News From The Box

Imperium CrossFit

Vol. 3, Issue 1

In This Issue

Editorial:

New Year, New Friends, New WODS

Athlete Spotlight

Page 4

Page 6

January Schedule

Page 5

Calendar of Events

Page 18

Tips From the Box: Burpees

Page 7

Photo Collage

Page 8-9

Why Barbells are better

than machines

Page 10-12

Babies, Puppies, and Rings

Page 13

Endurance & LIFT

Page 14

Advocare Challenge

Page 16

New Year Promotions

Page 17

News From The Box Page 4

New Year, New Friends, New WODs

by Katie Sowa

me rant about hating life while I

spent countless hours in a library

studying for a Board exam, you

people have been great to me.

2015 is going to be the best year

ever. Not only for me, but also for

you. I will finally (hopefully) graduate

and earn that DDS this May. I’ll be

able to focus more time on actually

completing WODs at RX. And

MAYBE you won’t have to wait an

entire year for another newsletter.

All of us should look forward to the

new WODs, including the dreaded

repeated Open WODs. And of

course, building new relationships

with those who you maybe never talk

to.

This year I challenge you to make it

your best year ever. Work a little

harder during every WOD. Make a

New Friend. Do some double unders.

Maybe try a pull-up without a band.

Whatever your goals may be, know

that everybody at Imperium has your

back.

Happy New Year!

2014 was hands down one of the

worst years of my 28 years of

existence. Prime example is the

last time I made a newsletter for

the box was early December

2013. This year was a giant test

of my willpower, strength, and

determination.

Most of you reading this know

my story and have experienced

many of the ups and downs of

dental school with me, both

directly and indirectly. I wrote a

really fun CrossFit rant on my

blog this summer that tells a

little bit more about my

experiences with CrossFit. You’re

probably already bored reading

this, so here’s the link to that.

2014 consisted of illness, defeat,

heartache, and failure. With

every bad day, I woke up the

next morning determined to

make that day better than the

last. My biggest challenge was

fitting CrossFit into my hectic

clinic schedule. There were

weeks at a time I missed out on

seeing Tony’s smiling face, or

experiencing Phil’s “Pick up that

bar, Katie”. There were times

where I hated showing up to

CrossFit because I knew I had

lost strength. I even started yoga

again because I was tired of

feeling like a loser at CrossFit.

Eventually I came up with a plan

that involved CrossFitting at

5:15am. Have you ever been to a

5:15am WOD??? You probably

should. Working out that early is a

whole new ballgame compared to

the evening. You rarely talk to

people and you definitely don’t

1RM shit. The only person who is

really truly awake at 5:15am is

Ginny. However, working out at

5:15am gave me the chance to

meet new people and start my day

in a new routine. I missed out on my

evening friends, but sometimes I

felt less pressure to be “1st” in the

morning. And since I didn’t have

many people to talk to, I focused on

building my strength from my long

CrossFit breaks. I’m nowhere near

the level I was at a year ago, but I’m

confident 2015 will take me where I

want to be.

In order to prove I’m not a Negative

Nancy, there was plenty of good life

changes made in 2014 specifically

related to CrossFit. I became better

friends with people who I’ve known

at CrossFit for awhile. I was on a

winning Flip-cup team with Kristin

and Phil. I had many fun nights out

with CrossFit friends. I talked to

somebody for the first time in two

and half years and realized I’ve

been missing out on something

awesome. The friends I’ve made at

Imperium in the past year have

supported me in my life outside of

CrossFit. Whether it’s OJ guessing

how many days I have left until

graduation or Tom helping me with

a car problem or Ben listening to

January schedule

Wednesday, December 31st: 6:15 and 7:15pm classes CANCELLED

NO CLASSES THURSDAY, JANUARY 1

Friday January 2: 6:30am-7:30am– OPEN GYM

12:00pm-1:00pm– OPEN GYM

4:00pm-7:00pm– OPEN GYM

Saturday January 3: 8:00am– Endurance

9:00am– WOD

10:15am– WOD

Starting Monday Jan 5..

