 Barebones Barbell Club of Tucson: strength training, power lifting, Olympic Lifting, private weight lifting facility
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No, not that kind of t-shirt contest. The kind where you get to showcase your cleverness. We are ready to order new t-shirts. You guys are always coming up with cool t-shirt slogans, so let’s use them! I have one rule. I have to be happy explaining your t-shirt slogan to my 9 year old. We aren’t big on censorship or anything like that, but “Nice Snatch” isn’t going on a CrossFit Works t-shirt. You get my drift. You guys are cleverer than that anyway. Thanks to Mac for reminding me to make this into a contest!! You have until January 21st, Saturday at noon to submit your slogan ideas. Pay close attention. Do not submit your ideas to the comments here. Send your ideas to carl@crossfitworks.com with the subject heading “T-shirt Contest”.
January 21st from 9:30 to 11:30 will be the first opportunity you have to come and assess your current fitness relative to the skill checklist for the Daily CrossFit class. On January 21st, Saturday at 9:30 we will begin taking people through the skill checklist that will eventually determine which program is the best fit for you. We will give you more information in the next few days, but remember that you might want to come that day and work through the skill check list even if you know you won’t accomplish all the skills. It will be a powerful tool in setting your individual training goals. Remember too, that our skill check list is not a “who’s who” of CrossFit movements, but an assessment of your strength and conditioning foundation with an eye toward being a well-rounded, fit person who has the mobility, musculature and kinesthetic awareness to be safe under many physical demands.
I hope some of you made it to the remembrance events around town this weekend. Congratulations to Mac, who finished very well at the CrossFit competition on Saturday up at CrossFit Now. 4th place I believe?
 Such beautiful overhead position at 5:30am!!
As promised, you have a special guest coming to work with you all for your next few weeks of Wednesday night mobility hours. It is really easy to get stuck in our CrossFit comfort-zone with our resistance bands, foam rollers and lacrosse balls. That is our recovery rut. You all already have a pretty big bag of tricks regarding the lacrosse balls and foam rollers. Time for something new to throw in your Recovery Toolbox.
We also get stuck in a mental/emotional rut often times as athletes. We get stuck on the same problems in our workouts, we have the same response to challenges. It is important not to forget that one of the benefits we can all get from our CrossFit training is carryover to any challenge in our regular lives: increased confidence for example or ability to persevere under uncomfortable conditions. We are extremely fortunate to have, in our little town of Tucson, a yoga teacher whose personal approach to teaching yoga is centered on how yoga can carryover to any challenge in your life. As CrossFitters we primarily think of yoga as a time to focus on stretching. We sometimes feel a little out of place in a yoga studio-our clothes are different, we don’t know the names of the poses, we don’t know the chants, it is so…quiet. But, yoga has quite a lot more to offer CrossFitters than stretching. The practise of yoga is the practise of developing neuromuscular awareness. Yoga is the practise of developing an intuitive feeling for which muscles should be firing and which should be resting. Yoga is the practise of learning how to control your breath during exertion. Yoga is the practise of clearing the mind of any obstacles to action. Yoga is the process of learning how to not waste your precious energy on non-essential movements. Yoga is the practise of controlling your rest and controlling your exertion. Dr. Brian Hewlett will share with you an active Yoga practise that is always connected to teaching you to produce the results you desire.
Brian’s class here at CrossFit Works will be an ongoing series dedicated to people for whom the practise of yoga is not an end in itself, but a means to your personal goals. He has an extensive and varied background including being an athlete, coaching athletes and teaching philosophy. This class will be free to all CrossFit Works members. FREE TO ALL CROSSFIT WORKS MEMBERS. It is also open to anyone in the community who would like to come. For information on how to attend Brian’s Wednesday night-CrossFit Works class for free, if you are not a CrossFit Works member, go here: http://yogaacrossamerica.com/?page_id=42
The Yoga for Athlete’s class here at CrossFit Works is part of a much bigger project that Brian is launching called “Yoga Across America”. Visit Yoga Across America for more information. But check out the seriously CrossFit-friendly Yoga Across America motto: “Any Yoga is Better than No Yoga”. Perfect. See you this Wed at 6pm.
