The CrossFit Games!

Why you should care (or at least know) about the CrossFit Games.

By Alycia, CrossFit Aspire

 

Starting today a few hundred of the top CrossFit men, women, affiliate teams and Master’s competitors will compete to see who is the fittest man and women in CrossFit. This group was chosen from over 50,000 CrossFit athletes who registered online to compete in the Spring 2012 Open (and the 100’s of thousands of other unregistered CrossFit athletes). These are the BEST of the BEST. Only 3 men and 3 women were chosen from the Northeast (NJ up to Maine).

 

THIS IS YOU

On a daily or weekly basis, you come into our gym and you do the same types workouts that these athletes did to get them to the games. Just like professional athletes, they are training many more hours per week than the average CrossFit gym goer, but the concepts behind the workout (hard, fast, heavy workouts) is the same.

As a non-athlete, I never really understood why people sat at home watching sports. Until the 2011 CrossFit Games when I holed myself up in my house for an entire weekend and sat infront of our tiny computer screen and watched the entirety of the live coverage and recap shows. I turned into a hermit. Obsessively watching exercise. That other people were doing. Why did it matter so much to me? Because I watched these people compete, recognized the movements that they were doing, saw the look on their faces, and thought “Hey, I was there once. I remember what the 50th wall ball in a row feels like, or how heavy the barbell feels after 40 thrusters, or how hard my lungs had to work to do unbroken burpees. I’ve been there and I can relate. Every time an athlete put the bar down, or tore a callus, or had the look of sheer agony on their face, I could relate. When they won a workout and a big smile spread across their face, I could relate. And when they did the very best that they could possibly do on that one day, I could relate.

The point here is that these people are larger-than-life versions of you. They are doing things that you might once have saw on TV years ago and scoffed at – “I could never do that”. Except now you do. Every week. You are a CrossFit athlete, and your fellow athletes are competing in the competition of their lives. Don’t you want to cheer them on?

Newbies: THIS WILL MAKE YOU BETTER

For casual fans, watching a season of football will not make them better players. Practicing will make them better players. But after just one or two seasons of watching, they come to understand the nuance of the game, the hidden rules, and the ways that players maximize efficiency and power on the field. They become armchair referees and coaches. Their knowledge of stats, plays, rules and winning tactics increases.
By watching the Games and recap shows, you can stand to learn a LOT about the top athletes, how they train, and how they formulated a strategy and paced the workouts to maximize their chances of coming in first. They don’t just get out into the arena and ‘go as fast as they can’. They have a strategy. And by watching them compete, you can learn a lot about what makes a strong CrossFit competitor, both mentally and physically.

Now, being armed with that knowledge won’t be enough to get you to the CrossFit Games 2013, but over time, you might have the opportunity to take things to the next level by starting to care a little more about the weight that’s on your bar, your conditioning improvements, and by pushing yourself to work even harder during every workout.  After seeing these top athletes yell in pain, fall down with weakness, and get back up to finish the workout…all while tossing weights around that you can’t even deadlift yet, you might just re-think the meaning of ‘going heavy’ or ‘pushing through’ or ‘finishing strong’ in your own workouts.
After a few months of working on your skills, becoming stronger, and pushing yourself harder in class, you might enter a local CrossFit competition. You might win that competition. And it begins…

 

Our best athletes: THIS IS WILL PUT THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE

Big fish always have fun in little ponds. Part of the reason that some of you are here is because the movements and workouts in CrossFit came naturally to you. The concept of doing hard work is engrained in your being, and this was ‘no big deal’. Yeah, it was hard, but after a few weeks or months, you caught on and now you routinely finish in the top 20% of the athletes at our gym in any given workout.
First of all, Congratulations! You are a great athlete and you set a good example for the others. Now, for the hard truth – you are weaker and slower than every single person competing in the Games this year, and than most people who competed in the Regional competitions before the Games. Every person you will watch has better technique on their Olympic lifts. They can burpee circles around you. They can climb a rope two times in the time it takes you to put chalk on your hands.

The Games competitors are amazing, semi-superhuman athletes. And as a Type-A overachiever, you will look at their performance with a mix of envy, passion, determination, excitement, rage and motivation as you imagine yourself working out side by side with them. You will return to our gym with a growing fire inside of you that will continue to grow as you get stronger, faster, and better. You will no longer be satisfied with being on the leaderboard, or getting the fastest time in the gym. What about the fastest time in the world? After watching the Games, the impossible seems possible, and you realize that your best maybe wasn’t your best after all. It was just the best in our gym.

 

The Info:

The CrossFit Games Website has all athlete stats, videos, Regional recaps, and updated news regarding the workouts and the leaderboard. Start browsing now to get familiar with the faces of the CrossFit Games 2012!

