Twitter's CEO does super

Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo got some extra special attention last week, after outspoken Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel mocked Twitter as a horribly mismanaged company because, 'there's probably a lot of pot-smoking going on there.'

Thiel's swipe instantly went viral. The irony is that all the attention about Twitter's lazy management brought attention to Costolo's social media feed to see how the insulted CEO would respond. He did make one joke about working his way through a bag of Doritos. But then he went on an unusual tweet storm about his obsession with the fitness craze, Crossfit.

@ russlaraway this: W/ a 100lb bar, 21-15-9 of -power cleans -front squats -push press W/ 25 t2b before & after each round. 235 total reps

- dick costolo (@dickc) September 17, 2014

Crossfit is a rapidly expanding fitness brand that combines body weights, Olympic lifts, and cardio all in one short sprint. It's become particularly popular among startups and tech companies looking to a build team culture around fitness. For anyone not familiar with the lingo, Costolo's feed may have seemed like gibberish. Here's the translation:

With a 100lb olympic barbell, I did three rounds of the Workout of the Day (WOD). The first round was 21 consecutive movements of a power clean, front squat, and overhead push press, or what is lovingly known as a 'cluster' (video below). After that, another round of 15 reps, and then a third round of 9 reps.

If this wasn't hard enough, after each round, the workout added another greweling move, Toes to Bar (T2B), before and after each of the 3 rounds. That's hanging from a pull bar and touching your toes to the bar 6 times, 25 reps each (picture below).

Even for Crossfit, that's a pretty tough workout.

To be sure, this wasn't the upper limit of Costolo's masochism. For Memorial day, Costolo subjected himself to Murph, one of Crossfit's most grueling workouts. When I lived in LA, the Santa Monica SWAT team used Murph to weed out new recruits. Murph is:

The upshot is that there aren't a lot of smokers among those who can perform Murph and live to tweet about it (I can't speak to paleo-friendly pot brownies, however).

Aside from the Thiel's insult, it's impressive to see the CEO of a public company also have such an intense workout routine. How does your company compare?

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