Really these guys don’t need any introductions. You just need to know they are wearing new hats!! Carl and I have always known that the best way to know if someone is a good match for your gym is to get to know them as athletes first. That way you get to see how they hold up under pressure, how they conduct themselves as representatives of the gym, how they respond to different coaching challenges. We don’t always have the chance to do that, but this time we did!
We’d like to announce that Andre Matus, will be coaching at CrossFit Works.
“Andre has been a member of the Pascua Fire Department for 6 years as a Firefighter/EMT. He was introduced to CrossFit from a fellow firefighter and from that point on he has enjoyed every moment of it. Andre is a Certified Crossfit Level 1 Instructor, and also holds a certification in Crossfit Olympic Lifting. Crossfit has provided a sense of balance and health to his life and he enjoys sharing this gift of CrossFit with others. He has a passion for helping people succeed and provides a motivating and effective training atmosphere.”
Andre’s enthusiasm for CrossFit is unparalleled and his outgoing, laid-back style is very comforting in the gym. He has experience coaching group CrossFit classes and is looking forward to getting to know more of you all!
We would also like to announce an expansion for Mark L. who coaches the CrossFit Kids classes. I often think that the most useful coaching seminar I have been to was the Kids cert. If you can teach a kid to squat and deadlift, you can teach an adult! Mark has the extremely enviable ability to demonstrate movement brilliantly. He possesses wonderful mobility and neuromuscular awareness, developed during many years of wrestling and motocross. Mark is a very patient coach, but not at the expense of moving you toward greater performance. Mark holds CrossFit Level I certification, CrossFit Kids Certification and USA Weightlifting Club Coach certification. We are lucky that Mark has a little bit more time in his schedule which is allowing him to do more with you all! Mark will be the coach of the 5:30pm class. If you are lucky you’ll get a white board chat like the kids!
Next week we will be happy to see Ben back from his world travels too! Ben will be moving from the 5pm class to the 6am class.
Especially with the word “CrossFit” becoming so mainstream these days I think it is easy to forget the real roots of this movement. This special strength and conditioning program was not created so you could obsess over your CrossFit details. It wasn’t created so you could agonize over your muscle up turnouts, your max rep hand stand pushups, your overhead squats or which shoes are best for transitioning from double unders to back squats. CrossFit also wasn’t designed to be the next popular “fitness craze” which is really just the same diet/fitness crap, so-you-can-look-skinnier-plan, that personal trainers have been taking people’s money for for decades. CrossFit was set up as a General Physical Preparedness plan. The movements were chosen and the program was designed, to have the most powerful translation to outside life.
Yesterday our Blueprint class did some target, depth jumps. Depth jumps are one of the most powerful tools in increasing your vertical jump (a solid measure of athletic ability). Target depth jumps add in a real-life element and also an accountability element. if you watch the guy crossing the stream in the video he is using a slow and controlled targeted jump which once or twice has a depth component. This is the time of year to head up to Sabino Canyon or Catalina Park and play around in the rivers. You can totally use your target depth jumps for fun. I did that exact thing over New Years and I only got my feet wet once! The accountability comes in because all of my classes set their target during their warm ups. They set a doable, but challenging target and even at the end of the workout, when they were tired, they were still hitting their target. Without the target, I’d bet money their jumps would have shrunk, just like when we have you guys do broad jumps. Towards the end of the workouts they aren’t so…broad! But with the target depth jumps you guys never changed your effort.
   
Surprisingly a**-challenging! Engaging your posterior chain is not optimal on this movement. In some other posterior chain lifts like the deadlift, it is tricky sometimes for people to concentrate both on good upper back and shoulder positioning while engaging and using the glutes and hamstrings. All taken care of for you on this one! We love the G-Row. Thanks Greyskull.
A little bird told me that tonight’s mobility class is going to work on overhead positioning and hips. Next Wednesday the mobility class is welcoming a guest teacher. He is a Yoga teacher who has experience working with all types of athletes, including the always impressive skateboarders. You will have a chance to mobilize, and begin learning and practicing techniques to control your energy and breathing. Our guest teacher understands that his yoga teaching has to be applicable to your training off the yoga mat! I will have a full description of next Wednesday’s class and a bio of our guest later this week, but save the date!! Wednesday, January 11 at 6pm.
