Become harder to kill.

Many of you know this, but some of you don’t, but I didn’t care at all about fitness until I was 31. I’ve never been athletic, coordinated, or exceptional at anything sport-related. I spent many years in a band honing a skill set and ignoring my health. I ate fast food for every meal and when I didn’t, it was cereal or pizzas out of a box. I ran into a guy who was 66 years old and he was talking about how he was going to watch his only son graduate high school that weekend. I did the math to realize he was 49 when he had him. It seemed irresponsible to me. I asked him why he did that; wasn’t he worried about not being around to see his son succeed and have a family of his own? He scoffed, almost insulted. “I’m fitter at 66 than I was when we had him. You don’t take care of yourself?” “I don’t have to, I’m skinny.” He rolled his eye intensely and uttered “you should start taking care of yourself if you want to live longer and enjoy the times you have on this earth longer.” It was incredibly sobering and kicked off a fitness pursuit filled with a number of stumbles and misdirection due to not having a guide.

Now I get to be the guide. It’s the greatest privilege in my life that you trust me and the other coaches at The Standard with your fitness development. It’s an honor to get to serve each of you and I hope all of you know how committed we are to providing you everything possible for you to live longer and enjoy your time here on Earth more. We study and critique and do our absolute best to have all of the tools to get you where you’re wanting to go. Thanks for allowing us to do that. Thanks for being a part of The Standard. We appreciate the support more than we could ever communicate. Thanks for making it a welcoming and encouraging place, thanks for not complaining, thanks for telling others we care and do a good job for our members. It’s a beautiful thing to behold, when I take the time to do it.

I’m looking forward to seeing all of you this week. If you need anything more than a great class experience, please don’t avoid asking for any reason. See you tomorrow!!

Fall/Holiday Schedule - last day to order Christmas gifts & Standard swag

As we head into the final stretch of 2021, we have a lot of fun things coming up! The year BLEW by, but it seems like we’ve all become fitter, better moving, happier humans, so it’s a successful year. The last couple months we’ll see the Fair Fight Championship return, a holiday party, The Chaos of Christmas, OSUvM game, and more. I’m pretty excited about it.

The official pop-up shop is closed, so hopefully you liked the convenience of picking stuff out. We’ll likely do all new merchandise offerings like that in the future. IF YOU MISSED THE DEADLINE, IT’S NOT TOO LATE …but pretty much too late. You have to let me know ASAP if you want something, we’ll be ordering some for stock in the gym alongside the other orders, so don’t mis out!

SEE ABOVE SEE ABOVE SEE ABOVE SEE ABOVE SEE ABOVE SEE ABOVE SEE ABOVE

Congrats Vargo's! One week only - Pop-up merchandise store!

If you’ve been to a noon class, you’ve met our resident RN, Maghan. Always in good spirits and friendly, there’s nothing bad that can be said about her. She and her new husband Alex were married yesterday afternoon, so congratulations!! We’re all excited to see where you go from here!

You may have noticed we produced some new trainer shirts for our Standard Staff and some of you asked about getting some of your own. Here’s the best solution I could find for that.

Instead of having to guess how many of each size and design and garment, you can simply select what you’d like and they’ll produce it for you and send it to the gym. Holidays are coming, it’s a badass design, your workout shirt game is lacking— whatever the reason… here you go!

It’ll only be available for a week, so do it now, while you’re thinking about it.

DON’T FORGET - if you’re into the shorts we had made, let me know, I have a number of them left.

The close of Assessment Season! 🙌

What a whirlwind three weeks that was! I continually hate the class experience during assessments, but every season confirms the importance of doing these. We continually see improvement where we expect none, often staving off the back steps we expect. Thanks for working so dang hard, taking on new challenges, and pushing yourself to the absolute limits. It’s SO helpful for us as a coaching staff— now we can create a plan for the next few months so you can be even more improved when we do this again. “…when might that be, Ben?” “One week after the 2022 CF Open.”

