REMINDER

Don’t forget to sign up for your Functional Movement Screen! For more info read here.

Time slots are available on Mind Body for Friday November 18th and Sunday November 20th.

*The screen is most accurate when your body is cold, so please pick a time either 3-4 hours after your workout or before you plan on working out.

1. Click on the Private Training/Elements tab on the home page

2. Select mobility consultation and then search either date for available time slots

3. When you check out, make sure to select the functional movement screen under the “item” drop box

CF Fundamentals Update

Starting this week, the 5:30am class on Tuesday and Thursday will change from 5:30am to 5:45am.  Get 15min extra zzzzz’s.

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So, last week we discussed how movements requiring an all-out effort to coordinate your entire body put a high amount of stress on your nervous system.  Additionally, I mentioned that doing this often will result in central nervous system (CNS) fatigue, which can lead to decreased performance and poor results over time.

Micah can lift heavy one weekend and get hitched the next… Congratulations Micah!!

First, CNS fatigue, in layman’s terms, is when your nervous system (brain, nureons, nuerotransmitters, etc) has become sufficiently stressed to the point that it cannot produce the amount of force that it is capable of. This is a good thing in limited amounts, as it causes our nervous system to adapt and get stronger.  However, too much stimulation and stress to your nervous system without allowing enough time to recover will begin to burn you out, and it will be impossible to fully recover without taking a much longer rest period. While there is still a great deal of research being done in this area, some of the symptoms of chronic CNS fatigue are:

• Increased resting heart rate
• Decreased motivation to train
• Difficulty sleeping
• Mood changes
• Persistent fatigue
• Persistent muscle soreness
• Depressed rate of recovery (Increased chance of injury)
• Depressed immune function (Increased chance of sickness)

For those of you who are very aware of how your body feels on a regular basis, you can often prevent overtraining by backing off when you aren’t motivated to do hard training.  Often, you will notice that you don’t have as much of a bounce to your step this week, you may feel less motivated and more easily fatigued during workouts and generally just “don’t feel up to working out”.

Micah keeps sneaking into my pictures

For those of you who have been doing the last couple weeks of training with us, including the heavy back squats, you are likely closing in on being overtrained.  This will be obvious to the advanced athletes today/tomorrow when they attempt their old 5RM for as many reps as possible.  Theoretically, if you have been training hard over the past 5 weeks, this 5RM will likely feel impossible this week since your nervous system has been incredibly stressed by the past few weeks of workouts and hasn’t full recovered.

This is where a deload week becomes extremely important..  By employing a deload week, we insure that your body gets enough time to fully recover, thus preempting overtraining and chronic nervous system fatigue.  If you do not deload appropriately, chronic CNS fatigue can take over, leading to sickness and injury, and often requiring a month of rest or more to fully recover.  While every athlete is different in the amount of training necessary before they need a deload period, we use one every 5-6 weeks as a preventative measure. Even for those of you that claim you don’t “need” a deload week, I can guarantee that you will be fresher and capable of training harder (and thereby getting better results) after a deload week.  To prove this, we will again test your 5RM back squat and Helen after deload week to see if you recovered and improved from the past cycle.

Workout of the Day

A. Back Squat

<1yr of strength training: Back Squat 5-5-5 adding 5-10 over last week

Know 5RM: 5 @ 80%, 3 @ 90%, 1+ (to failure) @ 100%
(% is of 5RM)

B. Tabata Intervals
8 Rounds of 20s work, 10s rest. Your score is the lowest amount you were able to complete in one round.

Tabata Squats (if your normal score is over 15, your rest position is the active bottom of your squat)
then, immediately
Tabata Pushups (if your normal score is over 15, your rest position is the plank position)

FUNdamentals

A. Ladder Drills

B. For Time: 2 Rounds
300m Run
20 KB Swings
300m Run
20 Squats
300m Run
20 Push-ups

C. Death by Burpee & Dumbbell Thrusters
1 burpee, 1 thruster each min
2 burpees, 2 thrusters each min etc.
Continue until you reach your max, repeat max each round until 10 minutes is up.

Every time you voluntarily move your body, there are 3 pieces involved, your cognitive brain deciding to move, your nervous system telling your muscles to move, and finally, your muscles contracting to move your body through space.  Thus, in CrossFit, we train all three.  However, we often focus on the brain (motivation) and the result (muscle contraction), but miss the middle.  There always seems to be allusions to the central nervous system in conversations at the gym and in our posts, but we never seem to do a good job explaining why this system is so important to our training… well, that is about to change.