The New Year is here and so are a barrage of New Year’s Resolutions. There are so many ways to set goals, so many ways to resolve to make changes. Just like choosing the right exercise program depends on individual needs and personality type, so does choosing the best way to set your goals for the New Year. You might be a yoga person. You might be a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu person. You might be a bootcamper. You might be a CrossFitter. You might be a fitness class person. You might be a strength athlete. You might map out the entire year and plan it in blocks with 1 month, 3 month, 6 month, 12 month goals. You might have your training goals, your financial goals, your book reading goals, your travel goals. You might have never made a New Year’s Resolution in your life! You might be someone who likes a certain level of accountability or you might be someone who keeps that sort of thing private. Maybe you post your entire suite of accomplishments on Facebook or maybe the people around you have no idea that you learned to play the cello this year.
Whichever type of person you are there is one approach to training at CrossFit Works that will help you meet your goals, however lofty or mundane. I encourage you all to have a Purpose-of-the-Day for your workout. It can be a tiny little purpose, like “hold the last stretch of class for the full 30 seconds”. It could be a moderate purpose like doing your ten kip swings every time you come in so that you accomplish the kipping pullup. Or it can be a huge purpose like “beat my last “Fran” time by a minute”. Each movement that is done here is chosen with a purpose. Your programmer has a purpose, your coach has a purpose and you could have one too. For example, let’s use the unglamorous Ring Row as an example. For your programmer, the Ring Row was selected for Monday’s workout to build scapular, low trap and upper lat stability and to prevent shoulder overuse injuries. For your coach, the goal for the class with Monday’s Ring Rows might be to remind the class repeatedly to engage the scapulae during the movement so that the benefit is achieved, as opposed to simply watching you all haul yourself up on the rings with an anterior dominant shoulder position. For you, as an athlete, the goal might be to achieve an extra centimeter of retraction on each rep while touching the rings to your shoulders.
The nice thing about the purpose of the day approach is that you can settle on it a few moments ahead of time. You don’t have to map out a year long strategy. You can see where your head is at that day, you can see the movements in the workout when you walk in and think about your strengths or weaknesses with that movement. You could even ask your coach: “What do you think is most important for me with this workout today?” I have been collecting the goals of the clients in my classes over the last couple weeks. If I know that Kai wants to do a kipping pullup, I can bring her attention to the aspects of seemingly unrelated movements that will benefit the kipping pullup. We are all ready to know what your particular goals are so that as we identify our purpose-of-the-day for our classes and our athletes, we can factor your goals into our choices.
The new schedule is up and ready to go !!!
Please log in to MindBodyOnLine.com by clicking here, CrossFit Works Classes, and register for the class you regularly attend. If you are one of our folks that has an unpredictable, frequently-changing schedule then simply register for the class that you attend most often. This process of registering is one that you will do each month in order to maintain or reserve your spot in the class that you choose. We have switched to this system in order to allow better class-size management and to facilitate communication with our clients!!
Most important changes are the 5:30am class will now meet Monday, Wednesday and Fridays. Women-Only will meet Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 4-5pm and CrossFit Kids will meet Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 4-5pm.
Please take special note that we are offering a Saturday CrossFit class that is open to ANY and ALL members of the gym. Saturdays from 11:30-12:30. Open Gym is from 9:30 to 11:30am on Saturdays. At 11:30am Open Gym will end and we will offer an All-Gym- Awesome-time CrossFit class.
In the next week or two we will be checking in with you all to see if you need assistance or help getting registered for your class!
Happy New Year.
I don’t think I have EVER heard better academic speak in my life!! ”ecologically novel chemosensory signaling compounds” simply means that diet soda is not PALEO!! It means the compounds in diet soda are new (“novel”) to the human body and that they perform some type of activity through our chemical processing/sensing pathways. It means our body is absolutely affected by whatever is in diet soda and these effects are new to our body. I wish I was the one to have made up that phrase but it was the authors of a study on artificial sweeteners published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2009.
I have had numerous requests to discuss diet soda and its impact on health. It is not a topic near and dear to me because, well, diet soda so clearly violates every nutritional principle that guides my work. Usually the answer to the diet soda question is something like, “obviously diet soda is god-awful”.
