The Strides We Make!!

This is marking the 3rd year of our existence, while in many ways it seems like yesterday that we as a partnership started this venture. In that same vein it seems we have been here forever!! I think that's a great sign of an awesome organization! I can't even even remember what it was like Pre-CFK.

Speaking for the owners and coaches we want to say Thank You!! It is because of all of you that makes us come here everyday to do what we do!! Please always feel free to let us know how we are doing, as it is the only way for us to keep improving!! If you feel comfortable telling us or if you'd just like to make a suggestion (just to the right →) at our suggestion box!! Either way we want to hear from you!!

The CrossFit Games season is here! Here is a rundown of the qualifying season:

The CrossFit Games Open: Thursday February 27th - Monday March 31st

5 weeks, 5 workouts. Approximately 200,000 CrossFit athletes worldwide take on these workouts. At the end of 5 weeks, the top 48 men and women and top 30 teams from each Region advance to Regionals.

The CrossFit Games Regionals: South Central Regional Friday May 23th - Sunday May 25 San Antonio, TX

The best athletes of the Region (as decided by the Open) advance to the Regionals competition. The top 3 men, women and teams advance to the CrossFit Games in Carson, CA.

The CrossFit Games: July 25th Carson, CA

The fittest of the fit! At this competition "The Fittest On Earth" is determined.

Make sure to keep tabs on Team CrossFit Kemah and all CrossFit Kemah athletes here:

http://games.crossfit.com/leaderboard

The time is now!!!

Save the date....

Set aside the date November 1-2, 2014

Coming to our very own CrossFit facility is the CrossFit Weightlifting Certification. Check the side banners, click the link and sign up!! The spots will fill up fast and you won't want to miss the opportunity!!

Once again, let's do this, it will be an informative and helpful two day seminar!!

Stay tuned in on our Facebook page for updates and reminders!!

CrossFit Kemah

The time is now!!!

Save the date....

Set aside the date November 1-2, 2014

Coming to our very own CrossFit facility is the CrossFit Weightlifting Certification. Check the side banners, click the link and sign up!! The spots will fill up fast and you won't want to miss the opportunity!!

Once again, let's do this, it will be an informative and helpful two day seminar!!

Stay tuned in on our Facebook page for updates and reminders!!

CrossFit Kemah

Superheroes?

One faction of The Avengers contained the  The Hulk, The Punisher, Thor and Elektra!! Saturday we definitely witnessed our version of those Superheroes!! You take a look and tell me if I'm off base on the bio of each these extraordinary athletes compared to the Avenger counterpart!!

Now That my friends are the true identities of these superheroes come to life at the Texas Fall Classic!! Only they could have dominated like that!!

Where Winners Train indeed!!

Defending your title is twice as nice!!

And on the podium for the first time is also sweet, especially when it's the first time competing!! Congratulations to Megan and Kim for a successful defense of the Beast Wars title!! Congratulations to our first time competitors Kirsten McBride and Crystal Henderson

The competitive spirit is within us all!!

Our first ever In-House Competition was a huge success!! We did this to inspire those who do compete to help those who haven't and help those who have never put themselves out there to get a taste of the action!! The Winners truly were Megan and I. to see all of you put everything you had into the WODs this morning was outstanding!! This is another chapter of new events to come as we move ahead!!

Thank you all so much!!!

Let's keep the "Blood In The Water"

Age is an issue of of mind over matter, if you don't mind it doesn't matter.

-Mark Twain

Inner Strength and the Masters Competitor

by DR. ALLISON BELGER

What is the connection between these two quotes?

“You never know how strong you are until strong is the only choice you have.” — Unknown Author

“You don’t compete to win. You compete to do better than you do in the gym.” – CJ Martin

The first quotation was posted recently on our TJ’s Gym discussion board by Sherri, one of our members, the day after the NorCal Masters competition we hosted in Richmond, California. Sherri had volunteered for hours at the event, all the while cheering on — and being inspired by — the participating athletes, who ranged in age from forty to seventy-something.