Monday & Wednesday

5:15am

6:00am

12:00pm

4:15pm

5:00pm– LIFT

5:15pm

6:15pm

7:15pm

7:15pm– FundamenTOOLS

Tuesday & Thursday

6:00am

12:00pm (*not Thursday)

5:15pm

6:00pm– Endurance

6:15pm

7:15pm

Friday (OPEN GYM)

6:30am

12:00pm-1:00pm

4:00pm-7:00pm

Saturday

9:00am & 10:15am

News From The Box Page 6

Athlete Spotlight: Chris Belcher

day men/women doing their absolute best.

6. What is your advice for a beginner to CrossFit?

Don’t be afraid to ask questions if you don't know what is going on. There is absolutely no reason to be ashamed of anything. Especially if it can cause injury. If you

are at a gym that doesn't encourage this type of behavior, then leave immediately and find another place. (Imperium is pretty great!)

7. Do you have any embarassing/funny/interesting stories to share?

Falling on my butt when attempting to lift weights is always embarrassing. I’m a big nerd so I’m sure that I’ve done really embarrassing things and didn’t notice. I’m sure if you ask people I’m around often enough they’d have plenty to say about that.◊

1. How did you hear about CrossFit?

I have a couple of friends doing it at other gyms, and I needed something challenging to do. I already had experience with many of the lifts so I felt it would fit me fairly well.

2. How has CrossFit changed your life?

Well it made me realize just how out of shape I am, and how much my body and mind can actually handle. Every workout is a new challenge that my body and mind do their best to make me quit. Pushing through that helps me out both physically and mentally. That, and the obvious improvements in my health (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc)

3. What are some of the goals you have achieved? What are your new goals?

The biggest thing I’ve achieved is becoming happy with myself and my self image again. At first I was shooting for a

weight loss number, but I figured quickly that the number isn’t everything. Getting compliments from people, especially at the gym, and feeling great are the best. As far as new goals, I’m not really sure. I suppose competing in an un-scaled crossfit event would be a great challenge to work towards.

4. What's your favorite part of working out at Imperium?

The group of people I work out with. Everyone is very helpful and, most importantly, encouraging. We all have limitations, but it makes it infinitely better to work through when you share the misery with others.

5. Why did you start getting involved with competitions? Will you do more?

Initially I went to a more powerlifting-oriented competition just for fun. It really put some things in perspective. There are always people present that are incredibly stronger than myself, but there are also people at my level which is very encouraging. The other competitions were either to help out a friend when someone else had to back out or for charitable purposes. I do intend on doing additional competitions. I really enjoy the “intermediate” level competitions because I feel I am at about that level of ability. Plus the events aren't as serious. It’s not as if we are competing for sponsors or lifting for a living. It’s just every

Page 7 Volume 3, Issue 1

Burpees make everything burn: Your muscles, your lungs, and most importantly, a ton of calories. The exercise -- which entails going from pushup position to a jump and back to a pushup position again -- is so tough that performing about 10 fast-paced reps is just as effective at revving your metabolism as a 30-second all-out sprint, according to a recent study published by the American

College of Sports Medicine.

In the study, researchers enlisted ROTC cadets for something called the Wingate Anaerobic Power Test: a 30-second sprint with 4 minutes of rest in between for 4 rounds. Some cadets performed 30 seconds of sprinting on a stationary bike while the others did 30 seconds of burpees as quick-ly as possible. The result: Both high-intensity exercises resulted in serious metabolic and cardiovas-

cular spikes.

But here’s the difference: "Pedaling on a stationary bike is a relatively simple motor pattern, whereas the burpee involves some degree of agility, balance, coordination, and total body strength” thanks to the exercise’s multiple steps, says lead researcher Nicholas H. Gist, Ph.D., dep-uty director of the Department of Physical Education at the U.S. Military Academy. And since the burpee is a total-body exercise, you feel the muscle-building benefits from head to toe, instead

of just in your legs and lungs. ◊

Tips From The Box: Why Burpees Are The Exercise That

Seriously Cranks Up Your Metabolism

by Kelsey Cannon

Reprinted from: http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/training-day/201412/why-burpees-are-exercise-seriously-cranks-your-metabolism

News From The Box Page 8

News From The Box Page 9

News From The Box Page 10

direction: straight up. Your body balances over the middle of your feet when you take an even stance, like we use to lift heavy loads. This means that the most efficient way to lift a load is as close to your body – and therefore as close to the middle of your feet – as possible, in a straight vertical line upward. Barbells permit this better than oddly-shaped objects, like

lawnmowers.

