great thread

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_forum/sports_boxing_fighting_mma_combat/the_case_against_crossfit_?id=2569090&pageNo=2

This one deals with the argument of CrossFit being a "superior training program". I agree that it is not the end all of training, nor the best thing to do for specificity, but damn if it doesn't do a good job of getting to a certain level of fitness (see: GPP). It's the Jack of All Trades, master of none... but we'll see how the program evolves.

The Truth About CrossFit

by Chris Shugart for T-Nation.com. Thanks to Dwinson for the heads up!

"The Truth About CrossFit"

"Was I in the right place?" I asked myself for the second time that day.

The little street near Southern Methodist University in Dallas was an incongruous blend of old houses and new bars teeming with college kids. It was 9 p.m. and the sun had set, making it impossible for me to read the street numbers. Finally I pulled over next to a bar called The Green Elephant to look at my directions again.

And that's when I saw them, a handful of men and women lunging down a long corridor holding Olympic bars over their heads. A well-built young man held a timer and appeared to be either encouraging them or yelling at them.

I'd finally found CrossFit Dallas Central, one of 650 CrossFit affiliate gyms.

Later I learned that the athletes — which included members of the SMU lacrosse team — were performing what the owner of the facility called a "single-movement mindfuck." This group was on their 28th minute of overhead walking lunges, the only exercise in that day's workout. The record was 400 meters in 20 minutes flat. The sweat poured.

Earlier that day, at 6:45 a.m., I'd had the same experience, driving around an industrial-warehouse district in Plano looking for building numbers in the dark. That time, instead of lunging lacrosse players, I was clued in by a man running by my truck wearing a weighted vest. I followed.

Ripping the vest off, he walked through a door with me close behind. CrossFit Plano was small but well-equipped with the standard markers of the "CF" gym: bumper plates, Olympic bars, kettlebells, dumbbells, gymnastic rings, climbing ropes, tractor tires, bands, Concept II rowers, medicine balls, pull-up bars.

The runner dashed into the next room and began to do kipping pull-ups. I learned later he was doing "Murph": a one-mile run in a vest followed by 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 body-weight squats, and another one-mile run, all done against the clock.

This "WOD," or Workout of the Day, was named after a Navy Lieutenant and CrossFit enthusiast killed in Afghanistan. Most other WODs are given girl names, like they used to do with hurricanes.

I was there to learn the truth about CrossFit, the training phenomenon dubbed "one of the fastest-growing fitness movements on the planet" by the Business News Network. Later, I'd do interviews with CF fans and critics, make phone calls, and read everything I could find online. But I'd start by driving to Dallas and doing CrossFit ... twice in one day.

This is what I learned. This, as I see it, is the truth about some of the most controversial aspects of CrossFit.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE!

Post-Workout Nutrition

from Robb Wolf's site:

Jason had a great question that I receive fairly frequently:

Jason Arp
Jason@crossfitaddiction.com

Hey Robb I’ve been zoning for a little over a month now, body comp has never been better, I have no problems with energy throughout the day and I continue to PR on most things but performance has not taken off like you say it should. I feel like I’m losing strength, as weird as it sounds, even though I continue to PR a little I can feel strength decreasing (i.e. some exercise just aren’t as smooth and I’m hitting muscle failure quicker than I was a few months ago). I’ve read 42 Ways and most of your diet stuff on here. I know about moving most of your carbs to the PWO meal and moving the fat from the PWO and spread it out the rest the day (I’m sure you’re tired of explaining that alot). But I’m not sure what exactly in detail I should include in my PWO meal (other than yams and apples that you mentioned in 42 Ways). I feel that the PWO meal is very important bc I think recovery is the most important aspect of training. If it’s not too much trouble could you go into a little detail about exactly what foods are good to put into PWO and why? I greatly apprectiate it.

There are two things that need to be tackled here, the first is PWO food recommendations, the second is the strength issue.

PWO Meal

The idea of a PWO meal containing carbs (and protein) is to take advantage of a period of time in which the muscles are particularly insulin sensitiveve. We can fly nutrients into the muscle “under the radar” via a mechanism called “non insulin mediated glucose transport”. Amino acids are also taken in during this time and may play a synergistic role in both glycogen repletion but also decreasing inflammation that accompanies hard training. Said another way, you recover from exertion faster. So, what should ya eat? We actually want a starchy carb as our primary carb. Yams and sweet potatoes are great options as they are also highly nutritious. Fruit should be used sparingly in this meal if one is focused on optimized glycogen repletion as fructose refills liver glycogen first, and once liver glycogen is full we up-regulate the lipogenic activity of the liver and start down the road towards fat gain and insulin resistance.