However, I am rethinking this answer because there are a zillion people out there who simply do not prescribe to the idea that the human body was designed (Divinely or otherwise) to function best on real food. There are people that appreciate that a female mosquito must have blood, and not Gatorade, for her life process to continue properly, but who do not see the human body in the same regard. Humans are tricky, adaptable omnivores after all and we can survive under a multitude of conditions. There are people out there who use the opposite food theory that Paleo-eaters use. I think it is fair to describe most Paleo-eaters as people who want you to prove without a doubt that a newly invented food is ok for them to eat before they eat it. Lots of folks in the world take the other approach: if something is said to be edible they want you to prove that it is bad for them before they will stop eating it. This diet soda discussion is out of respect to the second group. I’ve organized some bullet points. Yes, I was a scientist.
- every time you eat or drink something that is not positively contributing to the process of nourishing your body…you aren’t nourishing your body. Keeping a plentiful supply of vitamins, minerals, macronutrients, and phytonutrients going into the human body is a tough job. Every single study ever conducted (ok, I haven’t read them all) shows that modern humans are deficient in one or more nutrients. Diet soda offers your body NOTHING. BIG FAT NOTHING. It does fill up your belly so that you don’t put in something nourishing though.
- every time you put something into your body that your body cannot use to repair, nourish, rebuild or otherwise help itself, your body must make the effort to get rid of that thing. Your body will use its overworked, overburdened detoxification pathways to expel the unusable stuff. If we can agree that Diet Soda is not used to rebuild, repair or nourish you then we can agree that your body has to at least put a little effort into expelling it. Trash collectors and garbage men aren’t free. It is hard work. There is a metabolic price to be paid. You might have a fat metabolic bank account which can afford that metabolic price, or you might not.
- your body is constantly working to maintain homeostasis in your life-sustaining systems such as blood pH, oxygen levels, blood pressure, and hormone levels. If you are continuously adding a substance to your body that shifts the levels of one of these life-sustaining systems then your body will make a heroic effort to return that system to the proper condition. The acid in soda is associated with gastric distress, especially in kids. Drinking soda can result in heartburn or stomach aches as over time the body is unable to correct the pH of the stomach and small intestine in the face of all the excess soda-acidity.
- anytime you add enormous slugs of a nutrient to the body you have the potential to set up deficiencies. What?? How can adding too much of something create a deficiency? For example, phosphorus is a necessary mineral for bone health. So are calcium and magnesium. If there is a huge amount of phosphorus in the gut, the body will neutralize it by binding it to calcium and magnesium salts. These salts are not bioavailable, so your soda-derived phosphorus glut has deprived you of calcium and magnesium.
- our understanding of appetite hormone regulation is still in its infancy. However, we do have studies that show that artificial sweeteners have a different effect on appetite than real sugar. Animal studies show that artificial sweeteners cause higher caloric cravings than real sugar. If animals are allowed to eat as much as they want (like humans can) those fed artificial sweeteners scarf down way more rat chow than animals fed real sugar.
- Comparisons of the brains of women (from MRI) while they ingested Splenda (an artificial sweetener) showed that the pleasure/reward connection was stimulated by Splenda and sugar, but more completely by the regular sugar. Researchers hypothesized that the partial stimulation by the Splenda induces cravings in order to complete the pleasure/reward cycle.
- Two or more servings (one can) of diet soda per day by women showed a 2-fold increase in kidney function decline with age.
- A 2010 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that, even after controlling for other factors, there was an increased risk of pre term delivery in women who consumed diet soda during pregnancy.
- an 8 yr study showed that diet soda drinkers had higher rates of obesity than drinkers of regular soda!!! For each can of diet soda consumed per day the person’s risk of obesity increased by 41%!! This long study clearly demonstrates that if weight loss is your goal switching to diet soda will hurt you rather than help you!!!!
- A recent 9 year study with 2,500 participants concluded that diet soda drinkers had a 61% higher risk of vascular incidents (stroke and heart attack) than non-diet soda drinkers. This study controlled for smoking, blood pressure, cholesterol and total caloric intake. Drinking regular soda did not increase risk of a vascular incident. Only diet soda.
- A European study concluded that drinking 2 or more diet sodas per day was associated with a 70% faster increase in waist size compared to non-diet soda drinkers. In other words, people who drank diet soda got fatter 70% faster than people who did not.
- Aspartame (Nutrasweet, Equal) is associated with pancreatic damage. The pancreas is that poor hardworking organ that secretes insulin and attempts valiantly to control your blood sugar.
