Functional Movement Messiah// Preface and Evangelism

Preface
I am a Christian and a CrossFitter. And anyone who identifies with both of the titles will agree that there are loads of similarities between the Church and their CrossFit box. Whenever my wife and I notice the similarities, we're always convicted more than a little. Unfortunately we're usually faced with the question of, "What would my faith look like if it were as good as my fitness?" or "What would the church look like if it did things as well as a CrossFit gym?"

Let me set the record straight! I love and follow Jesus. He's my rock and foundation, saviour, healer, protector, and father. I need his grace beginning and end! I love my church, the people, and share a bond in Christ with all Christians! BUT there are just too many parallels between CrossFit and Christianity to not discuss, contemplate, or at least poke fun at.

EVANGELISM

I'm really convicted about this, so why not? I'll start here.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Matthew 28:19

Confession: My wife and I have 42 CrossFit disciples and 0 actual disciples.

It's true. I can talk your ear off about CrossFit. I get excited when someone tells me they've never heard of CrossFit. I even have an awesome CrossFit testimony to share. I once was fat, but now I'm fit. I will invite you to CrossFit until you come.

Basically, if I had the faith nuts to talk to people about the Holy Trinity, the way I spread the word of the Holy CrossFit Trinity (constantly varied, high intensity, functional movements), you'd think I was Billy Graham and my wife was Mother Theresa.

The receiving end is just as similar. Non-CrossFitters roll their eyes at a party when they find themselves between two CrossFitters comparing Fran times or complaining about how there isn't enough gluten-free options at the party, despite the IPA in their mitts.

Why is that? Why is it so easy to talk about CrossFit and incredibly difficult to talk about Christ?

1. Jesus actually matters! It's hard to talk about Jesus because there is some serious weight and consequences. In order to understand the Gospel, we have to come from a place of depravity. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We have to understand and believe that we are sinful which deserves death and we are in dire need of a way out that death. Without that understanding, Jesus doesn't do anything. So in order to share the Gospel, there has to be some part of the conversation that includes, "you're not good enough." Who wants to tell someone that?

Something I can learn here from CrossFit is that it's easy to talk about CrossFit as a better way, because people already know they're not fit enough. Like, you can't debate fat. Plain and simple, you're not healthy, I know the answer, and it ain't an elliptical or gastric bypass surgery. We need CrossFit.

You can't debate unhealthy, but all the time, we debate sin, and we convince ourselves that we're happy. But you can't debate Joy. I know the answer, it's not some new-age-feel-goodery, or morality and ethics. The answer is Jesus!

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.  

Eat this tasty dish!!!

These photos are in backwards order, but whatever. 1/2 onion, 1 green bell pepper, bacon, sausage 3 eggs per dish. Cut up the onions and peppers however you want. Cook the crap outta the onions and peppers. Don't just 'carmelize' them, make them Carmel. Cook the meat. Fork whip the eggs. Put all the stuff in the eggs. Bake it all until it looks edible. KABLAM! EAT IT SON! on a side note, the seasonings in the sausage and the caramelized onions replaced the need to add salt to this dish. I usually add a crap ton of salt to my eggs, so this dish is health factor 7.

Annual blog post

Welp, I am officially the worst blogger in the history of blogging!

This is what has been happening in my life since last year's blog post, or at least everything that I can think of on a Sunday evening sitting next to my lovely wife.

A. Marriage is so good! I honestly love MacLarin more every day. What did I do to deserve such an amazing woman? Literally nothing, and yet she adores me. All I do is hug her and kiss her and and talk to her and pray with her and cook her tasty food. Maybe that's it--the secret  to a good marriage. When I say I don't know why she adores me, I don't mean it in a self loathing sort of way though; trust me, I'm a very handsome and funny man with a job. MacLarin is simply one if the best humans...even on her worst day. 