Your nervous system is a very important (and complicated) piece of your body necessary to lifting heavy weights, running fast, or jumping high.  Sean did a great job from the anatomy and physiological side giving an intro on how your nervous system works and gets stronger here, but for our purposes today, we aren’t going to delve into the science too much: we are going to focus on how your nervous system affects you getting better.  In addition, CrossFit is very, very good at challenging and improving your nervous system, so it is critical that we look at how the nervous system works and affects our bodies.

In plain language, your nervous system is what tells your muscles to fire, how much of your muscle to use and how fast the muscle should contract.  By challenging your nervous system (through jumping high, running fast, lifting heavy, etc), you fatigue it similarly as to how you fatigue a muscle.  Additionally, the closer you come to going 100% of what you are capable of (whether a box jump height, back squat weight, or all-out sprint pace), the more that your nervous system is stressed as opposed to your muscles. The difference is that as your muscle recovers, you feel sore, and as your nervous system recovers, you feel sluggish. And similarly to training muscles, as your nervous system gets more training, it becomes better at firing your muscles, resulting in jumping higher, running faster, and lifting heavier. I haven’t lost anyone yet, right??

Alright, so, when your nervous system is fatigued, it becomes harder to coordinate and fire all your muscles as you normally would.  For example:

• Have you ever had a day when even the bar bar felt really heavy?? Maybe you weren’t even sore, but for some reason, just picking up the barbell felt like 80 lbs??
• Or, you were able to deadlift 200 lbs easily last month, yet 180 lbs feels impossible this week??
• Or maybe, handstands are easy for you, but you can’t seem to hold one after a hard workout.

These are all examples of your nervous system being fatigued.  Often, failing a rep has nothing to do with your muscles not being able to support the load, it is your nervous system that is struggling to continue telling your muscle to contract fast enough.  Acute (read short-term) nervous system fatigue is why you cannot lift your 1 Rep Max (1RM) more than one time.  Depending on the training age of the trainee, to fully recover and pull another true 1RM could take a day, a week, or a month to achieve, as their nervous system would not be capable of achieving the same amount of force more than once without a significant amount of time for their body to rest.  On the other hand, chronic nervous system fatigue can occur when your training consists of a many high intensity efforts (read CrossFit).  The recovery time from either version of nervous system fatigue will be increased when your sleep, nutrition, stress levels, etc are poorly managed.

Alright, so there is (hopefully) a decent intro to how your nervous system gets worked through intensity, now, as you guys do you back squats over the next couple weeks, we will further delve into nervous system training and recovery.  Also, we will look into why back squats feel so damn heavy and why they will start to feel harder over the next couple weeks.

 Workout of the Day

A. Back Squat

5-5-5 last week: 5-5-5 adding 5-10 lbs over last week

If you found your 5RM: 5 @ 70%, 5 @ 80%, 5+ (to failure) @ 90%
(% is of 5RM)

B. For Time, From the Ground:

10 Back Squats (135)
160m Shuttle Run (to the gate and back 4 times)
10 Back Squats (135)
120m Shuttle Run (to the gate and back 3 times)
10 Back Squats (135)
80m Shuttle Run (to the gate and back 2 times)
10 Back Squats (135)
40m Shuttle Run (to the gate and back 1 time)

*Advanced athletes, Part A is your focus, make sure to complete it fully before attempting Part B

Mark showing off his bronze...So Jealous

So I have a confession for everyone…I’m White!  I know you’re all thinking, “John, you kid”, but seriously, I’m quite the whitey.  If I lived in the 19^th century, I’d be at the height of fashion, but alas, I live in the days where the golden people rule, and I am failing miserably in this regard.  The Irish fair complexion in me rules and I am forced to abide unless I want to see just how red I can actually get.  There are few things that I find worse than sunburns, perhaps having your fingernails pulled out one at a time, that could be worse.

The other day, I ran across an interesting article claiming that eating real foods can work as a natural sunscreen?  The article talks about how getting the right balance of Omega 3 to 6 that Remy lectures on can actually make you less susceptible to sunburns.  Can this be true?  Could this paleo diet that I’ve been living actually protect me from those agonizing burns without having to lather myself in toxic sunscreen?  This actually kind of makes sense.   How did people survive without sunscreen for 1000’s and 1000’s of years after all.  I don’t think Grok was being asked to pass the SPF 85 nor was he just hanging out in the cave all day.

