Self awareness is everything. Most people don’t understand that what you tolerate you accept, but it is a reality. Think about it. The more you sit in traffic, the more you get used to the traffic. Eventually you say, “this is normal for me, the traffic isn’t that bad, I barely notice it any longer.” Yet, there is a non-moving mass of cars surrounding you — this is called grid-lock. Loss of tissue tolerance and the art of aging is similar in nature. The physical difference is basically the same, you become “locked” and consider it “normal”. I really want you to think about this; what you tolerate, you accept.
Every bone has muscle and fascia that surrounds it, and every joint has a muscle and a tendon that support it. Muscles are designed to create and maintain structural integrity in the body through proper force couples and length tension relationships. Structural integrity of the muscles produces proper biomechanics through intra and inter muscular coordination.
The biomechanical chain reaction, beginning with the foot, can take dysfunction from the lower leg all the way up to the quads, hip, IT band and even the lower back. – Trigger Point Technologies, 2008
Bolars and JBlack warming up their hip flexors for HD&CC!
So why no sugar substitutes?
Take for instance the dilemma of the diet soda. Most diet sodas are calorie and carb free, caffinated, sweet and totally delicious (this can be debated). At first glance, this sounds Zone perfect and a great alternative to that nasty water-stuff.
Let’s start with a very basic principle of the Zone – hormone regulation. One of the primary benefits of Zoning is the hormone regulation that results from eating a low-glycemic balanced meal. By controlling your carbohydrate intake and monitoring the glycemic impact of your carb choices, you limit the amount of insulin released by your pancreas. This maintains a neutral to favorable insulin sensitivity (as opposed to insulin resistance) and circumvents excess carb storage as fat.
Enter the sweetener. Sweeteners are just that – sweet. When your tongue tastes something sweet entering the mouth, it talks to the brain (specifically the hypothalamus) and says “Hey, here comes energy!” The brain then says to the pancreas “Yo, dump some insulin because here comes glucose!” And there it is – a big insulin dump, but all for nothing. The body is now very confused and unable to effectively regulate insulin and all because of artificial sweeteners. Not to mention all the other chemical processes that get thrown for a loop! Just say no to artificial sweeteners!
Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 12 minutes of: 150 Wall ball shots, 20# (14#) 90 Double-unders 30 Muscle-ups
CrossFit Games Open 12.4 workout instructions – video [wmv] [mov] [HD mov]
Post rounds and reps completed to comments and/or register and submit your results as part of the CrossFit Games Open.
Mary Catherine killing push presses last week and looking forward to wall balls today.
What is a CrossFit Athlete?
We all watched or played sports growing up. We were inspired by athletes that seemed larger than life. They seemed to defy gravity, have no pain, and perform without practice. Now that we’re older and wiser, we know that to be a world class athlete takes more than top notch performance on game day.
An athlete is a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength. By definition, CrossFitters are all athletes, which is what makes our program so damn rewarding. Now that we have grown up and understand what it takes to be a world class athlete, we can find satisfaction by getting a taste of their world through training like them. By competing against ourselves and our peers on a daily basis and exposing ourselves to a myriad of exercises, we become athletes.
But what sport do we play? What exactly are we training for? We are preparing ourselves to be ready for anything. If a friend asks you to go climbing, you’re ready. If you need to help out a stranger in an emergency situation, you’re ready. If you need to carry your kid, a 50# bag of dog food, and close the car door, you’re ready. You’re an athlete and your arena is life. Be your best… because every day is game day!
As many of you know we will be hosting the CrossFit Kids course at Verve this weekend. Therefore we will only have 1 am class each day at 7:30am which will be a WOD that is not 12.4. If you are unable to make it in on Friday or actually want to do 150 wall balls twice,CrossFit Rootshas opened it’s doors to all Verve athletes on Sunday during their Open Shop times starting at 10:30am. Once you get there you can sign up for a heat and get your WOD on. Thank you ROOTS! Check out their website here for more information.
