Little Asian man abuses displaced kid from New Jersey by forcing him to complete household chores from sun up to sun down for no pay so that he can spend his days of fishing. Ahhh – ”The Karate Kid”. Daniel-san washes and waxes cars, paints houses and fences and sands until he can’t lift his hand over his head. He gets so frustrated that he is ready to quit before Miyagi (with the help of some ancient Okinawan hand sorcery) demonstrates that what he’s been doing has built the foundation he needs to do more advanced things. Once he accepts this, he goes on to beat Johnny and the rest of the Cobra Kai and walks away with Ali who then proceeds to dump him after crashing his yellow car. But I digress.

As gym owners, we’ve drafted the equivalent of a corporate mission statement regarding programming and don’t want it to be as secret as what Miyagi’s ancestors brought back from China. At the highest level, these precepts dominate our philosophy:

  • Nutrition is the most important aspect of your health; strength is the most important aspect of your ability to increase work capacity across broad modal and time domains.
  • Improvements should be observable, measurable and repeatable.
  • Programming must work across a broad spectrum of athletes and abilities and include the ability to scale (both up and down)
  • Logistics matter – time, equipment and space constraints of class hour and programming cycles.
  • KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) – favor couplets & triplets.

These principles drive our programming cycles and the nature of those programming cycles evolve with our athletes. We are not programming the same exact things we were two years ago and today’s work is even more different than when we opened our doors. But the mission statement hasn’t changed. Think of today’s strength programming as Miyagi slave labor and Paul’s nutritional seminar as Okinawan voodoo. It works and it’s working.

When we are asked questions like “why don’t we do more Olympic lifting”, there are a range of responses but extending the Macchio-Morita metaphor works. Days in the hot sun working on Miyagi’s backyard love palace enabled Daniel-san to use the Crane technique to win the All-Valley Championship and drove Sensei Kreese to beat up high school kids. All of the strength and mobility work we prescribe provides that same sort of foundation. How much you can squat will directly affect how much you can squat clean. How much you press will affect how much you can jerk. Your mobility combines with strength and determines how much you can overhead squat. Before you know it, Rojas is wearing catcher’s gear and you put this all together for your Olympic lifts.

We are honored that you have put your trust in us for your training and we take it very seriously. We program for ALL of our 200+ athletes and have greatly expanded what we offer year-after-year. As all of you evolve, we will continue to evolve with you. Trust the journey and you can achieve the CrossFit equivalent of winning the trophy and walking out with Elizabeth Shue.