2025 Barbells for Boobs at GrandMastersRx

Saturday, October 18th 

8:00 am – until we’re finished

Join us for our annual event!
We’ll run heats every 30 minutes to allow warm-up time right before your heat.

You can sign up at the gym, or message Sam, or email her at “sam@grandmastersrx.com”. It’s a tradition!

Every October since…probably 2010, we have hosted a Saturday where all of us do “Grace”, a CrossFit workout consisting of 30 Clean and Jerks at 135 pounds for the (young) men and 95 pounds for the (young) women, for time. For our masters over the age of 55, we will scale the loads, but also know some of you can do the young Rx loads (of course you can!) or are working toward it.

This is a time-honored tradition and the longer we all have been in the fitness industry, and the more people we’ve come to know, the more important this becomes.

We all know someone who has been affected by breast cancer, whether it be you, a spouse, a family member, a friend, or a friend of a friend…it’s prevalent. 1 in 8 women will develop breast cancer within their lifetime! And as of recent years, it’s no longer just about trying to prevent it. Sometimes we try to do everything right and bad stuff still happens. These days we are about resilience – the kind the comes from training either with CrossFit methodologies, or at the very least with constantly varied, functional movements performed at all (high to low) intensities, weightlifting, calisthenics, gymnastics, and cardio – whether running, swimming, or machine cardio. It’s the physical dominance that’s built at a young age and carried into our Golden Years, or it’s the hunt for physical competence that leads to wanting more. The fitter a person is going into any kind of cancer diagnosis, including breast cancer, simply elevates the outcome.

What’s ironic about this throwback photo from CrossFit Rebel is that these were our female coaches at the time. At the time, we were simply trying to represent the numbers with this photo. The statistic that 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her life. Who would have guessed that we would have had two of these eight with breast cancer within 10 years of the photo. The point? It’s prevalent.

Our goal of bring awareness to this disease is simple: screening mammograms and self-exams can save lives. But so can being very physically fit and healthy going into a diagnosis.

Prevention and building resilience are our biggest assets here. But for so many women, they do “everything right” and still…they get hit with a cancer diagnosis. So prevention for some feels like a crap-shoot. So our second biggest asset is our health;  Meaning, banking A LOT OF FITNESS, ROBUST HEALTH, AND MENTAL STRENGTH…so that, Heaven forbid, you are ever confronted with a cancer diagnosis, you have both health and mental fortitude to work through the treatment process, should treatment be necessary. Think about it, if you’re not fit- meaning you have low muscle tone, low cardiovascular capacity, low lung capacity, a low “mood” (not mentally strong), poor blood markers and suffer the beginnings of (or are in the middle of) chronic disease like diabetes, hypertension, etc…. enduring treatment is going to be a helluva lot worse. You need to bank health NOW!  If that’s not motivation enough to lose weight, get strong and build a stronger mind, I don’t know what is!

#1 – Most breast cancers are treatable.

I’m not sure if we can say “curable” so for terminology’s sake, let’s say treatable. Statistics indicate that 240,000 Americans will be diagnosed with breast cancer every year. 42,000 will succumb to it. If the breast cancer is invasive and located only in the breast, the 5-year relative survival rate of women with this disease is 99%. (Cancer.net) About 66% of women with breast cancer are diagnosed at this stage. Next to skin cancer, breast cancer in women is the second most prevalent cancer in women in the U.S.

What I read from this is “if the cancer is invasive and located only in the breast”…so it hasn’t spread… it’s highly treatable. And why would it spread? Because it’s been there a while and was not detected in many cases. Early detection plays a huge role here.

Our local health systems do have options for those without health insurance or the means to afford screening mammograms. We’re CRAZY about screening mammograms. That’s where it’s at – get it done. Get a clean scan annually and move on. The earlier you find a problem the odds are that the greater the treatment effectiveness and it lessens treatment many times!

If you don’t have insurance or need financial assistance, get on your phone and Google it. There are options.

