CrossFit South Bay | Hermosa Beach, CA

Steven has been away from the gym for the last few weeks but it’s definitely not because he’s been slacking! He joined us a few months back with the hope that CrossFit would better prepare him for his firefighter training. He shared a little bit in a recent email about how his improvement in fitness has helped him endure the physical demands of that training:

I get up at 4am and leave my house around 530 and start wiping down all the fire engines and such until around 730 when the off going crews wake up then it’s time to stretch and work out.

They have this workout called the gauntlet. It’s an 8 event high intensity workout. We are in full turnout gear with an Axe at our side and our air bottles on our backs. All in all it’s around 70 lbs or so and hot! We start by doing box steps with a 50-60lb hose pack on our backs for 2 minutes and have to reach a minimum or 40 steps. After that we pick up a 2 1/2” hose pack bundle and walk it about 100 feet or so (about 25 lbs and speed walk not walk) set it down, pick up another one and walk it back. Then it’s 25 push-ups. After we get a 100ft section of 1 3/4” hose put a nozzle over our shoulder and crawl on our hands an knees 100ft, stand up and hand jack the remainder of the hose and repeat it the other direction. Then we pick up a 10 or 12lb sledgehammer and have to strike this 35” superswamper tire until it travels across the 100ft floor to a line then switch hands and hit it back (it kills my forearms!!!!). Then we go to a halyard attached to a 25lb 2 1/2” hose pack and have to raise and lower it under control 5 times to a height of about 20ft. Then we drag a dummy (usually a firefighter reserve dressed in turn out gear weighing anywhere from 165lbs+ gear up to 250 + gear which was the guy we dragged today. Lastly and in pain and out of breath we have to grab this thing called a pike pole. It is about 10ft long and weighs about 10-15lbs. At the very end they have attached either 10 or 15lbs. I can’t remember but you hold it in a vertical position and it’s a balancing act! You have to raise it a foot 25 times with each arm and then you have completed one circuit!

Then they start you again and they stop you just short of passing out. Today they spiced it up and made us use our masks and breathe air from our bottle. We wear a 30 minute bottle but that is rated at rest and not while working. My time has gone from 17 minutes to 12 minutes down to just over ten today. Wow. After this and other grueling work outs, we are physical all day either throwing ladders (24 ft extension at 107lbs, 35 ft extension at 176lbs, or the 16/18/20 foot straight ladders which are all around 50-75 lbs I think) pulling hundreds of feet of hose in the hot sun accompanied by some rather bad timing by the Santa Ana’s! I was not too worried about it being hot seeing that it is January but those Santa Ana’s kill!!! I have lost around 10-15lbs!!

I plan on returning Saturday because our academy which started January 10th culminates with our graduation Friday the 23rd. I begin my normal firefighter schedule on Monday the 26th and should resume attending classes regularly. I can’t wait to get back to continue to intensify my training!

WOD – 1.30.09

“Nicole”

Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
Run 400 meters
Max rep Pull-ups

Post number of pull-ups completed for each round