beyond the whiteboard

Many people forget, or don’t know, that the Girl Workouts are named alphabetically, like hurricanes, and are the classic Benchmarks of Crossfit. Pictured above is the screen that was used to make the shirt.

Why Are The Benchmarks Named After Girls?

To quote Coach Glassman, “Anything that leaves you flat on your back and incapacitated only to lure you back for more at a later date.”

Why Are They The ABC’s of Fitness

They embody the idea of CrossFit. To quote Coach Glassman again, “If you are improving at these, you are becoming fitter.”

The Design and Shirt

Simple and to the point. Next to each workout is the amount of posts CrossFittters around the world have posted. Yup, over 20k for fran and 15k for Helen and Cindy. CrossFitters are awesome. We went with American Apparel 50/50 Poly-Cotton blend shirt.

These pieces are comprised of our distinct 50/50 Poly-Cotton blend. Unlike other Poly-Cotton t-shirts on the market, ours is made with combed cotton, giving it an ultra soft, worn in feel and superior drape. Even finer than traditional combed-cotton yarn, this ultra-comfortable fabric features remarkable recovery even after repeated washings. Slightly more opaque than our Sheer Jersey yet still lightweight, these shirts offer a versatile surface perfect for screen printing and embellishment. -American Apparel

Our t-shirt guy actually told us that no one gives these shirts out for free, but we reminded him how great our users are. The back of the shirt has our new logo and date. We put the date on the back because we will never print these shirts in the future, and want you guys to have exclusive gear. Look forward to meeting you guys.

He Already Won

As if there wasn’t enough drama, Jeremy Kinnick’s wife gave birth to their second baby boy today, days before Jeremy competes in the CrossFit Games this Friday. It was an eventful day to say the least. Jonathan and I roll down to Hollywood to grab the btwb giveway shirts. The shirts come out great and we decide to grab food down on Olivera Street. Right before our food is ready Jon says, “Oh crap the baby is on it’s way.” I get up and tell our waitress, “We are going to have to get the food to go. My friend’s wife is about to have a baby.” The waitress thought I was talking about Jon. I was going to correct her, but didn’t want to derail her efficiency. Honestly, she was amazing and might effect my tipping for future servers. We fast and furious our way to the hospital, just in time to see Jeremy teary eyed. The picture above is him hugging his mother moments after his son was born. This moment helped put things into perspective. The Games are a HUGE deal. On a scale of 1 to 10, they are 42. In fact, they are plural. However, it doesn’t hold a candle to seeing the look on Jeremy’s face. I have no idea who will do well this weekend, but, in my opinion, Jeremy already won.

Series

About a month or two ago we decided to release a series on Jeremy for two main reasons. First, over the last three years he has recorded over 1200 results on the site, and is a perfect candidate for analysis. In fact, he is one of the few elite competitors who have their workout results detailed for 3 years. Second, he is unique for not being unique. He CrossFits and eats right. Jeremy feels like anyone can do it. In fact, that belief combined with his competitive fire is what keeps him working hard every day. Over the course of this series we’ll ask and answer tough questions. How did he make the games in 2009? Why didn’t he make the games in 2010? How did he rebound and make the games again in 2011? What can others learn from his experience? We think the series will be pretty amazing. For example, he has taken his Fran result from over 17 to mid 2 minutes.

Keep Up With The Series

If you want to keep up with the series, please follow the fan page on facebook or twitter account we made for him(It wasn’t easy but we convinced him to do it).

Feel free to contact me via twitter/@moe_naqvi or on our facebook fan page.

Our Booth (We are official sponsors)

We have decided to go with a different approach to usual convention booths. Instead of focusing around meeting prospective clients, we are hoping to meet as many of our amazing users as possible. We want to make a comfortable area for you guys to stop by and say hi. Once we verify you are a member you’ll get hooked up with our cool giveaway bag. Also, you’ll get a sneak peek into our new site design as well as some features we are working on.

2 Minute Challenge

We are going to have a LIVE Two Minute Challenge. If you can’t make it, you can participate at home.

• Repeat of a classic. Double Unders. The competition will begin Friday morning at 8 am and end Monday at midnight.
• If you can’t make it, participate at home. We will be recording and posting videos of people who compete at the tent.
• There will be prizes. At the minimum the top male and female athletes will get a pair of Again Faster Wooden Rings. Also, we will most likely buy stuff from different vendors during the games and add add to the prize pool.

A More Personal Feel

The first thing we decided to do is replace “beyond the whiteboard” with your Affiliate name. We assume you know what site you are on and don’t need to be reminded on every single page(the above picture has “CrossFit Kinnick”). Having your affiliate name(linked to the affiliate page) cleans up the user interface and gives a more personal feel to the site.

