Big Cat Productions initiated the Throwdown on a warm August evening as the founders watched a new member of Potomac CrossFit dominate a WOD and then stick around for his 5th foundations class.

Big Cat Productions immediately formed and took the then novel idea of the PCF Challenge Board to new levels by creating an event which would put a few hand selected athletes directly against one another.

Dates were set, athletes chosen, and the first throwdown made it’s appearance on October 22, 2010. The Friday Night Throwdown presented by Potomac CrossFit was born.

Noah, Chris K, Chad Pierce, and Christy Philips competed in three benchmark WODs in one hour. Fran was first, followed by Diane, and Grace wrapped everything up. As a testament to the energy that night, Christy Philips PR’d all three WODs. Noah took the day in elapsed total time of just under 14 minutes for all 3 workouts.

Throwdown 002 – The Challenger

On December 10, 2010 Big Cat Productions brought the Throwdown back to PCF to host the Challenger Event. Throwdown 002 featured athletes from CrossFit Outlaw and PCF all of whom competed for the right to take on Noah one on one in Throwdown 003. Andrew from PCF took the day with the fastest time over three the WODs and his dominating second WOD, “Muscle snatching like a man!” put him in solid control to take WOD 3 and claim victory.

Throwdown 002′s crowds were even larger and the atmosphere rivalled any backyard brawl videotaped for YouTube.

Throwdown 003 – The Women

Andrew, in the process of dominating his competition, hurt his shoulder and was unable to compete in the scheduled Throwdown 003. Instead the women’s championship belt was put up for grabs as 6 women competed to be crowned Female Throwdown Champion of the World.

The 6 athletes competed across 3 WODs each with different scoring domains to produce a singular champion. The crowd reached maximum capacity to cheer on the ladies as WOD 1 kicked off. A standard AMRAP featuring deadlifts, pistols, and shoulder press. WOD 2 was a couplet where each athlete had to establish a 1 RM max ground-to-overhead in five minutes and then perform an AMRAP of 3 minutes of 95 lb snatch.

Jenn Jones was injured in WOD 2 and tried to continue but Big Cat Productions’ legal team shut her down. WOD 2 produced the closest results with onl a narrow victory for Christy Phillips after a massive 180lb clean and jerk.

WOD 3 featured everyone’s favorite pasttime – rowing – and Christy again took first place to clinch her victory in Throwdown 003.

Throwdowns for the Future

The first and original Throwdown creator, Big Cat Productions will continue to produce Throwdowns. 

Often imitated, never duplicated – Big Cat Productions

Ingredients
2 sweet potatos
1 package spicy, uncured chicken sausage
2 eggs per serving

- Microwave the sweet potatoes for 3 minutes to soften them up, then dice.
- Dice sausage
- Combine potatoes and sausage in skillet with olive oil and appropriate seasoning and cook until sausage is done.
- Finish in broiler to crisp up potatoes.
- Poach two eggs
- Place hash on plate, put eggs on top, eat.

Liz K posted a recipe for gluton-free muffins and the Wife and I took the opportunity to use the recipe. After some hard work from the Wife we had blueberry muffins made from coconut flour which were tasty and gluton free.

My favorite muffin flavor is lemon poppyseed. It was decided the Wife would take the recipe, amend slightly, and create a Lemon Poppy Seed, gluton-free muffin.

The resulting muffins create a few interesting problem. The first problem being how many muffins can I safely consume in a single day and the second problem being how often can I convince the Wife to make more muffins.

Pictures:

Recipe:
Paleo Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Ingredients:

- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 6 eggs
- 1/4 cup raw honey (or slightly less)
- 4 T of applesauce (or slightly less)
- 1/4 cup coconut oil (or slightly less)
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 3 teaspoons poppy seeds

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a small bowl, combine coconut flour, salt and baking soda.
3. In a large bowl mix the eggs, honey, applesauce, coconut oil and vanilla/lemon extract until
well blended. Mix dry ingredients into the wet, blending with a hand mixer or by hand. Gently
fold in seeds and lemon zest.
4. Place batter in paper lined muffin tins OR oil small individual glass bowls
5. Bake in preheated oven for 14-18 minutes. .

For any interested party here is the nutrional breakdown if you make a batch of 12 muffins. My numbers may not be completely accurate so I encourage anyone else to run the numbers if you are so inclined.