I know James Fitzgerald (OPT) has used a mixture of mashed sweet potato and apple sauce for PWO meal…getting just a bit of hepatic (liver) glycogen repletion with the lions share going to the muscles. Sprinkle some cinnamon on top to enhance insulin sensitivity and you are set. Why do the mixture? Perhaps James will chime in on this but for me a simple answer would be palatability and taste. If you just received an ass-kicking, stuffing food down your pie-hole may not be that appealing. Something yummy could certainly make that easier.

Why not shakes? I’ve not found them to be superior to solid food, I have noticed they make people fat. A new paper just came out comparing milk & cereal (shitty food) to a PWO shake (also shitty food) and the milk+cereal beat the shake with regards to glycogen repletion. Go figure. I’d wager salmon and sweet potatoes would be even better…not likely to see that study!

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. If you train at night, just try to get that meal in immediately after training and keep an eye out for fat gain around the mid-section. If thyis happens, dial back your carbs.

Strength

There is a reality that getting really lean will decrease your absolute strength. We loose a bit of intramuscular fat that improves leverage and it just tends to take a little off the top end of things like squats and DL’s. You can still have great absolute strength and your relative strength will greatly improve…but if you are leanign out you almost inevitabley will see those top-end numbers come dwon a bit as compared to running just a bit heavier. Also, I’m assuming you are ramped up to a 5x fat, athlete’s Zone diet.

Five Worst Dietary Transgressions

from The Modern Forager:

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine told me that my “body hates me” because I don’t generally eat pastured chicken. Because of the amount of food that I eat to support my body weight and activity level, it would be very expensive for me to eat $2/lb chicken everyday. So I grab antibiotic- and hormone-free chicken from the local grocery store at $.69-.99/lb on sale (wait until it’s about a week from going out of date, then stock up the freezer). While the chickens are fed grains, they are not pumped up on hormones. I can shore up the poor omega-3:omega-6 ratio with some extra fish oil, which I do.

In light of that conversation, I want to touch on what I consider to be dietary indiscretions that will make your body hate you.

READ MORE!

10 Marathon Tips

Active.com's The Gear Junkie: 10 Tips to Make It Through a Marathon

'Tis the season to run your legs off. Each autumn, from St. Paul to Seattle, tens of thousands of runners wrap up a year of training with a 26.2-mile run. I ran my requisite annual marathon this past weekend, pacing at just under eight-minute miles in the Twin Cities Marathon to pull my best personal time to date at 3 hours, 27 minutes. Here are 10 quick tips--some highly personal, some quite unorthodox--on the gear, running techniques and nutrition I use to make it from the start line through 26.2 miles and to the end.

READ MORE!

CFT

There's a CrossFit Total tomorrow at Local's Gym again.

Am I ready to compete? Will I not scratch multiple times again?

I hope so...

i suck

i will be moving and writing at this blog from this point on.

time to organize everything and get on track. the last post really put me onto time management.

Time Management

I don't know why I didn't check this out when I first saw news of this. Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnagie Mellon University in Pennsylvania who was diagnosed with terminal cancer.



Here is the entire 1 hour 16 minute speech.

Tabata Sucks!

Only when you're feeling like crap, hot as hell and lacking sleep.

I was waaaaaay off my PR of 67 today. I scored a 44.

I started with pushups. Probably should've done squats since it's my strong point. Ripped my left hand on the pullups, blisters on my right AND I came out of the gate waaaay too strong (first round=22) only to mess myself up physically and mentally during the last set (1). Boo!

Is there a reason it's so much harder for me to function in heat? I was raised in Washington so I love and thrive in the colder weather. This was like when I was down in Vegas- I had to pause throughout my workout because I was gasping for air. Taking shirts off don't do much there.

I also made a mix for today's "Tabata This!" that you can download here. It's more hip hop, of course.

)=

I've neglected this site for too long. My laptop crashed a while back and I've been busy with running the Foundation CrossFit blog to put anything in here. I'll get back on this, I hope.

