June 2009 Archives

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Eugene Crossfit Travis 4th round of lynne from Jeremy Stecker on Vimeo.

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What are the factors that add to your motivation?

A hard fought PR? (Personal Record) That alone is enough for a lot of people. I personally love these.

Some find a greater importance in the rewards that come to them much after the effort is past.   Those numbers you put on the white board have a direct connection to your quality of life.

Quality of life is how confidently you drop down on the floor to play with a puppy.
Quality of life is another name for how well you scale up a tree to rescue a kitten.
How eagerly you climb on the roof to clean the gutters.  How readily you join a game of flag football.  How passionate you are with your mate.  How good it sounds to ride your bike instead of taking your car, or how attractive an all day hike to an isolated fishing lake sounds to you.

Your degree of reluctance to engage in any one of those is evidence of a diminished quality of life. 

- Parts taken from Dave Young - Crossfit Radio, Weekend Edition, #9


 

 

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Remember, being on vacation is no excuse to rest.  You've worked so dang hard to build yourself, now is not the time to rest.  You don't need a globogym - just think of the Crossfit methodology:

Do a functional movement at high intensity.  Whats a functional movement? Large Loads, Long Distances, Quickly.

So here's a scenario:  Lets say you're camping out.  Do the following:

• Find a large load.  (A rock.  A log, a bag of groceries, a stump, Your body, your child)
• Move it a long distance.  (up a hill, 200m, from the ground to overhead, throw it(not your child)
  
• Do it quickly.
• Repeat step 2 and 3 until you're really tired.  Then do it a bunch more.  

For extra functionality - do it in a way that is useful.  (i.e. Collecting firewood)
 

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Saturdays workouts - When you see that it's a "team workout," I'm going to do these different from any other day.  Non-Members can come for free.  Here's us last Saturday working as teams of two carrying heavy sandbags.

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More talk on nutrition.  Believe it or not, the Zone/Paleo is not a religion - you don't have to follow it exactly.  In fact, there are lots of adjustments you can make to so it works A LOT BETTER AND EASIER for you.

I've recent come into quite an array of ideas that make Zoning more manageable with better results.  The best way of doing anything is trying it - seeing how you feel and making adjustments, and then repeat the process.

So those of you that are currently in the zone, lets talk about whats going on sometime soon.  Even if you just started it.  Those of you that have tried it in the past and stopped for some reason, lets talk.

I would like to help you get it right.  Whether its making you sleepy, hungry, or you just can't eat all that salad, theres ways to make it work for you.
 

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I've heard that High Intensity Interval Training is getting popular in Eugene.

I first heard about High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) when I was trying to lose weight and gain some muscle on my bodybuilding routine 6-7 years ago.

HIIT or HIT (as I knew it) was a warmup, followed by rounds of high intensity running, with rounds of either slower running or rest between rounds.  Think running as hard as you can to the next telephone pole, and then walking or jogging to the one after.

How exciting!  You can get more results with 11-21 minutes of this than 45 minutes to 2 hours of Long Slow Distance running.  Very good stuff.

Most HIIT programs have you doing this once a week or every other day to ensure you get adquete rest.

Crossfit is a beast of a HIIT program.   It's the HIIT program to crush all other HIIT programs.  Here's just a few reasons why:

• Every day it's different - Crossfit taxes different metabolic systems
  
• We change the amount of hard sets between intervals
• We change to total amount of work you do
• Different movements - not just running.
  
• We change the amount of rest
  
• Sometimes these are set and sometimes these are not.  Even the workouts that seem all in one, you are stopping to rest or slowing down at points.
• By building Strength (on heavy days), and working with the olympic lifts Crossfit increases your raw power - so on the "HIIT" days you are getting more out of than if you stayed weak.

• By building coordination, accuracy, agility, balance with gymnastics and the oly lifts you get more out of the HIIT days.

• Crossfit mixes it all up in a beautiful package so you can do more than 1-2 days of working out per week and get WAY MORE results.

But what it really comes down to is fitness. (Read here for definition)  Crossfit is better than any "HIIT" program at making anyone fitter, faster, with less chance for injury.  And if any HIIT junkie wants to test that, I'm game.