Fat: 7.54 g
Carbs: 4.96 g
Fiber: 2.08 g
Protein: 3.69 g
Calories: 121.25

I subbed body weight back squats for dead lifts as I thought that would be better for the back. Turns out according to a doctor of medicine, back squats with any substantial weight are the worst possible thing I could be doing. My HSPUs, while improving, are not yet strong enough to do a full WOD with them so I subbed 12 near legitimate HSPUs for first round and then 15 and 9 dumbbell press.

10:01

Saturday evening featured Fogo de Chao. Going into the meal I was excited to eat my body weight in various meats but by the foruth or fifth gaucho coming over I realized the meat was overly buttery and seasoned. I also was never given filet which in retrospect, was a passive aggressive move by the gauchos, and one I did not appreciate. I would say meal was good but not as good as I hoped. I still ate a sizable amount of meat and of course celebrating K-Dawg’s birth is always worthwhile.

Sunday was rest.

16:43

my double unders were splendid today. I did the sets of 50, 40, 30 unbroken. Set of 20 was broken by the jump rope hitting my shirt on the ground and set of 10 by accidental human interference. Sit ups remain the slowest movement in the world for me. Didn’t break one but I feel like I go at a rate of 1 per 10 seconds.

Food Update

The Wife started doing a pseudo clean so I joined in on the fun. I’m basically just eating 90% good instead of believing to eat 80%. I’ve had a few beers and continue to enjoy scotch but I haven’t had a grain or other poor food choices. As a result of this eating effort, 4 different pairs of pants didn’t fit this morning. I have decided to purchase a few pair of skinny Dave pants to have on hand when doing things such as eating clean as this is a recurring problem.

Given the above, I think the game plan is to get down to 175 pounds and stay there. Immediately after switching to zone I dropped to below 170 but jumped back to 180+ after quadrupling my fat intake and cheating more. But I think the body will do better at 175 (better meaning less nagging injuries popping up versus catastrophic ones which occur no matter the body weight).

MRI on the back this afternoon as a note.

Snatch 2-2-2-2-2-2
OHS – 3-3-3-3-3

The snatches were supposed to be done at 50% or so of one’s one rep max as to maximize speed. I hung out at 75, 85, and 95 pounds and felt the speed was good on all of the reps. I was also focusing on a few pointers from Aaron so I probably ended up doing 20 or 30 reps.

OHS is a huge weakness of mine. I don’t know if it is shoulder flexibility, general lack of strength, or another flaw but I’m just terrible at the movement. I’ve started doing shoulder pass throughs and broom stick OHS’s with more regularity to work on it and I’m going to switch most squating days to OHS. I’m closer to 2x body weight back squat than I am to 1x body weight OHS. That seems off to me.

OHS sets were at 95, 115, 115, 125, 135 x 4.

I did somewhere between 5 and 7 rounds. My HSPUs actually progressed through the WOD and I was doing sets of 2 and 3 with an abmat at the end. Range of motion, abmat, and overall ugliness would prevent me from calling them decent.

Pull ups remain the goat, cost me 3 or 4 rounds given the time I was taking to do scaled HSPUs and pistols.

The diet has been strong the past week. Over the weekend I only indulged slightly by having a few peanut M&Ms but nothing overly alarming.

I went light on both as this was the first work out after I tweaked the back

7-17-10
AMRAP 15 minutes
5 front squat
20 jumping pull ups
5 DB press each arm
6 rounds and 30 reps
i scaled the front squats to 165 and 145 (3 rounds each)
DB press was 40 pound db

7-19-10
OHS Work – Wrist’s were my limiting factor. I was just trying to rep at 95 pounds to work on form and comfort but the ole wrists were not cooperating

Metcon portion was 5 200 meter rows
38.6, 36.4, 35.3, 35.1, 35.1

Rows felt strong, I should have broke 35 but just couldn’t stomach the last 40 or 50 meters at the same pace.

Clean and Jerk 3-2-2-1-1-1

Original goal was to do 155 x3, 165 x2, 175 x2, and try and hit PRs at 185 for the individual sets. But while warming up at 135 I did something to my back. Couldn’t move for awhile and had to walk home since I couldn’t physical sit down. Awesome time.

No other WODs performed. Food was good all things considered over the weeekend. The Wife is attempting a psuedo-clean so I am trying to be supportive and not eat terribly as well. I think we were relatively successful given that we were in Boston with my brother, his wife, and their friends – a group not known for positive reinforcement and good eating habits.