CrossFit Works » hunting

It’s so easy even a Cave Man could do it!

Jen — Tue, 11 May 2010 17:33:36 +0000

This Wed night, May 12, at 7:00pm we will have our monthly Level I nutrition talk. Don’t forget folks, the table is where you will really start to lean out if that is your goal. The table is where your recovery happens from your workouts. The table is where you build your energy and stamina for your workouts. Those of you in stagnation nation with your personal fitness goals NEED TO GET ME A FOOD JOURNAL!!!

As always, my Paleo Intro lectures are free and open to the public. Bring your friends and your family.

It is fascinating to me that there is a whole avalanche of former zealous vegans now taking up hunting as if it is the newest clever pursuit. Check out this guy: http://www.danielvitalis.com/ . He isn’t the only one either.

Talk about a pendulum swing. I for one, can be glad I was raised by generations of men (in my case it was really only the men) who regularly practised the job of raising and butchering or tracking and hunting (or fishing for) our own meat. It wasn’t glorified or intellectualized. It just was done. It was done with a vast storehouse of knowledge about the wilderness and ecology and the habits of animals. It involved a huge body of knowledge about how to dress and butcher and store and transport out of the woods, the body of a large animal. But, guess what? No tribal tattoos were involved!! Mostly a lot of crazily early, cold mornings, wool clothes and thermoses of hot coffee. My Dad talks about being a kid and going duck hunting. In November. On the coast of Maine. Below freezing temps. Wet and in a boat. Doing the work of a man. There wasn’t complaining involved if I know my grandfather. I think our kids are being raised so softened. What the heck does this have to do with CrossFit and eating Paleo? CrossFit toughens you up and makes you used to physical discomfort and Paleo requires developing a relationship with the life and death cycles involved in the food you eat. Or we could go duck hunting in Maine this fall.

Persistence Hunt…and Good Luck to Matt and Liz!

Jen — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:43:46 +0000

I’d like to welcome Bryon to the world of blogging! He might have gotten there kicking and screaming, but we’re going to find out a lot of interesting stuff now that he is here. Check out his new blog post where he talks about this video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can find him at

http://bryonlichtenhan.blogspot.com/

I wanted to do a quick check in with those of you who did some rowing with Jerry a couple weeks ago. Have you been practising? It sure breaks down easily once you get going fast and forget to think about technique! If you ever want to do a quick row and would like someone to watch and see if you are sticking with it let me know.

Finally, we have Matt Thrasher and Liz Cameron headed to San Diego to the SD/AZ Sectionals competition today. Good LUCK!

Kill your own food

Jen — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 02:09:07 +0000

Whoa Sister those Tabata Front Squats were a monster today! I’m feeling you all. My quads are still a little shaky hours later. Tony B.’s power cleans were looking sharp too.

I found a new CrossFit Affiliate that I want to visit…CrossFit West Santa Cruz, co-owned by Cliff Hodges, author of an article in this month’s Performance Menu Journal (a great read by the way if you like to geek out on training and Paleo Diet info). I have included a clip of his article here. If you want to read the whole thing buy yourself an on-line copy of Performance Menu and read it. But don’t think you have to go to West Santa Cruz to find yourself a CrossFit trainer who can make their own Stone Age weapons and hunt their own food. You have one right here…in your very own Bryon. He can do some very amazing things and he knows our home, the Sonoran Desert very well. Ask him.

THE PERFORMANCE MENU ISSUE 60 JANUARY 2010 12

“That was my first day as a true paleo hunter. It was many years ago, and needless to say, I did not shoot an elk that day. Nor did I shoot any animal for a good 2-3 years. It took countless days of practice: tracking, stalking, sitting , and shooting, before I would make my first kill. My equipment alone has hundreds of hours of work put in to it—bows are the culmination of many weeks of refined woodworking, and a single arrow made of earthen material can take upwards of 2-3 days to complete. And when it’s all said and done, I head out on to the landscape, like my ancestors before me, with a quiver full of weaponry that most people in the modern world would put behind glass or display on their mantel. The thrill, excitement, and pride I take in harvesting my own food is immense and wholly incomparable to anything else. There is a spiritual connection that takes place in the depths of my soul when I am able to feed myself not from aisles of a supermarket, but from the plentiful earth herself. The meat on my grill was once a living, breathing creature. I know this not because I am told it is so, but because I was there. I have that moment, etched in to my memory forever, when I felt the wind on my face, the sun on my skin, and my senses stretched out in to the open space around me in a deep meditation of awareness. I can still see that animal moving gracefully in front of me as we carry out that timeless dance between hunter and