B. We're opening a gym. The pipe-dream has been upgraded to project status and we're saving our pennies. We have a long term savings plan and we're doing the damn thing. It's fun and scary and challenging, but it's so real. Whether we're successful or complete failures, we cannot lose in the grand scheme of life. Thus far we've learned so much about ourselves through what little process we've gone through, none of which are lesson's that we've never heard before. What a crazy notion right? Things like, "you think you need it, but you really just want it." And "God answers prayers." 

C. I really love moving my body. Yep, I'm obsessed and really do not care to say it. There are definitely harmful obsessions rooted in poor self perceptions that result in exercise addiction and eating disorders, but I am simply fascinated with discovering how God crafted my physical body. Our bodies can are simply amazing. They adapt and heal. We convert food into energy. Many people would argue that our lives are short, but considering the abuse we put our bodies through, we are resilient beyond belief. I could go on and on, but it's bedtime. (Sleep is one of our most amazing functions, but I'll save that for another post)

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.

Interests change evolve. I thought this blog up years ago to be about the intellectual pursuit of things I like that aren't necessarily intellectual--OUTellectual... I was fat then. What I like now is fitness, so outellectual is taking on a new focus but with the old parameters-- The intellectual pursuit of fitness wellness.

why not call it wellellectual or fitellectual? A question you didn't ask, but one you would nod to in agreeing inquiry. Compared to the prefixes 'fit' or 'well', 'out' is ambiguous enough to embrace whatever I want, just like theunitive.com.

What if I started blogging again?

What if I started blogging again? I haven't written anything in a long time. Football season was great, but I wish we were still playing. Now is the season for shredding! But this is not an entry about shredding; it's about music.

Yesterday on NPR-ATC(all things considered), Rob, Melissa, and Tom, the NPR music critic, reviewed the new release All Day by an artist I hadn't ever heard of, Girl Talk. I don't even know where to start. The album is a remix on steroids. I think it's made of 100% sampling, because there's absolutely nothing in the album that I've never heard before. But in the same breath, everything's been mixed to create something I couldn't ever imagine. I would describe the listening experience as an exercise in nostalgia and... well... let me start over. I would describe the listening experience as being lead through all the pop music of the last... Ok here's an example: Lil' Jon mashed with Simon & Garfunkel, but only for a second or two before Girl Talk moves on to mashing up at least 2, and sometimes 3 or four samples from oftentimes completely unrelated genre's and eras.

Get it. It's a free download from illegal art as either one continuous 70 something minute track or multiple tracks for easy management. I prefer having the album split into tracks, All Day really is one entire track and album that should be experienced in its entirety at least once!

A Poem!

My great friend Mike asked me to write a Poem to contribute to his blog and I thought I should post it here as well!

wtf buttons?

Content in waiting waned when a button unraveled from my shirt.
And Just before it rolled down my chest into the palm of my hand,
It held as fast as a loose tooth the Hole third from the top.
My shirt stayed closed but that tacky butonless hole cried out
For its button.
I can sew on my own button, but its void stirs a longing.
Look at my shirt incomplete and say "it is not good that the man should be alone
Semicolon
I will make a helper fit for him."

-Devin Colby Jones

Farewell Facebook

Friday, on the way to watch the worst team in baseball, our Seattle Mariners, I stopped off at the best place to shop for reasonably priced fashions, our North Bend Outlet Mall, and acquired a new pair of the best shoes for human feet, our Vans Authentics. The colour-way that I procured was black with black souls, a colour-way I had yet to own, but one that my good friend Cameron Grant had bought a full year earlier. So what is the first thing I decided to do? Put on my new shoes? Text or call Cam to tell him about the shoes I bought? Nope, I did the cutest thing I could think of at the time: Funny Facebook Status Update! BUT for some reason, 'suggestively morbid' was the funniest genre I could think of. It read something along the lines of:

"In honour of Cameron Grant, I just bought the Black on Black Vans Authentics. Rest in peace Cam. Cameron Grant (1984-2009). We miss you buddy."