Keeping the weight close to the body is the normal way to handle any load you work with. You already do it this way without thinking about it. For instance, pay attention the next time you pick up something heavy from the floor. You stood as close to it as you could before you lifted it, because your experience has taught you that the closer the load is to your feet, the easier it is to lift. Chances are that when you’ve gotten hurt handling your lawnmower, it happened because the weight was not close

enough to your center of balance.

The increased use of various types of benches altered the basic nature of barbell training, and this enabled the bench press to replace the standing press as the basic upper-body exercise in the gym. Benches allow the center of balance to be moved to your back or your butt, and this is how the bench press or any seated barbell exercise works. But otherwise, the default position in barbell training should be standing with the load, both feet

evenly spaced under the weight.

When a man walks into a gym, he may be confused about where to spend his time — in the section full of gleaming, easy-to-figure-out machines, or over by the barbells, where he might be more intimidated both by how to use them, and the kind of guys who are gathered

there.

Let’s just clear it up right here: barbell training is the best way to train for strength. Bar none. Nothing else even comes close to the effectiveness of barbell squats, presses, deadlifts, and the Olympic lifts for the development of strength, power, and muscular size. The reason barbells are so very valuable is that they are the most ergonomically-friendly load-handling tool in existence – they allow very heavy weights to be gripped in the hands and moved directly over the center of the foot. Their extremely adjustable nature allows small increases in stress to be applied to the whole body over the full range of motion of all your major leverage systems; these small increases accumulate into amazing gains in size and strength for many

uninterrupted years of progress.

A long time ago, gyms were equipped with barbells. And that was pretty much what you went to a gym to use – a steel bar and iron plates that were added to increase the weight. If you used them while standing with both feet on the ground, a natural position for a bipedal creature such as yourself, there were a limited number of exercises that you could do. You

could put the bar on your back or shoulders, squat down, and stand back up. You could put it in your hands and press it up overhead. Or you could put it on the floor and pick it up. But these simple approaches worked very well, because they utilized the normal functions of all

the joints and muscles in the body.

Fighting Gravity: Why Barbell

Training Works

Standing barbell training can be summarized very succinctly: moving your body’s mass and a weighted barbell in a vertical line over your center of balance – the middle of the feet. The effectiveness of this movement is due to gravity. Amazingly enough, gravity always works in one direction: straight down. So the way you always work against gravity is also only one

Why Barbells are better than machines

by Mark Rippetoe

Reprinted from: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/09/05/why-barbells-are-better-than-machines/

Page 11 Volume 2, Issue 3

The barbell offers a way to load the body’s normal movement patterns with progressively heavier weights, a process that essentially forces the body to get stronger whether it wants to or not. After all, if you start with an empty 45-pound barbell laying on the floor and add just 5 pounds to it every week, in 6 months you’re deadlifting 175 pounds. In a year, you’re up to 305. And almost nobody starts with only 45 pounds – your mom is stronger than that from having picked your ungrateful

ass up off the floor all those years.

Barbell training is simple, logical, effective, inexpensive, and most importantly, proven. It has worked in its current form for decades for millions of people, and it has formed the successful strength training foundation for athletes since the early 20th century. So why is it that modern gyms are loaded with machines rather than

just barbells and weights?

A New Business Is Born

An alternative to this perfectly logical approach to getting stronger was developed from some odds and ends that were floating around in gyms owned by guys who could weld: exercise machines that worked a few isolated muscles at a time. Simple versions have been in use for decades, and old photos of leg extension and leg curl machines can be found in magazines from the

50s and 60s.

In the middle 1970s, Arthur Jones began marketing his line of Nautilus machines to health clubs, sports teams, high schools, colleges and universities, and everybody else on the planet. Within a couple of

years, he’d sold about $300 quadrillion dollars worth of the beautifully welded, beautifully designed electric-blue machines, 12 pieces at a time. Nautilus revolutionized the health club industry, establishing the concept of the modern gym, like the one you’re probably a member of with sales offices in the front, a huge roomful of shiny machines in the back, and several employees roaming the

floor.