prey that has been played out time-and-time-again for over 100,000 years. I do not expect that everyone has the time to learn the art of bow-making and flintknapping, or the opportunity to spend hours on end in the woods tracking their prey. However, just as in our box here at CrossFit West Santa Cruz, I hold you to a higher standard. You’ve dedicated yourselves to a level of fitness or performance that is well above average—your diet should be no different. If you’re not eating paleo, than you need to seriously examine why you are even training so hard. If you are eating paleo already, then go kill something. Just once. Kill what you eat. Your diet already necessitates the taking of life, so I am wholly unwilling to have a debate with you on the morality of hunting. Have the courage to do it yourself at least once in your life and make that connection within you to your paleo ancestors. It will, forever, change the way you look at nutrition… and the world.”

Why the fish oil?

Jen — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:40:03 +0000

The best thing about providing nutrition education via a CrossFit Affiliate is that my days of tiptoeing around vegetarians are OVER. I was a vegetarian for a long time as I’ve written before, and I have the utmost respect for people’s personal eating choices. Each of us has profound motivations for choosing the foods we choose. I honor that in each person. However, I absolutely no longer believe that vegetarianism is more environmentally sound than eating animal foods and I absolutely no longer believe that avoiding meat is healthy. I do believe that the source and type of animal foods we eat and the way in which animals are raised and harvested is very important to our health and the ecology of our planet. My grandfather set an incredible foundation for my thinking about eating animals. He tracked, hunted, killed, butchered and cooked his own animals. He ate every bit and in a generation of men not known for their culinary skills, he was an excellent cook. He loved real butter and ate a lot of fat which I’m pretty sure protected him from all the smoking and drinking he did! In my childhood Universe, one of the things that separated kids from adults was that adults gutted and cleaned the fish and kids just got to catch them. All of you men (I’d love to meet some women this would speak to) who hunt and eat your animals do not need to be apologetic about it. It is funny how long it takes me to extract from some of you guys that you hunt, as if you will be in big trouble.

What does this have to do with you all?

The more research we do, the more evidence we uncover regarding the importance of a decent Omega-6:Omega-3 fat ratio in our diet. Among other things, these two Essential Fatty Acids are the raw materials for the pro-inflammatory prostaglandin hormones (the 6) in our body (important for tissue healing) and the anti-inflammatory prostaglandin hormones (the 3) (inflammation is good, but needs to be shut down too). Omega-6s come from nuts, seeds, vegetables and grains (all those vegetable-based oils we eat). Omega-3s come from cold-water fish, wild game, properly raised eggs, hemp seeds, chia seeds and flax seeds. Major consideration between these choices is that the 3s from animals are EPA and DHA form, absolutely ready to use in the body. The 3s in those seeds need to undergo a significant amount of metabolic conversion before they are useful AND especially flax seeds, have not been constituents of the human diet for very long AND flax is a cold-climate, very fragile food which does not translate well to our desert climate.

Recent research at Laval University in Canada gives us an insight into the importance of the O-3s for creating new muscle tissue. We know that the ability of mammals (yes, you are a mammal) to convert nutrients from food to muscle declines with age. Although we don’t understand the entire reason for this, insulin resistance is a likely piece of the puzzle. Omega-3 fats improve glucose metabolism in animals and humans which prompted researchers at Laval U. to conduct a study to determine if supplemental Omega-3 fats helped synthesize new muscle. These researchers gave one group of animals supplemental O-3s in the form of fish oil. Interestingly, the control group was given olive oil (that vegetable oil everyone says is so beneficial). The study found that the O-3 supplemented group used TWICE as many of their amino acids (proteins) to synthesize muscle compared to the control group. Another fascinating tidbit from agricultural researchers is that animals supplemented with Omega-3 fats “spontaneously eat 10% less food to achieve the same weight gain”. In other words, with adequate O-3 status the body can do the same amount of anabolic work with less energy intake. Very cool. You should think about how much more metabolically efficient the body can be if it is properly nourished.

SO, why eat Paleo? Because it improves your O-6:0-3 ratio AND improves your insulin sensitivity. Perfect. And if you are one of those skinny people trying to build muscle, get your O-3s into you. If you are really serious get your O-3s via some cod liver oil, so you keep your Vitamin A status high. You need Vitamin A to produce testosterone, to grow your muscle.