Friday, December 4th, 2009

I know it’s been a long time. I haven’t had the time or the motivation to post on here. I have traveled for the Thanksgiving holiday and I just tended to my family as we are getting ready for the baptism of the special little love of my life. I have never, ever thought myself being a gun owner but you can be damn sure I am going to be one now. Ha-ha. Not really, but she is so special to me. Anyways, that has kind of been what I’ve been up to as of late.

I was recently in Amarillo, Texas this past week for the holidays as that is where I am originally from and where most of my family lives. I hadn’t been back in over a year and my parents don’t get to see the kids that often so we made the long trek down. I was lucky enough and honored to have the opportunity to work out at CrossFit Amarillo. Heidi Coffman, who is owner, was unfortunately in Austin for the holidays and so was only able to work with Ryan Huseman, a trainer of theirs. He is an awesome person and was really cool to talk to. Joe and I have visited many affiliates over the last couple of years and the one common thing that we see are trainers who give a damn. Very willing to continue their education and pass that information on to their clients. The thing I haven’t seen is a course for affiliates and their trainers to learn how to run a business and how to systematically run people through their program in the beginning so that they become members for life and your main marketing machine. I see dis-organized classes, no system to how people are taught movements from day to day, no re-enforcement of good movement from day to day or class to class, and no actual loud training voices. These are problems that are easy to overcome and that actually limit your gym from growing closer to its potential. The blame doesn’t really fall on the trainers because they don’t always know where to turn. They are mostly having to learn on the fly and by trial and error. This can sometimes kill a new business like CrossFit gyms before they even have a chance.

I think that those affiliates that have successful businesses and have a deep interest in the success of CrossFit at the affiliate level must take action to teach those affiliates that are suffering and are in the blind when it comes to not knowing what to do. Their gym is losing people and they don’t know what to do about it. I feel that it is my responsibility to help these gyms out otherwise it is going to be the demise of us all, at least under the CrossFit umbrella.

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Now on to my next subject. The increase of those that are shedding CrossFit and taking on strength full-time. I think there are a lot of misconceptions out there considering this whole movement. There are all these people bashing CrossFit because of this and because of that but non have any idea what CrossFit really means. I’ll tell you one thing, I do believe there a lot of people out there who really need to get stronger because as humans they are barely considered so. Being weak is pretty much an epidemic. It is on the same level as obesity. Yeah, people are fatter than ever and dying of things humans should not be dying of but it isn’t just the fat and processed food that is causing us to die of disease. I am also a big believer that being weak is also a major cause of this. Look around you. There are people every where that are frail, sick looking, and just weak. Throw in eating bad and you have yourself a huge problem. People like this need to get stronger. They don’t need physical activity, they need to get stronger. They need to lift barbells and dumbbells. They need to do pushups and pull-ups. Running on a f’ing treadmill is only going to make you weaker. Quit running distance for anything more than competing and/or pure enjoyment if you’re not lifting weights. Don’t look at lifting weights for losing weight, look at lifting weights for keeping your weak ass alive and not running up our health costs because you need every medication under the earth. Eat better not to lose weight but to stay out of the hospital.

Okay now that I got that out of the way, don’t stop doing CrossFit because you think getting even stronger is going to make you better at CrossFit. Maybe you want to supplement your CrossFit training with a little more strength training (i.e. MEBB) but if you drop CrossFit training altogether and place all of your focus on strength training, yes you will get stronger and yes, weights that are normally used in CrossFit will still feel lighter but you will still gas out. You can even argue that you will get stronger and it won’t take that long to build up your work capacity. To that I say, if you suck at CrossFit in terms of not being able get through workouts with super high intensity (with disregard to pain), getting stronger is not going to make you better at that. It will give you an opportunity to do so because the weights you’ll be using will be lighter to you but you probably weren’t moving fast as a result of the weights (I’m thinking you had to scale) being to heavy, it was probably more of an issue of your inability to endure pain and hypoxia over the length of an entire workout. People say doing 50 burpees without stopping is impossible for them but I say that if there was $250 on the line you could do it or at least attempt to. The point is, why won’t you try this all the time? Why is it that you pace? Why is it that at the first sign of “holy shit” you stop moving? Getting stronger is not going to magically change all of this. Like I said, it’ll give you the potential to change all of it because the weights are lighter to you now but if you were moving slow and finishing slow with scaled weights, what makes you think that is all going to change with a strength program?

What you need to do is build a solid foundation of strength but not at the expense of other components of fitness. I am referring to being good at CrossFit. If you just want to get strong and/or strength training is enjoyment for you, then by all means. I hate distance running and don’t enjoy it but I need to be okay at it. I need to focus a part of my fitness to it. If it was for purely health, I wouldn’t run distance because it is detrimental to health and makes you weaker but it’s not for health. It is because CrossFit is my sport and I need to be ready for the unkown. I am an athlete. But there are those that enjoy running distance despite its health costs. I guess, at least you are moving and you are enjoying your life. Why not right? Same goes with strength training. If you enjoy it, do it. All I am saying is that it will not make you better at CrossFit unless you are already finishing before everyone else and you have top times but what’s holding you back is that you aren’t able to go prescribed. Only in this situation, would I back down from the met-con and focus on strength for a while but only until I could go prescribed on everything and I wouldn’t cut out the met-con completely.