Navigation Made Simple

As we worked on features we realized the top navigation was getting a bit crowded. We grouped the navigation options into three categories: Log, Find, You. New features will easily be added to one of the top menus and will never cause design problems.

Don’t Panic

We aren’t changing everything on the site overnight. The new layout will have the same main section on every page. We will constantly make more videos and blogs anytime we are about to change a page.

The new logo embodies our next big step. Simple but not simpler. It conveys our mission, passion and commitment to the CrossFit community. From a Garage Gym in 2007 to 1.5 Million Results strong today. And this is only the beginning. Let’s Change The Game. Again.

You Never Forget The First

Since 2009, our logo has been based on a picture of Jeremy Kinnick doing an Overhead Squat during the 2009 So Cal Regionals, where he earned a qualifying spot at the 2009 CrossFit Games. Jeremy was with us in the garage in 2007 and has recorded over 1200 posts on our site. We thought this movement was fitting for our community, given that it is the most challenging of the squat variations (especially for Moe), and it is also the receiving position of a squat snatch.  As much as we are sad to be retiring this logo, we are really excited about the meaning and professionalism of the new logo.

As stated above, the new logo embodies our next big step. Simple but not simpler. The “b” is drawn with three progress bars, because our fundamental purpose is to help you track your progress. You are working out to get better, and we want you to be able to see that. The first progress bar is going “beyond” the box. This embodies our approach to building outside of the box technology for the CrossFit community. Also, there is a “w” in the logo. This respresents the whiteboard that we, as many other gyms, started at in 2007. Over the next few weeks, you will see all of our materials being updated with the new logo.  The blog was one of the first places the new logo was introduced.  Below you can download hi-res versions of our new logo to use on your own blog, website, or wherever else you might want to put it.

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JPG (29 KB) | PNG (w/ Transparency) (16 KB) – (1339 x 134)

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JPG (16 KB) | PNG (w/ Transparency) (8 KB) – (512 x 509)

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The Good

Beyond The Whiteboard is now “in the cloud”. What does that mean? Better performance. You should notice the site moving faster. Also, we can scale up the site with a click of a button now.

The Bad

We were down longer then we anticipated and are really sorry. Somewhere along the update process we messed up and had to rebuild the application environment and it took a long time.

The Ugly

If you posted something yesterday(anythign after 1 am), you might have to repost. We’re really sorry. Luckily, we backup the site everyday and were able to restore 99% of all posts. We have already started researching the problem and are confident nothing like this will ever happen again.

Sorry

We have amazing users and felt that being honest and upfront was the best approach. Hopefully the “Good” will be really good in the long run. This was not one of our “game changing” new features. However, those are going to start being released in the next week or so and will be great. Again, we are really sorry.

Our next mission is to not only build the greatest fitness tracking tool in the world, but to help you assess and strengthen your fitness weaknesses. We plan to release a game changing update every week or two for the next few months.

In 2008 we changed the way people organized their CrossFit workout histories. We quickly became the community’s largest workout log and have now recorded over 1.5 Million workout results. We are fortunate to have amazing users who appreciate our passion and commitment towards our services as well as our community. We get great feedback and usually respond to all our support questions quickly. We listened and have been hard at work over the last few months. In fact, our hardwork is a testament to the amazing support we get and want to thank everyone out there for their kind words. Especially all the Military affiliates.

With that said we have exciting news. We plan to release a game changing update every week or two for the next few months. Every new feature or update is driven by what we have learned over the past few years. When we started our goal was to offer an unmatched tracking service that would scale with it’s growth. After 1.5 Million results we learned a lot, and our new goal is to apply what we learned to help you achieve your fitness goals. This major shift in philosophy is a natural evolution of the site, and we are really excited. So hold on to your seats, the next few months should be a lot of fun!

Sneak Peek

1. Mobile Apps. Yes we have been making mobile apps and they are part of the update. We architected them so they could seamlessly connect to all your btwb data. Plus, we build some awesome features that should help fight your Angry Birds addiction. We will give regular updates as we put the finishing touches and are testing them.
2. Workout Creation and Posting. We really took this to a whole new level. It will be 100% easier to create and post for workouts. In fact, we are applying for a patent. Can’t give too much away just yet.
3. Goals. You guys have set a lot of goals. Some good, some bad, some really bad. We have a brand new approach that is going to help everyone not only set better goals, but achieve them. Here’s a hint, we are working with a firebreather. In fact, we have ramped up our Meals and Weigh Ins features with the same approach.
4. Site redesign. We obsessed over our design and have made big changes. It’s safe to say that every single page of the site is more usable and easier on the eyes. Don’t panic, you are not going to log in and be lost. We are going to release the design step by step and make sure to include videos, blogs and help text everywhere.
5. Unknown and Unknowable. We have some big surprises planned that we are trying to keep a tight lid on. Let’s see if we can. Hint: it’s awesome.