We had some great stories come out, but one of my favorites was Policeman Jim Moore. Prior to assessments, Jim was continually making comments about “I’m getting less fit, less strong, this seems harder than it should,” for weeks. “Stay the course," do what you can.” Then assessments happen. He proceeds to level up Deadlift, U/B Pushing, Kettlebell, Weightlifting, API, Front Squat, and Lactic Tolerance. Those are some TOUGH levels to go up! It wasn’t without a couple of disappointments, but those disappointments exposed a few areas we can now adjust to and look for opportunities to improve when he comes to normal, daily class training.

There are a lot of great stories and I hope you’ll all tell yours to the people around our community. Verbalizing a pride in achievement is a powerful experience. Be unsatisfied, but also proud.

29 OVERAL LEVEL UPS — 29 people went up whole levels!! That’s a big deal!

537 total levels entered — Over 75% were improved levels and if we include same levels, that number goes up even more! This is an important proof of efficacy of our program and also a testament to you all having worked REALLY hard to improve. It’s rather inspiring.

We’re going to have some after-action reports with all of you so we can know what you need and be able to provide it. We’ll be talking about those in the next few days and weeks.

GET YOUR BINGO CARDS TURNED IN!!

DRAWING is tomorrow night (Monday!)

Also, four #standardtrained athletes took to the adventure course yesterday; biking 36 miles, kayaking 6, and rucking 8 with 20% of their bodyweight in a pack. Congrats to Craig, Amanda, Michelle, and Rachel! What a way to spend a Saturday!

Hybrid assessment week 3...

^^ Watch that ^^ Assessment schedule is changing, so we can get back to normal class vibes sooner.

Amended schedule for this week; HYBRID WEEK:

Monday Assessment opportunities: Deadlift, Weightlifting, U/L Endurance

Tuesday Assessment opportunities: API

Wednesday Assessment opportunities: RUNNING, Upper body pull

Thursday Assessment opportunities: Front Squat/Squat endurance, Neurological/Core Endurance

Friday Assessment opportunities: Flexibility, Lactic Tolerance

Assessment Season 5, Fall 2021

What a 1st week we had during Assessment Season! We saw over 250 levels entered, with the vast majority of those being level-ups. We saw multiple Red V performances and SO MANY big achievements be hit. One of the best examples came from Maghan Purney who was stymied by Upper/Lower Endurance two seasons in a row. We had so many conversations over the last year about how to modify specific workouts and what accessory work she could do to bridge that gap. She never once complained, just quietly went and put in the work. This work, not only did she do Tabata push-up 4, but she SMASHED Upper/Lower Endurance. Congratulations!

Other notable performances was Libbe’s ring dip and pull-up weights (31 & 20+ respectively), Adam’s first strict handstand pushup, Tim’s first TWO handstand pushups, Dennis & Tommy’s first 20 minute row experiences, and coach Sam unexpectedly beat his time in UB/LB End by a mere :40!!

It’s awesome to watch these pour in and it’s proof that the process will pay off if you commit to showing up and giving your absolute best effort.

I’m also fully aware that assessment season is tough to work through and those classes are often disjointed; the attendance confirms that. Assessments are mostly for your coaching staff, believe it or not. We can’t identify the areas you need the most help in unless we, you know, see you do stuff you suck at. If you just want to bypass it, that’s fine, you totally can… but I want to be clear that it’s the best way for us to see how to best help YOU.

Don’t forget to be logging your levels and keeping track of your bingo card!

With all of that said, this is the first week with a couple of repeat assessments, so there will be some alternate workouts available. If you just aren’t in a place where you can handle the assessments and simply want to come in and do the alternate workouts, you’re welcome to do that. We’d rather have you training than not. :)

See you tomorrow!

Good bye Solheim... thanks for the new parking spots.

Solheim Cup is almost done, but the events downtown are. It was a whirlwind of excitement and inconvenience. A completely bipolar experience; annoyed to ride my bike each day but super happy to have so many people experience downtown like it’s never been before. With it came new parking spots, a more beautiful Summit St. and lots of newfound awareness. But the show must go on… and that starts with Labor Day.