CrossFit Games Recap Shows will help you stay on top of the standings all weekend!

Here is the full ESPN3 CrossFit Games schedule (Note: All times are Eastern.)

Friday, July 13: 5:15 - 11:15 p.m., ET
Saturday, July 14: 1:30 - 5 p.m. and 8:30 - 11:30 p.m., ET
Sunday, July 15: 1:30-7:30 p.m., ET

The Games will also stream live on Spectator Stream.

Click here for more details: http://games.crossfit.com/article/espn3-schedule-crossfit-games-released

Why grains are killing you

Get rid of grains in your diet. You’ve probably heard trainers, CrossFitters and Paleo diet practioners talk about this topic hundreds of times. But do you know the nitty gritty details of what grains do to your body and why they are only one step up from eating poop?

First, when you see “grains,” that means wheat, rice, corn, barley, rye, oats, millet, or sorghum. Grains are killing you. Literally. Very slowly, from the inside out—but they are killing you. I’m going to tell you about the four major ways grains are killing you. It would take Mr. Wizard and Bill Nye the Science Guy combined to fully explain this, so I’m just going to hit the high points.  It’s going to get a little complex in a couple places, but you can understand this—I promise.

1. Lectins
Many plants and animals have defense mechanisms so they don’t get eaten, trampled, or otherwise prevented from reproducing. Roses have thorns. A rhinoceros has a big horn. Poison Ivy has chemicals that make you itch if you get too close. Grains have an Al-Qaeda like defense mechanism called lectins. Now many foods have lectins, but grains have nasty lectins that harm us.  Lectins are proteins that we can’t digest. We normally digest proteins into amino acids where they are absorbed by our intestines (our gut). Since we can’t digest lectins, they pass through the wall of our gut undigested as complete proteins. This damages the gut, inflames our bodies, and makes them unable to absorb many of the good proteins that we get from other foods. But that’s not all. The worst part is that our body’s immune system is at a high state of readiness around our gut. After all, the gut can be a nasty place. See what’s in the bowl after you finish in the bathroom? Thirty minutes ago, that was inside your body, and your body’s immune system had to fight off the bacteria and other microbes you might have been exposed to. Now, when lectins pass through the gut as a complete, undigested protein, our body mistakes them for foreign invaders and attacks with the immune system.

After repeated attacks from lectins (your daily bowl of Special K) your body gets smart and makes antibodies to automatically attack these nasty proteins. It builds immunity. The problem? Sometimes part of the lectin looks a lot like normal body tissue. You don’t want your immune system attacking your normal body tissue, but that’s exactly what can happen. Check out why: Lectins are proteins. Proteins are made of particular arrangements of amino acids, stacked just like Legos. Let’s take a look at a hypothetical lectin that has a little piece of it made from an arrangement of amino acids A, B, C, and D.


Lectin

Now let’s take a look at another protein in your body. As an example, we’ll use a protein in your Pancreas, but there are countless examples. This protein is much longer than the lectin, but it happens to have a little segment of amino acids with the same Lego pattern as the lectin.


A protein in your body that you would really like to keep

That particular lectin looks a lot like an important protein in your pancreas, and now your immune system attacks that protein in your pancreas, rendering your pancreas unable of producing insulin. This is Type 1 Diabetes. What if the lectin looks like myelin basic protein (MBP) in your brain? Multiple Sclerosis. An important kidney protein? Nephropathy. The list goes on. Grains turn your body’s immune system against you. This phenomenon is called auto-immune disease. It’s very real. We haven’t even made it to #2 and grains are already killing us—quite literally.

So you’ve been eating grains all your life and you’re not dead yet, right? Why haven’t you been stricken with something described above? The human body is an incredibly resilient biological machine. That’s the only way we’ve been able to survive, not thrive, with grains for the last 10,000 years. After grains were introduced to humans, we lost an average of six inches in height. Do you think that’s coincidence, or that we’re trying to feed our bodies with material that we’re not genetically equipped to handle? But yes, you could go all your life eating grains and never get one of the many auto-immune diseases. In the end, you may be lucky. I suppose it depends on whether you’re a gambler. But remember, about 18 sides of that 20-sided die look pretty ugly.

2. Insulin Response
It has been widely documented the importance of hormonal balance between insulin and glucagon. Grain-based foods  cause huge, nasty insulin spikes, making it almost impossible to achieve hormonal balance. This means that as long as you eat grains you’re going to experience inflammation in your muscles, joints, and other tissues because you’re not in hormonal balance. Your body is also going to stay in fat storage mode instead of fat release mode, and you won’t be able to achieve the body composition you want.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, insulin is a hormone that promotes tissue growth. Do you know what we call uncontrolled tissue growth because a little piece of DNA gets damaged? Cancer. Yep, the medical community is finding high insulin levels linked to cancer.