For two hours, my status was broadcast to the roughly 270 people on my friends list. Sarah, Cam's wife and parents received calls by concerned and crying friends. Cam and Sara had to make numerous phone calls and text messages to clear up the mess I had caused. And as my guilt set in, I began to really boil down facebook and examine what it has done to my life. My guilt was genuine, but this ordeal revealed how people have made facebook their real lives (myself included). Rather than just asking me something like, "are you kidding Devin?" people, in tears, called Sarah. I'm sure that my closer friends and family knew in an instant that I was joking.

In the case of those who didn't, I realize that people know too much about me to know nothing about me at all. My influence has grown too wide for a 26 year old who knows essentially nothing about life. I think about my 270 or so facebook 'friends' and now realize that I've been trying to get to know these people by reading statuses, looking at vacation pictures, and reading profiles, all of which are only what we choose to project on facebook and not our real selves. I've even been neglecting my closest friends abroad; I haven't called Matt King, the Grants, Jake, in forever, because I can just read their wall and know what's up. Rather than calling my own family, I stay up to date via their facebook pages (I think they do the same to me). And it all breaks my heart. Facebook promises to be this social network that brings people together and keeps people in touch and makes our community global, but it's nothing more than a social crutch and Facebook has actually done the opposite of what it promised me. Social interaction should have the consequences that facebook robbed of relationships. Then the question arose, "What if I didn't have facebook?"

My response was really what scared me. "NO!" I cried out. And all at once all my fears arose. "How will people know what I'm doing? Who will laugh at my jokes? How will I get to know new people? How will I know what people are doing with their lives? How will girls get to know me?" I really want to know how I can hang on to something so insignificant as facebook. I clutch on to facebook with some crazy kung fu grip until it oozes out between my knuckles. My response to the question "What if I didn't have facebook?" is just dripping in bondage. All of my fears about not having facebook are squelched in light of the Gospel and how God truly created us to be in relationship with him and others. I can't honestly go on building my house in the facebook sand, relying on it to make me friends. I was fearfully and wonderfully made in the Image of God. He made me witty and charming and intelligent and good looking and generous and good hearted and if I'm blessed to have friends and influence they come from His plan in me alone. I will lean on his sovereignity for those things, not on facebook.

I want my life to be an open book where anyone has complete access to anything and everything about me, which is what I thought I had with Facebook. Rather than an all-access, open book, facebook is just the cover and the synopsis on the back. Facebook isn't even the spark-notes version of you or me. Let us buy each other's books and read them in full because God made the world too big to be as small as facebook has made it.

Dual Blog! a. What I do during Japanese class b. Hipstamatic iPhone App.

Whenever I tell people that I 'facilitate' a Japanese class, people ask me, "can you even speak Japanese?" And I reply, "No I don't, but I have a student teacher who teaches the class for me and he is great." And naturally, people want to know what I do with the extra two hours, when I'm not teaching. These two hours have become my favourite hours of the day and I always try to be a good steward with the extra time.

Every day I start out by checking my email.

The stapler is no doubt covered in germs so I use a lot of hand sanitizer.

These two hours are an excellent time to drink some coffee. Kyle left this mug in my car. He said I could have it.

Grade some papers.

Star Sticker. Kids love star stickers.

Also, I use the time to plan ahead and organize my notes and thoughts for teaching future Freshman World History classes.

If there is time, I might chat up a buddy on gmail or try to do something creative like write a blog entry.

Hand sanitizer is vital to teachers.

50 year plan for never living alone: or how I hope life works out.

Last night, for listening club, we watched a depressing and beautiful documentary about the Hlemmur bus terminal in Reykjavik Iceland; specifically the homeless people who spend their time around it. Depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, and mental illness were some of the issues connecting each character, but the one heart wrenching aspect of each of their lives was parenthood. Each of the characters had children, mostly grown up and independent, whom they were no longer in contact with. This common theme lead to overwhelming depression which also contributed to the alcoholism and drug use. Everytime a character would speak about their children, my heart would break. I'm not afraid of being alone, nither do I run from silence, but it is a Biblical truth that we aren't meant to be alone. (Gen 2:18)

You can call me a momma's boy, socialist, whatever, but here's my plan for never again in my life, living alone if I can help it. The entire plan, which is in no way revolutionary, revolves around the extended family unit and my empathy for my own parents. "He's gonna be changing our diapers someday," my dad often jokes. What he doesn't know is that surely some day when he is elderly and can't take care of himself or my mother or visa versa, I will indeed refuse to send them to any assisted living community. I'll build an extension onto my house, buy a new house, pitch a tent in the back yard, or do whatever I need to do to have my parents live with me.