Quick updates:

• I'm on my 6th week of the 20-rep squat program. I'm currently at 210lbs for twenty reps. It is some hard stuff. I'll be finishing up on my 10th week 09Sep08, the day before my 23rd birthday.
• I was on a roll of PR's for a while. I have since hit some workouts and have not outperformed myself. It's ok though, I'm really satified with my progress. I need to figure out a proper programming.. I've only been going on a truely random template, making sure I don't repeat too many things.
  
• My nutrition took a big fall. Enough said. I'll get to cleaning it up AFTER September. It's my birthday month and I'm going to party. The way I see it is I'm waaaaay healthier than most of peers. In high school and post-high school I didn't NOTHING. I didn't develop any bad habits. I have taken plenty of complete sobriety breaks. I don't go crazy, but I'm going to enjoy it while I'm young. Nothing crazy, but you only live once.
  

Gymagery

dope site: http://gymagery.blogspot.com/

Yo

So I did the Reset and lost 4 lbs. I feel a little more energetic and maybe that combined with the butterfly kips have helped me make personal bests in 5+ workouts. Sucky part is that I moved and am currently not eating as healthy as I can/should be.

Tonight I decided to completely re-do the 20 Rep Squat program because I slacked over and over and would miss weeks and try to make it up in weight which would mentally make me fail. SO I'm now doing "20-REP TUESDAYS". Every Tuesday my workout will be a 20-rep squat day, hopefully with a 5lbs increase every week until September 9th (the day before my 23rd birthday).

That gives me 10 weeks (including today) to stay accountable. By the 9th I should be squatting 235lbs for 20 reps, meaning my 1RM should be around 350lbs. And by then my deadlift should be over 400lbs. Both would put me between Advanced and Elite Levels of Strength according to this. It's going to be awesome.

After 30 minutes or so after doing the squats I decided to join the class in doing a CrossFit benchmark WOD

"ANGIE"
100 pullups
100 pushups
100 situps
100 squats

14:29 (PR by 2:30)

YEAAAAA. Laid the f*(& out!

And you know when you've ripped too much when a callus rips only to reveal another callus!

This was dope. No blood, no pain.

Do full squats!

many professionals in the industry advise against full squats

millions of people all over the world disagree.

"Partial squats are never good. They neglect the hips and hamstrings. When an athlete stops above parallel, his knee joints are forced to halt the downward momentum, but once the athlete goes below parallel that stress is transfered to the more powerful group in the hips, hamstrings, and adductors. Full squats keep all these muscle groups proportionately strong."

Bill Starr - Strength Coach John Hopkins University Sept. 1997

Frantastic

How many times do you think people have used that post title?

Anywho, I PR'ed today by 61 seconds.

"FRAN"
21-15-9 reps for time:
thrusters, 95lbs
pullups

4:23

Yeaaaaa.. And I just recovered from a brutal workout the other week. Why'd I PR again? Maybe it's because I'm on my first day of my 5-day Reset! I forgot to take pictures of myself as a "beforehand" so I'll hopefully remember it tomorrow morning.

Today:
Morning - AM Multivitamins, Strawberry Shake
Mid Morn - Iced Lemon Bar
Lunch - Vanilla Shake, 15oz can of Lite Sliced Peaches, Braeburn Apple, 5oz Black Forest Ham
Afternoon - Peanut Butter Bar
Dinner - Chocolate Shake + Hard Boiled Eggs (2)
Evening Snack - TenX Blast Antioxidant Bar, PM Multivitamins + Episodes 4 & 5 of Battlestar Galactica: Season 3

Easy as pie.

Nutrition 101: The One Rule to Remember (from the Modern Forager):

EAT REAL FOOD.

Let’s keep it simple: Eat real foods, preferably in their natural state. I think it’s pretty easy to figure out what is “food” and what isn’t. A few things to remember:

• Food grows and dies. It isn’t created.
• Food rots, wilts, and becomes generally unappetizing, typically rather quickly.
• Food doesn’t need an ingredient label (and probably isn’t in a package either).
• Food doesn’t have celebrity endorsements.
• Food doesn’t make health claims.

Let’s give some foods this simple test and see if we should eat them:

• Broccoli - Most certainly a real food
• Steak - Deliciously real food, straight off the cow
• Oreo cookies - Hold while I read the ingredients. Are you serious?
• Eggs - Bingo
• Walnuts - Check
• Spaghetti - I don’t recall seeing a spaghetti tree on my last hike
• Pop-Tarts - Just seeing if you’re paying attention
• Pasteurized/Homogenized Milk - Nope, not in its natural state
• Raw Milk - Yep, real food, naturally

----

It's so easy, but today's society wants to make it so difficult. Stop playing into the hype! Real food will put you into the best state in your life.