3. Protease Inhibitors
In addition to those nasty lectins and elevated insulin response, grains find yet another way to pour gasoline on the fire. Protease inhibitors further block the digestion of proteins in your gut. That includes lectins, so they compound the lectin problem. But that also includes good proteins that you are getting from quality foods. Grains aren’t content to just stand in a corner and be anti-social. They’re going to piss in the punch bowl and ruin the party for everybody! So you are eating plenty of chicken breast, grass-fed beef, and lamb in addition to the grains in your diet? You’re not getting as much of those proteins as you think, because grains are blocking their absorption by your gut. Just eating something doesn’t mean you’ll absorb it and actually put it to use in your body. Grains are masters of that fact.

4. Phytates


Grains want to reproduce. You can’t blame them for that. All plants and animals down to the smallest virus are hard wired to reproduce. A whole grain contains all the pieces necessary for reproduction. The bran is the hard outer covering that protects the rest. The brown part of brown rice is the bran. The germ is the actual reproductive organ of the grain. The endosperm is a neat little package of starch and some protein that will feed the baby germ. And one thing the baby germ will need is trace amounts of nutrients like iron, zinc, magnesium, and calcium. So the grain contains chemicals called phytates that help it collect these precious resources. The phytates bind to these metals saying, “They’re mine! All mine!” trying to save them for the germ. Unfortunately, their selfish behavior doesn’t stop once they’re in your gut. And guess what, you need those nutrients too! But if phytates are in the picture then your gut doesn’t stand a chance. The phytates bind to the nutrients first, and you aren’t able to absorb them! Once again, simply eating something does not guarantee it is absorbed. No zinc for you! Phytates and lectins are sometimes referred to as “anti-nutrients.”

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the short course on why grains don’t fit into a healthy lifestyle. I know it hurts to find out that our beloved Bunny Bread is out to kill us, but it really is true. We didn’t grow up thinking that, did we? But why does that matter? My parents grew up when sexism was accepted. My grandparents grew up when racism and smoking was commonplace. My great, great grandparents might have thought that bleeding yourself with leaches would cure disease. They were all equally wrong, and equally comfortable with those ideas, because they were accepted as the status quo. The point is that facts and reality are completely irreverent of the ideas you grew up with or are comfortable with. If the facts about health point a certain way, I think we are obligated to ourselves and our loved ones to explore those facts regardless of how uncomfortable they might be.

So here’s my challenge to you: Eat grain-free for a month. But to reap the benefits, you have to be totally grain free. No flour tortillas on weekends.  No eating toast at breakfast just because the rest of your family likes it and has seen you eat toast for 30 years. Totally grain free, for an entire month. A word of warning: You’re going to have a period of about two weeks where you will constantly feel tired and “foggy.” This is normal. It’s you getting off the crack, and it will pass by the end of the month, leaving you feeling great!. That’s right, if you truly go grain free for a month then you’ll be 5-10 lbs lighter, have more energy, and look better than you can ever remember. After that, if you want to go back to eating grains—do it. Because you won’t want to go back. You’ll be happy and energetic, full after meals, performing better at your workouts, and shopping for new clothes. Oh, and you’ll be less likely to die from one of the 3,000 diseases of affluence that were unknown to our ancestors that didn’t eat grains. Did I mention that part? Folks, if I’m lying, I’m dying. Try it. You won’t be sorry.

http://www.crossfittherack.com/

I Have to 'Get In-Shape' Before I Start CrossFit

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me this, I would be a rich (ok maybe quasi rich) man.

At first, I try to put myself in the other person's shoes to understand where they are coming from. And then I realize that this statement doesn't even make sense.

Can you 'get in' CrossFit shape by doing the treadmill, bench press, bicep curls, etc...???

Can you 'get in' basketball shape by swimming?  Can 'get in' a size 4 jeans by eating McDonalds hamburger and fries everyday for lunch?

Let's break this down logically and show you the truth so you will have some ammo the next time one of your friends or acquaintances tries to give you this B.S.

Look in the Mirror: If they are currently working out, apparently what they are doing now is not working, because if they are not in regular shape then how are they going to get in 'CrossFit Shape'? And if they are not working out then obviously the good ole' regular gym is not working either. And you know the old saying, "If you do the same thing over and over and expect a different result that is the definition of insanity. So it sounds like they are the insane one's.

All Levels: It doesn't matter what kind of shape you are in when you start CrossFit. Everyday, every movement, every workout is 100% scalable. And what we mean by scalable is you can adjust the weight, the movement, time, reps, anything according to your current level of FITness. Our goal is to have you complete each workout successfully (safety 1st and effective 2nd).