- The friendly-sounding “caramel coloring” in soda is 4-methylimidazole or sugar reacted with ammonia and sulfites. It is a carcinogen according to The National Toxicology Program.
If you would like more information on diet soda and the associated “ecologically novel chemosensory signaling compounds” usually called artificial sweeteners, you can always spend some time on Pub Med. Searching via Pub Med allows you to skip over any journalistic interpretation. Sometimes you can’t see the articles without a subscription to the Journals, but you can usually read the Abstracts.
 Anne is going to CONQUER the squat during this Raw Strength Series!!
Lots of upcoming program announcements and scheduling details. Keep checking! Today begins our foray into modern technology in order to serve you all better! From now on, you will sign up for your chosen class or program through, Mind Body On-Line, our on-line database system. This will allow us to manage class size and to communicate easily with specific groups of clients. We are super excited!! But it won’t work if you don’t use it!! Over the next few days our entire class and program offering will be ready for you to register for using this system. You will register for your chosen class each month. Today, the Raw Strength Series, Women-Only CrossFit , and CrossFit Kids are ready for action.
The first Raw Strength Series of 2012 is open for registration!!! This Raw Strength Series will be Monday and Wednesday evenings from 6:00pm to 7:30. We will begin on January 9th and run 6 weeks through Feb 15. You can read more about the Raw Strength Series at www.barebonesbarbell.com. To save your place, register here:
Raw Strength Registration.
Only 12 people will have a spot in this Raw Strength Series to insure that we can offer you our full coaching attention.
Your coaches this series will be myself, Jennifer Higgins, and Gary Panttila. We loooove weight lifting and we love teaching people how to lift and watching progress in our clients. Gary has more than ten years of coaching experience here in Tucson and five years of competitive powerlifting experience.
Beginning next week on January 3rd the Women-Only CrossFit class will move to Mon, Tue and Thur from 4-5pm. Repeat. The Women-Only CrossFit class will no longer be a M, W, F class, but a M, Tue, Thur class. Same time, 4-5. To correspond with this, and hopefully make the schedule a little more family-friendly, the CrossFit Kids class will move to the exact same time and days. CrossFit Kids will now be Mon, Tue, Thur at 4pm instead of Mon, Wed, Saturday.
To save your spot in the January Women-Only CrossFit class please sign up here.
Women Only Crossfit Registration.
To register your child for the January CrossFit Kids program please go here:
CrossFit Kids Registration.
Don’t forget, regular schedule Tue, Wed and Thur of this week. Keep checking for updates to the class schedules that will begin on Tuesday January 3rd.
While we are taking this scheduled break from our strength and conditioning training we may as well use this opportunity to focus on our food. It is so easy to get complacent about our food supply. So hard to change it. We are all so busy. And is there really a serious threat to our health anyway? Sometimes I know you are all out there thinking, “Is real food that much of a big deal? I think I’m fine with this moderately good diet I have going on.”
You might be fine. Research is complicated. I’m still going to bring new research to your attention. One of the benefits of having this website is that I get to choose the articles I high light and I get to write my own thoughts on them. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read other articles or have different thoughts. Today’s article is just a reminder to not get complacent about what is going on in our food supply. To be sure, there are a million unanswered questions about the effect of Genetically Modified crops on the ecosystem and our health. Recently, a little study was released that gave us some more questions to answer. If you’d like to read the entire thing you can do so here. And if you don’t even want to read the entire conclusion I have highlighted the conclusion’s conclusion.