The Nautilus circuit consisted of 12 different exercises, each performed one after another in a specific order, one set to failure. It destroyed you. Thrashed you. Fried/barbequed/blasted/obliterated/murdered you. The Nautilus circuit humbled even the most arrogant former high school athlete, because working a small group of muscles at the edge of its capacity is difficult and uncomfortable. However, it did not make anybody stronger on anything besides Nautilus machines, where it worked for about 6 weeks. For someone who has not been training, anything works for about 6 weeks, because for novices who are unadapted to any physical work,anything will drive an adaptation and make you

stronger. For about 6 weeks.

From a business standpoint, Nautilus was easy to understand, easy to administer, and easy to coach, because the machines only moved one way. That’s why the Nautilus-club model was so successful: it was based on sales, not training or exercise. A gym could now hire anybody that looked the part to work the floor in a machine-based club, because it took about 35

minutes to learn how to “coach” all the exercises. Since there are no variations, there was nothing to learn except how to adjust the seat height. Then, sales staff development can be where you spend your money. From a management perspective, this

makes perfect sense.

The machine-based club model also gave birth to a new approach in the rapidly expanding physical education market at the university level. Since PE graduates had to work somewhere, and health clubs were springing up all over, the machine-based approach to exercise was quietly embraced by the academic community too. The growth of an entire body of peer-reviewed journal-published literature has been largely based on the use of exercise machines as the instruments with which we investigate the human body’s response to physical

stress.

So, an interesting situation has been created over the past couple of decades, in that more people than ever in history are actively performing regular exercise, but the overwhelming majority are doing it ineffectively. Machine-based exercise does not work very well, and it’s important to understand

why.

Why Machines Don’t Work

If it seems counter-intuitive that something physically hard enough to make you puke lacks the capacity to make you much stronger, reflect for a moment upon the definition of strength –

News From The Box Page 12

Cont’d from p. 11

force produced against an external resistance. Strength is the most general physical adaptation, in that it has a positive effect on all other physical attributes. When one is “strong” one’s entire body is strong, not just one’s quadriceps, or

biceps, or triceps.

Machines have never formed the basis of the competitive strength athlete’s program, because they lack the barbell’s capacity for long-term progress: you cannot increase the weight on a leg extension for years, like you can a deadlift, because muscles do not normally work in isolation from all the other muscles in the area. They work as a system of motors that operate the levers of the whole skeleton, which moves the loads we encounter when we use our bodies every day. Machines use only one or two levers at a time, while the deadlift uses all of them. And all of them working together can move more weight

than one or two of them in isolation.

Since your body as a whole can move heavier loads than individual muscles, strength training using barbells applies much more stress to the system — in a good way — than a machine which is only working one isolated muscle group at a time. Working an isolated muscle group to failure certainly has the capacity to produce physical discomfort, but since its ability to

produce force is limited by the mass of the working muscle, so is its capacity to increase strength. Deadlifts, squats, and presses therefore have the capacity to stress more muscle mass and produce a greater strength adaptation than

isolation exercises.

Some machines, as discussed earlier, select a few muscles at a time that operate one or two joints. It’s easy to see the problem with these: they don’t work enough muscle mass to

cause enough overall stress to make anything change. You can work them hard enough to feel like hell while you’re on them, but they just don’t make you stronger for anything except that exercise. There is more to useful strength than the motion around one joint. Bottom line is that squats make you strong and leg

extensions do not.

Our food is made to ordered

and delivered to Imperium a few

times week. Each meal plan

includes a fixed menu. Please

email for pricing options for meal

plans: info@elitefingmeals.com

The F

UN

Imperiu

m N

ew

s Everybody loves happy stories. This year, we’ve had lots of happy

stories with our members at

the Box.

Last January, OJ proposed

to Niki at the box (of course

because that’s where they

met).

OJ and Niki

also adopted

a new puppy,

Sampson, to

hang with their

already sweet Tucker.

Tony and Mared gained a new family

member as well with this cute puppy,

Rascal. He’s so cute, he even makes Clanton look good in this picture.