You will always try to get in 'CrossFit' shape:  COMPARED to what?!?! Truth is, you cannot get in shape for CrossFit at any gym on your own. In fact, even if you go to CrossFit for a very long time, you may not be 'in-shape' for CrossFit as it takes tremendous dedication, diet, skill and time. Yet, you will find success in CrossFit workouts as you can do things you have never done before in your life, physically. Frankly, some of the people at CrossFit are in freakin' unreal shape with strong muscles, massive lung capacity and big hearts…I do not know how you get that from a few sets of bench press with 4 minute rest in between, a set of 12 curls, some flashy mirrors to watch my form, and a cushy mat in the corner to work my abs.

What's your story: Look, the only way your friends are going to really come is if you walk the walk. That alone will weed out the winners from the people that are just all talk. So if you want your friends to come to CF and believe what you say, then you better be right on par with how great you are explaining CrossFit to your friends.

In the end, they really need a reason, not an excuse: CrossFit is the truth. It will test you physically, emotionally and mentally. There is no easy way to the top. And that applies to CrossFit. CrossFit provides the structure, progressive setup, commardie, challenge and fun that is missing with these kind of people's lives. Understand that it is hard for someone to look at you with all this success you have had and then they look in the mirror and see all the flaws they currently have. Level with them. Tell them how hard it was for you to get started and enlighten them how great it is to be in this place you are today. Talk about how motivated, excited, confident you are. What was your reason for starting CrossFit? Is it still the same?

http://www.crossfittherack.com/

 

What determines your ultimate success in CrossFit is this:

1. Consistency in your training. Come 3-4 times per week, every week, and you will make improvements.

2. Practicing the skills. Spend more time under a jump rope, and you’ll get your double unders. Spend more time on the rings and you’ll get strong enough for ring dips. Spend more time upside down and you’ll eventually be able to walk across the gym on your hands. Master the ‘hip pop’ and get under the bar faster, and your Olympic lift numbers will skyrocket.

3. Demonstrating perfect form in practice. If you can consistently hit depth on your squat,  show a perfect overhead position on every rep, do pullups without craning your neck, and hit the wall ball target every time, then performing to the CrossFit standards on game day will be effortless. The only thing you’ll have to worry about is how much work you can get done in the allotted time – not how high your kettlebell is flying, or if your chest is hitting the bar for pullups.

Yes, you could have done 1 more burpee during those 7 minutes. But that wouldn’t have made you a better athlete.

The next time you find yourself saying "I could have done more" after a workout, take a step back and evaluate your training, consistency, comfort using good form, and the amount of time you spend in and out of the gym working on high skill movements. Find the real source of your weaknesses, and start making improvements today.

http://www.crossfittherack.com/

Six Truths of Weightlifting Technique

Greg Everett |Catalyst Athletics

When it comes to weightlifting technique, there are disagreements. Some are legitimate, some are questionable, and a few are downright silly. But when you sift through it all, there are a few universal Truths when it comes to the snatch and clean. If you can make these following six things happen with a given technical style, you can probably make it work for you.

 

Truth 1: The lifter and barbell system must remain balanced over the feet.

This is pretty simple. If the balance of the system doesn’t remain over the feet, the combined weight of the bar and lifter will not be supported by the base and it will fall over. This is basically an average measure—the actual balance over the foot isn’t exactly the same throughout a given lift, but it must end up being essentially balanced on average. If it diverges too much at any given point, it will be more than the lifter can compensate for, and the result will be the entire system being pulled forward or backward out of balance. There is actually a bit of latitude here. It’s possible to perform a snatch or clean with a backward or even forward jump as long as you can re-establish the balance over the newly positioned base. However, there is a limit to how much this can be done, and any degree of horizontal movement, in particular in a forward direction, makes the stabilization of the bar more difficult.

Truth 2: The barbell and lifter must remain in close proximity to each other.
This seems pretty obvious like Truth One, but this Truth is violated so commonly that it warrants emphasis. I like to illustrate this point by asking people what they would do if I asked them to pick up a barbell and then rolled it away from them. Everyone either answers that they would walk up to the bar or roll the bar back to themselves—in this extreme example, no one fails to recognize that the closer the bar is, the easier it is to lift. When we’re talking about a more complex movement like the snatch or clean, the effect of distance between the bar and body is magnified; that is, extremely small distances can create big problems. I prefer to have the barbell as close to the lifter as possible without making contact until the appropriate point of contact during the final explosion effort (hips for the snatch, high upper thigh for the clean), but would rather have it in light contact earlier than be considerably distant.

Truth 3: There must be no time wasted at the top of the pull.
You can argue about either the elevation of the bar or the pull under the bar being more important than the other, but you can’t deny that any time spent in an extended position following the point of producing maximal acceleration is limiting the lifter’s ability to relocate under the bar. That is, whether you want to focus on lifting the bar or getting under it (or, a novel idea, both…), you have to transition between accelerating the bar upward and accelerating the body downward as quickly as possible.

