal ranking system. I don’t believe in advocating one but do believe that one of the benefits of the belt system is the relative comfort that it give by setting certain expectations. All of the blue belts know that they’re most likely going to be getting beaten by the purple, brown, and black belts and don’t fret when such happens.

In CrossFit we’re all left to wonder where we stand at any given time. Due to the varied athletic backgrounds that people bring to CrossFit, someone with only two weeks of CrossFit experience but a national ranking to his/her Olympic lifting pedigree will be leaps and bounds ahead of someone who’s athletic career is highlighted by winning the latest game of kickball (no offense kickballers).

This week we’re going to break down the five stages of CrossFit, the five stages that we as coaches find people in at any given time, but can identify – PreCrossFit, Infancy, Adolescent Growth Spurt, Adulthood, and Mastery. Each stage has its own benefits and challenges, each different than the rest. We’re going to break each one down per day this week in hopes that this gives some comfort for those who are struggling as well as showing you the light at the end of the tunnel. Please feel free to add any advice or experiences that you’ve had in each area. Our goal with this week’s post is to provide a roadmap everyone to be able to utilize, especially people who are new to the sport.

PRECROSSFIT:

In the PreCF stage, you probably find yourself caught in a hellacious cycle, wallowing in mediocrity at your local gym, thinking curls and bench presses are “working out”, cut-off jean shorts and spray tans are normal, and concentrating on nutrition is for sick people and hippies. (Bowers loves hippies by the way.)

The PreCF stage can last for an indefinite period of time as moving out of it involves stepping outside of your comfort zone and that’s not going to happen while you can be surrounded by televisions, mirrors and the cast of Jersey Shore for a mere $24 a month.

Hell, at this stage you can’t even drop weights or make anything louder than a perfunctory grunt under your breath or the “trainer” (there are great trainers out there, I’ve only met a few of them unfortunately) next to you is going to have to put down his/her latte (as well as their clients), stop pretending to give a shit about what his client is chatting endlessly about and ask you to follow the rules of the facility. The rules are there for a reason, grunting is a sign of effort. (see next paragraph for the dangers of effort)

Here you really, really hope and pray that your body somehow changes; your weightlifting numbers go up, your bodyweight comes down, and your life gets better – without any added effort on your part. “Effort” is the equivalent of strapping yourself headfirst to a bullet train bound for Bulkyville, so that’s for sure not going to happen.

The concept of teamwork is as foreign to you as being next to someone of the opposite sex in a gym and not feeling the need to either hit on them or worried about being hit on by them. You are completely reliant upon yourself for your workout programming, creativity (or lack there of), and self motivation. You’re on your own for just about everything. (Unless some jackass wants to come and give you unsolicited pointers.)

Hopefully your level of personal dissatisfaction coupled with your connection to a CrossFitter via Facebook starts to shine a little bit of light onto what is actually possible. It’s time to pick up the phone.

Today’s Workout:

“Elizabeth”
21 – 15 – 9
Squat Cleans (135#/95#)
Ring Dips

Dear Augie,

Summer’s coming and like the guys in the gym I’m going to be out running by the beach a lot. Unfortunately for me though, I can’t find a sports bra that works well and this cuts down on my enjoyment of outdoor running.

Since you have a lot of post graduate education, a knack for engineering and an affinity for the subject, do you think you could describe your design for the perfect sports bra? Any diagrams that you want to include would be helpful.

Thanks!

The Ladies of CPC

——————————

Hmmm. As much as I appreciate ‘Dear Augie’ questions for me to answer, I cannot fathom any one of the perceptive, sophisticated, intelligent ladies of CPC asking me for sophomoric advice of which I know so little…having said that, far be it from me to sort or qualify the questions that come in and since it was asked it is my faithful blog duty to at least opine to the best of my abilities…

I have to admit that I am no expert in functional bra design nor, have I spent much time pondering the significance and utility of the outer husk compared to the amount of energy, time (measured on an epochal scale) and some would say fanatical focus I have spent on the inner core.

Yet, what I lack experience-wise in women’s undergarment engineering, materials science, the physical interaction of elasticity and mass, surface roughness compatibility, mechanical wave guide propagation, the deft ability to negotiate the backward facing clasp one handed. (An arcane and mystical art handed down from one women to another and a faculty never to be truly mastered by any man) or even the tiniest mote of understanding of women in their holistic totality except for a basic ham-handed, adolescent tactile effort with any bit within my span of control, I make up for with sincere and abject enthusiasm for the subject.