Labor Day schedule, as you’ll notice in the app is only 8am and 10am, just like Saturday. Tell your friends and then bring them to the morning class. We’ll be doing a workout called “Hotshots 19,” written in tribute to 19 firefighters who lost their lives fighting gigantic blazes in their hometown of Prescott, AZ. The majority of them were avid CrossFit enthusiasts and used it as their primary source of training in preparation for one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. We’ll honor them tomorrow with an incredibly difficult workout that could very well take more than the hour we typically allot. If you’d like to partner up, you should. If you want to time cap it, you should. Your effort and intention is just as valuable as the completion. We’ll see you tomorrow!

Some of you have been asking about the themes for the month as they change, so here are September’s… albeit, we start assessment season next week. :)

Month Theme Overview 

E Discipline: Weightlifting

System: Plumbing

Virtuosity: Bodyweight

Fun: Classics

Assessments: Squat End., Lactic Tolerance

***WORKOUTS ***

Solheim Cup Week and new Standard brand shorts!

We all know the Solheim Cup has been slowly approaching, bring us new parking and new city beautification. It also brought with it some nuisances. We should be prepared for more of that this week. Entire roads will be closed and it may be more difficult to make it to the gym— please plan accordingly. This is a giant event that puts Toledo on the world’s stage, but it’s going to be an inconvenience.

Secondly, we got some new shorts and shirts for our Standard Trainers. These shorts are built from scratch, meaning the logos are in the fabric itself, not just printed on or vinyl. It will literally never disappear or look bad. Because they’re so epic, we ordered a few more than we’d need just in case anyone wanted a pair of their own. So, this is an extremely limited run and we won’t likely do it again for a while. If you want a pair or two or three, just touch base with me and I’ll get you set up. We have black and dark red in mens and women’s sizes; the women’s shorts are lined, super conservative, and even more comfy. We’re selling them at our cost ($64), so we can’t do credit cards, just cash or venmo… unless you want to pay the extra $4 service fee (🙄). I’m pretty pumped about these. We’ll have a Standard custom shop this fall so you can pick up a new shirt or hoodie if you like then. Woo! March!

We have a couple of brand new faces around the gym as well, so if you don’t know someone, please introduce yourself. They’re probably the best friend you didn’t know you needed.

Workouts!

This was my very first CrossFit workout. It took me 22 minutes.

The Bipolar weekend

This weekend was filled with some incredible highs and an unfortunate low. A team of 6 #standardtrained athletes participated with the Battle of the Boxes in Northville, MI and a fun time was had by all! …except Chuck Standard. Chuck suffered a shoulder injury that included a trip to the ER, but thankfully didn’t require surgery. Let’s send out some positive vibes as he works through that challenge. Here are some photos from the event:

Also this weekend, Lexi and her sister Carly, earned their MBA degrees! Congratulations on such a tremendous achievement!

Our swimming levels are awful. (but we had fun!!)

…good thing we’ll be working on them more and more often! lol

We had a great time at the Eastern Community YMCA in Oregon this past Saturday. Lots of us figured out that fitness on land is not really the same as fitness in the water. lol… We’re definitely going to be working on it more often in the future. In the fall and winter months, we’ll be moving those events indoors and have actual instructors teaching us how to get better. I’m pretty pumped about it. :)

Three housekeeping things:

1) Don’t forget to register for classes and then don’t forget to show up. lol …if you can’t or aren’t, please be considerate to our friends and remove your registration. Thanksssssssss….

2) Assessment Season starts Sept 13th. This is a global assessment cycle, which means a whole slew of other gyms will be doing it at the same time we are.

3) There’s a global leaderboard in the works. Now you can see how you stack up in Chalk Up against athletes worldwide, not just at The Standard. That’ll be pretty cool.

WORKOUTS!!!

Waves of life and waves in a pool...

Hey team! We made it through Jeep Fest and seeing our place in the background of a number of pictures was really surreal. Each and every one of you have been an integral part of creating The Standard’s experience, so thanks for being great human beings, challenging yourselves, and encouraging your friends to do the same. It was a reflective humbling weekend for me in that way.

