Blog

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The Beast Inside of You

We know who you are. Sitting at work all day, unable to focus on the customer you're helping, or mabye it's the guy in the suit giving a 90 minute Power Point presentation sounding like one of the adults from Charlie Brown. A constant whisper calling from the shadows of your mind...always pulling your thoughts back to the workout you're going to annihilate after you clock out and dig in at the gym. Your favorite dungeon of weights, ropes, and pullup bars where you break down your mental and physical barriers, where you battle to become the physical specimen that you long to be.

We honor you. You do things that "normal" people wouldn't even consider, and they think you're bat crap crazy for doing it. Crazy? Maybe, but as far as we're concerned crazy beats the hell out of complacent. Life isn't worth living if you stop working to better yourself.

We are you, and you are us.

What's that? You say this isn't you? Bullshit. This IS you...it's inside you, inside all of us. It's time for you to to open the cage and unleash the beast. Take a long, hard look at your goals, your PRs, and your weaknesses...then give your fears and doubts a good hard kick in the sack and do what your mind is telling you is too hard. Make it clear that your heart and determination are the players in this game, and the word "can't" doesn't even get to watch. It's time to blur the line between "crazy" and reality, then you'll learn what you are truly capable of.

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Box Hopping

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.

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Life is better when every day is Paleo

Here's the scoop: I lift weights, I work out hard and I get HUNGRY. When it comes to eating I am the only person I need to please, and I eat Paleo. If I were to write a book about Paleo eating I would call it "Put Meat in Your Mouth". And it would be a very short book...actually the title pretty much says it all. That's because like most people in the Paleo world, I suffer from tunnel vision when it comes to making Paleo meals and I usually end up eating the same few things over and over again. "If only there were some magical tome of Paleo cooking knowledge that I could keep handy in the kitchen to add some variety to my bland Paleo menu," he said in desparation.

Well Hallelujah! The Everyday Paleo book by Sarah Fragoso is exactly that. Read more

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Shoes Do Matter: EVO II Review

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.

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Profile: Luke Leaman

Since Luke has been published on T-Nation I am going to do this one in a straight forward interview style for a sense of nostalgia.

You can find a couple of Luke's T-Nation contributions here and here.

On a side note, does anyone else remember when it was first published as Testosterone Magazine and you could always expect to find some lunatic article by Bruce Kneller (aka Brock Strasser)? Hmm...maybe I shouldn't dig up that old skeleton. Oh well, too late now. So...let's get started.

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Art of WOD’n

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.

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Profile: Erika Chandler Talbott

Training History: Olympic Style Weightlifting, 16 yrs. Prior to that was several years of soccer.

Height: 5' 3"

Age: 40

Favorite lifts: Hip Snatch, Split Jerk from the rack and Back Squats

"Love for the sport" is what motivates Erika to train. She is currently preparing to compete in the USA Masters Weightlifting 2011 National Masters this April where her main goal is to beat her lifts during the 2010 National Masters, but ultimately she will be focusing on doing the best she can. “My main focus is Olympic lifting, but over the years I have found that I need a variety of things to do to keep myself challenged and interested. I started looking at Crossfit and realized it was going to be the next challenge.” Erika began her Olympic lifting with Ursula from Oly Athlete, trains with Sandy Abney from Power to Perform and Strength Coach for the University of Texas, and gets her butt stomped by the WODs at CrossFit Leander, where she can also be found coaching the CrossFitters on their lifting technique.. Read more

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Train for #1

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.

All of this led to a lot of frustration, anger and eventually discipline. Read more

New Designs

We need your help! Tell us which of these designs you think is the most gym worthy and we'll enter you in a drawing to win one hot of the press. The winner will get the shirt that gets the most votes.

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2011 is here!

And with it comes change!

Our New Year's Resolution?

To do more to honor those who represent Manimal in everything they do. The best way we can think to do that is to shine the spotlight on athletes who embody what it means to challenge themselves in conquering their fears and doubts, and push themselves to levels their bodies never thought possible. We will be posting Athlete Profiles to take you inside the minds (and gyms) of those very people, to show you how they approach obstacles and to give you the motivation to overcome yours. So check out our first Athlete Profile and continue to check back for more stories of achievement and inspiration.

What else is going on at Manimal?

We want to grow our apparel line with new designs, but first we have to make space in the stock room. Check out the new, clearance level pricing on our kick off designs by clicking on the Men / Women links above.

Stay tuned for more Athlete Profiles and bad ass designs!