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Also one of Daren's bands "Frown Squad" is playing a show in Eugene this weekend at Sam's Place on Wilson Street. The show is Saturday night at 8:00 till around Midnight.  Frown Squad plays a variety of Rock and Dance tunes.  It'll be a rockin good time!  Proceeds (Suggested $5/person) will help benefit a family who lost their home to a Fire. 

 

 

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Here's a great post from Freddy Camacho:
 
Range Of Motion

Yesterday the topic was competition and how it is what drives Crossfit. Competition is what drives up the intensity. We aren't talking about intensity as in the funny faces you make, how loud you scream, how much you sweat, or whether or not you meet pukie at the end or during your workout. We are talking about your power output. The amount of work you are capable of doing in the shortest time as possible.

A huge part of achieving maximum work (Force x Distance) is to move in the full range of motion (ROM) of the movement. We accept some flaws in your movements when you are "going for it." The occasional chin not getting over the bar during a pull-up.... The bar not totally overhead on a press movement....The hip not below parallel on any squat movement.....Or the how about the push-up not chest to deck or with the arms not fully locked out. That shit drives me crazy when I see it!  A few missed reps is gonna happen even to the most elite of Crossfitters. Also, sometimes the ROM in any given movement might be tinkered with for scaling purposes. 

If you are throwing full ROM out the door right at the beginning of your workout so that you can get a better score, you are cheating yourself. This is even worse if you are posting a time on the board and ten times worst if you are bragging about your time. In those cases it is worse because you are cheating those who look at your score. I haven't seen this happen too often at our gym, but it does happen. You can look at some of the athlete profiles that were posted on the Crossfit Games site as an example. The scores some people claimed for benchmark workouts were insane. I looked at some of the profiles and just figured, "This guy/gal has to be the next Crossfit Games Champion!" Some of those athletes didn't even come close to placing at their own regional qualifiers. Now this may have happened for a number of reasons, but someone holding you accountable to full ROM can really change your end result.

So how do you focus more on your ROM during a workout? You may not even realize that you are missing full ROM. Your One World trainers are always barking at you guys and gals when you are missing your reps. The problem there is that you have your workout ears on. You are hearing us, but you aren't hearing us. It's hard to process what someone is saying to you when you are in the round of 15 of Fran and you just want to curl up in the fetal position and die. Want an eye opener? Ask someone to judge your reps during a workout. You have your judge count for you. Your judge will not count any weak ass reps! The judge will tell you when you are done with the required amount of reps. Also, try filming your workout. I have filmed almost every Fran workout (and many others) I have ever done. This benefits me twofold. First off, I arm chair quarterback myself and strategize for the next time. Second, if I see the reps were bad, I toss the workout out. It keeps me legit. Try it sometime.

There is a formula for a good strength and conditioning program. Technique first, then consistency, and then ratchet up the intensity. I challenge all of you in Crossfit One World Land to turn down the intensity just a tiny bit and concentrate a bit more on full range of motion. The payoff in the long run will be huge.

 

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Post your favorite breakfast protein to comments. 

-  Things that grow don't count as protein.  Beans, Whey, Nuts, soy -- all thumbs down. 
-  Protein = an animal.
 

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Ok.  Hows breakfast week going. 

What time do you eat breakfast?  2-2.5 hours after, if you are:

• loopy (sleepy, brain doesn't work) you ate too much carbs.  Eat less tomorrow.
  
•  hungry, you didn't eat enough carbs, eat a bit more or the right ones tomorrow.

Keeping a food journal is going to go miles.   Learn your body.


 

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Lets call this official breakfast week - just for kicks.

A couple things to remember about breakfast:

• Make sure you have it within 1 hour of waking up.  I don't really care if you're not a breakfast person.  This week, you are!  :)
• Make sure there is protein, carb and fat in your meal.
• Remember, a carb is something that grows, and protein is something that LIVES

And if you're zone savvy - men should be eating 4 blocks in the morning, and women 3. (or more if your prescription says so)

• And for some reason I can't get rid of this bullet point......
  
  
  

 

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Workout of the day:

6 rounds for reps and calores, in teams of 2:
Row 1 minute
Pushups (or bench press) 1 minute

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Now that you're goal is set, lets talk about you taking some initiative to your fitness.   There's no way your goals has to take you 12, 6, or even 4 months to get. 

Of course, all the good stuff you need to do at home is going to help a TON.

