Reconstructing Pukie

I've never barfed during or after any workout since beginning Crossfit or otherwise. That's not to say that I don't work hard. I'm proud of my 3:18 Fran and once in a while I'll record the top score on the whiteboard of my local box. And while I've brought many friends to puke after a met-con, I've never ralphed, even trying to keep up with the early-tweny-something-firebreathers. Whenever I look at that crude crossfit clown, doubled over and yacking, I'm reminded of a different purge.

Of the times I’ve barfed because of sickness or some sort of poisoning, I’ve always felt better after purging my stomach of whatever was ailing me. In fact, compared to the feeling of needing to ralph, the feeling directly after releasing the demons, is an almost euphoric physical enlightenment. Somehow though, this image of the clown is so offensive and I love it.

I’ve never barfed during or after a workout, but Crossfit healthfully forces us to purge our systems of all the trash that we’ve learned about our physical selves in the past however many decades. Within that cartoon stream of green bile expelled is all the misinformation we’ve been fed by any number of sources: your high school weights teacher, “Squatting too deep will hurt your knees.” or your doctor, “Deadlifting will ruin your back.” or your running addicted friend “Running long distances is the best way to get into shape.” your body building friend, “You need cable machines to work out.” or vogue “Skinny is healthy.” and the entire fitness industry that sold me the most worthless idea of all, crunches and whatever machinery they could think of to help me do crunches.

Sure, pukie represents intensity, but Crossfit serves to cleanse us of the dishonest or misguided and potentially oppressive information about nutrition, movement, and health. That process is abrupt and violent and offensive like the scene of Pukie the Clown’s depiction, but it is good and necessary and liberating.  

KID STATUS MOBILITY

Mobility- Formerly known as stretching.

"Mr. Jones, Why the Face are you doing right now?"
"Ahem, I am teaching you literature and writing. I am an English Teacher"
"No I mean with that large rubber band."
"FORGING ELITE FITNESS! GO BACK TO WORK!"

Unless you're a hot yoga super master or level 70 Elf Gymnast, I'm willing to conclude that you have in your body, some sort of movement deficiency from lack of flexibility, tacked down muscles, or shortened ligaments. Here are some of my biggest issues and their causes as if you care.

Ankles- Possibly genetics, I have really thick joints all over my body. I'm willing to bet that it might also come from years of wearing shoes with gigantic heels like those nike shox and reebok zig-techs shortening my Achilles. (another blog post in itself)

Groin- Years of not stretching my groin because stretching the groin hurts :/

Hamstrings- years of squatting heavy loads, but not to a proper depth. I have big ol' quads and itty bitty hamstrings. Also only ever power cleaned rather than squat cleaning. I never front squatted or overhead squatted until now (I'm 28).

You can't see from the picture, but I'm making a tremendous pain face in each frame

My mobility strengths are:

My shoulders- I can skin the cat all the way through to touch the ground with the rings pretty high! whoo fancy!

My face- I've never had issues with facial expressions, and it's just beautiful!

To work on all of my range of motion issues I reference the best website in the webworld www.mobilitywod.com. Kelly Starrett has about a million (just over 500) short videos on how to stretch, myofascial release, "open", and prep just about any muscle, or tendon---aka torture yourself into better mobility. mobilitywod.com is an every-day-read and super interesting! he can't do anything about your face though :/

Also dehydration and sugar directly effects our muscle elasticity. Drink up and lay off the candy bars and overly sugary fruits and veggies like carrots and sugar coated carrots. Ok eat carrots, but not enough to turn orange, and I'm serious about not eating sugar coated carrots.

Little Cooper's range of motion is my goal for mobility! As I was doing shrugs in front of a mirror in 2001, I never would have imagined that I would one day hope to be as flexible as a 5 year old girl.

Zumba Zumba fitness

zumba zumba fitness!

Crossfitters scoff at bodybuilders. Bodybuilders scoff at Crossfitters, endurance athletes, people who wear glasses, yogis, downhill skiers, etc.
All of the above scoff at Zumba.

Tonight I attended a friend - Jenna's - final Zumba class in Ellensburg instead of Crossfit. It was rad - I admittedly enjoyed it. I even didn't mind the muscle hamsters looking into the dance studio to snicker. I thought of a lot of witty comebacks just in case one of them were to comment on my way out, but nobody said anything.

The top of the fitness pyramid is Sport, according to Glassman or whoever came up with it. Zumbas not necessarily sport, but neither are thrusters a pull ups really. Zumba is a great experience of movement though. The dance moves are just complex enough to challenge, but simple enough to get the heart rate up a bit.