Another added benefit to not wearing sunblock is that you will end up synthesizing more vitamin D, a vitamin that is vital to your functioning and is synthesized when you’re exposed to UV light from the sun.  There has been research done that vitamin D can even prevent cancer, including skin cancer, a very hot topic these days as it is becoming more and more prevalent.

So have any of you noticed that you can be out in the sun longer without sunblock and not burn?  I’m interested to know as I’m still very scared to go out and try it.  There something about feeling like I’m on fire for a few days that keeps me from giving it a go.  Childhood sunburns have caught up to me.  The idea of having a glorious tan though is truly just a dream to me, unless all my freckles merge into one  :)  Post your thoughts.

Vinny and Matt going for a PR on the beer bong. Matt drinking Bud Lime because they were fresh out of ZIMA and Strawberry Hill.

Remember back in college when you would go out on an all night bender of shitty beer, long island iced tea, sugary shots and Jägermeister? Yeah, I don’t quite remember it either. Luckily (or unluckily depending on which side of the story you’re on) some of you had a super time last weekend and experienced a bit of that good ol’ college hangover of yesteryear.

Usually when you have a hangover, you know it. You usually wake up, albeit not always in your bed or even in your house, disoriented with that “What the hell happened last night?” kind of feeling. Then you quickly check to make sure you have your cell phone and wallet/purse. Scroll through that phone to see the list of drunk texts you sent to the people you not-so-secretly have a crush on. Then after recounting what an idiot you are, you realize that you either A) slept all night fully clothed, even with your shoes still on or B) slept totally naked and have no idea where your clothes are. Your dry mouth would indicated that you obviously were lost in the desert for the past week, but the taste leads you to believe that a stray kitty used it as a litter box. The pounding headache starts to set in as you sit up out of bed. You never get that drunk right? Somebody must have drugged you. Well that somebody is you. Congratulations, you just gave yourself a hangover.

Saturday fun-day somehow turned into Sunday fun-day which finally lead to Monday dumb-day.

Why do we get hangovers?

• The ethanol contained in alcoholic beverages has a dehydrating effect which causes headaches, dry mouth and tiredness. This effect can be lessened by drinking plenty of water before and throughout your night of drinking.
• Your liver breaks ethanol down with the aid of enzymes produced by liver cells. These chemical reactions do many things including impairing the liver’s ability to supply glucose to tissues, in particular to the brain. Glucose is responsible for the brain’s energy and the lack thereof results in fatigue, weakness, moodiness and decreased attention.
• Congeners are the by-products of the process of alcohol fermentation and exaggerate the symptoms of a hangover. The more congeners consumed, the worse a hangover is likely to be. Dark spirits such as brandy, whiskey and red wine contain more congeners than lighter spirits like vodka and white wine. Likewise cheaper spirits have had fewer of these impurities removed and are more likely to cause a hangover.
• Some people believe the sugar in sweeter cocktails contribute to the severity of hangovers.
• Smokers and even some non-smokers tend to smoke more when they are drinking and this can lead to nicotine poisoning which will also worsen hangovers.
• Some people are genetically lucky when it comes to hangovers and rarely, if ever, suffer the effects.
• Weight is a factor. The less one weighs the more that person will feel the effects and after effects of alcohol.
• The older you are the more likely you are to have a severe hangover. This is usually not a factor because we tend to take it a little easier as we learn from the mistakes of the past. But you have been warned.
• There is something to be said about psychosomatic effects. If you think you will get a hangover, you probably will get one. Look on the bright side and save yourself.
• Finally, the more you drink or the more you guzzle in a short time span, the worse your hangover will be.

How do I avoid a hangover?

• Eat. Fill your stomach with a healthy meal of essential vitamins and minerals. Note that I said healthy. The food will absorb the alcohol and lessen its affects on you. If you decide a greasy bar burger or drippy pizza is your idea of a good meal you may regret that idea when the grease mixes the wrong way with liquor and carbonation and you end up staring at the toilet bowl.
• Hydrate. Drink lots of water now. Think of it this way, for every glass of non-alcoholic beverage you drink now you will save yourself from having to drink two glasses in the morning.
• Prepare your favorite hangover remedy and place it in an easy to open container in the fridge. If you do over indulge the last thing you will want to do in the morning is gather ingredients, mix things and worse yet, run the blender.
• A clinical study from 2004 suggests that drinking prickly pear fruit extract several hours prior to drinking will reduce the symptoms of a hangover.
• Finally, DON’T BINGE DRINK YOU IDIOT. HAVE SOME SELF CONTROL!