CONCLUSION:
“Patho-physiological profiles are unique for each GM crop/food, underlining the necessity for a case-by-case evaluation of their safety, as is largely admitted and agreed by regulators. It is not possible to make comments concerning any general, similar subchronic toxic effect for all GM foods. However, in the three GM maize varieties that formed the basis of this investigation, new side effects linked to the consumption of these cereals were revealed, which were sex- and often dose-dependent. Effects were mostly concentrated in kidney and liver function, the two major diet detoxification organs, but in detail differed with each GM type. In addition, some effects on heart, adrenal, spleen and blood cells were also frequently noted. As there normally exists sex differences in liver and kidney metabolism, the highly statistically significant disturbances in the function of these organs, seen between male and female rats, cannot be dismissed as biologically insignificant as has been proposed by others [4]. We therefore conclude that our data strongly suggests that these GM maize varieties induce a state of hepatorenal toxicity. This can be due to the new pesticides (herbicide or insecticide) present specifically in each type of GM maize, although unintended metabolic effects due to the mutagenic properties of the GM transformation process cannot be excluded [42]. All three GM maize varieties contain a distinctly different pesticide residue associated with their particular GM event (glyphosate and AMPA in NK 603, modified Cry1Ab in MON 810, modified Cry3Bb1 in MON 863). These substances have never before been an integral part of the human or animal diet and therefore their health consequences for those who consume them, especially over long time periods are currently unknown. Furthermore, any side effect linked to the GM event will be unique in each case as the site of transgene insertion and the spectrum of genome wide mutations will differ between the three modified maize types. In conclusion, our data presented here strongly recommend that additional long-term (up to 2 years) animal feeding studies be performed in at least three species, preferably also multi-generational, to provide true scientifically valid data on the acute and chronic toxic effects of GM crops, feed and foods. Our analysis highlights that the kidneys and liver as particularly important on which to focus such research as there was a clear negative impact on the function of these organs in rats consuming GM maize varieties for just 90 days.”
Corn is one of the grains that I am not particularly careful about avoiding. We eat carefully selected and prepared corn in my family. Corn tortillas are the sure fire way to get all sorts of meat and eggs into my children. A polenta-ish creation is also acceptable. Corn is gluten-free and is not particularly high in phytic acid. The problem with corn is that it simply is not very nutritious and it has been bred to be nearly unrelated to its ancestral plant. Corn is my very favorite example of why foods need to be grown and prepared according to the customs of our ancestors. Corn is indigenous to the Americas where it was grown in a form that was chewy, low in sugar and tough all around. Our Latina ancestors prepared corn always by grinding and soaking in an alkaline solution. They used an ash or calcium carbonate mixture (known as “lime” but not having to do with citrus) to soak the corn. This is called nixtamalization and you can buy really cheap nixtamal at Food City (no it isn’t organic). This process results in a nutritionally superior corn product because the indigestible hull is gone and the scant vitamins, including the B family, become bioavailable. Those of you patient enough to sit through my nutrition lectures, know that while our Central and South American neighbors rarely suffered from pellagra (a B vitamin deficiency) with their corn-based diet, our poor white southern relations had a rampant affliction from pellagra in the early 1900s with their corn-based diet. The difference? No one every taught our Appalachian folks to properly prepare corn so as to make it at least marginally nutritious. Grits, cornmeal, corn bread and johnnycake are not made from corn that has been nixtamalized, thus they are essentially nutritionally useless. A properly prepared tamale, however, might just offer you something more than deliciousness. Thank goodness!!
Carl, Chris G., Mark L. and Ben T. and I want to wish our entire community a very wonderful, peaceful, joyful holiday season. Below you will find a description of our holiday gift to the CrossFit Works community. Before we tell you about your present, I want to take a moment to share with you all the story of one of the most amazing acts of giving that I have ever heard told. This is, after all, the season of giving right? I have spent the greater part of this past year “listening” to the story I want to share with you all.
Most of us do not really make any personal sacrifice in the act of giving during our holiday season. Many of us don’t do much giving outside of the holiday season, or if we do, it is not usually a significant personal act. The story I want to share with you all is the story of a woman who in her most deepest heartbreaking moment decided to spend the rest of the year giving. She gave emotionally and physically of herself multiple times per day so that babies around the country could have the gift of health. This is a story about a woman who lost her first son when he was eight days old. In the moment of that loss she decided to continue to collect her breast milk and ship it, via a milk bank, to babies around the world. You all may not realize that human breast milk is the only food that many sick babies can consume. It is also used by cancer patients and other ill adults. Human breast milk is the ultimate Paleo medicine. I know that for those of you who have not breast fed a child it might be difficult to appreciate this act. When a woman pumps to collect breast milk her hormones are the “mothering” hormones. It can be a physically draining, emotionally powerful act. I spent seven years doing volunteer work with women who just weren’t sure they wanted to “have to” breast feed their children because it was “so hard”. Women with every resource available to them choose every day to bypass the “hard work” of breastfeeding. To read about a woman who set out to do this for one year after the passing of her tiny little son, reminds me that we all have such deep reserves of strength and sometimes we under estimate what we can offer to the world.