It is well documented that complex rhythm patterns are good food for brain development so I would argue that the process of learning foreign choreography to the complex rhythm patterns makes an enriching cocktail for holistic kinesthetic postures.

High impact-- great for bone density, good prescription for women.
Choreography-- terrific for developing proprioception and balance.
Rhythm and music driven-- stimulates the brain, also just fun.

I'm on the phone because I'm trying to convince any number of these women's husbands to come join us so that I'm not the only dude.

Another note: Blog posts from now on will be short, I assume you'd rather be moving.

Musical Bands: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Now that my fundage has greatly increased, I've been able to spend my money on the really important things in life such as snowboard videos. And as you may have read before, from snowboard videos is where I find much of the music that I enjoy listening to. I found Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero's little gem of an album, Up From Below, in this year's Transworld video, Get Real.

The track '40 Day Dream' sets the backdrop for Chris Grenier's part and from the first time I watched Get Real, the music from Grenier's part stood out as something I should look into further. At my first listen though, I had my doubts about the rest of the album. Only two tracks really stood out as usual. The other besides '40 Day Dream' was 'Home' and while they're still my favourites from the album, the rest deserved much needed second and third listens. The best way I can think to describe this album is a pleasant marriage of a full country band and psycadellery. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros might sound like the hairy baby wandering through the desert the mother and father and father and mother of whom are Neko Case, Neil Daimond, Radio Head, and Zooey Deschenal all living at a Spanish mission in Texas at the turn of the century with a full horn section. However Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros might be classified, they are good!

Letter Writing!!!

Today is Monday and I am sick. Really sick. Probably dying of Swine Flu if you ask my roommate Melanie Dee Jones. And what might I do on a sick day? Read? Maybe. Watch a movie? Probably later. Plan ahead for my classes? You gotta be joking me. Nope. Today I'm writing letters (and then blogging about letter writing)

Why letters? Everybody knows that Devin Colby Jones prefers hand written sentiments to e-mails or texts any day. I am finding that I have a passion for handwriting and letter writing gives me the opportunity to practice my otherwise illegible penmanship. The English language is a beautiful thing when written in cursive! And writing in cursive is a dying art the death of which would classify cursive now as a form of caligraphy.


Also, letters are special because each one has taken a journey! Sure an e-mail or text might go to outer-space and back, but outer-space is so cold. An email hasn't been exchanged from human hand to human hand, sent through sorting machines, ridden on an airplane, train, boat, bike, or mail truck. E-mails are just as easily discarded, but a letter is usually kept, and becomes your very own personal history. My grandparents saved all of their love letters during the second world war, and my family often revisits the letters to remember Howard and Dorthy's true romance. A million emails are bunk compared to a couple letters back and forth from England and France to Montana in 1943!


Here is a letter I just recieved from my friend Brian in Colorado! I don't think it's legible via computer, but he uses a 4 color pen, it's mega funny, and he sent me a gift also with it. He randomly saw some Cinnabon Chapstick in the store and bought me a stick! My camp name is Cinnabon and Brian and I worked together at Sambica a bunch of summers ago. I got the camp name because one time I said I thought women should wear perfume that smells like something that I want: Cinnamon Rolls. Sometimes people still buy or point out cinnamon roll flavoured or scented things! This letter was awesome, one of the best I've ever received!
.

Ellensburg, where the livin' is green! GARDENING!

In the spring of 2009, Mother and Father Jones decided, "We should grow a garden this summer. Devin Colby, invent us a garden." Traditionally, we try to grow some sort of garden, at least an herb garden, but this year, we've finally got it right!

The water bed was a core value of the Jones family in the 1980's and early 90's so we had a couple water bed frames sitting around. We decided to use the frames to create elevated growing beds for our garden. On the ground, lining the beds, we laid down special weed blocking cloths, then filled the beds with soil. And the area we chose to place the beds receive ample water from our automatic sprinkler system!
In our garden we grow spinach, zucchini, squash, kale, cucumbers, tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, tomatios, bell peppers, Anaheim peppers, eggplant, Japanese egg plant, a bunch of herbs, Swiss chard, and two types of lettuce. We grow some other veggies that I cannot remember the names of.

Last Sunday, I invited Cam and Sara to dinner, where we harvested the veggies for dinner and cooked together! It's a teriffic feeling knowing that we grew and picked the vegetables that we're eating.
My favourite vegetable right now is kale. Kale is very nutritious with a large concentration of vitimin K and vitimin C. "Loves me some vitimin K and vitimin C!"