Flipcup: Warm beer, finger flicking and lots of yelling. Brilliant.

While you drink:

• Grab a bite to eat at the bar. This is where greasy fries would be okay to eat because it is a snack that will keep your stomach full and add extra material to absorb the alcohol. Bar peanuts, popcorn, any type of food will do the job. I know, sounds crazy because it’s not Paleo right? Well, newsflash that drink you have in your hand isn’t Paleo either. You’ve already decided to cheat so might as well enjoy it.
• Choose the booze carefully. Again, dark spirits contain more congeners, light spirits fewer, cheap liquor more. More congeners equal more headaches. Stick with quality light color drinks most of the night to reduce your hangover.
• Memorize this rhyme and abide by it, it will save you a lot of pain. “Liquor before beer, never fear. Beer before liquor, never sicker.”
• Alternate alcoholic with non-alcoholic beverages. This trick will slow your alcohol consumption down and still give you something to drink. Choose water, fruit juices or light carbonated beverages. If you are worried about what your friends may think order a mocktail or dress up a straight virgin beverage with a garnish and lie. Call Sprite or 7-Up with a lime a Vodka Tonic or orange juice a Screwdriver or cranberry juice with a lime a Cape Codder. They are probably too drunk to know the difference and who cares anyway, you will feel so much better in the morning than they will.
• Consume less than one drink per hour. Your liver breaks down alcohol at the rate of one beer per hour, so spreading out your drinking over many hours will give your body a chance to keep up with you.
• Once you make it home and before you crash on the bed force yourself to drink a glass of water and take some Vitamin B. This is also not the time to take any headache medicine (Acetaminophen, Ibuprofen, Aspirin) as they could seriously damage your liver.

CrossFit doesn't injure you, drinking with CrossFitters does. Rebecca with her hurt hand and Lauren with her sprained ankle. Well done, girls...well done.

Some of you may be thinking “Oh my God, Forrest wrote this post because of me I’m such a drunk”. If you’re thinking that, then I probably did write this post because of you. Go out and have a good time, but just make sure you’re not destroying your bodies on the weekends and trying to rebuild during the week. We all need to let loose once in a while, so have fun. Who knows? Maybe one day you’ll be holding me up as I stumble home…

WOD 3/31/2010

A. 3 Sets (not for time)
4 Deadlifts (4RM)
30 Seconds Rest
15 hollow rocks
30 Seconds rest

B. AMRAP 12
3 Handstand Push-Ups
6 Cleans (squat or power)

CrossFit Rugby

A. Snatch Balance + 2 Overhead Squats 2-2-2
Hang Power Snatch 3-3-3-3
500M Row Max Effort

B. 10 Rounds
8 Thrusters (kettlebell or dumbbell)
8 Pull-Ups
16 V-Ups

Drank Kool-Aid:May 2009
Fave WOD: Kelly
Least Fave WOD: Fran
Fave Movement: snatch and push press
Least Fave Movement: CLEANS!!
DL: 295 (about to break 300!)
BS: 235
CF Accomplishments:Losing 10 #s of fat due to the Zone!
CF Goals: 50 pullups unbroken, HSPU, Muscle Up

Jake found us through the Northrup grapevine and immediately became known for his speed in any WOD involving running (damn him!). He may also be the only athlete in the gym who prefers the snatch to the clean! Since then, he’s set and achieved numerous other goals for himself.

He recently committed to a challenge to run every single day for 25 years. Day 1 was on his birthday last Tuesday. We’ll be sure to get together in 2034 to celebrate his 9131 straight days of running. His newest goal is to unseat Spealer as the pull up king. We’ll be cheering you on, Jake (holding tape in the sidelines for ya!).

REST DAY 08.30.09

Word: sticktoitiveness
Part of Speech: n
Definition: dogged perseverance; resolute tenacity; also written stick-to-it-ive-ness
Example: The only way to improve your snatch is through stick-to-it-ive-ness.
Etymology: 1909

As constantly varied as CrossFit can be, an athlete has to become proficient in upwards of 50+ movements, ranging from gymnastics to olympic lifts.  Those of you who are geeking out and counting them in your head, FOCUS.   It is daunting for the beginner, who struggles with the kip swing, getting below parallel, and trying to figure out what the hell a lumbar curve is and why does my coach keep yelling that at me?!  It’s also infuriating for a veteran CFer who PRs in his back squat one day and can’t even get close to his max the next week.  Or to one who gets her muscle up one day and loses her handstand push up the next.