Maybe it’s easy for me to say because, relatively, I am strong. Not in absolute terms because if that were the case, I would be average at best. In relative terms though, I am kind of where I want to be. I have a bodyweight press, a more than double bodyweight squat, and a triple bodyweight dead-lift. I can snatch and clean & jerk quite a bit too. It’s all relative to my bodyweight though. All this has helped me to become the CrossFitter I am today but it’s not all. I only attribute my strength as but a small portion of my limited success in CrossFit. I attribute more of it from my ability to endure pain. My ability to say “F” it and keep going. When my lungs hurt, my heart is about to jump out of my chest, my muscles are about to give out, and I can’t breathe, I ignore it and keep going. This is not the same thing as going to the point of throwing up. Not by longshot. That is not smart training. I have control over my body. I can control my heart rate for the most part. I rely on mechanical advantage when moving to help me control my heart rate and breathing. I rely on momentum and use muscular contraction only when needed. I can put off fatigue much further into a workout than most people. I am not trying to go fast out of the gate. I am trying to put off fatigue, an elevated heart rate, muscular fatigue, power output, etc. until the last moment and then I go hard. If I can successfully do this, I won’t break up any reps and my pace is blistering. The pain I don’t feel or I at least have learned to ignore it because I have control over it.

How do you get to this point. Yeah, part of it is getting stronger. If you are stronger, relatively, you can put off fatigue later on in the workout because 135 pounds doesn’t take much effort in a WOD like Elizabeth when your clean is 277. But there is another avenue you need to address as well. This is the avenue of learning how to trick yourself into enduring pain and fatigue. How to keep going when you normally wouldn’t. There are many ways to do this.

Here is how I would set up things for those that want to get better at CrossFit. I would work on getting stronger a little more often than most do but I would also work on the pain side of it. I would learn how to endure more pain. How to work through fatigue. Learn how to ignore all of it and just keep going. Pain with coming out of the heaviest squat you’ve ever come out of. Pain with moving through 50 burpees without stopping. Pain with doing 100 reps of 135 pound thrusters in the shortest amount of time possible (or 115 pounds or 95 pounds, whatever will allow you to move for longer periods of time without stopping. Not that you will but what will allow you to). Do lots of heavy met-cons that are longer than 10 minutes too. And try not to break up reps. Use a heavy enough weight that you maybe would have to break them up but if money was on the line, you could do it. Not just with weights either. Set yourself up to run a mile on a treadmill and set it at a pace that is faster than you’ve ever run a mile (ex. 7 minute mile, then set the pace to be 6.5 minute mile) and don’t get off. “But what if?”, who cares. Make it happen. Endure the pain. If the most burpees you’ve done without stopping is 10. I would do five rounds of 8 reps with like 15 seconds rest between and not break up any of the reps. Force yourself not too. Then the next time, do the same amount of reps and rounds but only take 7 or 8 seconds rest. Or you could keep the same amount of rest but increase the reps to 9 over 5 rounds. Do this until you progress to 50 burpees without stopping for one round. This is tricking your body/mind into enduring pain. It’s realistic to achieve and will make you better at CrossFit. It’s smart training.

Friday’s WOD (091127)
For time:
Run 400 meters
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 rep rounds of
Weighted Pull-ups (25 pound db)
Med Ball Cleans (20 pound ball)
400 meters

time: 13:31

Saturday (091128)
For time:
50 Wall Balls
40 Double Unders
30 Kettle Bell Swings (1.5 pood)
20 OH Walking Lunges (35 pound db’s in each hand)
10 Burpees

Time: 4:45

Sunday and Monday off

Tuesday (091201)
I forgot, damn!!!!

Wednesday (091202)
Heavy Elizabeth
15-12-9 reps of:
165 pound full cleans
Weighted Ring Dips (30 pound db, no kipping)

Time: 8:16

Thursday (091203)
50 GH Situps
10 Belly to Bar Pull-ups
40 GH Situps
8 Belly to Bar Pull-ups
10 GH Situps
6 Belly to Bar Pull-ups

Not timed (just playing around)

Friday (091204)
Snatch from Blocks 10×1 @ 63.5 kilos (bar at mid thigh – just below contact point)
Clean and Jerk from Blocks 10×1 @ 74.5 kilos (bar at mid thigh -contact point)
Front Squat (speed) 80 kilosx1, 95.5 kilosx1
3 rounds of:
20 Band Pull-throughs (hamstring work, strong band)
20 Ball Slams (20 pound ball)