We are going to be blogging/tweeting/facebooking a lot to keep you guys up to date. Expect feature explanations and design thoughts all the time. Feel free to contact me via twitter/@moe_naqvi or on our facebook fan page.

In 2008 we(including you) changed the game. Let’s do it again. This time faster and with better form.

The CrossFit Regionals have been taking place around the world. As with all sports, there is some controversy. Many feel that AJ Moore was unfairly judged during one of the WODs when he got 60 reps called back during his kettlebell swings. I wasn’t there, I haven’t seen any videos and, like many people around the world, I have been reading eye witness accounts online. However, I think a lot of people are losing perspective.

Fans & Judging
From what I understand, people felt that other competitors were held to looser standards than AJ was. It seems like a lose/lose situation for the judge. Either the judge does her job correctly and is hated by fans or lowers the standard and sacrifices her character. I’m not sure if his swings were valid, but if they were not, I applaud her for being able to call back 60 reps with angry fans yelling at her. Again, I wasn’t there, but I heard people were extremely rude to her, which I find surprising and unsettling. I hate hearing fans say horrible things to players and refs during MLB or NBA games. I’ve always appreciated the class CrossFitters have shown during events and I’d hate to see it fade away as competitions become more intense. With that said, the responsibility falls on the shoulder of the head judge if other competitors were able to get away with bad form. Again, I wasn’t there so I can’t say wether the judging was unfair. However, from what I read it seems like AJ’s judge was holding up the correct standards and should not be thrown under the bus for it. Also, I read about someone having a video of AJ”s performance but electing to only show it to HQ to avoid a giant backlash. This is awesome, and great for the community. In fact, I’m not sure who this guy/girl is but the class they are showing should be commended.

Rich Froning
I’ve seen people use AJ’s other WOD finishes as an argument. Basically, there is no way he would finish is 30th if he placed 1st and 2nd on every other workout. But didn’t that happen in the Games last year? Rich Froning killed WOD after WOD but didn’t win the games because he couldn’t climb a rope. I mean no disrespect to Rich, in fact, I think he’s going to win the games this year, and started rooting for him to win last year. The same thing could have happened in this case also. I’m not saying it did, but want to point out that the argument of using previous WOD finishes are flawed.

The Reality Of Sport
Judging or refereeing is a vital part of every sport, and, at times, can be the reason someone gets an unfair advantage. For example, in the NBA there are some refs who are notorious for calling certain types of fouls or throwing guys out of the game early. However, it’s the reality of sport. There will always be bad calls, because, like the rest of us, judges are human. The best CrossFit can do is figure out the problem and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The Brighter Side
I didn’t know much about AJ Moore before this event, but I sure do know a lot about him now. From what I have read he is a stand up guy, beast athlete and is ready to be in the sequel for 300. I have no idea what CrossFit will do, but I don’t think they are obligated to let AJ go to the games. However, AJ has something that few competitors have, a following. He has thousands of people who stand behind him. Thousands who respect him for his hard work and admire him for his talents. I really hope he runs with it and ends up doing well in the future. I hope he can look back at this time and say that’s when the spotlight hit him and he was able to get to the next level. I’m a big AJ supporter now. I’ll become a fan on facebook, follow him on twitter and root for him when I can. In fact, we’ll give him a life time account on beyond the whiteboard and I’ll pay for his drink if we ever hang out.

Feel free to hit me up on Twitter or Facebook.

It’s time CrossFitters took advantage of Dynamic Inertia. Although the prescribed workout from the official site is six minutes, we opted for 2 minutes to avoid injuries(rhabdo etc). The Shake Weight helps you perform 240 muscle contraction repetitions per minute (4 per second). The workout will be judged for total reps, with a maximum of 480 reps.

Workout

-In the squat position hold the shake weight at chest level.
-The shake weight must be shaking.
-Video(s) must be included. We understand if some of you want to take video from different angles.

Post Total Reps (4 per second)

Video Guide

Make sure you angle the shake weight correctly to get the most benefit from the dynamic inertia movement. Just imagine you are aiming a giant hose (or any other metaphor that suits you) in front of your face. We are looking for FULL RANGE OF MOTION here. Below are some pictures to help.

Men

Women

We just passed the 100 results mark for the first CrossFit Open workout, and thought we would share some quick analysis. The bulk of results, around 26%, are between 4-4.9 rounds. Bobby Noyce, a solid beyond the whiteboard user and athlete at CrossFit 515, has the the top result with 8.5333 rounds (all the double unders and one power snatch in the last round). Bobby averaged a little over a minute for each round. I anticipate the top scores being very close, where a few reps will separate many ranks. In short, it’s going to be a fun week!

Remember to register and post your results on the CrossFit Games site. You can also register as a fan to view, judge and comment on results.