CrossFit South Bay | Hermosa Beach, CA

Wikipedia describes the Excalibur as “the legendary sword of King Arthur, sometimes attributed with magical powers or associated with the rightful sovereignty of Great Britain.” The Excalibur is also an excellent brand of food dehydrator that will make post-workout food to which we will soon attribute our CrossFit powers. The better we eat, the better we perform. Our recovery will improve, our lifts will get better, our gym average CF Totals will start to climb. We will point to Paleo, Zone, and… the Excalibur.

So far hopefully you’d agree I’ve established that the CrossFit nutrition prescription to maximize performance and stave off a variety of diet-related disease is:

1. Eating paleo foods for minimized glycemic load, maximal nutrient density, minimized inflammation, and improved performance AND
2. Controlling how much quality food you eat with a Zone prescription for quantity to improve your understanding and manipulation of the relationship between your food and quantifiable changes in performance.

This post I’m going to add a #3 to this list…

Number 3 offers another significant lever on controlling the outcomes of your crossfitting: post workout (PWO) nutrition. What you eat in general every day helps determine how you feel each day, how you perform in crossfit and your other activities, and helps determine your health and longevity. What you eat in the first hour after your workout should be of major importance to you if you care about strength and performance gains from your workout as a result of optimal recovery.

Mid-late January, the Paleo/Zone challenge will start (details to come!). But before that we expect that many of you have started tinkering with your present food habits to see what it’s like to start getting off the crack (easing off or mentally preparing to ease off the high-sugar grains/beans/foods and replacing them with tasty vegetable recipes like those I post), and paying attention to your essential fatty acids (EFA’s, esp. omega-3) intake and protein quantity and sources.

After this post, you will understand why we’re going to start offering a delicious PWO meal. You may have already seen the coconut water come in for your PWO carbs. Next will be your protein in PWO-friendly blocks of grass-fed meat jerky and EFA-rich nuts. My mouth is watering just writing this.

I’ve only skimmed the surface of the why’s of #1 and 2 (above) in the past few posts, but here’s the recap on Paleo and Zone before moving on to PWO nutrition:

• Generally, you should eat foods found in nature (primarily meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds) because they’re highest in the long list of micronutrients (vitamins, minerals) your body requires to make your body run smoothly, they minimize inflammation due to their high antioxidant/phytochemical content and are inherently generally low glycemic load (these foods have other positive net effects, but this is the gist). As a result of all this, paleo foods best prevent a host of diseases quite effectively.
• You should be paying attention to where you get your macronutrients: low-glycemic carbohydrate (vegetables), plenty of omega-3 rich fats (essential fatty acids/EFAs) and quality protein (grass fed meats, omega-3 eggs)
• You should eat Zone proportions of paleo foods to increase your body’s sensitivity to the hormones (particularly insulin) your body uses to perform best and that your body uses to choose the optimal fuel to burn to live/do work (preferably fat). The proportions of macronutrient recommended as a baseline are approximately 40% CHO (carbohydrate), 30% Pro (protein), and 30% Fat with total kcal determined based on your height, weight and activity. Scaling the Zone diet to your unique needs and goals is absolutely necessary and will be the subject of probably the nutrition post next week.

PWO Nutrition: Why?

Aside from getting to use “Excalibur” in my vocabulary on a regular basis, I really look forward to helping all of you tinker with PWO meals, as it’s a powerful tool and it’s fun to experiment with. CrossFit nutrition experts such as Robb Wolf who have coached and worked with many hundreds of crossfitters on their general nutrition and PWO nutrition have excellent recommendations which I am boiling down here and will post a list of links to at the end.

The importance of the PWO meal is in taking advantage of a window of time where your muscles are particularly insulin sensitive: in the first hour after the workout. During this time, you should get very important macronutrients (CHO+Pro — and specific kinds) into the muscle. Replenishing your muscles with these nutrients in this window of time has far greater effect than outside of the window. According to Wolf, the PWO window is most potent immediately after a WO and drops off to about 50% efficacy by 30 min, and pretty much back to baseline by an hour.

PWO Nutrition: How?

The PWO meal I will focus on will be the one that Wolf recommends to maximize recovery, muscle repair and growth, minimize soreness/inflammation, and maintain insulin sensitivity. What “low” carb means will depend on your goals. Since we know that strength should be a very big part of our game (see Strength=Improved Metcon), we should all be focused on strength improvement via muscle growth seen in post-WOD recovery. If you’re focused on losing body fat, a low-carb (carbs coming from vegetables primarily) consistent paleo diet will be the way to go. Post-WOD is our opportunity to maximize our recovery (and therefore gains in strength) while maintaining the insulin sensitivity you’ve established each day.

However, during this window of time you can get CHO (specifically glycogen) into your muscles “under the radar” (Wolf’s words). This refers to the CHO part of your PWO meal and means that, the more intense the WOD, the more you can shift some of your carbohydrate blocks to your PWO meal and cause less of an insulin spike thanks to the mechanism your body uses in that window that does not require much insulin. If you’re not in the Zone (not keeping track of blocks), you should still include a little CHO in your PWO meal. This does not mean a Powerbar, high-sugar juices or a banana. Optimal CHO for PWO are small amounts of starchy vegetables (sweet potatoes, squash) with your protein — just how much I’ll get to soon.

Wolf-endorsed Sweet Potato-Apple Compote With Pork Loin for a post-chipper glycogen repletion

Next the protein part where I will quote Wolf verbatim: proteins eaten during your PWO meal window “play a synergistic role in both glycogen repletion and decreasing inflammation that accompanies hard training. Said another way, you recover from exertion faster.” Proteins are easily the most important part of the PWO for this reason.

