Operation Phoenix, Part Two

Operation Phoenix was started in March of 2008 as an effort to raise the funds necessary to properly outfit Camp Pendleton (the major Marine training base on the West Coast) with the equipment necessary to run a large scale Crossfit gym. The founders of Crossfit, Greg and Lauren Glassman, began Operation Phoenix by donating the equipment from the original Crossfit gym to camp Pendleton.

The founders then got in contact with the owners of Forged Clothing, a company started by two ex-Navy SEALs that sells shirts to raise money for the families of SEALs who were killed in action. Four new shirt designs were created, and are now being sold on the Operation Phoenix website, with 100% of the proceeds going towards outfitting Crossfit Camp Pendleton. The amount of money raised to fund Camp Pendleton is staggering:



The first shipment of new gear will soon be sent off, and includes barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, squat racks, bumper plates, and gymnastics rings. These essentials, plus the start up equipment from Crossfit HQ, will give Camp Pendleton a significant boost towards its goal of bringing crossfit en masse to the United States military.

















A sampling of the first shipment.

Operation Phoenix, Part One

The United States Marine Corps was designed to be the most elite conventional military unit in the world. As such, logic follows that expectations of members of this force would be reasonably high in all areas relevant to the duties that they must perform. And yet the physical fitness requirements for these men and women are laughable.

Every six months, a marine must take his Physical Fitness Test (PFT) and earn a minimum of 135 points in three different exercises in order to pass (for now we will look at only the men's requirements). These three exercises are a max-out on pull-ups, as many sit-ups as possible in two minutes, and a three mile run, all of which needs to be completed within a two hour time frame. The maximum possible score in each exercise is 100 points; 5 points are awarded for every pull-up, 1 point is awarded for every sit-up, and 1 point is deducted from a score of 100 for every 10 seconds over 18 minutes the marine takes to complete his three mile run.

Not only does this result in a pathetically minimal set of requirements for an elite fighting force(one could pass with 3 pull-ups, 40 sit-ups, and a 21:20 three mile run), but the form of the test does not in any way follow the function of these men and women's fitness. Surviving in modern combat, especially in the towns and cities of Iraq that are the arenas of today's battles, demands a fitness program that consists of intense, highly functional and highly varied movements performed both at bodyweight and with external load.

This is where Crossfit comes in. Crossfit is already quite popular among the military and law enforcement agencies; there are over 750 affiliated gyms world-wide, and nearly every Marine in the United States has easy access to a Crossfit gym either on-base or close by. However, the benefits of Crossfit have still not been fully and officially recognized and exploited by the Marine Corps. And this is where Operation Phoenix comes in.

To be continued...

A Special Kind of Crazy

Your heart is racing at 200 beats per minute, pounding in your ears. You're struggling so hard to get enough oxygen into your bloodstream that your eyes open extremely wide as though you can absorb just a little more air through them. The palms of your hands begin to tear and bleed, making it difficult to grip anything. Your shoulders are getting battered and bruised from the constant pounding, and the impact eventually wears away the top layer of skin. But you don't feel any of this, thanks to the adrenaline pumping through your veins. When it's all finally over, however, your knees will buckle from the effort of standing, and you will lie on the ground for minutes, rolling from side to side, hoping that the pain will go away soon. And the only coherent thought that you can form is, “Why the hell did I just do that?!” Yet you know that when the next day rolls around, you will do it again.

This is Crossfit. It is not for everyone.

Crossfit is a high intensity combination of fast, functional weight lifting, body-weight strength training, and sprinting. It's specialization is not specializing. Athletes who train with Crossfit are able to apply their fitness in the widest spectrum of modalities, from varsity and collegiate sports to urban combat in one hundred and twenty degree weather. In the words of Robert Heinlein, “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

What turns most people away from Crossfit is the insane level of effort that is put into every single workout. I have been an athlete my entire life, going from 8 years of competitive swimming to 4 years of martial arts. My first Crossfit workout was the most painful and physically challenging experience of my athletic career. And the second one was even harder. But enough talk. The following videos will show what I mean when I say that it takes a special kind of crazy.

The first is of Josh Bridges getting a world record on one of the most notorious Crossfit workouts: Fran. One will notice with some research that many of the workouts have girls names. Like hurricanes.



This next video was taken at the second annual Crossfit Games in Aromas, California. In it, Kallista Pappas (initially in the background) is finishing thirty repetitions of the 100 lb clean and jerk olympic lift after dropping the bar on her knees. Oh, did I mention that Kallista is 14 years old?