Babies were also in season this year. Todd and Ashlee had their sweet

baby girl, Emory earlier this year. Marc and Julie became first-time

parents this Fall to baby girl Charlotte. Liz and Jon welcomed baby

boy Noah in this world just about a month ago. Shoutout to all the

mommas coming back to CrossFit post-baby.

(babies not pictured..because I didn’t even get permission for the other pictures…)

Babies, Puppies, and Rings

Volume 2, Issue 3

CrossFit Endurance is an endurance sports training program dedicated to improving performance, fitness and endurance sports potential. We inspire, coach, and provide our community with the most aggressive and proven fundamentals of sports science, exercise physiology, nutrition, and athletic training protocols. We are the leaders in strength and conditioning for endurance athletes. We are guiding athletes, educating coaches and providing premier content to the endurance communities with tremendous success. Our passion is endurance sports. Our goal is to show a path that has not been illuminated. Our training principles work. We are not for everyone, only for those who want to have a home in which they can grow both mentally and physically as an athlete to

realize their chosen potential.

Power and speed are critical components to success in the endurance world. With careful planning, our strength and conditioning plan increases these two mainstays of performance while decreasing recovery time, reducing injury, promoting preservation of lean tissue and creating a more sustainable performance

curve.

We focus on eliminating unnecessary volume of training while increasing intensity. Our programming is structured, sport-specific and seamlessly integrated with Olympic lifts, powerlifting, gymnastics movements, explosive activity and mobility-based support. Everything we do focuses on midline stabilization and working from the inside

out.

Our strength and conditioning approach for endurance athletes is unparalleled. We incorporate the CrossFit fundamentals of being constantly varied. Repetition is the enemy and results in a

decreased ability to build fitness.

Make no doubt, our program is not easy, but we believe the journey is part of making the results more rewarding. Our design is to maximize you as

an athlete and to elevate your fitness.

Our commitment to you is that we will coach, inspire, lead and educate with care, sincerity and a relentless motivation to finally get you where you

want to go! ◊

CrossFit Endurance is every Tuesday & Thursday at

6pm and Saturday at 8am with Edmar!

Page 14

Try CrossFit Endurance

Like Us on

Facebook!

News From The Box Page 16

In need of a Nutrition Challenge?

Join us for an Advocare 24 day challenge beginning on

January 7th to start the new year off right! It’s never too

early to get ready for bikini season.

Go All-In with AdvoCare!

IMPERIUM CrossFit will be kicking off our 24day Challenge in

concert with the Nation Wide Challenge lead by AdvoCare. We

are also extending our “20% Members Only” discount to

everyone who pre-orders their 24day Challenge kit with

IMPERIUM CrossFit. To receive this discount and special offer, all

orders MUST be placed before December 31st, 2014. Orders can

be placed by contacting Tony Orozco at 713-591-6966, by

emailing tony@imperiumcrossfit.com or by clicking HERE

24day Challenge Kit - $175.00

As part of this Nation Wide Challenge, you will receive access to

the New 24day Challenge Mobile App, daily updates, reminders,

recipes and shopping list! Don’t miss-out on this life changing

challenge!

News From The Box Page 17

New Year, New Promos

-4 month UNLIMITED CrossFit classes for $139 per month

-4 month 3x per week CrossFit classes for $99 per month

***Please ask about our new contract pricing options starting in

the new year****

Competition, etc Update

Congrats to Jared for competing a Spartan Race!

Tony and Chris competed in a power lifting compe-

tition recently and did AWESOME!

Marty and Chris competed in the Clutch Classic in

early December and rocked.

If you’re interested in competing, please see Coach

Marnie.

2015 Open starts February 26! Registration

begins January 15 at games.crossfit.com

INSIDE THE BOX. OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE.

January 2015

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1 NO

CLASS

2 3

4 5 6 7 24-day chal-

lenge begins

8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Community

WOD

18 Half-marathon

and marathon

19 MLK

Day

20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31

News

from

the box January ‘15

1718 W. 23rd St Unit B. Houston, Texas 77008

© Imperium CrossFit

1718 W. 23rd St Unit B.Houston, Texas 77008

(713) 591-6966

www.imperiumcrossfit.com

tony@imperiumcrossfit.com

Newsletter Credits:

Creative Director: Contributors:

Katie Sowa Tony Orozco

Marnie Ischay Chris Belcher

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