Truth 4: The relocation under the bar is an active movement
The pull or push under the bar must be as aggressive as the attempt to accelerate it upward. In effective lifting, there is no falling, dropping or catching. There is pulling, pushing, squatting and splitting—the relocation of the lifter under the bar is just as active as the rest of the lift, and a lack of aggression in this phase of the lift will ensure a lifter fails to maximize his or her potential.

Truth 5: The receiving position must be stable and strong.
You can argue with regard to the snatch or jerk about how many degrees of internal or external rotation of the humerus is correct, what the shoulder blades should be doing, and how the hands should be holding the bar, but all that matters is that you establish the position that best allows you to support the weight and stand up with it. This position will vary somewhat among lifters based on anatomical peculiarities, flexibility, etc. The rack position of the clean similarly will look different among lifters, but in any case, the bar must be supported securely on the trunk, not in the hands and arms, and the position must allow optimal posture in the squat position.

Truth 6: Consistency is more important than the actual technical style.
No two athletes lift exactly the same way. Some use the same basic style, but every lifter has his or her own technical idiosyncrasies for better or worse. In the long term, it’s more important that a lifter perform the lifts as consistently as possible relative to him- or herself than it is to perform the lifts with a certain technical style (assuming the style is within the range of acceptable). If a lifter is much better with an emphasis on hip extension, his snatch or clean will look different than a lifter who is better at producing a powerful downward punch of the legs along with the hip explosion. If those styles are truly what works best for each lifter, each lifter is maximizing his ability and attempts to mimic another technical style will limit that ability to lift as much as possible. Each lifter should strive to optimize the technique that proves to be most effective, and then make that optimized technique second nature through high volumes of practice and training over time.

http://www.crossfittherack.com/

Who Needs Situps When You Can Do Front Squats

A primary benefit of front squats is that they increase your core strength. Most of the time when you’re talking about increasing core strength you tend to think about crunches, hanging knee raises and planks. With front squats however, the load to the front of your body forces your abs and core to stay activated to stabilize your body throughout the movement. If your midsection isn’t activated and your torso isn’t erect during the movement, the lift is likely to fail as the body is unable to support the load.

Front Squat Setup

1. Your shoulders support the weight, not your hands. Always keep your chest big & elbows up.
2. Your foot stance should be slightly wider than shoulder-width apart and your toes must always follow your knees. Point your toes out to about 30 degrees.
3. Utilize a big chest by putting your chest forward & lift it up. This gives the bar a solid base to sit on & makes it impossible to round your upper-back. Tighten your upper-back.
4. Look forward, not up! Looking up is bad for your neck and looking down will make your lower back round. So look forward at a fixed point in front of you.
5. Grip the bar at about shoulder width, or at a position in which the hands will not be trapped by the shoulders when the bar is “racked”. A narrow grip pushes the bar against your throat, making breathing difficult. A wide grip makes it harder to keep your elbows up.
6. The bar should be placed on top of your front shoulders. Behind your clavicles & close to your throat. Open your hands, relax them. Your upper-arms should be parallel to the floor – so the weight doesn’t end on your hands and the elbows should be squeezed toward each other. Admittedly, it takes a little flexibility. The best way to get this flexibility is… wait for it… do more front squats!

http://www.crossfittherack.com/

Long Live The Burpee!

from CrossFit Montgomery County

The Burpee: Everyone’s favorite movement. Personally, I hate them and I know there isn’t a person at the gym who enjoys seeing them on the board. They are incredibly simple – you get on the floor, make your chest touch the ground, get back up, do a little hop and clap your hands over your head. They don’t require much coordination, agility, strength, or any real skill at all. I can teach someone who’s never seen one in their life to be a burpee ninja in about 15 seconds, yet they have been and will most likely remain the least favorite movement among CrossFit athletes. But as a coach, there’s something intriguing about them (aside from watching peoples’ heads drop in disgust when it’s time to get started on them): Burpees are without a doubt one of the best training tools I’ve ever seen.

Burpees are hard, annoying, and very unpleasant (especially when the guy doing the programming puts more than 100 in the WOD). I know and love this about them. I’ve been doing them for a few years now, and I still hate doing them. But keep in mind that this is a CrossFit gym, and I assure you that how you feel about burpees is far less important to me than how much better you can become because of them. If nothing else, they teach you how to “quit bitching and deal with it” when faced with something unpleasant to do outside the gym. See? Now that’s practical fitness!

