Keeping a food journal
June 20, 2009 by Brian
Filed under Tips & Hints
Hey everyone, I know we harp on keeping a journal about your training. This is done so you can chart your progress, and see measurable results. But how many of you record what you eat? This is also important for self evaluation. If lately you have been working hard, but spinning your wheels in weight loss, strength gains, etc. Maybe you need to track what you put in your body, how it makes you feel after, and how you felt in the gym. I think this is just as important as your training journal. I have spoken with a few of you recently about plateauing, and how to break out of it. By tracking your nutrition, training, sleep patterns, etc.. you can map your way back on track! I know this sounds time consuming, but maybe this investment of time in your health is worth a little sacrifice. When lack of time is used as an arguement, I ask you this question; Who was voted off survivor last night? If you know the answer, you have enough time to write your food consumption down!
See you all in the gym!
-Brian
Taping your hands for pull-ups
May 29, 2009 by Brian
Filed under Tips & Hints
Hey everyone, here is some great instruction from Andy Petranek of Crossfit L.A., on taping your hands. A little bit of time and effort can help with those ripped blisters.
See you all in the gym!
WOD – April 30th
For time:
“10,000 lbs (men)/ 7000 lbs (women) from the ground to over head”
Post time, method, weight and reps used.
Here’s a pic of Maryse during the Mercedes-Benz 10 km on Sunday. Congrats Maryse! What a great run!
“Wheel Analogy“, CrossFit Running Certification by CrossFit Again Faster, CrossFit Journal Preview – video [wmv] [mov]
Here is a video from Catalyst Athletics of Olympic lifts…
http://www.cathletics.com/wod/video/collectedTraining3-17-09.mov
WOD – April 27th, 2009
Phase I: Warm-up / Preparation
3 Rounds: 10 burpees, 15 squats, 20 pushups, 15 squats, 10 pull-ups
Phase II: MetCon
“Crash B”
Row 2k (note time)
Run 1 mile (note time)
Rest 2 minutes
Row 2k (negative split)
Run 1 mile (negative split)
Make a note of your row and run times, and then shoot to have a faster time on the second set of row and runs. Rest no more than 2 minutes in between row and runs.
Post times (run and rows ) to comments
Also which exercise was the worst, the run or the row??
Rowing Basics (C2), Angela Hart…[wmv][mov]
WOD – April 16th, 2009
“We Need One Score” – from CrossFit Football
Do as many rounds as possible in 3 minutes. Take a 1 minute rest. Complete 5 times.
3 Power Cleans 155 lbs (scale as needed)
6 Push Ups
9 Knees-To-Elbows
Post total rounds completed to comments.
Curling the Clean Corrections, Pat Sherwood …[wmv][mov]
In Your Warm Up. All Levels work on Hand Stand Push Ups. 5 rounds of holds for max time. 2 min rest between rounds. Work on pushing your head through and shoulder flexibility.
Do you like eggs for breakfast? So do we! Read this article Eggs No Harm to Health
Strength and Muscle Size!
Hey everyone, I was recently asked about some the strength training components that are being added to the WOD’s. One of our female members was afraid she would get too bulky! Before I share the article with you, I wanted to explain that the strength training is a necessary component to complete fitness. If you want a faster “Fran”, you have to get stronger in your pull-ups, and your thrusters. The addition of lifts consisting of sets of 3 or 5 reps, or even some max single rep efforts will improve our strength, without adding the extreme muscle mass as seen on say a bodybuilder, male or female. Bodybuilders live in the 8-12 rep range, and those seen in magazines also take some “special” supplements that help with that dynamic hypertrophy! Anyway, read the attached article, and fear not ladies!
See you all in the gym!
-Brian
From Crossfit Endurance…by Tony Leyland
Strength and Muscle Size
August 28, 2008
It is pretty obvious to most people that a muscle’s strength has a strong relationship to its cross sectional area (size) in both men and women. Muscle enlargement and the corresponding increase in strength was first measured and discussed at least as early as 1897. The relationship between muscle cross-sectional area and strength is shown for the forearm flexors in the graph below. This graph also shows that while men, on average, have more muscle than females, there is no “difference” between male and female muscle (all points pretty much lie on the same straight line).
What is far less obvious is that we become strong in more ways than by simply gaining more muscle mass. Weight training elicits a strong neuromuscular effect and all individuals will in fact gain strength in part by using existing muscle fibres more efficiently.
Strength Training increases neuromuscular efficiency in three ways.
• Increased number of motor units are recruited (a motor unit is the nerve and all the muscle fibres it activates)
• Increased firing rate of each motor unit
• Increased synchronization of motor unit firing
Put rather more simply you use more of what you already had and you coordinate the force production better. This is one of the reasons CrossFit teaches technical lifts. How much you can lift is a function of skill (coordinated firing of muscle units) as well as muscle strength and power. So even though your lifts might be going up by 40 or 50% or more it doesn’t mean your muscles get 40-50% bigger.
This fact is often viewed as good news by females ☺ and bad news ☹ by males!
The graph below (Narici, et.al. 1989) will take a little explaining but it clearly shows this effect.
