Camp for Wodders, Day 1

7:00AM – Amazing scrambled egg + pulled pork breakfast courtesy of Paleo Nick.

8:30AM – Warm-up led by the one and only Dave Durante (Olympian and world class Gymnast)! A few cool stretches and movements you don’t normally see.

9:00AM – Straight into a Snatch session with Chad + Jodi Vaughn, Mike Cerbus and Jessica Salvaggio. Chad starts pouring on the knowledge and claims that Mike always has to tell him to shut up (but the rest of us could listen all day). We hit some more stretching to get our squat mobility and work on relaxing in the bottom position - not sure that I ever got to the relaxing part, but all of their pointers got me closer than I have ever been!

Worked pause squats with an elevated heel (those suck!) in which some of us discovered a true high bar back squat (are you doing yours correctly?), overhead squats and then moved on to some transition work. Side note – Jessica is unbelievably fast! Blink and you will miss it.

In the midst of all that, found out that my ankle mobility so poor that it borders on hilarious to these guys, or maybe it was just all the pain I was in. “Good” pain, I am told.

11:10AM – Move into Mobility session with Sadie Wilhemi. She is awesome. And ridiculously flexible/mobile. Would probably try to drop in on this session more this week if all of the sessions were not equally as good.

Although the class was entitled Mobility, I actually left feeling my muscles more than before! Maybe it was just the fact that we stretched things I had never even thought of stretching. Either way, I definitely need to start doing some flexibility training… or just integrating some of the great techniques she showed us on a daily basis.

Sadie also showed off one use of the Power Monkey Stall Bars and I can’t lie – they were a ton of fun and a great stretching tool.

Have to throw Sadie one more bit of love – she is amazing! And very humble. Have to respect an aerial performer on the level of Cirque du Soleil!

1:15PM – EAT! Paleo Nick knocks it out. Afterward, we sit on the deck and wander around the gorgeous camp playing sand volleyball, basketball, hanging out by the lake and in general just enjoying ourselves.

3:00PM – Ring work with Ninja Sean Velas of CrossFit Gymnastics. Coached us through some progressions that made my first, second and third strict muscle-ups easy as Paleo pie!

We also hit the gymnastics kip / swing and saw many more people nail muscle-ups. Can’t beat a class where 3-4 people get their first muscle-up, whether it be strict or kipped.

Dude (Sean) then nonchalantly rolls into a Ball Up to an Inverted Hang to a Back Lever to a Front Lever. All with Bronchitis. Talk about some Beast Mode.

Finishes it off with an introduction the The Ring Thing for anyone that doesn’t have any sort of movement on rings. It is amazing for those athletes that don’t quite have it – whether that be dips, muscle-ups, front lever, back lever, iron cross, etc. Definitely check this sucker out if you need some help on rings.

5:00PM – Open Gym. You have the Vaughn team doing their workout alongside Wes Piatt, Nate Schrader, Jennifer Smith and Maddy Curley, all doing their own things. Or you could just play a little B-Ball if the rest of the work that day is wearing on you.

Today’s special analysis was for Handstands. Get coaching from Dave Durante and slo-mo video review so you can see everything and get excellent tips to improve.

7:00PM – Dinner from good ‘ol Paleo Nick. He is going to get a lot of shout-outs here. Gotta eat to lift!

Hung out a lot with Vaughn and Crew today. Always wondered what it was like on Mount Olympus…

Final thoughts – we have 3 more days of this? Un-freaking-believable.