But the main reason I like them is because I believe they are purely a matter of will, and they challenge you in a way that is unique to burpees: No matter how many you’ve just done, you can always do one more. You may not feel like you can after 250 or so, but if someone held a gun to your head and threatened to pull the trigger unless you did another burpee, you would clamber through another one – and you know it. You may argue, you may whine, you may complain between your gasps for breath, but you can ALWAYS do one more. This fact alone tests (and trains) your will to push yourself past your comfort zone without danger of injury from losing your grip in the middle of a kip or having a loaded barbell fall on your head, and unless you can push yourself beyond the level of discomfort you’re currently comfortable with, your level of fitness will stay right where it is now.

These horrible little monsters are a matter of WILL, and if you have the WILL to push yourself to greatness, then it WILL be yours. Don’t settle for less than incredible. Do your burpees like Jiminy Cricket on amphetamines, even when you’re tired – ESPECIALLY when you’re tired – and you’ll teach yourself how to be awesome.

http://www.crossfittherack.com/

The Devil Is In The Details

Common Deadlift Errors. Common mistakes you need to avoid to minimize risks of injuries when doing Deadlifts.

• Hips Too High. Use your knees: it’s not a Stiff-legged Deadlift. Put the bar against your shins with the shoulder-blades directly over the bar.

• Hips Too Low. It’s not a Squat. Put the bar against your shins with the shoulder-blades directly over the bar. Shoulders in front of the bar.

• Bending Your Back. Increases the pressure on your spine thus increasing risk of injury. Keep your chest up at all times & look forward.

• Hyper-extending Your Back. As bad as bending. The Deadlift ends when your hips & knees are locked. No need to arch at the top.

• Rolling the Shoulders. Dangerous & inefficient. Your hip muscles move the weight, not your shoulders. Extend your knees & hips, stop.

• Shrugging at The Top. Unnecessary.

• Pulling with Bent Arms. You could tear your biceps by pulling with bent arms. Keep your arms straight, tighten your triceps.

http://www.crossfittherack.com/

The Truth

The Truth

by Jon Gilson, Again Faster
Everyone has their caveats. This is the warning reasonably intelligent people deliver after every definitive statement in an attempt to cover their ass.

"Yeah, fasted cardio is the only way to get your body fat below 8%. But, you know, that's only true for most guys. It might not work for you."

The caveat absolves the speaker of any responsibility for the effectiveness of their advice, shifting the blame for failure to the listener. In the world of athletic training these cop-out statements are often necessary--there's not a whole lot out there that's strictly black and white.



Nonetheless, I was lying in bed last night wondering if there are certain unalienable truths out there, statements about training that require absolutely no caveat. In my mind, every pursuit has an essence that lends itself to description and explanation. Fitness is no exception. Here, I humbly present the truths of training, caveat-free:

1.) You will not get stronger without overload.

This one is simple. Training has two guiding principles--volume and intensity. The first refers to the number of repetitions performed, while the second refers to the relative demand those repetitions place on the body. Over time, you must expose your body to gradually increasing volume in order to reap fitness benefits. You must keep intensity high throughout.

I like to track this in my workout log by recording the total amount of weight lifted in any session divided by the number of repetitions performed in that session. This calculation gives an average weight per repetition. This number must increase over time, or you're just spinning your wheels.

2.) You will not get bigger without eating more or smaller without increasing energy expenditure.

My buddy Eva Claire loves this one. All the girls want to get smaller and all the boys want to get bigger. Most women try to get smaller by eating less when they would be better served by increasing their energy expenditure. Most men try to get bigger by increasing their energy expenditure, although they'd be better served by eating more.

Each gender should take a page out of the other's playbook.

Eating less only serves to lower your metabolic rate, meaning your body will attempt to conserve every precious calorie for future use. What goes in stays in, stored as fat. Rather than lower their metabolic rate, women would be better served by lifting heavy to maintain lean muscle mass and exercising with high intensity to ramp up fat-burning.

In the same vein, lifting heavy and often will only increase lean muscle mass if the attendant caloric intake will support the new tissue. The boys need to take in more food, not lift more. Nonetheless, they'll spend three hours a day in the gym, burning off those stray calories that would've turned into new tissue if energy expenditure had been a little lower.

3.) Steady-state cardiovascular work will not lead to fitness.

The body uses three distinct energy pathways, each employed based on the demands placed on the body. Two of these systems (the alactic acid system and the glycolytic system) are called into play when the rate of muscle contraction exceeds the body's ability to produce contractions using oxygen.

These two systems, collectively known as the anaerobic systems, are not trained during steady-state cardiovascular work. Steady-state work utilizes the aerobic energy system, which is only capable of producing muscle contractions in the presence of oxygen.

Unfortunately, the anaerobic systems are critical for high to moderate power output activities, such as the squat, the clean and jerk, and the 400-meter sprint. If they aren't properly developed, the corresponding activities suffer.