You can read all about this amazing woman and her gift at her blog here: High Five Max. Since not all of you know how important, and rare, human breastmilk is, here is an excerpt from the nurse at the milk bank:
“I can’t imagine her grief and am humbled by her milk donation under these circumstances. I hope it’s a bit of consolation that her Max’s first gift of milk was about 200 oz. This will provide up to 600 feedings for preemies and medically fragile babies. It’s no small gift; preemies depend on human milk to protect against necrotizing enterocolitis. Babies fed formula instead of human milk are 400% more likely to develop this gut infection that can lead to immense suffering, the need for surgery, the need for intravenous nutrition which can cause organ damage, long term disability, or death. Most of our recipients are preemies or medically fragile babies in theNICU for whom donor milk is life-protecting.”
Some of you in the CrossFit Works community have a little connection to this powerful Gift-Giving Woman. If you have done yoga at Yoga Oasis, you have been a part of the community in which this Gift-Giving Woman teaches and studies. And, her own Balancing Monkey Yoga Studio is located inside a CrossFit gym in Hawaii!!! Isn’t it sort of amazing to know that all around you are incredible people doing powerful inspiring things and you might be connected to them when you least expect it? This powerful Gift-Giving, Milk-Giving Woman is an embodiment of the Santa-myth for sure.
So, now for your present!! We didn’t do Secret Santas. Didn’t have a holiday party where we asked you to dress up and eat too much. We know that within this CrossFit Works community we have all types of religions, cultures and spiritual leanings. We have left-wingers, right-wingers and centrists. There are a million things that separate us. What we do have in common is a belief in eating real food. There is an organization that is all about real food. All about providing raw materials for people to improve their health. About teaching people. Kindred spirits. On behalf of the CrossFit Works community, we have given the gift of “A Flock of Hope”. A flock of goslings, ducklings and chicks will go to a family either in our own country or somewhere else in the world so that they can eat…more…eggs!! Happiest Holidays to you all!!
“What is gluten-free?”
“Why does everyone want to be gluten-free now?”
 
I hear these questions quite often. My usual answer is an abbreviated explanation involving the inflammatory nature of this grain-protein. Quick mention of the insidious gut-destruction. When I try to whittle it down to a real elevator-type answer it sounds something like, “research shows that gluten, which is a protein in wheat and other grains, has multiple undesireable effects on the human body and most people feel much better, heathier and energetic when they stop eating it”.
There is another reason to avoid gluten. If you are stuffing yourself with gluten all the time you are missing out on the nutritious foods. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, meat, fish, and eggs. Perhaps the real down side of a gluten-packed diet is that those gluten-laden foods are not all that nutrient-dense and when you eat bagels, you aren’t eating as much eggs and spinach.
This issue is becoming more significant as grocery stores are filling up with gluten-free breads, cookies, cake mixes, cereal and crackers. I see myself falling prey to it with my son’s school lunches. If I pack a true Paleo lunch for him it is a nutrient power house: olives, macadamia nuts, cold chicken, toasted seaweed, grapes, a carrot-cabbage slaw, leftover salmon, frozen blueberries etc… If I get behind in my food prep and run to the store I could end up with gluten-free bread, gluten-free tortilla chips, gluten-free crackers, gluten-free cookies. I am still happy to have kept gluten out of his body, but those gluten-free foods are not nutritious. How is he going to keep growing, not get sick, and out lift me on a diet of rice bread and cookies made with potato starch?
This short article is a helpful primer on what the label “gluten-free” actually means. It is also a helpful answer to the “are oats gluten-free” question.
Parkour is ridiculously awesome. The MovNat guys are awesome too, but we don’t all live in the jungles of Thailand or the forests of West Virginia. Parkour is The People’s version of Natural Movement.