Now imagine going into every workout, five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, with the level of intensity shown by these athletes. It is what we do. If you have never seen a Crossfit workout in person before, I encourage you to find a local Crossfit gym and take a look. And even if you don't think that you are capable of it, you just might find that somewhere deep inside you, you have that special kind of crazy necessary to participate.

I Think, Therefore I Am Correct

"Never say 'I' in an essay. Ever."
-Guy Everyman, Ubiquitous English Teacher

In this modern day and age, a high school student who has never been told some variation of that rule is one in a million. And yet, today's discussion in my English class about the appropriate and effective use of the first person--namely the phrase "I think"--got me thinking about the nature of arguments, and people's unwillingness to acknowledge the validity of those that contradict their own.
The most widely preached model for a thesis is the one that boldly makes a declaration, leaving no doubt in the reader's mind about the confidence of the author, and no room for compromise. And yet the spoken argument that is most likely to leave listeners who have a contradictory opinion stubbornly clinging to their own ideal out of spite for the speaker's arrogance does exactly the same. I personally pride myself on my ability to interact with others, and I have always found that the first step to bringing someone around to my way of thinking is convincing them that their thoughts are valid and insightful, if not downright correct. And because the typical highschooler's essay follows the format of presenting an argument and supporting it, it is no less crucial to acknowledge the reader's right to disagree with the declarations; and there are few better ways to do this than simply inserting the phrase "I think" as a preface. Once the reader is satisfied that the author's opinion could potentially be naive, false, and in every way inferior to his own, his ego is satisfied and will sit the rest of the argument out, allowing his rational side to interpret the information objectively.

Authors and Ideas Other Than Me And My Own

On Friday, September 26th, York school's senior English students (myself included) took a wonderfully traditional field trip to the Authors and Ideas Festival at Carmel's Sunset Center. The show that they put on for us was meant to expose us to new ideas and stimulate our creative sides. The big name on the list of the speakers was Sandra Day O'Connor, who was the first female justice to server on the Supreme Court, and I was looking forward to hearing firsthand what sort of decisions Supreme Court justices are faced with in the course of their duties.

Unfortunately, the interview of O'Connor was focused around her life prior to the Supreme Court, and her struggle with the sexism of others that initially held her back in her practice of law. Compelling and inspiring though it was, I learned nothing from the interview that I could not have found on Wikipedia. O'Connor's narrative was utterly devoid of any mention of her actions from her time as a Supreme Court justice, which was her distinguishing characteristic. I personally felt cheated to have someone who was in as unique a position as the first female Supreme Court justice speak only about how hard it was to have the media closely scrutinizing her every decision, yet never say a word about what those decisions were.

Aside from the anticlimactic letdown of O'Connor's interview, the first three speakers were surprisingly funny and insightful. I was honestly expecting most of the presentations to be condescending tirades about the importance of our vote (of which there was a little bit), yet the author, motivational speaker, and astronomer (respectively) managed to keep their audience entertained and interested. The major change that I would have made to the show would be to have these speakers conclude the show, leaving the audience with a better final impression of the event than that of O'Connor's sub-par interview.

On Blogging

The assignment: create a "blog" about something that interests you (or nothing in particular, if that is the direction in which your interests take you) and update your "blog" on a semi-regular basis with posts about this topic.
The problem: I have personally never been able to take blogs seriously. The first and most insurmountable barrier for me has always been the name; "blog" seems to me to be a brilliant onomatopoeia, invoking the image of a suppressed author opening some concealed facial cavity to reveal loosely formed and loosely restrained thoughts that subsequently spill fourth onto the Internet with the same sense of anonymous invincibility that is the cause of road rage and prank calls.
My second problem with "bloggers" is that in many cases, the ability to distribute their material on the Internet seems to have given these individuals the idea that someone is reading along on an iBook in a coffee shop somewhere, nodding sagely in agreement with the blogger's opinion while sipping from an iced chai (I'm certain I'll get to my hatred of coffee shops, iBooks, and iced chais in a later post). The reality of the situation is that, with the exception of a precious few bright, funny, or overly vulgar individuals, the majority of all bloggers end up as the world-wide-web's equivalent of a blind man on a soap box mistaking the hurried footfalls of passing pedestrians for the applause of eager listeners.
My final (and currently most relevant) issue with blogs lies grounded in the fact that using a blog to whine about those who use a blog to whine makes me something of a hypocrite; however, this cannot be avoided, and if I must come off as a hypocrite in order for my divine opinion to induce sage nodding of the head in my undoubtedly large coffee shop audience, then such sacrifices must be made.
...I suppose I'll give blogs a chance.