The amount of protein and carbs should be scaled based on your workout. Wolf’s rule of thumb is excellent and succinct so I’m going to copy/paste it in bullet point format here and add links and some comments [in brackets]

• Find your Zone block allotment [here's the link again]
• From this use about ¼ of your daily protein for PWO meals, and ½ your days carbs PWO for “big” WOD’s, ¼ of your day’s carbs for “small” WOD’s.
• This does not mean you need to weigh and measure every meal, just use this as a tool to find a nice PWO carb/protein level
• If your block allotment is 17 blocks [medium height lean male]: PWO protein would be 4-5 blocks, PWO carbs would be 4-8 blocks [8 blocks Pro would look like 3oz jerky + ~1 20g svg whey protein isolate; 4 blocks CHO would look like ~1 coconut water that you'd mix w/the whey + 1/2 small baked sweet potato]
• Huge variability? You bet, you need to pay attention to how much carbs you need to recover from a given beating. This is where writing down what you eat pays big returns.

OPT’s recommendations are more specific:
Post wod fuel – male:

above 12% – 40g prot/10g carb
8-12% – 40g prot/25g carb
below 8% – 40g prot/40g carb

Post wod fuel – female:

above 16% – 30g prot/10g carb
12-14% – 30g prot/20g carb
below 12% – 30g prot/30g carb

Eat a balanced PFC meal 60 min after post wod fuel for everyone (P=protein, F=fat, C=carb)

Notes on which foods:

• General rule of thumb from Wolf’s “42 Ways To Skin The Zone” is no fat or a small amount of fat in your PWO meal. In subsequent (or prior if you workout at night), you’d distribute your fat blocks and remaining CHO blocks (whatever you don’t plan to consume PWO — 50% of your CHO or less depending on intensity)
• Liquid food tends to spike insulin more and dairy is a potent insulin spiker. Wolf has noticed in many people that they may see this as mid-section fat, or they may lean out much more slowly (everyone responds differently).
• Whey protein isolate has the lactose/sugar removed and is a decent choice to combine with coconut milk/water.
• Solid foods are a better choice for body comp results if you can stomach them or plan to have them on hand PWO.

Other important notes for varying goals summarized from Wolf and CFJ sources:

• If you’re focused on seeing performance improvements in your met-con workouts in addition to strength building, experiment with CHO for your PWO meal (in addition to your well-thought-out Zone/Paleo diet   ). Use 2-4 week increments of time to test out an approach (scaling the CHO to your WOD intensity)
• If you’re most interested in leaning out (losing body fat): if you’re calorie restricting already, you may want to scale back the above recommendation PWO until you’ve leaned out to your liking. This may result in a somewhat decreased performance impact in your met-con for some. Some lean tissue loss does accompany rapid body fat loss while you’re calorie restricting (generally speaking), so make sure you’re eating adequate protein daily and PWO, as well as adequate fat (0.5g EPA+DHA fish oil per 10 pounds of body weight) throughout the day prior to your workout or after your PWO meal if you workout in the morning.

With PWO meals, as with nutrition in general, what you eat should be planned based both on what results you want as well as what your workout was prior to your PWO meal.  It’s important to note that any adjustment to dietary changes will take time, especially if you’re dialing back carbohydrate. Your body will adjust though and you will see results if you planned well.

Soon you will all be rolling and chewing in these PWO pictures

PWO stuff I referred to that you should check out…

• Post WO Nutrition
• Post Workout Nutrition: High or Low Carb?
• General/PWO nutrition podcast
• OPT’s got some good PWO nutrition stuff that pops up on his blog like this
• If you’re interested in reading “42 Ways…” ask me, or you’ll be able to find it in the CFSB Library soon (it’s copyrighted and you have to pay $ for it, so there will be a physical copy on hand)

Red cabbage is high in Vit A&C; eat w/a leafy green; 2.25c = 1 block CHO; don't forget to add blocks CHO from juices/honey

Your recipe for this week is another veggie dish almost as tasty as the kale/raisin dish. Be sure to use an omega-3-rich oil in this recipe. Makes ~ 8 c.

1 head red cabbage – shred very finely into half-cm chunks

1/2c lemon juice (1/3 c lemon/lime = 1 block CHO)

1/4c lime juice

1/2 – 1 whole red onion (how much do you like onion?… I use 3/4)

1/2 c fresh basil leaves, chopped

1/4 c shredded fresh cilantro

2-4 T honey/agave/molasses (1 t honey = 1 block CHO)

1/4 c flax oil

1/4 c olive oil

salt & pepper to taste

Mix everything evenly in a large bowl except juices, honey and oils. Melt honey in large pyrex in microwave 20s, add in oil and juice mixture and pour over cabbage mixture.  Enjoy room temp or cold. This one is highly adaptable to your taste: add walnuts, kale, other vegetables for variations.

WOD 12.23.2009

12 Days of Christmas
1 100M Run
2 1.5 Body Weight Deadlift
3 Muscle Ups (sub 6 ring dips)
4 Box Jumps (30″/24″)
5 L-Sit Pull Ups (Scale down dead hang)
6 Overhead Weighted Walking Lunges (Each leg)
7 Man Makers (use same weight as walking lunges)
8 Kettlebell Swings
9 Kettlebell Sumo Deadlift Highpull
10 Push Ups
11 Toes to Bar
12 Handstand Push-Ups

The workout should be done exactly like the song. You start with one 100M run, then 2 deadlifts and one 100M run, then 3 muscle ups and 2 deadlifts and one 100M run, etc.