Running, or its proxy, longer, lower intensity metabolic conditioning workouts, is  a topic we revisit periodically.  Many many people come to CrossFit with endurance backgrounds and they worry that additional muscle or too much strength work will slow down their running.  Many people, especially many [...]]]> How about a little sand bag run?

Running, or its proxy, longer, lower intensity metabolic conditioning workouts, is  a topic we revisit periodically.  Many many people come to CrossFit with endurance backgrounds and they worry that additional muscle or too much strength work will slow down their running.  Many people, especially many of my women out there, wish we did more running and less lifting (I like you all even though I don’t understand you all…).  I want to revisit a few things about running and longer workouts in this post.  The first element of this conversation has to be:

1.  Why do you workout?

If the answer is “to be a competitive endurance athlete” then you must do some training especially for your sport (although if you are a distance athlete it has been researched and demonstrated many times empirically and anecdotally that you can improve your times without training so many hours in the longer time domains).

If the answer is “to live longer and healthier and be as fit and well as I can” then long slow/moderate workouts do not have much of a place in your repertoire.

The second element of this conversation is:

2.  What should drive my trainers and instructors in their coaching methodology?

Hopefully the answer to this one is “They should strive to make me as fit as possible while minimizing negative impact on my health due to exercise methodology”.

There is a new study about the cardiovascular health of runners discussed on Dr. Kurt Harris’ website, www.PaNu.com. This website is where Dr. Kurt Harris discusses why he, as an MD, believes eating a Paleo Diet is the healthiest way of eating.  As an aside, Dr. Harris advocates a version of the Paleo Diet closest to the one I use here at CrossFit Works (he likes butter too!).  Dr. Harris has written before about research regarding the health of runners (like a German study showing that in groups matched for age/behavior/sex sedentary people had healthier arteries than runners).  I hope you all will click on this link and read what Dr. Harris has to say.

I encourage you all to fulfill your desire to run more as your outside-CrossFit workouts.  The majority of you train here only 3 days per week.  This leaves 4 other days in which you need to find action.  Even I ran a 10k the other day (and Lorna, I don’t think your “Oh a 10k isn’t so bad” quite matches my feeling, but you were right, it wasn’t as bad as I thought).  Ultimately, remember that CrossFit methodology prepares you to tackle whatever comes your way including running.  Make sure you are hitting your shorter CrossFit workouts with actual intensity.  Do you require a few minutes before you can pull yourself together and talk and unload your barbell? Or do you stroll to your water bottle while chatting to your neighbor?  Sometimes I see the second thing in the gym, so check in with yourself.  If you do our short workouts without the intensity they don’t give you the same powerful results.  And, we will do some longer workouts in the near future while we have the weather for it.  Before the inferno hits.

Wow, that was fun last night.  This is a fantastic workout.  Genius really.  Let’s talk about why this is a brilliant workout.  It uses some bodyweight movements (squats and pushups) that are always a challenge, but that should be able to be done at top speed if your fitness base is solid.  A [...]]]>

Wow, that was fun last night.  This is a fantastic workout.  Genius really.  Let’s talk about why this is a brilliant workout.  It uses some bodyweight movements (squats and pushups) that are always a challenge, but that should be able to be done at top speed if your fitness base is solid.  A nice strength lift is included (Power Clean), but not one that is too technical or beyond anyone’s range of flexibility.  Again, one that you should be able to repeat quickly without losing intensity.  You get 1min of rest between your 3 minutes of effort which also contributes to you being able to work at high intensity for the duration of the workout.  See Mike G. crawling back to the bar after resting?  When we say rest, some people really know how it is done.

The evidence for the maintenance of intensity is that many of you managed to complete your fifth round with as many (or sometimes MORE) work sets as in previous rounds.  I witnessed very little slowing down or falling apart towards the end.  High five to Tido and Kyle (his first workout!) for accepting the Med Ball under their booties for the last couple of rounds so they got deep enough on their squats.  Bryon and I were hard on you all in terms of performing this workout so that each rep was legit.  I saw plenty of full range pushups which are sometimes MIA around here.  The one thing I saw a bit of which we all need to be vigilant about is that when you do lifts for reps you need to completely stand up (open your hips) after the lift.  Don’t put the bar down until you are fully extended at the top.  Chauncey gets the gold star for more than 24 rounds!!  Man, I love my Affiliate.  It is never hard around here to feel good about getting pretty damn close to 40 because the Hombre at the workout with the most years WON IT!!  C’mon Youth-bring it.

Check out Mia in the pics below.  Mia celebrated our One Year Anniversary of our Free Sat workouts with us recently.  The only person to be at the first one and the One Year moment!  Pretty cool.  See how Mia is NOT curling the bar up so it can crash down on her shoulder rack??  She is smart and talented and beautiful in a way that I never even recognize her when she walks in dressed up from work.

REMINDER!!

This Saturday is PR Saturday, from 3:00-4:30.  Come do a lift.  If you have a blank spot in your log book because you missed a 1 rep max day for that lift or because you haven’t trained here long enough to do them all, this is your chance.  Plus it will be fun, obviously.  There are still spots left.

Finally, we want to send out our Best Wishes to Maureen and Eddie.  Maureen has been training with us for a couple months, usually at the 9am class.  Her husband Eddie had already earned himself a respectable nickname of Mr. Inflexible during the Sat workouts and his Fundamentals.  Eddie is receiving treatment for cancer this week.  He is doing very well.  And in a funny CrossFit Works moment it turns out that Maureen recognized one of the physicians involved in Eddie’s care as her fellow CrossFitter!!  Our thoughts are with you and we’ll see you both soon, in here, working out.

