Do you regularly watch our GWOD progression videos? Do you have a few extra hours to volunteer to help the community? Do you want to attend one of my Freestyle Connection gymnastics-movement seminars for free? If so, read on!

Over the past few weeks we've been working hard here on a special project at GWOD. After receiving feedback from our community that our progression videos were inaccessible to viewers who are deaf or hearing impaired, we've been inspired to enhance our site so that we can also serve this audience so we can bring them the best movement training available. With the generous help and guidance of the amazing Amelia Penner, we are proud to announce that our GWOD video player now has Closed Captioning capabilities - check it out ! This works far beyond our own website, if you embed our GWOD videos on your own blog or website you can also enable subtitles and read every word that's said in the progression videos. But wait, there's more work to be done...

Since we have over 180 progression videos with a new one added each week, we are asking YOU to volunteer and help us do some of the transcribing. As our sincere thanks for your efforts, in return we would like to invite you to attend a Freestyle Connection seminar for free. So if you're interested in helping out, please send us an email and we'll get you hooked up!

Speaking of progressions, this week we're getting wild again with The Modern Gypsies working on some front flips!

• Front Tuck on Trampoline Progression Pt.1 

Finally, WOW! What a strong showing to kick off the CrossFit Games Regionals this weekend. I don't know about you, but we're glued to watching all of those update summaries until it hits our region.

Thanks!
Coach Carl

We usually perform a lot of our movements relative to something solid and rigid, most of the time we're testing ourselves against gravity while rooted on the ground. It's easy and almost comforting to train against gravity as we have a lifetime of experience with it. But what about movements where we are not anchored and can't use solid footing as a reference? The double unders on the jump rope feels tricky even though you're only hopping inches off the ground. The rope climbs are no go even though you can climb a ladder no problem. The muscle up transitions feels impossible with the rings going all over the place.

So how do you train for that moment of weightlessness, and how do you master movements when you're not pushing or pulling against a rigid surface? One tool that gymnasts use to gain aerial awareness is the trampoline, where the athlete is able to spend more time in the air. As an exaggeration of reality, the athlete can then focus on precision movements to achieve proper positioning and controlled transitions under any orientation.

Over the few weeks, with the help of The Modern Gypsies we'll show you several progressions using the trampoline. If you have access to a trampoline, go try it out! But only go as quick as you can stay in control, don't be a knucklehead and get yourself hurt.

• Trampoline Basics Progression Pt.1 

We're less than two weeks away from our seminar at CrossFit Omaha and CrossFit TNT! These sessions are almost sold out, so last call to sign up if you haven't already.

Thanks for the birthday wishes!
Coach Carl

A special shout out to our friends at Reebok, Rogue Fitness, and Beyond the Whiteboard for syndicating our CrossFit Games Breakdown series this year for the 2012 CrossFit Games Open.  With an impressive 100K+ views on YouTube and the GWOD site for the Games Breakdown series, we hope these videos helped you prep for more PRs and resulted in injuries during this round of competition.  Stay tuned as we'll continue our coverage for the Regional Workouts!

As we continue our training, it's time to make time for more skill work once again. This week we take another fresh look at the Back Extension Roll where you'll notice in practicing this movement that the hip extension and quick hands will skill transfer well to your Oly lifts:

• Back Extension Roll Progression Pt.2 

Thanks!
Coach Carl

This week we are going to practice a fun skill that you've all been asking for - the Handstand Walk! If you want to walk more than a couple of steps, you have to find a quality handstand position that you can control in extension to chase with your hands. Go practice and chase quality positions - literally.

• Handstand Walk Progression Pt.1 

Don't do anything sketchy, keep it close to the wall for support for now to get comfortable with these positions and we'll get into some safe exit strategies next week.

Thanks,
Coach Carl