I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that when we, as humans, feel strong we can be happier. Strength gives us a platform from which to conquer fear. Fear is such an enormous obstacle in life. ”Be careful” is my least favorite parenting phrase. If you have kids, strike that from your vocabulary. Instead try, “Focus on your balance if you climb on that wall and walk along the top because you are high up and if you fall you will very likely get hurt.” I observe that adults LOVE to tell children to “be careful” or “don’t do that honey you could get hurt” or ”don’t play with that, you might get dirty”. What is it about us as adults that makes us want to instill such fear into our children? All that does is produce a generation of people afraid of everything because they never spent their child hood falling and failing and figuring out how to get back up and brush off the dirt, bandage up the scrapes and get going. Creating fear creates fearful people. I find it fascinating to talk to adults that I admire. The most accomplished business people, engineers, scientists and all-around really interesting people I meet are often the ones who had a lot of wild adventures as a kid. Their mothers let them fight it out with their siblings, they jumped off barn roofs, broke their arms riding their bikes all crazy, swam to islands, rode motocross, rode horses, and cut firewood.
In your movement adventures, whether it is in your CrossFit gym, or on your mountain bike rides or navigating puddles, do you notice when you are fearful? Can you be smart and wise, but brave and adventurous? Kids are usually brave and adventurous if we let them be, but not always wise and smart. Adults often let their heads do all the talking, so they miss out on courageous adventures. One of the things I like most about keeping fit with a powerful strength and conditioning program is that it lets me be courageous and adventurous even though I am all grown up.
 The 5:30am class with their secret pre-dawn gymnastics skill work.
This afternoon I am contemplating what it means to live the “CrossFit lifestyle”. I’m not at the gym. I haven’t worn anything that says “CrossFit” on it. I haven’t discussed a workout. I’m not even sore. I haven’t been on Facebook or any CrossFit website (except this one!). So, what about my day makes me a CrossFitter? Today is about laying a foundation for my week that makes an intense strength and conditioning program healthy (instead of debilitating). Above and beyond, CrossFit and weight lifting for me are health and wellness programs. As a middle-aged CrossFit-based athlete, my goal is to ride a fine line between being the very best I can be (I have never been a person who does anything at the level of “just showing up”) and maintaining the highest level of health and wellness. I firmly and completely disagree with the notion that as a middle-aged woman I will be fulfilled “just showing up and having fun”. As a middle-aged person, with a business, with obligations, with kids, with dreams and goals still left to accomplish, I need more from my coaches and my strength and conditioning program than anyone out there!! I need a health, wellness and fitness program designed to maintain a Super Woman for the 21st century. Such a program certainly requires plenty of thought and planning. Today, I am focusing on the things that support me in my training.
Today I slept. A lot. Sleep is the basis for health and wellness. Sleep is the recovery. The rebuilding. Sleep is the process of filling up the root cellar before the winter.
Today I went to yoga. My yoga teacher helps my mobility and flexibility, but he also helps my mental strength. I have studied yoga off and on with this same teacher for nearly five years. He helps me set a stage for being a strong mental/emotional athlete. Through his teachings he reminds me not to be buffeted about the stories we tell ourselves. My yoga teacher reminds me that while I might tell myself that I don’t belong working out next to future CrossFit Games competitors, that is just a story I tell myself because I don’t am doubting myself right then. There is no truth in that story. It might be just as true that they don’t deserve to train next to me because they have not survived all the challenges in life that I have survived. My yoga teacher reminds me to stop being disappointed in my body or frustrated by it, but to cherish it and check in with it regularly.
Today I shopped and cooked. As many of you know, I own a CrossFit gym because CrossFit methodology places the value of eating well above working out in the pyramid to great health. My shopping list accommodates two kids and a set of parents. This week will see the following things on the table at my house: Thai coconut-lemongrass soup, roasted butternut squash with sage, crab cakes, roasted chicken, sunflower sprouts, a Swedish carrot pancake, beet salad with horse radish, cucumbers and dill, cabbage with sunflower seeds and caraway, stuffed mushrooms, various sausages, and a Paleo version of Okonomiyaki (Japanese cabbage pancakes). There will be plenty of other stuff too.
Today I spoke with a friend who does not do CrossFit nor lift weights, but is on his own dedicated journey to the best health and wellness he can attain. I admire him. He is inspirational for me.
Tonight before I sleep I will envision my workout for tomorrow. I will imagine the mood I want to be in, the attitude I want to cultivate and the feeling I would like to have when I finish.
Today I laid the foundation for the coming week where I will follow a training program designed to support Super Woman of the 21st century. I know many many women at CrossFit Works are living their own Super Woman lives. I hope you had a chance to use your Sunday to support your Super Woman training program.
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