Burnsy and Danger Guerrero have been holding down the fort while I’ve been wandering around Austin looking for Mark Henry covering the sights and sounds for UPROXX and Gamma Squad, but I finally stumbled onto something sports related: the impromptu Nike Fuel Lot in the middle of downtown, wherein you can play sports, watch people take pictures of people playing sports and get a free t-shirt.

The lot has been a meeting point for Livestrong running groups all week, but I managed to get down there on Wednesday to earn my girlfriend’s shirt with 100 Fuel points of activity. See, Nike’s new Fuel Band doesn’t just measure running, like the old Nike Plus … it measures EVERYTHING, from basketball, push-ups and jumping jacks to skateboarding and dancing around like an idiot. Anything athletic, except for swimming, and as I’ve learned the hard way, doing your dishes.

I earned something like 4,000 Fuel points trying to get from one concert to the other (and not wanting to pay the bike rickshaws twenty bucks to take me 10 blocks), but my favorite 100 earned were here. Check out a few of the pictures, and stay for the technicolor freakout at the end.

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In news that should only be shocking to people who take diet pills, Reebok is paying $25 million to disgruntled athletic shoe enthusiasts after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission determined that the company’s RunTone and EasyTone shoes were sold with a mighty misleading ad campaign.

If you’re unfamiliar with the kicks in question, they’ve been marketed as shoes that women can wear to gain the benefits of exercise while they simply walk from the frozen dinner aisle to the ice cream samples. So how did they market such a foolish idea? By strapping these $100 cankle supports to exotic human masterpieces like Nicole Scherzinger and Kelly Brook.

David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection said: “The FTC wants national advertisers to understand that they must exercise some responsibility and ensure that their claims for fitness gear are supported by sound science.”

(Via the Daily Mail)

Now you wait just a second. How can you say that Kelly Brook isn’t a walking example of sound science? Everything about her suggests that gravity is bogus. Next thing you’ll tell me is that wearing Sketchers Shape Ups won’t turn me into a Hall of Fame quarterback or a sex tape star.

But don’t worry, lazy fitness enthusiasts. I’ve found the solution to all of our problems and it’s so awesome and powerful that it makes CrossFit look like cross dressing.

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You may have seen this gallery already. The two best reasons why I can come up with are:

1. You have a google alert set for “Self Magazine”, which would be hilarious, or
2. You frequent one of those sites where a guy is already MS Painting ERIN ANDREWS NASTY BOOBY STRETCH CLICK HERE across the pictures before they’re even uploaded.

Regardless, With Leather likes to consider itself the industry standard in comedy sports blogs who appreciate CrossFit. We also consider ourselves people who enjoy a good Beautiful Woman Exercising and wanted to share these with you. Granted, we also wanted to come up with funny captions for each picture, but the only Erin Andrews jokes are easy (they took these pictures through a peephole, ESPN is going to give Erin her own subsection about CrossFit with articles by Chuck Klosterman, etc.) or perverted (they took these pictures through a peephole, everything she does looks like a sexual position, etc.).

If you want more, the pictures were published a couple of days ago on Self.com, and Self.com is like the fifth thing you get when you type “Erin Andrews Crossfit”, because a lot of websites have “bro” in their name.

Please click through and enjoy a lady in much better shape than the rest of us. Don’t worry, slideshows are good exercise.

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There’s a fine line between underwear and gym clothes. Sometimes women go to the gym with a sports bra as a top, and sometimes they use yoga pants as pajamas. It is in that spirit of line-blurring that I present to you Victoria’s Secret’s VSX Sexy Sport line of workout gear, and, more specifically, their ad campaign: making models (angels, whatever) Candice Swanepoel and Erin Heatherton wear these things and filming them. Good call, Victoria’s Secret.

You can check out the video after the jump.

In case you’re still reading and haven’t jumped yet (what’s wrong with you), the video is that wonderful kind of pointless where Candice Swimmingpool is soaking wet from exhaustion despite her workout being “lie down on the ground and occasionally stand still”. At one point she stretches a little, and at another she dances in place. I don’t know if this counts as exercise at all, but I’m pretty sure she isn’t real and is just S1m0ne. I wish they’d bring in Kate Upton for stuff like this, but I don’t think Victoria’s Secret employs women who get a period.

Go, go, watch the video.

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With Leather’s founding editor Matt Ufford attended the CrossFit Games in Carson, California last weekend. This is his report.

If you’ve never heard of CrossFit, the simplest description for it is “fitness cult.” As with most cults, there are gurus, a particular style of dress for its members, and a separate vocabulary that can take weeks or even months to learn. Notably — as with most cults — gurus and followers alike shy away from the word “cult.” But there’s one important difference between CrossFit and Scientology or Jonestown or the Movementarians: obeying CrossFit’s religion of short but intense workouts produces undeniable results.

Nowhere is that more obvious than the CrossFit Games, the fledgling sport’s annual competition to determine the fittest of the fit. The devotion of the faithful is on display everywhere: in the competing athletes, in the muscular bodies of the crowd, in the companies hawking fitness wear and protein drinks, in the food trucks selling snacks compatible with the paleo diet. Even as someone who works out at a CrossFit gym*, I felt out of place with my average build and torn pectoral muscle and general unwillingness to take off my shirt amidst a sea of physical perfection.

On the following pages is a photo essay of the Games, with my commentary peppered in. The professional-looking images are courtesy of CrossFit; the crappier candids were taken on my iPhone.

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Sir Charles Barkley is an eleven-time NBA All-Star and a member of the original Dream Team, but he was never really a fitness role model. He’s also 48 years old and spent the last half a decade rocking the Five Buck Box, so react with only mild surprise when you see him looking turrble in his first week of CrossFit. I’d struggle with it too, especially if Ludacris was screaming GET BACK MOTHERF**KER at me while I cleaned and jerked. Maybe I just don’t have what it takes to be a member of Team COCKDIESEL.

Our own Matt Ufford is a CrossFit veteran, so I asked him what he thought of the video. His two cents:

I almost feel bad making fun of Barkley — this was apparently filmed during his first week of CrossFit, a time when a lot of the exercises are unfamiliar and uncomfortable (note: I’m endlessly thankful and relieved that my first week of CrossFit wasn’t filmed). Check out his cleans compared to everyone else’s: he doesn’t have the wrist flexibility to rest the bar on his shoulders.

We can laugh now, but if Sir Charles sticks with it, he’s going to look a hell of a lot better in six months.

Now to find that hilarious video of Detlef Schrempf doing P90X.