Road jocks aren't worth a damn when it comes to performing anaerobic activities, because they haven't developed the contractile strength that comes with heavy anaerobic training. Primary practitioners of steady-state cardiovascular work are incomplete athletes.

4.) Mental focus is more critical to training success than physical ability.

We are limited by our bodies, but our true limitations exist in the mind. Flat-out lying to an athlete about weight on the bar will often get them to lift a personal best, absence any organic change in the body. I attribute this phenomenon to the power of belief. "Knowing" that you can do something will instantly bring you closer to doing it. Combine an ardent belief with months of training, and you have a recipe for excellence.

On the flip side, God-given ability is easily negated by a poor outlook. I've seen otherwise-talented sandbaggers spend a lot of time claiming inability, giving them a ready-made hedge against failure. These folks fail a lot, and they remain in the realm of the novice athlete for years.

5.) There is an inverse relationship between the complexity of a piece of exercise equipment and its effectiveness.

The most effective implements for building lean muscle tissue and shedding fat are heavy, blunt, and simple. They have few or no moving parts, and they don't plug into the wall. A barbell, some weights, a few dumbbells, and a pull-up bar are all you need to achieve world-class fitness. Everything else just adds variety.

By their nature, these things require effort to use. You've got to pick them up off the ground and hoist them around. They don't give you a place to sit, and they don't read your heart rate every ten seconds.

If your exercise regimen involves blinking lights, vibrating seats, or imbedded televisions, you're doing yourself a disservice. Find the stuff that's cold and heavy and made of metal. It's the only route to fitness.

There they are--five unalienable truths about training. You could disagree with my assertions, and probably make a good case of it, citing fifteen scientific studies and the extensive knowledge of the over-certified polo shirt-wearing pseudo-trainer down at the local Y.

The problem is you'd have to use an awful lot of caveats.

 

http://www.crossfittherack.com/

Always Look To Improve Yourself Inside and Out of The Gym

Through CrossFit most of you have experienced what it feels like to achieve the "unachievable". Such achievements indicate that many of your physical limitations are mere misconceptions -- they are learned impediments on the psyche, not the physique. Your PR's, increased range of motion, greater work capacity, and greater self-confidence are just a few of the things that can attest to the power of mind over body. Yet there are also those among us who have profound physical potential, but don’t push themselves nearly enough mentally; or avoid lifting heavier weight because they think they can do no more. As a result, many of these individuals never reach their fullest potential. This is unfortunate. An old mentor of mine once said, "Don't give up ten seconds before the miracle." Those that quit may never actually know how close they were to achieving their goal. And even if you do initially fail, remember it’s OK -- there is growth in failure. Failure is not an end. People who fail can recreate themselves by learning from, and improving upon, previous setbacks, people who quit cannot. No matter what endeavor you pursue in life, whether it is a new PR or something outside the box, always believe that you are capable of just a little bit more than you’re currently doing. The eventual payoff may be bigger than you think.

http://www.crossfittherack.com/

 

The Open (February 22 - March 25)

The Open is a worldwide competition consisting of five workouts over five weeks. Last year, more than 26,000 athletes competed, and this year will likely be a multiple of that!

Each week, the workout will be announced on Wednesday at 5 p.m. PT (starting February 22). Everyone will have until the following Sunday at 5 p.m. PT to complete that week's workout and submit their score. You can do the workout at your local affiliate or film your attempt from any gym, a garage, or park.

Once you submit your workouts to the Games site, you'll be able to find your rank, both worldwide and in your region. You get one point for each place (i.e. five points for 5th place) for each workout. Your overall score is the sum of all the workout scores, and lowest total points wins. You can compete both as an Individual and on a Team. Individuals are divided between men and women, and Masters are divided by gender and age.

The individual athletes and teams that perform the best across the five Open workouts, in each of the 17 regions, will be invited to compete at the second stage of the Games, the Regionals. The top 20 Masters in each age and gender category will earn an automatic spot at the Games in July.

http://www.crossfittherack.com/

 

Proper Bench Technique

CrossFit Journal video

The first cue is to set your shoulders back in their sockets, pinching shoulder blades behind you so your shoulders are well supported to reduce the risk of injury. Get under the bar and lift it to hold it over the chest, not the eyes. From there, use a straight-line path for the bar as you press over your chest.
On the way down, act as if you're going to break the bar. On the way up, spread the bar. Pretend like it’s a rubber band and you’re trying to stretch it—your hands aren’t going to move, but you’re pulling as hard as you can.

The stance is wide legs and foot position.

You should be pushing into the ground, spreading the floor with your feet.
This video demonstrates common faults with the bench press, including set-up, and provides points of performance to maintain safe lifting.