To count, 5 reps with the same weight must be performed on each leg.
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Personal Records - 11/2011 til now
What is it that you want to accomplish before the close of 2012!
This week we will be creating a new personal record board, but this time it will have a twist. We want you to 1st claim what it is you plan to do. For instance; I will get 2 double unders in a row, by 12.12, CC. Then we will have a second board for accomplishments; I snatched 130# – CC. There is nothing cooler then watching and helping people achieve new things. Blow up the picture above and read it if you don’t believe me, IT’S AMAZING!
Just this evening an athlete mentioned to me, it’s time I learn double unders. Heck yea it’s time, so declare it to the Verve family on our new MISSION and ACCOMPLISHED board! Here is all you need to do:
1. Have a mission: I want to walk a continuous 20m on my hands. 2. Create a realistic time frame: I can currently walk 5m only hands so 20m’s isn’t too unrealistic. I believe I can do it within 2 months. (being realistic is key and if you need help with this ask a trainer) 3. Create a plan: In order for me to walk a continuous 20m’s on my hands I have to practice. I will include handstand walking into my warm-ups 3x a week for 5 minutes at a time. Be cautious and make sure you are not over doing it. Note that I added my handstand walking into only 50% of my warm-ups, not 100%. This will not only keep it fresh by prevent over training. 4. Write your mission on the board and in your calendar. Each day you are “scheduled” to “practice” your new skill have an alarm go off as a reminder. 5. Keep track of your progress and adjust your methods as needed.
OPTIONS FOR 12.4 WOD.
As many of you know we will be hosting the CrossFit Kids course at Verve this weekend. Therefore we will only have 1 am class each day at 7:30am which will be a WOD that is not 12.4. If you are unable to make it in on Friday or actually want to do 150 wall balls twice, CrossFit Roots has opened it’s doors to all Verve athletes on Sunday during their Open Shop times starting at 10:30am. Once you get there you can sign up for a heat and get your WOD on. Thank you ROOTS! Check out their website here for more information.
Row 250m 5 Right leg dumbell split jerks, 40#/25# 5 Left leg dumbell split jerks, 40#/25# Run 200m
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The open brings out the best in everyone!
I am a CF Games competitor – and this is my story! – By Dan Adams, CrossFit Verve athlete
I am a CrossFit Verve “athlete”, in quotations given I’ve always had only mediocre athletic talent and my conditioning had deteriorated over the years from mediocre to something less than mediocre. I am 53 and was running 2-3 miles a few times a week, probably better than the American average guy my age, but hardly felt in shape and had somehow slowly gained about 20 pounds.
The Verve team has started to change that. After six months (with a two month interruption for hernia surgery – not related to CF), I’m feeling better and making real and measurable progress at the gym. Still, I view myself as mediocre in the context of the “real” CF athletes, so when talk of the Games Open came around I quickly dismissed the idea as something for others, not me. But then the enthusiasm at Verve caught me in a weak moment (or is that strong moment?) and I told myself paying the twenty bucks to sign up would be doing my part to help the participation numbers – and I’d just see how it went.
The 12.1 workout didn’t seem so bad. I frigging hate burpees, but figured how bad could 7 minutes be? We warmed up to get a sense of pace, and jumped into the workout. I started conservatively and didn’t push too hard to avoid throwing up and embarrassing myself and ended up with 73. Not that I could have done a lot more, but I felt a little bad (ok, not that bad) that I hadn’t pushed just a little harder. And I snuck a peek at the leader board for the Masters 50-54 mainly to make sure I hadn’t finished last (and should therefore drop out to spare Verve the shame). I was relieved to see I was there about the 70th percentile (as in I outscored 30% so definitely not last) – so now officially a participant!
