I know you're all dying to find out the truth behind the legends, but you'll just have to wait, some other stuff happened before we met them.
First off food. Food is going to be another recurring theme, so deal with it. We love food and we were in a place with a whole new cuisine to try, not to mention being the home of junk food. We embraced both, unfortunately.
I had breakfast at the Ramona Cafe, a short wander from the Motel. It was fun seeing the aviation decor and seeing so many people who were obviously regulars come in and sit at their usual tables. One guy wandered through from out back (I think there's parking out there?), said hello then wandered out the front door to get a paper. While he was outside the waitress poured him a coffee at an empty table which he came back in and sat at. Obviously a routine. The food was good, nothing outstanding, just good. I can't remember what I had, even looking at the menu online, I know it featured egg beaters as I didn't know what they were. Laura explained them later.
Andrea "Marla Singer" Nitz met us at the motel at 0830 to take us to Brand X. I wasn't at all nervous about meeting her. Yep, lying. All the threats and in fact downright glee about the prospect of making me run "TP's hill" had me rather worried about her intensity. I needn't have. Andrea is a lovely lovely lady. Fantastically kind and one of those happy relaxed people you love to be around. There were elements of the "treehugger" she describes herself as about her, she was so laid back. Oh and I got my hug from her. She kept apologising for the mess in her car, saying it was a kid carrier and I kept thinking that she should see our cars. Or the car of another Brand Xer we met the previous day. ;-)
She got us to Brand X and the nerves were back full force and then some. I was wondering if I was going to have to bypass meeting people and dive straight into the toilet. I'm not sure of the exact sequence, but I'm pretty sure Mikki came out of the office pretty much as we arrived and said hello.
First impression in person? Mikki is a pretty little lady with a lot more freckles than I expected and a perpetual slightly worried look that probably comes from raising 3 sons. Except when she smiles, then the worried look disappears and she's just lovely. No, I'm not worried about Jeff knowing I think his wife is lovely, he already knows she is. Mikki showed us around the corner to where Jeff was training, deadlifting I think. He shook our hands wetly, it was already warm and whatever he was training he was working hard. I don't think he knows how to train any other way.
Jeff's shorter than I thought, despite knowing his height, but you don't think of him that way. The man has an air of authority about him and just a presence that constantly made it a surprise when I'd reach up to a pull-up bar he jumped to grab and realise I was taller than him.
OK, time to spill the beans about Jeff and Mikki and stop playing games.
From the forum I guess I had this impression of Jeff as a rather fierce, tight lipped person and Mikki as a strict school-marmish type. I knew they both had a wickedly dry sense of humour, but in both cases thought the martial arts and fighting aspect of their lives had had a very profound impact on their personalties. It had, but not in the way I had expected.
The word that comes to mind when I think of them now, and indeed all of the people I met at Brand X, is "honourable". There is a sense of dignity about the two of them that makes it impossible for me to imagine either of them doing anything underhanded or mean-spirited. They can both set aside that dignity and be very funny, or in Jeff's case plain silly (more on that later and yes, that's where you come in Sven), but at no time does it disappear completely.
They are decent, extremely kind, phenomenally generous and quite frankly, nice. I've said several times in the past that I know nice is not fashionable these days, everyone seems to be trying to be badass, but I like nice. There should be more of it.
Jeff and Mikki are the sort of people you hope will find you worthy of being their friends. I've honestly met very few people I respect as much as I do those two.
Another note about Mikki before I get back onto "what we did on our holiday" and stop embarrassing them both. They're going to hate all this BTW, they're not the sort of people who take praise easily. I'd had reason to ask a little about Mikki of a Brand Xer I'm not going to name (not Laura this time) before we came over and was rather surprised to find that they said the most dominant part of her personality was her maternal side. I can now confirm that that is completely accurate. Mikki puts everything she has into caring for her family and given the nature and antics of the three boys (and Jeff) I'm not surprised she looks a little worried most of the time. She extends that caring to Brand X as a whole and that's where that school-marmish impression I had comes from, or as it really is, an aspect of caring for Brand X as a responsible parent. And she is funny, had I mentioned that? I had? Good.
Somewhere in there we met Connor "Top Dawg" Martin and Cyndi "Go_Irish!" Rodi. I think when Cyndi came in to run the 0900 class that we sat down to watch, feeling a bit too intimidated by being at Brand X to feel confident about joining in. Not long into the class Jeff rounded us up and had us toe a line to check our squats. I finally found out what "send your hips back" meant, I'd been breaking at the knees first for all these years. Lynette had a few issues that Jeff quickly attended to and he was impressed that she picked up what he was saying so quickly. Jeff could have been saying what he was saying for the hundredth time that month but you had no impression that he was delivering Squat correction speech 43, version E. He was very clear, very concise, extremely accurate and very professional. Oh and quite entertaining. He explained how he would teach the movement to kids and quite frankly it's those cues I remember most, which might say something about my mental abilities. I had a problem with not fully extending my hips at the top of the squat and the cue he mentioned (and demonstrated) was telling the kids to "stand up like a superhero". When someone with Jeff's dignity does it you don't feel embarrassed to do it, so we did, hands on hips, chest out and all. During my Level 1 cert I found myself muttering "like a superhero" as they ran us through squat practise and decided I would do the hands on hips bit, but that I'd perhaps better drop the muttering in case someone heard what I was saying and thought I was big-headed.