#2  – Your health plays a role in both preventing and surviving breast cancer.

“From the mid-2000s, invasive breast cancer in women has increased by approximately half a percent each year. One theory is it is caused by an increase in excess body weight in women overall, as well as a drop in fertility rates and rising age for first births.” (Cancer.net) You had to know I’d go here. Maintaining ideal body weight which to me means maintaining adequate strength and muscle and ideal body fat percentage, is in our control…and no, I don’t believe the problem with the masses is  “it’s in my genes to be overweight”. Sorry guys, I’ve yet to meet anyone who has thrown that excuse at me who is also in control of their diet, physical activity and other lifestyle factors that contribute to obesity. You have to control those factors and check for progress before you can throw out the “it’s in my genes”. Eliminate the causative lifestyle factors and THEN seek a medical cause.

#3 – Your health plays a role in how you will tolerate treatment for breast cancer.

You had to know I’d go here too! I feel like a broken record. Yes, from personal experience recently, and our OG Rebels past with Moana, Janette, and Tracy,  and now having a gym of seniors, many of them women, and many of them who have had battles with breast cancer, once I get a whiff of something amazing, I’ll do all the research both anecdotal and published to both understand it and promote it. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of research out there on how well a “healthy person” will tolerate chemotherapy or other treatment options as compared to an “unhealthy person” because we don’t have a great definition of “healthy” in our country. Unlike the CrossFit standards (pretty black and white!), and the numbers under the Wellness Curve (see below), the modern definition of a “healthy person” today may be that your bloodwork is normal, but you may still be sedentary and overweight. It takes time for “disease to cook” and youth has a great way of masking the percolation and path to disease. If you’re in our network of friends and family then you’re more attuned to a broader level of health statistics and herein lies our goal with our work.

I could go on and on, but it’s the same message, and it’s consistent with what we preach at the gym.  Yes, this is “our opinion”, we are not physicians, but we are surrounded by medical professionals in our lives, and friends and family who’ve endured having cancer, and have beat it. Regardless of what you choose as your belief in how to manage this disease, you cannot argue that the healthier a person is, the better their chance of survival – regardless of what course of treatment they choose. And that is our platform (currently not up for discussion – LOL!).

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we preach screenings and health. That’s it!

If you screen for breast cancer (self-exams, annual gynecology exams, and mammograms when indicated based on your age or health history), you’re doing your part there.

Then, if you subscribe to the healthiest lifestyle you can muster – it may be more for some and less for others – but in the end…

  • more of your diet should be whole foods than processed, and amounts/calories should support your activity level and body weight, but not more,
  • you need physical activity (long slow, short fast, heavy, and light) every day and the older you are the more you need (you heard that right!),
  • you need to sleep, well and enough,
  • you need people – friends, family…COVID is over – no more isolation…bring back your community or tribe,

then you’ve done your part there.

That’s it. It’s a simple and powerful message, and it’s not hard. And it’s the foundation to everything, including, for our purposes here today: preventing breast cancer, early detection of breast cancer, and being as strong as possible if you do have to tolerate any type of treatment for breast cancer. 

And….back to business. Saturday the 18th, our Barbells for Boobs event will kick off at 8:00 a.m. – BE THERE.

Ed and I will be leading the kick off speech this year!  Come and support those attending who’ve had and beat breast cancer. And then be there for workouts! Members of the box will likely know someone in every heat. Yell for them – help them get through it. Friends and family of the box can get on the schedule by texting Sam (still old school, we know!) or stopping by during open hours to sign up. We can accommodate Grace any way: from the hang, scaled loads, just a clean if you have shoulder issues – you know us: we’ll make it happen!

If you sign up to do Grace, you may also be committing to scorekeeping for an athlete before or after you so maybe plan on that.

We’ll continue heats until all our athletes, friends and family are through. I’m anticipating Ed and I will jump into a heat if we can swing the judging.

Plan on being there. Participate. Spectate. But join us! We should be done before noon.