Daily WOD Blog at

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Sometimes...

Life asks you to chop down a tree too...gotta have fire wood...

Monday, December 21, 2009

Throwin' Hay...


For those of you that don't know, my parents have horses on their property.  Two of their own, and a third horse that a friend owns and stalls there.  Horses eat hay, and lots of it.  So, a couple times a year, we load up in the truck, hook up the trailer and head deep into God's country to pick up and replenish their stock of hay.  We (Me, My Dad, My Brother) made another one of these trips on this past Saturday.  We hand loaded 137 bales onto the trailer, drove back home and unloaded all 137 into the hay barn.

If you have never done this kind of work, it is not easy.  Especially not when you attack it the way we do.  Bottom line, we want to get it done as quickly as possible.  This process involves a lot of stacking, throwing, crawling, climbing, etc.  The bales are cumbersome, unevenly weighted, inconsistantly shaped and generally not built for convenient handling.

So, if you are still with me, this is where CrossFit comes in.  I cannot think of an activity that measures your funtional fitness in the real world any better than "throwin' hay".  After the day's work, my family was quick to point out how easily I seemed to throw and stack the bales in comparison to past trips, not to mention the pace I kept.  The particular loading process this time required throwing the bales a fair distance to eliminate double and triple handling each bale.  What can I say, the bales just felt lighter and flew farther.  I was assurred these bales were not any lighter than previous trips.

CrossFit works.

As a CrossFitter, I train for the sport of life.  Sometimes life requires you to "throw hay".  Don't you want to be ready?

Thanks for reading.
-Shane