I think I’ve written about this before, but sometimes repeating myself is probably a good idea.  Especially since I’m hopefully more coherent the second or third time around.

I’m in the mood to beat that old dead horse “Intensity” again.  A 30 minute hard workout leaves everyone worn out, sweaty and feeling [...]]]>

I think I’ve written about this before, but sometimes repeating myself is probably a good idea.  Especially since I’m hopefully more coherent the second or third time around.

I’m in the mood to beat that old dead horse “Intensity” again.  A 30 minute hard workout leaves everyone worn out, sweaty and feeling pretty damn pleased with themselves.  As you all know, that is not intensity, that is long and hard.

Intensity means even if it is only 5 minutes, you have NOTHING left to give afterwards.  It means spending a long time working up to it and a long time recovering.

Some of you may not have had the pleasure of reading or hearing the wisdom of Dave Tate of Elite Fitness Systems.  Dave is like a character from a book, including the long mustache.  Dave is a Powerlifter turned Powerlifting-Strength coach.  When he was competing he back squatted 935lbs, deadlifted 740 and bench pressed 610.  I know, those numbers are just around the corner for me too.  In a recent lecture on recovery in his athletes, Dave mentions that recovering from a 1rep mex effort Deadlift might take 2 WEEKS!!! Now obviously, none of us have developed the strength base to require 2 weeks to recover from our deadlift.  But still, the concept Dave speaks of is important.  He discusses the neurologic impact of very heavy lifts and how taxing they can (and should be).  There are many of you out there who are still working on form and technique, but some of you can start thinking of heavy lifts as VERY TAXING NEUROLOGIC LOADS.  I see so many of you approaching the bar sort of mindlessly.  I can’t even really tell if you are taking in what your trainers are saying.  Are you blocking out everyone and everything around you?  Are you thinking about your breath? your grip? your feet?  Or are you just thinking of it like another set of 20 burpees?  Heavy lifting is nothing like running a mile or doing sets of body weight gymnastics stuff.  It is not mindless (mind numbing?).  You get only a few seconds to get the job done.  Approach these things like you have only 20seconds to accomplish an incredible neurologic and physical task.  Get every single nerve and muscle cell firing.  This is intensity.  Moments of sheer, complete and total committment.  And, of course, accompanying crazy looking faces too.  Liz makes a perfect deadlift PR face!

Yesterday, we did a spectacularly long and perhaps unpleasant workout here of the sort that we don’t frequently undertake.  I received plenty of feedback about it, mostly stuff like, “I’ve never felt like I was going to [...]]]> Theresa and Lorna ran the Disney Half Marathon on Sunday in 2hrs and 8minutes!!  Congratulations Ladies.

Yesterday, we did a spectacularly long and perhaps unpleasant workout here of the sort that we don’t frequently undertake.  I received plenty of feedback about it, mostly stuff like, “I’ve never felt like I was going to be sick before.  This was the first time.”  People also commented on how different it felt to do something in the 30-40minute range as opposed to our more frequent 5-15minute range.  As is perhaps human nature, there is the gut response of “that was so hard, we should do it more often, so that I can be more of a super-person”.  So, here is where I let you in on a little bit of what goes on behind the scenes in my programming philosophy at our Affiliate (aided, abetted and cleverly supported by Dave).

CrossFit is supposed to move you further along the path to wellness.  By doing CrossFit you are supposed to be less sick/injured and more well/healthy.  Believe it or not, my job is not to crush you with a killer workout each and every day.  My job is to program workouts that make you more well, fit and healthy not just now while you are young and strong (all relative of course).  CrossFit is supposed to be done at high intensity and teaching you all to work at high intensity is one of the most difficult pieces of teaching CrossFit.  You all do not work at high intensity if the workout goes on too long.  What I saw yesterday during that long, hard workout was a whole bunch of people who had learned to work at high intensity!!  You all actually kept it up for the majority of that workout.  If you regularly did workouts that were 30-50minutes long what you would know how to do was work for a long time at moderate intensity.  Instead you all have been trained, pretty damn well I observed, to hit a workout HARD no matter what it looks like.  If I did that to you with workouts 4 times per week instead of 2 or 3 times per month you would not do it like that.

More importantly, from my perspective, is that if we had you doing long, long hard workouts on a frequent basis you all would get over trained and worn down remarkably fast.  Dave and I want to get the most from you physically while you do the least (I know sometimes that is not what it feels like).  I was talking recently with someone who has done a fair bit of CrossFitting, about something called Adrenal Fatigue.  This is an issue that is currently in vogue and while we don’t have to jump on the bandwagon we should know what it is.  Your adrenal glands produce all your sex (testosterone) and stress hormones (using cholesterol as their raw material I might add).  When you are repeatedly subjected to high stress, whether it is from illness, life, work or training you eventually ask too much of your adrenal glands and they can’t keep up with you.  Adrenal Fatigue includes a complicated set of symptoms but include depression, exhaustion, trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep and then trouble waking up.  Adrenal Fatigue is common in endurance athletes and…over trained CrossFitters.  What do I mean by overtrained CrossFitters?  Crossfitters who work out like endurance athletes, for 30-50min per day!  So, think of yesterday’s workout as your own little CrossFit Game.  Your training prepared you for that, but it doesn’t mean you should do it as your training.  Make sense?  If it doesn’t post your questions to the comments…