So, in for a penny, in for a pound!

Scientific solutions for mechanical problems such as mentioned above, correlate through the prismatic personal experience base of the person trying to solve it…the reason behind double-blind experimentation is the desire to take personal filtering mechanisms out of the equation and come up with results free of humanistic bias. As I lack the scientific ability to perform basic experimentation on this particular topic bereft of my personal inclinations, we will simply have to make due with the fact that there are two basic subunits and we will run process development on both concurrently.

Protection: As I am not a woman, I cannot imagine units of unsupported, highly enervated mass attached to my chest in a way that demands a modified center of gravity and attention to the challenges of supporting and protecting those incredibly wonderful components. About my only experience in regards to actually internalizing and relating to the criticality of the protection component can be summed up when my second son was 15 months old and sleeping on my chest on a Saturday afternoon in our quiet San Diego bedroom while dust motes danced in the sunbeams filtering through the curtains. (For you veteran blog readers, this tale may sound familiar but remains quite germane to today’s topic) In one moment, I felt a pain in my jaw like no other and it radiated down my shoulder though my arm with such and intensity, that I knew I was having a massive myocardial infarction. Through the blinding pain, I looked down at my beautiful son as staccato images of him growing up and the life we would have shared flashed through my mind. I knew this might be the last moment on earth that I could share with him and as I lovingly looked down, I noticed that with those two serrated beaver teeth, the bastard had latched on to my left nipple. A supernova broiling the flesh off my bones would have been less painful than the spawn of my loins clamped down with those fishing plier wire snip teeth so I have a fair sensitivity to at least that component of bra design…that it not include any type of mechanical component that could cause a grade-school paper cutter scissoring effect. Brrrrrr.

Performance: This one is tricky. While one might desire compression to a. Bring the center of mass inward and b. Reduce the wave propagation effect of rhythmic mechanical movement, this must be balanced against the entirely opposite positive effect of c. driving men insane with your epiphanic femininity. Testament to the latter can be unequivocally proven by the fact that in Santa Barbara, one of the highest daylight accidents areas per vehicle interaction can be found in the two hundred yard stretch of frontage road bordering the East Beach Volley ball courts. It is here where humble scientists such as myself can find a wealth of data points for our research as monotonous as that data gathering can be. If men with my inclination were in charge of bra design, you could imagine that great care would be taken in designing a bra that matches the natural frequency of movement of both bits to the widest number of frequencies of external mechanical motion such that each propagated wave supports the next and builds over time. (A fine example of this complementary wave effect can be viewed on the attached – LINK

With proper design controls, men might be able to initiate a compounding propagated wave just by jumping up and down or perhaps rhythmically clapping or whistling…can you imagine the joy and elevated mood imparted in at at least half the world’s population if you could build this functionality into all future bra designs? Not to mention the salutary leg and lung strength developed by men around the world as we spent most of our lifetime singing and jumping rhythmically whenever we were breathing and in the vertical plane! Wars would be a thing of the past.

Comfort:

Imagine a material with the most diaphanous covalent bonds that conformed to every nuanced perfection of those enclosed heavenly globes. A material with the optical transparency of polished quartz glass and the tactile harmonics of a thousand butterflies taking wing at the same time. With heretofore unknown ease of usage that would allow even a common man such as myself to navigate the unfathomable opening process with one hand in a timely and cool fashion and combine that with a hickory smoked bacon flavor and you have what I might humbly consider, the perfect summer support device.

Alas, I simply do not have the diagrammatic capability to visualize this dream but suffice to say, this image lies waiting and ever hopeful within my higher cortical pathways that someone more capable than I, pushes the concept of this shoulder mounted, hemispherical, complementary wave propagating, bacon infused, multi globed, transport device toward it’s inevitable conclusion, a Nobel prize and the betterment of all mankind. Bless you for your efforts.

Reverently submitted, Augie

Today’s Workout:
Press 3-3-3-3-3

In 10 Minutes complete:
1,000 M Row
As many Wallballs (20#/14#) as possible in the remaining time.