The “chickens came home to roost” (or other similar sayings us old people might proclaim) on 12.2. Let’s see – 75 pound snatches, OK. Jump up to 135 pounds, NOT OK. Surely they must give us old guys a break. But what?!, not until I turn 55? The silver lining was I knew it’d be a pretty short workout. Popped out the first thirty at 75 pounds pretty quickly so I could rest up for a few tries at 135 pounds. I’m sure it was partly mental, but I wasn’t even close. I did do a couple at 105 pounds though just to prove to myself I could do it. Now I was interested in where I stood, including how many old guys got up the higher weights. Turns out 45% of the guys could get up 135 pounds at least once (good for you guys), certainly breaking up the peloton. But at least I was in good company with the other 55%.
I looked around, though, at some of the guys that had done video submissions just to see if they had gotten any closer to getting 135 up than I had ( that would be a negative, based on the ones that I saw) when I came across Jim Evans, from the “northeast” and 50 years old. Never heard of Jim before, or seen him other than his video submissions, but he happened to get exactly my same 12.1 score of 73 burpees and we were both in the big group at 30 snatches. The first thing that struck me was that he looked older than I wanted admit to myself that I look. But man was he taking this stuff seriously. Turns out from his bio that he is/was a pretty decent athlete 20 months into recovery for a shoulder injury. But somehow I suddenly connected with this guy and felt this tinge of competition!
12.3 rolls around and I wasn’t sure what to think when I saw the workout. I can do box jumps, but 115 pound presses seems like a lot to do more than a few of, and the last workout where we did toes-to-bars was a couple of months ago and didn’t go well for me. Plus I had to do the workout Thursday ahead of the majority of the group doing it on Friday at Verve so missed out on some of the tips. Plus plus – 18 minutes sounded like a lot. Of course once again I’m two years too young or I’d get to do a scaled back workout! But Joylyn put me through the workout and did get up the 115 pounds more times than I thought, and hung in there on the toes-to-bars, all just more slowly than the “real” athletes. I ended up putting up 4 rounds plus another 25 reps, so 169 reps total.
Now anxiously I rushed onto the Games website to see how my new adversary Jim had done (figuring correctly this guy is obsessed and would get his workout in quickly). YES – Jim had only done 165! So now it’s GAME ON! I down around the 75th percentile, but a whopping 4 slots ahead of ole Jim. It all seems a little silly, including that poor Jim doesn’t have any idea about my secret stalking. But somehow I feel a little more like a competitor now, and don’t think I’ve completely embarrassed Verve yet.
PS – I think CrossFit should have a special division at Worlds for just Jim and I – the “ordinary old guys group” – to show by contrast just how fit the other competitors are!
Thanks Dan and you don’t embarrass us at all, in fact we are super proud of you! Let’s keep the steam rolling kids just 2 more WOD’s.
Maintaining your high performance is dependent on three things, nutrition, physical activity, and sleep. When you ignore one of these or one of them is insufficient, your weight will suffer. The amount of sleep directly effects staying at a healthy weight. Hormones in your body respond to the food that you ingest. One of those hormones is Cortisol. Cortisol comes from the adrenal glands located on top of your kidneys. When you do not get enough sleep the adrenal glands release cortisol and travels to your brain and triggers it to think that your body is hungry even if you have already eaten.
Sleep is essential for performance also. When you sleep, your body replenishes the growth hormones in your body. When you do not get enough sleep, growth hormone levels are reduced, which in turn reduces the body’s ability to grow new muscle. We know limitations will happen in life that affects your sleep schedule such as your night life, work, babies… But try and get a minimum of seven hours of sleep a night in order to keep that healthy weight and to continue to break those PR’s.
Five rounds for time: 20 Pull-ups 30 Push-ups 40 Sit-ups 50 Squats
Rest 3:00
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Clay practicing forward rolls during warm-up.
World-Class Fitness in 100 Words – by Coach Greg Glassman:
Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.Practice and train major lifts: deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast.Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense.Regularly learn and play new sports.
We’ve post this this before and will again because these words define what we do.