• MVC stands for maximal voluntary contraction, which simply means the maximum force you can generate.
• CSA is the cross-sectional area of the muscle which is effectively the size of the muscle
• EMG stands for electromyography, which is a recording of the electrical activity of the muscle. A higher EMG signal means more muscle fibres are being recruited.
The graph shows 60 days of training and 40 days of detraining (rest) for the quadriceps. You can see that despite a 22% increase in force output after 60 days the increase in muscle cross-sectional area was only 8%. In another study (Staron et.al. 1994) the amount subjects could lift increased by 100% to 200% but there were no changes to the cross-sectional area of muscle fibres.
The amount of improvement in neuromuscular efficiency versus gain in muscle size will vary between individuals. Typically young males, who have higher levels of testosterone, will tend to increase strength by building bigger muscles, whereas females and older males will tend to rely more on improvements in neuromuscular efficiency.
We all use both physiologic adaptations (efficiency and size) to become strong but the above discussion does explain why females tend not to bulk up with lots of muscle mass whereas males (particularly young males) often do.
Tony Leyland is Senior Lecturer at the School of Kinesiology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia. He has taught at the university level for 26 years and has been heavily involved in competitive sports such as soccer, tennis, squash, and rugby as both an athlete and a coach for over 40 years. He is a professional member of the National Strength and Conditioning Association, a Canadian National B-licensed soccer coach, and a level-1 CrossFit trainer. He can be reached at leyland@sfu.ca.
WOD – April 5th, 2009
Sunday a Day of Rest?
Ok, so you weren’t able to make it into FirePower during the week, and now it’s Sunday and you feel a bit guilty. Well FirePower isn’t open, but this doesn’t preclude you from doing your own workout at home. You don’t need fancy shmancy equipment to do CrossFit. Some of the most debilitating workouts are the ones that do not require any weights or equipment. For instance I’m thinking of “Cindy” or “Barbara”. Every Sunday we will try to post a bodyweight workout, so that you can play along at home. Remember if you have been hitting it hard at FirePower, then perhaps you should take your rest day and recover so that you can see us on Monday. But if you haven’t…..
4 rounds:
50 walking lunges
50 squats
Run 400m
Post times to comments
I want you all to be warriors!
I was recently sent this photo. It speaks volumes all on its own! Warriors come in all shapes and sizes!! Be warriors!!
See you all in the gym.
-Brian
Warm-up people!!
A Better Warm-up
Introduction
In commercial gyms everywhere, warming up constitutes little more than spending fifteen or twenty minutes on a bike, treadmill, or stair climber. While better than nothing, this approach to warming up is largely a waste of time in that it will not improve flexibility, does not involve the whole body or major functional movements, misses an ideal opportunity for reinforcing and practicing some critical exercises, and poorly prepares an athlete for rigorous athletic training.
We need a warm-up that will increase body temperature and heart rate, provide some stretching, stimulate the entire body and major biomechanical functions, provide practice for basic movements, and finally, prepare for rigorous athletic training.
We offer here a favorite CrossFit warm-up and compare the advantages that it has over riding a stationary bike for fifteen minutes. The CrossFit warm-up satisfies our needs whereas the traditional warm-up only leaves us with an elevated body temperature and heart rate. The essential features of our warm-up are that they include a stretch and major hip/leg extension, trunk/hip extension and flexion, and pushing and pulling movements.
The combinations are limitless and might include more challenging movements like good mornings, hollow rocks, rope climb, or handstand push-ups in place of back extensions, sit-ups, pull-ups, and dips. The movements used will largely depend on your athletic development, but over time the more challenging movements can be included without being a whole workout.
The “official” CrossFit Warm-up is in the April 2003 CrossFit Journal.3 rounds of 10-15 reps of
Samson Stretch (do the Samson Stretch once each round for 15-30 seconds, pictured above)
Overhead Squat with broomstick
Sit-up
Back-extension
Pull-up
Dip
Note that for a workout that’s dip or pullup-centric, you might want to do something else in the warmup.
-See you all in the gym
Brian
Abs?
We don’t always do a specific abdominal movement in our workouts. I have noticed sometimes at the end of our WOD’s people with some left over energy getting down on the mats and crunching, bo-suing, etc. I wanted to share some thoughts on this from Crossfitfootball.
What about abs?
“People ask me, ‘what do I do for abs?’ I tell them, stabilize the mid-line like a motherf*@!er, that’s what you do” – Coach Glassman (Crossfit founder)
Abs work to stabilize and support the body with all movements: squats, deadlifts, snatches, burpees, pushups, pullups (especially the kipping variety), etc. These movement patterns place greater emphasis on the abs working in concert with the rest of the body, and will result in greater abdominal stability than the isolation of crunches. CrossFit relies primarily on the abdominal work inherent in excercise which demand high levels of midline stabilization. Try to overhead squat or deadlift without stablizing your midline and you won’t last very long.
*****************************************************
Stole this from a fortune cookie….
“Trying and failing does not make you a failure, it’s only when you quit trying and give up”
See you all in the gym
-Brian
