Ask yourself a question.  How coachable are you?  Do you plow on through a set of deadlifts basically ignoring the cues your coach gave you?  How is that some people hurt themselves with a lightweight and [...]]]> Don’t forget Nutrition Basics lecture this Saturday at 11:30am.  Bring your friends, bring your questions, bring your goals!

Ask yourself a question.  How coachable are you?  Do you plow on through a set of deadlifts basically ignoring the cues your coach gave you?  How is that some people hurt themselves with a lightweight and others pull up serious heavy weight with no problem?  All in the details.  The 6am class this week was incredibly attentive to detail in their deadlifts.  We got the camera out and took a couple pictures so that people could really see their form.  Are you someone who is receiving the same cues and corrections from your coaches over and over and over again?  Get out the camera.  Maybe seeing will help you really understand the issue.  I want you to check out the photos below and see Traci getting some very good positioning in place and then see a couple people you might recognize pulling PR deadlifts without compromising their form just because it got heavy.  It can be done.  It should be done!  Just because it is heavy doesn’t mean it should be ugly.  If you are frustrated with a positioning struggle in any of the heavy lifts, if you are tired of hearing the same old thing being shouted at you every time you deadlift, come and see me or Chris or Pete and find out what to do about it.  You might need some assistance work.

Sometimes we carry things while we move in crossfit workouts like kettlebells, weight vests, med balls, or bumperplates.  We might do a gym-length shuttle run or a 400m run while carrying something heavy.  We’ve done team workouts where we carry each other or carry a bigger item like the heavy bag. [...]]]>

Sometimes we carry things while we move in crossfit workouts like kettlebells, weight vests, med balls, or bumperplates.  We might do a gym-length shuttle run or a 400m run while carrying something heavy.  We’ve done team workouts where we carry each other or carry a bigger item like the heavy bag.  Sometimes we add weight to our in-place movements like when we do a step-up with a barbell on our shoulders or a weighted pull ups.  Carrying extra weight while moving is the quintessential functional movement that all humans have done since we started moving around.  These weight-carrying movements have initiated several conversations in the gym over the years regarding the impact of losing or gaining body weight.  Most recently, one of our master’s games athletes, Maureen (of the 100lb power clean!!!), mentioned that she has lost about 15lb since beginning crossfit.  This was on the day when we were doing a 3 round, 400m med ball run.  She said she was just thinking of it as what it was like to run 400m before she lost weight.  Summer and Midori and I have talked about the fact that the elusive weighted pullups sometimes are a wash when it is pretty easy to go up and down 5 or 7lbs of body weight in the course of a few months.  One month it is possible to do a 5lb weighted pullup, the next month it isn’t, but if you gained 5lbs then maybe you are really doing the same movement!  Crossfitters are so thoughtful about the effort their bodies are putting out.  I love that we all consider the nature of the work our body is doing.  And a special congratulations to the people who now use plates on a chain, med balls and weight vests to supply extra load to replace the body fat that they used to carry all the time!!

When you live the burden of carrying 60lbs extra of body fat every day, adventures where you voluntarily carry 60lbs in a pack aren’t so appealing.  In that backpack you could have warm socks, delicious drinks, maps of beautiful destinations and tasty snacks .  A lot of times in 60lbs of body fat, comes tiredness and poor health.  For an incredible story of one man’s experience of living day-to-day with obesity and his family’s return to health, read A Life Unburdened by Richard Morris.  Just read it.  He is working on changing the world, one real meal at a time.

Most gyms and  fitness and nutrition professionals sell supplements.  As with many of the important choices of life, there isn’t a black and white answer to using or recommending supplements.  The vast majority are overpriced, sketchily produced and not effective.  The placebo effect can be pretty powerful.  There are certainly therapeutic situations (by [...]]]>