The preparation begins

I've become so ridiculously busy in the past couple of weeks, but because of that I'm going to go through with my Reset next week (starting Monday). Most people do it to lose weight. I don't need or intend to do that. My reasons are to clean my system out. Detox. I'm tired of being tired. Not smiling and being bubbly. It sucks especially when you need to be on top of you game because people look to you as a role model and for advice. I don't want to be a hypocrite. I guess, if anything, this just shows that EVERYONE (including the people you admire) slip up and need to restrategize and freshen up their gameplans.



One of the most important things with nutrition is getting the right amount of vitamins and minerals in your body. Ideally, you'd want to get that through the foods you eat. WE DO NOT EAT "HEALTHY". I'm guilty as well. Most of you know I'm not a huge supplement person (when compared to most meatheads whose daily meal plans look like a science experiment), but I do take some important ones:

1. Multi-vitamin. We don't get everything. Even when eating Zone/Paleo, I felt I didn't get everything that I should've. Maybe it was what groceries I had. Regardless, I caught up with everything else in that little pill.


2. Protein. This was my "quick meal". The best post-workout nutrition. Why? Because the body doesn't have to break it down as much, therefore the body absorbs it quickly and you really reap the benefits from exercise. Also, if I didn't eat (if i was hungry or not), this is something I could put down to keep "fueling my fire" (brownie points if you know what I'm talking about!)


3. Fish Oil. Healthy fats, peoples. Fats don't make you fat. Processed carbs, too many grains (!), bad fats (trans, LDLs, VLDLs), and lack of activity make you fat. Healthy oils such as this help protect cells (small picture) which of course help everything else function properly as well: joints, heart, brain, eyes, etc.

So those are my three. My good three. You can take everything else, but it's really about taking care of the body. We're so quick to help FIX things when the become a problem. We need to start PREVENTING it. Degenerative diseases are the #1 killer of people today.

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

So you have the weekend to make the choice and I would love for some more people to join along the adventure with me. Let's be a team!

Slacking... big time.

In the past month I've done really, really well with my workouts.

I've also done really, really well with slipping up when it comes to nutrition.

And so, in the ever-raging battle that is life I am going to partake in an adventure that will fix my ass up (figuratively/literally). I've done something similar in the past with so-so results, but I have a feeling this will be 100x better. It's also going to help with other aspects of my health: sleep & rest, energy levels and, most importantly, attitude.

Watch me and this blog; pictures and daily updates to come to track my progress and keep me accountable. If this works for me, I'm going to recommend that my clients and friends try this out too.

Here we go! (c) Mario

Yaay Burpees! (c) Coach Burgener

50 burpees for time:
2:48

I was going to then complete the 100 burpee challenge, but I quit. )= Haven't been in the right mindset lately and it's really getting to me.

----

Scott wrote up an awesome article about the origin of one of my favorite sites/blogs:

"What does "Modern Forager" mean? How did I come up with that name?"

My First CFT

Earlier today at Local's Gym, the local affiliates had a CrossFit Total Meet. The turnout wasn't that big, so we only really needed one rack. Coach Dave and Jesse ran the meet. Good times!

My technical total was 775 lbs and I weighed in at 145 lbs. I missed some lifts OOPS

Thanks to Dwinson for the picture edit.

Squat 275 - 295 - 305 (miss: stuck in bottom)
Press 135 (miss: toe lift) - 140 (miss: stuck) - 140 (miss: stuck)
Deadlift 315 - 325 - 345 (miss: toe lift)

Deadlift starting position

I have to stop lifting my toes up. I was wearing Converse Chuck Taylors if you were wondering.

833 is the goal according to this ranking chart in the CrossFit FAQ.

Jello Legs

Yesterday Mikey and I did some MetCon because I needed to rest today in preparation for tomorrow's heavy lifts.

"Cindy"
amrap in 20 min:
5 pullups
10 pushups
15 squats

23 rds + 5, 10, 2 (PR)

Now I can't walk properly, my chest is tight and I can't raise my arms. This. Is. Awesome. In other news, the new May issues of the CrossFit Journal and the Performance Menu are out!

"Recognize that there is a benefit to not getting everything you want"
- Jason Dougherty, CFJ May 2008