The key to no shoulder injuries is proper positioning.  It takes the pressure off the shoulders and lowers your injury rate dramatically … and it allows you to create as much power and torque as possible.

http://www.crossfittherack.com/

 

Why CrossFit Will Save America

A decade ago, Robert Putnam’s groundbreaking book “Bowling Alone” presented Americans with a serious challenge to our sense of community and connectedness, arguing with vast data that we have suffered a precipitous decline in the time we spend engaged with family, friends, neighbors and our democracy.  He dubbed this fabric of connections “social capital” and suggested that our very society would eventually crumble if we didn’t work to reverse the trend.

Contributing factors to this decline in social capital over recent years include long work commutes, television, computers, and changes in the family structure.  In addition to this recent loss of social capital, Putnam also noted that we suffered a similar decline about 100 years ago as well – noting contributing factors such as rapid industrialization and urbanization. Though different forms of “industrialization” and “urbanization” from 100 years ago, one could essentially argue that our most recent decline in social capital is driven by the same trends – major shifts in technology and, therefore, how we live.  Each of these changes, albeit with many new advantages, have brought unintended consequences that unravel the fabric of our connectedness to one another and to institutions, whether they be churches or bowling leagues.  (For example, Putnam notes that Americans are still bowling at high rates but not as part of leagues.  In other words, they are bowling alone…not together!)

In my experience as an avid CrossFitter and follower of The Paleo Diet, I see a fascinating similarity among the trends driving our loss of social capital and those that have caused us to lose our healthy ways of eating and exercising. We all know too well the rapid rises in obesity, diabetes, and heart disease over the past several decades. When I first read “Bowling Alone,” it was through the lens of public policy – long before I came to CrossFit and The Paleo Diet.  In reading more about “paleo” eating and the guiding principles behind it, I was stunned by the similarities between “how we have forgotten how to eat” and “how we have forgotten how to be social, connected…human beings.”

I've seen testimonial after testimonial about the fitness benefits of CrossFit and the accompanying benefits of eating paleo.  Most of these are posts about weight loss, drops in cholesterol and blood pressure, and incredible gains in fitness standards.  Sprinkled throughout these testimonials, however, are comments about the incredible “community” of CrossFit too.  We don’t necessarily measure the community benefits as clearly as we do our WOD performances, but if we did I argue we might reveal – what would be considered by far – the most powerful aspect of CrossFit.

It’s hard to deny the superior individual fitness results that we all achieve through CrossFit, but the bigger-picture game-changer may be CrossFit’s effect on social capital. In fact, I’m not sure I know of an institution or organization anywhere in America that has stronger social capital than does CrossFit.  We all experience it every day – whether we are physically in the box, travelling, WODing from home, or just browsing a post.  We relate, we engage, we cheer, we encourage, we care, we support.

The attributes of CrossFit and paleo are at once revolutionary and archaic, sophisticated and simple.  There’s nothing high-tech about it, yet it forces us to change the way we’ve always thought about nutrition and fitness.  Ironically, the revolution has nothing to do with technological and industrial breakthroughs and everything to do with going back to the basics…way back to the Stone Age basics in fact.  CrossFit exercise is revolutionary in its design but it requires no cutting-edge equipment…just simple “old-school,” Rocky-Balboa-style exercise with body-weight movements, kettle bells, ropes, boxes, bars, etc.

And the real strength of CrossFit lies in the “group nature” of it.  I do a WOD on my own and it’s a great workout.  I do one at CrossFit The Rack and it’s a whole different ball game. People cheer each other on with the same ferocious intensity that they compete against each other.  Everyone is welcome and the only thing asked in return is for you to give 100% every day.  In no small way, the expectations we set for each other and the standards we expect of one another in CrossFit are what drive the tight bonds in this community.  Give it your all and you’re loved indefinitely and indiscriminately.  Where else can you find that these days?

Just like the trend of more Americans bowling alone, I’m sure there has been a similar increase in Americans exercising alone.  That’s what takes place every day at the Globo Gym – do your thing on your own and get out.  No meaningful conversation – perhaps a “hey dude, can you spot me” here or there.  No real friendships.  No real commitment.  I did that for a while and felt lost.  I’m convinced that no matter how many CrossFit WODs I would do at a Globo Gym by myself I would never be as fit as I am doing the same WODs at CrossFit New England.  The “x-factor” is social capital.  One place has it; the other does not.

As the CrossFit community grows exponentially in the years to come, it will be interesting to see whether it might gather enough momentum to help us reach a critical tipping point in the repair of social capital in America.  Can its attributes spill over into the broader fabric of American culture – whether you are a CrossFitter or not?  Work ethic, getting back to basics, caring about one another while we push each other to higher standards….  We could fix a lot of problems in America today if this takes off. It certainly has this potential. We all know it and we all work to share it with others every day.  Keep up the great work!  We’re on the verge of much more than elite fitness.  We are America’s social capital!

http://www.crossfittherack.com/