Win or lose relative to our fellow athletes, we have won if we have pushed beyond our perceived limits and proven to ourselves that we have far more in us than we can demonstrate in the forum of a non-competitive training day.

Later that night, while Sherri was talking with her husband, Bill, he mentioned one of his favorite quotes: “You never know how strong you are until strong is the only choice you have.”

Bill has been battling Multiple Myeloma (an insidious bone cancer) for two years now. It has taken him away from his young children and wife, forcing him into treatment centers in the Midwest for months at a time. It has stolen his hair, his marrow, his wellness. But it hasn’t captured his spirit. Indeed, it seems he is stronger of spirit now than during his life before cancer.

The second quotation is by CJ Martin, owner of CrossFit Invictus, who is always trying to get his athletes to enjoy their training and to repeatedly and honestly evaluate if that training is predominately enjoyable and rewarding, or if it is distracting and draining. For CJ, competitions are a chance to push ourselves beyond what we do inside our own gyms, and to test the limits of our tolerance — both physical and mental — during the heat of the battle. Win or lose relative to our fellow athletes, we have won if we have pushed beyond our perceived limits and proven to ourselves that we have far more in us than we can demonstrate in the forum of a non-competitive training day.

Finding the Will to Fight

So what do these two quotations have to do with each other? Maybe nothing. But when I finally sat down to write an article about the Masters athlete population, these two quotations came to mind. I’m a psychologist who believes in the unconscious mind. I believe that when ideas surface in our minds in tandem, there is usually some meaningful connection between them, especially when two seemingly unrelated bits of content emerge almost simultaneously at the start of a single endeavor.

Perhaps for the competitive Masters athlete, a significant portion of our competitive drive comes from a desire to prove to ourselves that if the shit really hits the fan in our lives, we will do better and have more in the tank than we did before.

My unraveling of the mysterious connection is this: Bill is now fifty and has two children. He has quite a bit of life experience behind him. But he’d never been tested or forced to dig down deep and see what he’s made of until he suffered the effects of cancer and its treatment at age forty-eight. One might say that Bill’s daily “training” (carrying on in his job, his relationships, his self-care) pre-illness was just fine, maybe even stellar. But it wasn’t until the competition with cancer that Bill was forced to see if he could do better, fight harder, be stronger.

Somewhere in our psyches, we all possess some level of concern or fear about how we might hold up if the going were to get really tough. I don’t mean thirty-reps-of-clean-and-jerks-for-time kind of tough or a 5k-run-with-a-sandbag kind of tough. I mean hair-falling-out-life-being-sucked-out-of-you-while-your-kids-cry kind of tough. Or worse still, the kind of tough it would take to watch your own child go through cancer. As we age and experience the decline of our youth and the realities of getting older, these fears tend to intensify. Signs of our own mortality mix with the fact that we become less sheltered from “bad” happenings in the world and are more in touch with the potential for things to go wrong.

Perhaps for the competitive Masters athlete, a significant portion of our competitive drive comes from a desire to prove to ourselves that if the shit really hits the fan in our lives, we will do better and have more in the tank than we did before. We will fight harder, tolerate more, and access parts of ourselves that have never been tested or revealed before.  Our hope is that, like Bill, we will be STRONGER, because strong is the only choice we have.

Dr. Allison Belger is the author of The Power of Community: CrossFit and the Force of Human Connection and the creator of PsychologyWOD. Follow her on Twitter at @psychologywod.

Our Fundamentals course is now starting every two weeks. This $65 course must be purchased on Front Desk before you can attend. (https://crossfitkemah.frontdeskhq.com/courses/10005). This course meets Monday/Wednesday/Friday from 6-7pm and must be completed before entering into CrossFit classes.

Fundamentals will be starting on the following dates:

9/23/13

10/7/13

10/21/13

11/4/13

11/18/13

12/2/13

12/16/13

We also offer a free trial class on Saturdays at 9am. Please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with any questions!