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It’s also been a really hard season for a number of our friends. Some of you know what I’m talking about and many of you are likely insulated from it, but suffice it to say there are significant struggles happening inside our walls. For instance, Angie had a major procedure this week in Ann Arbor where they removed a 3lb mass and 4 herniated discs from her neck. She’s in great spirits, but the recovery process will be intense. These are opportunities to come alongside our friends and show that we care and have their best interests in mind, so if you’d like to know more of what’s going on, please talk to me (Ben). If you’d like to contribute a few dollars, I’ll have a place to do that at the entry area’s shelves or you can venmo me (@thestandardtoledo). If you’d like to write a card, you can do that as well, just put it in the box on the shelves. Everyone goes through tough experiences in life, we practice doing that on a small scale each day, but sometimes you absolutely need people. Let’s be those people.

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NO ON-SITE SATURDAY CLASS THIS 8/14!!

We’re going to take our fitness outside the gym and over to Eastern Community YMCA! We’ll be working through a fun 4-teammate partner WOD using their outdoor pool before it closes for the season. Get your friends together now and plan to attend! No open gym, no gym, just that workout over in Oregon. It’s going to be a fun time. Oh… if you can’t swim, no worries, as always, we have a substitution that makes sure everyone gets to play. :)

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WORKOUTS

Assessment season is coming Sept 13th + New promo video

ANNOUNCEMENT: Assessment Season #2 for 2021 is scheduled for September 13th. You have 6 weeks to shore up the areas you struggle in the most! Look at your levels, talk to a coach about them, and let’s get a plan together to ensure that your season is better than when we did it in January!

Secondly, we’re rolling out a new website and a promo video put together by our very own Josiah Williamson.

Kong's weight-loss and health journey documented on WTOL...

All of us know Kong (John). We know he’s been on a tremendous journey of weightless and self-renewal and we know he’s a kind-hearted good person. Roxy swung by the gym to give an update on his progress, so if you haven’t seen it, take 2:00 and check it out!

Also, I got to take a few days off this week to play golf in a tournament in Lima. I couldn’t have participated if I didn’t have a coaching staff willing to pitch in and fill the gaps, so I have to say thanks to them for being flexible. Specifically Sam and Lexi who are working full-time jobs and still stepped up to run classes so all of you can continue your fitness progress. Thanks a lot!

Our coaching team is growing and evolving and I’m proud of how much they care and how much they know and can give back to Standard athletes. It’s awesome to see. I hope each person who trains at our gym knows the level of instruction and experience being provided. If not, please drop-in to another CF gym the next time you’re out of town. :)

Ivy Daniel Baer-Genson arrives!

Many of us have known that Logan and Jordan have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of their daughter and finally, on Friday, she made her debut!! We are so pumped to welcome her! Mom and baby are both healthy, thankfully. There’s a general dog and baby ban at the gym, but expect that there may be a baby carrier in there every so often. :) Congratulations, guys!!

In other news, we added a basketball hoop and I spent my Sunday fixing the dang crease in the rubber floor. No more tripping hazards. :)

I’m going to be playing a ton of golf this week and I want to thank the coaching staff for filling in the holes (pardon the pun), so I can get a few days off. I greatly appreciate you all. As for you athletes, don’t treat them like the substitute teacher in high school— you still won’t get away from the bike. :)

Happy 4th! New parking!

Hey all! We hope you all had a fantastic holiday weekend!

We had a special 4th of July workout on Sunday and by “special,” I mean brutal and when I say brutal, I mean appreciative. Appreciative of all of the sacrifices and hard work and hard decisions that have been made so that I could choose difficulty on my holiday instead of having difficulty choose ME.

I’m a little late in posting this as I spent most of my holiday time working on a BASKETBALL HOOP install.

It’s awesome. :)

See you all this week! There are some GREAT workouts planned!

New Coaches, New athletes, new holiday class!

