Author: george

Most Recent Stats:

Scott Dawson has been a friend of mine since he showed up at the box and started turning our athletes inside out at the age of 40 a couple years ago. We later found out he was a part of Naval Special Warfare and had served as a Air Rescue Swimmer for many years prior. (That's why he doesn't get tired!) Currently he's a Naval Special Warfare recruiter. You can find him on the fields or at the pool putting recruits through hours of training. He's preparing them for selections ahead. Navy SEAL, EOD, Air Rescue Swimmer and Navy Diver pipelines. He's a humble guy and a real role model for the youth and everyone around him.

Little did we know, when he's not at the box or out on the road working he's at home in his man cave cooking up music tracks with digital equipment and instruments he plays himself. He's always rocking Led Zeppelin at the box during his class and when he's hit a wall during a WOD he looks over and gives the Zeppelin que and we know what to do. Recently he had this idea to make tracks specifically for CrossFit WODs. He made two tracks based around Fight Gone Bad with built in time queues for each round and station switch. One is a remix of Led Zeppelin songs and the other is his own instrumental mix. This is his first debut and we're psyched he came to us with it.

Captain America Himself

Feel free to download it and use it for the Fight Gone Bad coming up this week. Or play it whenever you do the workout Fight Gone Bad. May this track bring you more reps and adrenaline.

Fight Gone Bad By Scott Dawson - Click to play

Fight Gone Bad (Zeppelin Mix) By Scott Dawson - Click to play

Coach Mike Burgener is the owner of Mike's Gym, a USAW Regional Training Center & a Crossfit Affiliate. As a USAW Senior Instructor & CrossFit Olympic Weightlifitng Instructor he travels both nationally and internationally training youth, professional athletes and those aspiring to be the best in the Weightlifting world. He is a former Junior World Team (1996-2004) and Senior World Team Coach (2005). He also shares his passion with youth as the Strength & Conditioning Coach at Rancho Buena Vista High School in Vista, California.

When you get past his impressive experience you see a veteran of the Marine Corps, a mentor who gives free advice on weightlifting videos posted by strangers on facebook, a father of two accomplished weightlifters, a man who enjoyes riding his motorcycle cross country and last but not least a kind, giving professional who always looks for a way to give back with his work.

Coach B approached us with an idea for a shirt. He wanted the shirt to be patriotic, exciting, authentic in design and a quality above the rest. He also made sure to let us know the shirt was to benefit Steve's Club.

Our reaction was, let's get started! We couldn't have been offered with a better opportunity: Support a good cause and collaborate with one of the best Weightlifting Coaches and role model Americans around. This is what we're all about.

Steve's Club is a non profit organization that provides the youth of Camden, NJ with coaching, community, support and guidance. Paleo Kits, which is still one of the best ways to travel and eat Paleo, is owned by Steve and made this organization possible to begin with. (On a side note, one of the owners of Manimal was born in an urban New Jersey town.) This quote sums it up well:

"50 years from now it will not matter what kind of car you drove, what kind of house you lived in, how much you had in your bank account, or what your clothes looked like. But the world may be a little better because you were important in the life of a child."

Purchase your shirt HERE.

Occasionally I sit down on a rower, facing a rubber floor filled with athletes, and see something that makes me envious. I see someone going at a workout in such a way that almost looks painful, but they won’t stop. There’s a motivation there that only that person knows and it carries them to another place where the pain doesn’t mean shit and the finish line is all that matters. They could be blind. They hear and see nothing. If they do hear anything it’s the voice in their head telling them to keep going.

People feed on this type of energy, especially in a CrossFit gym. They yell and taunt the athlete with no real understanding of the pain and mental battles they’re pushing through in that moment. The spectators are in-sensitive as to whether or not something has happened to that person in the past or that very day that is driving them to fight out of anger, hatred or other personal emotions.

Recently I spent a couple of weeks back on the east coast visiting family. I was fortunate enough to be able to stop by four different boxes for a WOD.

At this time I would love to tell you all that if you haven’t traveled to visit family and tried to continue training, what a fucking experience it is. Between driving all over the place, eating out all the time and being crunched for time on a regular basis it’s definitely different. Also it’s easy for us to take for granted our training environments, the equipment and just the constant of knowing what’s there and how to get your training done. Being in other gyms I was mostly a lost dog wondering around looking for things like foam rollers, checking out the ring set-ups and trying to figure out where and what I was doing. More on this later.

Many athletes I’ve met have told me stories of experiences they have had at different boxes and I was curious to see how things were going to turn out for me. I sent out a bunch of emails the day after I arrived in NY and got some replies.

Manimal has always been about quality products, if you own one of our shirts you know this. It’s only natural for me to review products I use on a daily basis and are up to par by Manimal standards.

For the past 6 months I’ve been wearing EVO II’s made by VIVO BAREFOOT. This shoe was designed to be a minimalist running shoe, but I heard it was also a badass all-around lifting shoe and CrossFit kick. It turns out there is much more to this shoe than advertised on their web site.

The Art of War: Translated by a CrossFitter, trainer, and sarcastic bastard

It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.

Warn your new clients who haven’t worked out in a long time or are older and de-conditioned not to row a 1:30 500m row on their first baseline or you might possibly kill the fucker or give them rhabdo.

The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerely, benevolence, courage and strictness.

A trainer is there for a reason, ignore what he has to say and you have no one but yourself to blame for the consequences, even if it’s months down the line Mr.Horrible Squatter.

Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

If you walk into the gym on your 5th day on and you’re tired as shit, sore as a mother and hurting all over or you are sleep deprived and stressed the fuck out, you better believe all of your friends are going to kick your ass in the WOD and you’re going to feel like a dumbass for not resting.

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

Just because you program a “badass WOD” to be 5 hours long doesn’t mean it’s going to make you stronger.

What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.

The athlete who knows himself, trains hard according to his weaknesses and strengths and commonly wins the competition with composure is part of the true Elite.

There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.

Just because the movements are easy, does not mean that the combination of reps, movements and time will not own you.

Knowing the place and the time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order to fight.

Prepare for you training with recovery, diet and mobility so that when the time comes you’ll perform at your best.

We cannot enter into alliances until we are acquainted with the designs of our neighbors.

Know your teammates if you want to win team competitions.

Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your compactness that of the forest.

Stay tight and lift aggressively!

He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them.

We all know that guy or girl who’s always talking trash, calling people out or just pretending to be a badass. Well those people usually get their ass handed to them in the workouts. Dark Horses are quiet.

In the past two years I have learned a lot about training. Not just the specifics but the more philosophical side of it. When you train 5 days a week or more for 2 years you go through different phases. More importantly than anything else you learn about your mind and body and hopefully how to train them both to the fullest.

There have been periods in my training where everything felt impossible. Times where stress was conquering my mind and dragging me down during workouts. Days where I had slept like shit and then went into the gym expecting to perform at a peak for 15 minutes of hard lifting and body weight movements. Weekends of eating trash and showing up on that Monday and getting my ass kicked.