But there are other things you can do in the gym.  For example, showing up early before class is a great time to:

• Get more warmed up
• Work on skills that are high in technical nature

 

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Also congrats to Kelsi, Travis, and Riley for signing up for the Level 1 in Portland September 5th and 6th.

I (and Daren and Eric would echo this as well) strongly recommend atttending one of these to any of the current members of Eugene Crossfit - whether you've been Crossfitting only a day or a long time, the level I is a great way to give yourself that extra boost. The sooner you go, the sooner you'll harvest the gains.
 

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If you have interest in supplementing your Crossfit with Crossfit endurance.  Let me know.    Everybody is going to respond different to this, so it's important to monitor your progress closely when adding things to Crossfit to make sure you're not overtraining. 

Crossfit Endurance is for folks who have been doing Crossfit for decent amount of time, can handle and is currently doing 4-5 days a week of full intensity Crossfit, and is seeing constant results at the program (i.e. everything is dialed in, not overtraining, etc.)

Also keep in mind this is for those who want to specialize more to the endurance sports.  (This may or may not make you a better Crossfitter, but certainly a better endurance athlete)
 

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Workout of the day:

Thruster 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 reps

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Nutrition, Nutrition, Nutrition.  The most important component in your success of an athlete.

The fifth fundamental class includes a long talk on nutrition.  If you haven't attended one of these in the last few months, hop on and attend.  Also keep in mind that I'm going to get Nutrition Certified at the end of the June, so I'll have plenty of material after that - I may be able to fit all the new stuff into a fundamental class - or Look for a upcoming Saturday seminar to go over all the good stuff.
 

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What's the mother of all core exercises?  Nope, its not the situp.   It's not the GHD situp.  You may be surprised - its the overhead squat.  Keeping your core tight with a load overhead is the best way to build a functional core.

This means keeping it tight, all the way down and up.  Raising that chest.  Active shoulders.  Lets work on our technique to keep them very uncomfortable during the warmup so we can build a core fit for an awesome WOD.
 

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Q:  What was the second announcement from last Thursday?

A:  July 2010, Eugene Crossfit is going to the Crossfit Games to win the affiliate cup.  That means we need to get to work.  Top 4 guys and top 4 girls from our gym go.  I believe 2 alternates as well.  Lets get going now.
 

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Write your time on the whiteboard, this one probably won't be on beyondthewhiteboard.com.

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Alright - so the answer to question #2 - What things can I do to recover quickly after a brutal workout?

The correct answer - RICE.  Rest, Ice, Compression (and massage) and Elevation.  Also if you tell your friends and family how sore you are it heals a lot quicker.  But mainly ice.  That stuff is the bomb.

From Kelly Starrs blog.
"Bask in your soreness! Brag about it at work as your friends help you get up off the toliet. And above all, practice all the recovery tricks you know! These include: Proper nutrition, fluid intake, ice bath, fish oil, active recovery, stretching, massage, etc.

Hell, you can even sneak in another quick workout the next day before the 48 hour soreness beat down really kicks in! Quick, let's do Fight Gone Bad before you get too sore from yesterday's double fran! For example."


 

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Squats must be to full extension at the top and below parallel at the bottom.

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Note:  There is no 5:00pm time slot.  If the 6:00 is full, come anyway.

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Todays workout - We will meet at the box, get warmed up, and then travel to Greenhill - (5 minutes away) 

Remember movie night is at 7:00 - Things to bring:

• Yourself
• A friend

Optional:  A snack, a chair.
$5 Entry Fee.
 

 

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Crossfitters,

Clue on the announcement for Thursdays movie night (Every Second Counts - Premier!) at 7:00pm:  Your happiness is a function of your development.  The announcement pertains to YOUR development.  Please be here and bring a friend!  =)  (oh and bring a chair if you don't want to sit on a tire or box.)  Admission - $5

Post to comments how you know if you are over training.  Extra points if they are the 5 things I talk about in the fundamentals class.

 

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Do you guys Facebook?  If so, Add me as your friend.  Also, if a pic comes up with you on it, make sure to click "Share" found just below and to the right.  Also, you can Twitter it, email it, Myspace etc  -- Make sure all your friends and family see whats up with you and Crossfit!

Remember this Thursday at 7:00pm is movie night at Eugene Crossfit.  You will be one of the first to view "Every Second Counts" -- an official Crossfit Production profiling 5 athletes and their quest for the title of fittest man alive at last years Crossfit Games.  Bring a friend!