Most gyms and  fitness and nutrition professionals sell supplements.  As with many of the important choices of life, there isn’t a black and white answer to using or recommending supplements.  The vast majority are overpriced, sketchily produced and not effective.  The placebo effect can be pretty powerful.  There are certainly therapeutic situations (by that I mean treatment of an illness) in which using targeted, professional grade supplements is appropriate.  Most naturopaths are fairly skilled at using specific nutrients to address illness.  The primary reason that we here at CrossFit Works utilize a hunter-gatherer approach to food (the paleo diet) is because it inherently increases the nutrient content of our meals.  Meat, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables possess an array of nutrients and a quantity of those nutrients far superior to the agricultural foods.  If you doubt me on this one, use a nutrient calculator and see what you get.  Following a solid Paleo diet is a damn good way to ensure that you are taking in adequate quantities of important nutrients without supplements.  Benefitting from the nutrient density of the Paleo diet requires you to include the wide spectrum of paleo foods…especially red meat.  Let’s use the nutrient L-carnitine as an example of the importance of red meat.  I’ve been getting some questions about L-carnitine lately, so let’s look at it.  L-carnitine is a compound that your body can make for you in your liver from two amino acids, lysine and methionine.  Lysine is an essential amino acid which tells you that in order to get it in your body you have to swallow it down.  Your body can’t make lysine for you.  Synthesizing L-carnitine also requires a couple of the B vitamins and Vitamin C.  As with all nutrients that our body has the ability to manufacture for us, we have to have adequate stores of the raw materials in order to make it.  We can also help out our body by providing some of the L-Carnitine we need from our food.  L-Carnitine is involved in many important functions including bone manufacture, production of sperm and sperm motility, heart function and...the transport of long chain fatty acids into the mitochondria of our cells to be used in the Krebs Cycle to produce energy. Reread that one.  If we have sub-optimal stores of L-carnitine we cannot do a great job of getting fat into the cells where it can be used to produce energy.  How might we have created a situation where we are low in L-carnitine?  By not eating red meat.  Check out the levels of L-carnitine in the following foods.

Per 100g of food:

red meat = 95mg of L-carnitine

pork = 28mg

cod = 6mg

chicken = 4mg

cheese = 2mg

asparagus = 0.2mg

eggs = 0.1mg

L-carnitine is often sold as a “weight loss” or “fat-burning” supplement.  Like many supplements, studies on the effectiveness of L-carnitine as a weight loss aid range from astoundingly powerful to non-existent.  What gives?  Most likely the difference is in the pre-existing tissue levels of L-carnitine.  If you are deficient, then raising your tissue levels will improve your body’s ability to get fat into the energy production cycle.  If you are not deficient, nothing will happen.  What about us Masters crossfitters?  Studies on aging show that as we age the ability of the mitochondria in our cells to produce energy for us declines.  Studies also show (sounds like a TV commercial) that our tissue levels of L-carnitine decline with age.  Guess what studies show next?  Supplementing older folks with L-carnitine improves mitochondrial function.  L-carnitine has very few adverse side effects (sweating being the most common).  I have used L-carnitine with great success in many folks who come to see me for weight loss.  I have also used it with people who really didn’t notice any change.  The bottom line is tighten up your eating.  Eat some steak.  If you are curious and slightly experimental, L-carnitine is available at most places that sell supplements.  I’m not recommending it.  I’m telling you what it does and what people have experienced.  Do your own research if you are interested.  Or come and talk to me.

Shout out to the Get-Some Challengers.  I’ve seen you all working hard this week.  Ellie-you are stepping up with a new level of committment and I AM EXCITED!  Lots of pullups around, questions for your trainers-impressive.

In this [...]]]> Look-All men!!  I think they are worried about the outcome of the Get-Some Challenge

Shout out to the Get-Some Challengers.  I’ve seen you all working hard this week.  Ellie-you are stepping up with a new level of committment and I AM EXCITED!  Lots of pullups around, questions for your trainers-impressive.

In this world of eating well and training hard and in light of our Women’s Challenge, I want to distinguish the CrossFit Works philosophy from some other PISS POOR philosophies on training and eating.  As we all commit to good eating and getting fit, fitter and fittest lets all remember that inside the walls of this Affiliate we determine success by performance and feeling.  NOT BY APPEARANCE.  There is such a fine line sometimes between wanting to get lean, fast, strong and healthy and being disgruntled or sad when we don’t look a certain way.  Yes, it is fantastic when someone loses 15 or 20lbs because they stopped eating crap and started training hard.  The loss of that weight means they got healthier.  They didn’t get healthy because they lost weight.  They lost weight because they got healthy.  Know what I mean?  As the co-owner of this strength and conditioning facility I refuse to participate in the phenomenon by which we create negativity for people around their bodies.  I was deeply saddened to see, on the www.crossfit.com Affiliate blog a couple weeks ago, a picture of the blackboard from an Affiliate in Atlanta.  The board said “It’s simple.  If it jiggles then it’s fat.”  Well, what then?  The women I know and love have fat that jiggles.  They are strong, fast, powerful, kind, loving, dedicated.  They have birthed children, cared for partners, built businesses.  Whether or not they have jiggly fat somewhere is no body’s damn business (except those people with whom they get naked on a regular basis!) and does not have implication for their ability to fight off the flu or kick someone’s ass in a workout.

Remember that in this CrossFit Affiliate we strive for wellness and a better quality of life through hard playing.  Physical strength, mental strength and emotional strength are the goals.  Get strong in every way.  If you jiggle, make sure you’re jiggling while running faster than you’ve ever run before.  If you jiggle, make sure it is while you are doing sets of kipping pullups like lightning.  If you jiggle, do it while playing in the park with your kids.  Keep working hard.  You are awesome right now at this very moment.