Jeff also checked us out on push-ups and offended Lynette by suggesting she could do her push-ups with her hands on an elevated surface. I think she should have taken him up on it, I would have if he'd offered it to me, as he then sent us out to do a lap of the building, 10 perfect squats and 5? perfect push-ups and repeat until he told us to stops. Brand X takes up two units of a one of two long industrial buildings. Other business are in other units and the two buildings make up one long length with a road/carpark separating them. A lap of the building is about 200m I think and we took, oh about an hour for each one? I hadn't run much in a loooong time and Lynette wasn't any better. I was pleased that I made it and didn't blow a calf or achilles tendon out again. My calves did tighten up pretty badly and fortunately came right with some stretching. I thought I was in trouble for a while there though.
Once I'd got my breathing down to a steady gasp Jeff had me demonstrate my kip while Andrea showed Lynette through Overhead Squats. My kip was ugly as hell, but my joy at doing pull-ups on a round bar that was high enough I could actually hang from it was enormous. Even with my technique sucking I was able to get a swing going and get at least equal what I'd managed to do before. I wasn't counting reps, I was having too much fun playing on the bars. Jeff made me get off (spoilsport) and showed me that I was using all leg and not getting my shoulders into it at all and how to fix it. It was watching him jump up to the bars when I first made the realisation I was taller than him, as silly as that sounds. Jeff showed me how he'd teach the kids to kip and again I filed that method away as the best way I'd heard to explain it. I'm getting worried in hindsight at my affinity for these kids cues. Back on the bar a few times and very quickly it seemed to me Jeff had me kipping for real. Not perfectly I grant you and I still think I can get more hip into it than I did while I was there, but well enough so that on the angled bars I was touching my lower chest to the crossbar. I lost a lot of skin off my left hand in the process, but who cares? I could kip!
Andrea dropped us back at the motel as the trainers had a planning and run-through session for the Kids cert I was technically there to attend. She picked us up again to get back at Brand X at 1400 and that's when things went from awe-inspiring to awe-inspiringly stoopid. That's right, this is your bit Sven.
Sven "SuperSwede" Hestrand is the reason there is a Swedish flag hanging amongst the collection to which we added an NZ flag. I wasn't sure whether Jeff and Mikki accepted flags from just anyone, but their delight at receiving ours assured me it was welcome. Anyway, back to "Stoopid Swede" and "Dumbass" aka the Sven and Jeff afternoon stoopid workout show.
At approximately 1400 most weekdays when Sven is in town these two get together and plan, and I use the word loosely, and execute the most ridiculous workouts I've ever seen. Actually it's not so much the workouts that are ridiculous as the "planning" process.
The Stoopid Swede/DumbAss brain trust in action, and the resulting nightmare.
What happens loosely is that they both turn up at 1400 with something they have in mind and they throw those ideas into the pot. That apparently achieves some kind of a critical mass because what then ensues is a display of something between one-upmanship and brainstorming hat sees these two intelligent, careful, sensible men (one of whom has two degrees in this stuff for crying out loud!) feeding off each other's enthusiasm in a frenzy of gleeful delight at discovering new ways to attempt to damage themselves. At some stage the dust settles, they warm-up (neck crank, shoulder roll) and they're off. And sometimes people join them!
The workouts tend to follow the buy-in;WOD;cash-out model Jeff is using these days but in most respects look like a mini painstorm. And Sven is fond of throwing in "dessert".
There are a bunch of photographs from a couple of these insanity sessions at http://picasaweb.google.com/metric.nz/SS_and_DA. I haven't tried to caption them because words fail me.
Update; I have been asked by no less than The Stoopid Swede himself in this post http://www.crossfitbrandx.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/4839/P45/#66779 to say that
"There is a lot more sophisticated planning going into the SS & DA WOD’s then what you explained in your blog....I still think he and Jeff are just big kids who should be separated until they learn to play together nicely without hurting each other.
There is a measurement of metabolic output, muscular endurance range, cardio respiratory funcions, VO2 Max etc etc. You didn’t get that part since we decided to call them: “Suck Factor”, “horribleness”, “pain level” and more...cooler words."
End of Update
We watched the Monday afternoon and evening classes, Kids Kenpo, Peewee kenpo? (may have been Tuesday), Crossfit Kids, Crossfit and Crosspit. Peewee Kenpo is so cute!
I got to see Laura doing Crosspit and finally got to keep the promise I'd made long before to take photos of her if I ever watched a Crosspit class. Sorry I didn't get any video Laura.
I found the amount of activity in the gym a little overwhelming. I train at home on my own and unless Lynette joins me I never even see anyone else doing Crossfit. At Brand X there are the classes going on, private training sessions happening and people doing individual workouts all at the same time. A few days alter I was fine with it, but that first night seemed like chaos.
I thought Lynette was getting bored so I accepted a ride back to the Motel with Laura after Crosspit. It turned out Lynette had wanted to watch the adults Kenpo class which I would have enjoyed too, so I goofed there. I'm sorry!
We had dinner at Sizzlers which is right next door to the Ramona Valley Inn.
I haven't talked about Big D, Justin, McKenna or Adam and I've glossed over Cyndi and Connor. I'll come back to them all, honest.
The photos in this post are from the following albums, feel free to browse around.
http://picasaweb.google.com/metric.nz/SS_and_DA
http://picasaweb.google.com/metric.nz/Other
Some will feature in posts yet to come, others will not.
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2 comments:
Oh man we get to name the hill after me? Cool!!!!
That's how I'm going to think of it anyway.
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