Both of my parents are fairly healthy and relatively young, only 24 years older than me, so I don't forsee them needing assistance for a very long time. Also, if one were to die, mine or in-law, I will in a moments notice take in the other. I would even like for them to live with me earlier. I can think of a ton of benifits to having my parents live with me:

Free childcare. A live in cook who works for hugs and the occassional scrabble or golf game. Wisdom for my kids to learn from. And a bit of heart wrenching entertainment when they start to get loopy. There will be books that need reading, crosswords that need finishing, and kids to spoil.

If I have my children though within the next 5 years or so, chances are very high that my children will be out and on their own around the same time that I need to take in my own parents and we can all just be old together. And to complete my cycle, hopefully I was as awesome a parent as mine were and my own kids will be willing to take me in!

Music! Jay Reatard! Watch Me Fall!

What just happened? I'll tell you what just happened. I was just checking out Duksjen the Movie on myairblaster.com. When a song came on. An insanely catchy punk song. And in that instant, nothing made sense. I looked down at my green Van's and felt my beard and asked, "Who am I?" After a moment the Shazam app told me that the music playing was a song called Rotten Mind by a young man named Jay Reatard. Needing to investigate, I stopped the movie and went to iTunes to sample whatever I could find and decided to buy his latest album. And listening to it a couple times sparked some intense emotions. I'm stoked obviously to have found this, but at the same time...

Jay Reatard (pronounced Retard, but I say it Re Atard because I don't like the "r" word) plays a brand of early punk very reminiscent of The Clash and other various '70s punk bands, but a helluva lot catchier. Produced at my ideal level of lo-fi, this punk album has hooks catchier than a pop album complete with a forced brit-punk accent.

...I'm borderline pissed that this human existed and no one bothered to tell me. I honestly thought I had friends who were good at finding music, but this album makes me the indie rock finding king of my friends...

I started out by buying 'Watch Me Fall', his latest album, but shortly I'll be expanding my Jay Reatard stash hopefully to include his entire prolific collection. I can already tell that 'Watch Me Fall' will take a long time to get stale, but next on the "to buy" list is 'Blood Visions.

...It's also tragic that I only discovered Jay Reatard days after he died (May 1, 1980 – January 13, 2010). So in memory of Jay, I highly recommend that if you're reading this post, at least go on iTunes and sample some of his licks...

Shredding: DIY stickers

This is my new Burton Blunt 162 wide and I am stoked on the entire board and the graphics are sick. But I do appreciate a good sticker job on a snowboard and in the spirit of DIY I've decided to pass on the traditional huge die cut company stickers for the most part and come up with some of my own. I'm still going for the die cut look though, but with a less than capitalist message.

For the stickers I bought a roll of white vinyl sticker sheet. If you go to the store and ask someone, this would be the same stuff that shelves are lined with. Then all I did was cut out the letters to a positive lesson with my handy dandy x-acto knife and KABLAM! Positive board '09. I thought it would be fitting to make a sticker that warns kids of the dangers of drugs to offset the fact that I'm a school teacher riding a snowboard titled 'Blunt'.
I'm continuing the spirit of my last board where I spray painted the top sheet white and used colorful Sharpies to write positive messages all over the top sheet. But this way, I won't ruin the sick graphics. Also if you read my last blog post about my goal for this shred season, my board will carry on that goal even when I fall into the 'I'm cool, but I'm really just self conscious' trap. I'll update you on future stickers for the board, but in the meantime try your own mega limited edition die cut stickers!

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!

Another Art!

I had today off so I did some art after 'Mancake Monday: A Monday Breakfast and Mens' Holy Bible Study'.