I seriously think that CrossFit has a built-in ego check that just doesn’t let our accomplishments get to our heads.  I’m also convinced that what draws us to CrossFit is not just the physical brutality of the WODs, but the mental challenge as well.  We fight off that inner demon, attack our goats, and forge on through the frustration, because what’s waiting on the other side is that intense gratification of knowing that your stick-to-it-ive-ness elevated you to another level of fitness; that your envelope has been pushed that much further; and that YOU have accomplished yet another goal that you set for yourself.  

As coaches, we have the luxury of seeing many of you progress from Day 1′s Baseline WOD to achieving milestones in CrossFit, doubling–and even tripling–PRs.  We have seen your stick-to-it-ive-ness pay off in leaps and bounds.  Go pull your folder from the file box and take a look at your first benchmark WOD, deadlift, and back squat.  Realize for yourselves how far you’ve come already and remember that the next time you start to feel the frustration of a missed lift get you down.  

Pat yourselves on the back (just once) and go enjoy a moderate cheat meal (if you must)!

REST DAY 08.16.09

Last week, Chip posted about how to stay on your Paleo diet when dining out.  I figured we could help by posting reviews of local restaurants whose menus offer options for us urban cavemen.  This week, I’ll start with one  that CFSB has frequented time and time again:  The Counter.

Conveniently located in El Segundo,  Marina Del Rey, and various other locations, The Counter specializes in custom-made burgers.  They even offer the “Burger in a Bowl” which comes bun-less on a heaping pile of salad greens.  Their menu is a checklist of standard and gourmet ingredients ranging from tomatoes to bacon to roasted red peppers and fried green tomatoes.  

A word to the wise though:  order the avocado instead of the guacamole (which comes in a tiny tablespoon container).  Also, try to stick with a theme when ordering.  I’ve found out the hard way that many ingredients don’t mix well and had to suffer through dinner gazing with food envy at my neighbors’ plates.  

The only downside is having the willpower to resist their sweet potato fries and malted milkshakes!  Post any reviews of The Counter, favorite concoctions, or other recommendations for burger joints to comments.

Rest Day 08.09.09

For those of you who recently (if not begrudgingly) got on the Paleo Wagon, you may have noticed an marked increase of energy, followed by a marked decrease in free time which has now been relegated to buying produce, cooking, weighing and measuring, packaging tupperware, and finally washing used tupperware.  What little time I have between getting home from the gym and trying to get to bed to get those elusive 7 hours of sleep has become a blur of veggie chopping, egg boiling, meat chopping, and dish washing.

That is, until I rediscovered the Crockpot, a kitchen gadget that rivals even the Foreman Grill! While the Crockpot revolutionized the 70′s, single-handedly making it possible for women to escape the kitchen and enter the workplace, it soon lost its luster and was exiled to the far corners of our kitchen cabinets. However, it has certainly resurrected itself in my kitchen lately.

How’s this for simplicity: before bed, throw in a 2-3 lb chuck roast, some vegetable broth, half a bag of baby carrots, a chopped onion, some bay leaves, basil, and pepper (or buy the Mirapoix mix at TJ’s to avoid chopping onions and celery).  Cover, set on low, and wake up to a deliciously tender hunk of lean meat ready to be divided into tupperware.  Keep the stock.

Then, throw in a whole chicken into the broth, add a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (to extract the calcium from the bones as it cooks), desired spices, and cover. When you get home from work, you already have most of dinner ready.

What are your favorite paleo Crockpot recipes?  Post to comments.

Rest Day 08.02.09

TEAMWORK

So in the table above, we have 11 in each category. That leaves 14641 variations of meals. That’s 3 different meals a day for 13 years!! So, an example of a meal would be: beef & broccoli with olive oil and cayenne pepper. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? It’ll take you 13 years to exhaust all the varieties of meals until you get to revisit it again. All it takes is a little imagination and innovation. Until you get the hang of it, though, we trainers will remain on-call at all hours as your Paleo Hotline. Many of you (Forrest) have already taken advantage of it!

Post any nutrition questions you may have!

REST DAY 07.26.09

Murphy's "What Recession? Decadent Chocolate Cookies"

For many of us, yesterday’s celebration of our nation’s Independence Day included various cheats–be it alcohol and/or forbidden carbs.  What was on your plate?  

Hopefully today’s carb hangover doesn’t hit you as hard as a date with Fran or Linda.  In any case, jump back on the Paleo Zone Wagon and start the day off clean.  

Post cheats to comments.

REST DAY 07.05.09