I really wish I could share some tips or tricks for gardening, but our garden is very low maitinence. All I do is eat the vegetables. The weed cloth keeps the weeds from growing in our garden, and the garden area is automatically watered every Day!

Football Plays! Zone Option!

Dear Blog reader,

This is my attempt to write intelligently, creatively, non-pretentiously, and inclusively about football strategy.

Love,
DCJ
Common sports journalism cliches explore different ways to introduce each new season of football. "The air is crisp and the leaves are changing, must be football season," any writer or broadcaster might proclaim. At Ellensburg High School though, we began practicing in June, lifted weights and conditioned each week day of the summer, and took a week of team camp squeezed in the last week of July. It is now officially football season but the players have been hard at work all summer and are now an elite band of brother warriors ready to challenge the biggest and best in the CWAC.

My roles and responsibilities as a coach for the Bulldogs are many, but my favourite role as a coach is that of an offensive coordinator for the C-team and Junior Varsity. I'm blessed with a head coach, Randy Affholter, who encourages me to be creative in compiling an offense that best suits our athletes. I say compiling because we truly have an offensive playbook as thick as a text book.

My favourite play, that we've been running with our C-Team group is called the Zone Option. To first understand Zone Option, or Zone Read, as we call it in the huddle, one must first grasp the Zone play. Zone, is a running play where the running back's initial aim is to run towards and through a certain area designated by a number in the play-call. The lineman though, block in such a way where importance isn't placed on creating a specific hole, but rather moving defensive lineman and linebackers away from the line of scrimmage, creating seams. A seam is open space like a hole or gap, but can be described better as a lateral hole. (I wonder how many lady readers I just lost) The running back begins running with the football towards the designated area, finds the first seam and runs through the space. There is much debate in Offensive blocking schemes between zone blocking and man blocking (attempting to create specific point of attack holes in the defense) which might be another blog entirely. Zone can be run out of any formation, in almost any situation and is often the core running play of any west coast offense.

At some point in the history of the zone play, defensive ends from the side opposite the zone is being run (usually the last man on the line of scrimmage for the defense) started to make tackles by chasing the runningback straight down the line of scrimmage and vacating their normal responsibilities; greedy defensive ends. Offensive coordinators answered back with bootlegs, counters, and most recently the zone option.

Usually run from shotgun, zone option, begins looking like Zone, and for all intensive pourposes, is Zone, but the Quarterback now has the option to give the ball to the runningback or to take it himself, depending on how he reads the Defensive end. The lineman who are on the designated zone side run Zone like normal, while the lineman on the back side, or away from the disignated zone area leave their Defensive end completely unblocked. Once the ball is snapped, the quarterback holds the ball out for the runningback and watches the unblocked defensive end. If the DE runs up field or stays in the same spot, the quarterback will release the football to the running back who then runs zone. If the DE goes towards the runningback and into the zone play, the quarterback will pull the football out and run in the space now being covered by a block or two and vacated by the unblocked DE. This play is awesome because it forces defensive lineman to be very disciplined, which High School defensive lineman struggle with!
Examples: Imagine much smaller and slower humans running these plays, and you'll have the EHS C-team!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwpXXWJA2m4

Music: MGMT!

Since the fall 08 snowboard video release season, seldom have we seen a snowboard flick or teaser without an MGMT lick. And since much of my musical tastes and selections are inspired by rad parts in shred vids (skate, snow, surf, bike) naturally, I had to pick up the MGMT (pronounced management) album Ocular Spectacular. Why this psychedelic electric rock band has become the unoffical sound of snowboarding is revealed when watching the shred put to an MGMT song. Exhibit A: (you may need to turn the sound up on the player)


Aside from the sickness that happens when combining MGMT and shredding, their album, Ocular Spectacular, is quite the experience. Track by track, MGMT presents an unlikely marriage of variety and balance. Each track is very unique from the others, yet they're all held together through some common thread. Every song sings, 'I'm me', while also singing 'I'm a MGMT song'. And while many bands are hard to categorize, because of MGMT's balance between distinguishable sounds they're very easily classified and described as Pschycadelic Electronic Pop Rock. Far beyond cliche indy, and miles short of techno. More shredding Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Exhibit D: (my favourite because of all the tree bonks!)

So pick up this album, put it in your shred/bike/life mix and move your body!