The Inaugural Lexi & Maddy Show debuted Friday at the noon class. Fresh from their L1 seminar, they both did an excellent job presenting the workout, giving cues and corrections, and creating an enjoyable environment for each athlete! Great job, ladies! Keep an eye out for them more and more often as they work through our Coaches Development Program

We currently have 6 people working through Basics, so as they finish up, there may be a number of new faces showing up. If you don’t recognize someone, introduce yourself and if someone looks lost, lend a helping hand please. :) (…you all do this incredibly well already, I just want to mention it so you know it’s extremely valuable)

Lastly, we’re going to have a 9am 4th of July Sunday class. I programmed the workout, so all complaints can come directly to me. There will likely be many. You’ll need a partner of similar STRENGTH to you, so choose wisely! If you want to do that workout, but can’t come Sunday… Saturday open gym at 8-10a sounds like a good opportunity. :) This is a big workout to take on— the intent was for it to be hard enough to appreciate that hard things are worth doing in the end and they’re most manageable if you have a support system to help get it done. Keep that in mind as we think back on all of the moments of history that have happened to keep us free in so many ways.

This is a repeat workout, so if you logged your time in Chalk It, push the history button to see what your goal is.

A Muddy Father's Day weekend...

Firstly, we have some of the best Dad’s as members at The Standard. We hope all of you felt loved and appreciated for all you do for your little ones and everyone else in your life. The way you all manage your time, support your kids, and mentor them toward valuable humans to our society is a true inspiration and doesn’t go unnoticed and unappreciated.

Secondly, congratulations to everyone who took on a Tough Mudder challenge this afternoon! Many of us overcame literal and mental obstacles to complete the course, so we want to acknowledge all of you. It was awesome to see your fitness put to the test in a completely different venue. 💪

A peek behind the programming curtain...

A little look behind the curtain. We don’t talk about these concept much publicly, but the workout planning— what happens when, how often, how heavy, etc —is a delicate art and is never just random. It may FEEL or SEEM random, but it never is. There is a lot of consideration that goes into every element inside every workout, how long the workout will be, etc. Each month we have a “virtuosity,” focus and that means an area that we are specifically going to concentrate on getting better at. For this month, it’s kettlebell movements, which is why you saw kettlebell cleans and snatches last week. That’s why we have Turkish Get-ups and windmills today and swings later in the week. It’s important for us to get exposed to new movements, new implements, and learn new things. That keeps things fresh and exciting, but also challenges your brain (important!), and forces muscles to be used that we may unconsciously be avoiding.

There’s also a “fun,” focus for each month and this month it’s old open workouts. So last week, we did the box jump/push press/toe to bar open workout, this week we have one of the most miserable open workouts I’ve ever done (because I’m not good at heavy breathing workouts). So you’ll see those sprinkled in all month and that’s to give us an exciting challenge and to break up the training rhythm that’s fairly easy to fall into. We need that “go time,” intensity.

That’s all I have to say about that! I hope you all had as good of a weekend as I did! See you this week!

What a weekend!

Yesterday was pretty historical for a number of reasons!

1) Coach Sam and Ben Holt lead their team to an incredible showing at Lex Artis’ local competition in Plymouth, MI.

2) Lexi and Maddy competed as well and had a great time. Both teams had to complete 6 workouts within 75 minutes!

Great job teams!

3) The Sub-Standard Golf Outing returned with version 2.0! 20 of us descended upon South Toledo and had a great time. Many of us would never consider ourselves “Golfers,” but had a great time! Version 3.0 is in the works already, so hit the range and look for it in the fall. :)

4) While competing, Maddy and Lexi got a notification that they passed their test from their seminar last week and are now CrossFit Level 1 Trainer Certificate holders!!

CONGRATULATIONS!! The Standard family will look forward to what you do with those!

NOTE: if either of them give you a cue randomly in class, it’s likely because they know their stuff and want you to be better 😉

We’re going to have a great week of training; there are some challenging workouts, including an OG open workout, so bring the positivity and the intensity this week!

Sub-Standard Golf Outing 2.0 - June 5th 2pm

There are still spots available! As with everything The Standard does, all skill levels are welcome. Bad attitudes and unrealistic expectations are not. :) It’ll be a great time! Sub-Standard Golf Outing 3.0 coming in the fall!

This is obviously a big workout to embark on. If you’ve been training regularly, and you follow your level, you can do it. Embrace the challenge, pay your respects, be conscious of the why, emerge victorious, supported, and humbled. Registration is open— pick a time!

THERE IS A MURPH RECOVERY OPTION FOR THIS DAY, but if you didn’t do Murph, this will kick off your week really well!