This Spring’s Paleo Challenge was a huge success. Beginning on April 24 with a launch WOD and ending on June 5 with a WOD-and-Party, 52 participants spent six weeks making positive changes to their diets and health behaviors. Collectively, we were all Big Losers, shedding well over 300 pounds. More importantly, though, we improved by our body composition by well over 100 percentage points and our performance by an astounding 1520 repetitions on our Cindy+burpees WOD. You can see these results around the gym just by looking at people like Ruth, Lars, Jennifer K, Chris M and his partner, Sebby. They’re looking good and they’re moving well and, ask them yourselves, they’re feeling better.
Our winners by a large margin were the Doyle family. Tom Sr. and Diane took home the title in dominant fashion, working incredibly hard to make gigantic changes to the way they eat, sleep, mobilize and perform. Their sons, Tommy and Brian, came in third, winning bragging rights in the gym but losing them at home 🙂 Our silver medal went to CrossFit and paleo newbies Chris L. and Stacy R., whose body composition improvements were great, but whose performance gains were almost off the charts. While Stacy & Chris’s finish goes to prove the quick progress that you can make when you start CrossFit and add paleo, they and all our other winners all go to show what’s possible when you team up with your loved ones to get healthy.
One other takeaway from this challenge is a bit of pleasant surprise to all of us: the challenge’s benefits to Masters athletes. In addition to Tome & Diane’s triumph, several other 40-year-old+ participants made incredible progress. Despite everything society tells us, Ozzie is not only improving in strength, he’s actually adding muscle, adding weight yet losing body fat in the challenge. Just amazing. Other ageless wonders include Steve Schmidt, Sangeeta (seriously, just ask her how old she is and be ready for your jaw to fall off), Daniel “dad-bod-no-more” Sherman, yours truly (lost six pounds and PR-ed on my 5k row), and several others who may not want to be outed as older than you think 🙂 Way to go, Team AARP!
The other coaches and I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank everyone who participated. You inspired us and each other with your curiosity, dedication, and hard work (and your recipes). Thanks to you, we would to build on your success and hold challenges–nutrition and otherwise–more regularly. We’ll be sending out a survey soon to ask you about your experiences and preferences for that, so keep an eye out for that and look forward to another Nutrition program this fall. Way to go, Hardwarians!
Strength:
Back Squat: 5RM, then 2×5 @ -10%
Conditioning (Competition):
12 min AMRAP:
- 5 Power Cleans (155/105)
- 10 Wall Balls (20/14)
- 10 TTB (Scale to 30 sec Hollow Hold)
- 200m Run