Move, Lose, and Cruise Part 3 – Get to the gym

Here’s the third installment of my tips on how to succeed in the Move, Lose and Cruise challenge based on how I won last year. Here’s Part 1 and Part 2 This may not sound like an epiphany but going to the gym, specifically this gym, will do wonders to help you reach your wildest fitness [...]

Move, Lose, and Cruise Quick Tips, Part 2:Fasting

Here’s Part 1 in case you missed it. Part 2:Fasting In addition to the The 4-Hour Body book, I had been reading and listening to podcasts and a common approach for fat loss I kept hearing about was intermittent fasting. As before, I’m just going to describe what I did. Remember, I was going for the most [...]

Move, Lose, and Cruise Quick Tips, Part 1

I know many of you are entered into the Move, Lose, and Cruise challenge. If you aren’t it isn’t too late to sign up and get measured. I thought I’d share a few tips over the next few weeks on how I was able to drop over 50% of my body fat last year in [...]

Crossfit Games 2011

This weekend is the Crossfit Games and our gym has two members representing us at the games. Dee and Mark. Since all of us can’t be there, I encourage you to watch what you can this weekend. You can catch all the action via live internet stream at: http://games.crossfit.com/ The games start tomorrow (Friday ) at 8:00 am. I will have a projector setup tomorrow morning at the gym so you can catch some of the action while you are there. In addition, we will be having a potluck on Sunday at 2:00 – 4:00. This will allow us to see the final competition and the 2011 winners while enjoying tasty food and drink. Please feel free to join in by bringing your favorite dish and libation while watching some of the fittest people in the world compete in one of the toughest competitions in the world. Hopefully we can see some of Dee and Mark in action as well.

Go get them Dee and Mark.! Hope to see you all there.

Update
Dee’s first heat is at 8:20 on Friday

Heat 2 – 8:20 a.m.
Women 60+, 2
Deirdra Rogers
Betsy Finley
Dee Jones
Meryl H. Joseph
Jill Spealler
Karen Rackliffe
Julie Arismendi

Mark’s first heat is at 11:20am on Friday

Heat 11 – 11:20 a.m.
Men 55-59, 1
Joe Lengel
Charles Sullivan
Michael Thille
Randy Mulkey
Mark Hachquet
Greg Clewis
Dan Sparks
Frank Dejak
Rocky Wilkinson
Bill Berry

-Greg

What If

What if someone offered you a million dollars and all you had to do was not eat refined sugars for the rest of your life. Would you, could you do it? What if we changed it to 6 days a week? So once a week you could have whatever you wanted but all you had to do is be refined sugar free 6 out of 7 days. I think that most of us would say, yes we could do that for a million dollars.

Now what if someone offered: added years to your life, a firm sexy body, increased energy and mental acuity, a better quality of life, the best possible chance of being healthy and cancer free? Wouldn’t that be worth even more than a million dollars? If you’re in your twenties or less you might be under the delusion that you’ll live forever or middle age is way too far away to worry about it now. If you are middle aged and or a tad wiser, you know this gift is worth far more than a million dollars.

What if this gift was accessible to almost anyone, all you had to do was workout regularly and eat: dairy, glutton, legume, refined sugar, and additive free 6 out of 7 days. Wouldn’t it be worth it? Wouldn’t everyone jump on this immediately, especially those wise enough to know how precious and fleeting our time is on earth?

Achieving Crossfit Bliss

In a Rut?

I have to admit, I kind of fell into a rut sometime during the last fall/winter time frame. I am sure I can contribute part of it to the lack of sunshine, but most of it was me. I had been doing CrossFit for almost 3 years. I had completed 99% of the Rx challenge and had most of the movements down to an intermediate/advanced level. I had developed great strength, but was still lacking in endurance and that damn muscle-up. My progress seemed to have halted and I just wasn’t getting the enjoyment out of it that I once had.

That stupid muscle-up! I knew I had the strength for it. I have had it for the last 2 years at least. The issue for me was that early in my CrossFit journey, I wrenched my shoulder really bad while attempting my first muscle-up. It took me 3 months to heal. Ever since then I have been hesitant in throwing my shoulders through during the transition. For those of you that can do muscle-ups, you know this is key to completing the transition into ring dip position. This mental block was keeping me from my goal and in the process making me very frustrated. Every time a workout that involved muscle-ups came up, it was like rubbing salt in my wounds.

Then one day I got pissed off enough to take action (oh, and I think the sun came out that day as well). I decided that I was going to start going through the muscle-up progressions every day during my warm-up until I had them down. The reality was that I could only do ~10 progressions every other day because of the wear and tear on my arms and shoulders. It was only 4 days later and I could do full muscle-ups one at a time fairly consistently.

Holes in the Wall

So what lessons have I learned from all this? Achieving and learning new things is important in my fitness journey. It actually has a lot more to do with my happiness than I realized. I think that many of you might be in the same spot I was. It might not be muscle-ups, but it is some goat that you have just been struggling with for what seems an eternity. Due to the nature of CrossFit, your goat pops up every now and again, just often enough to piss you off but not often enough for you to make real improvements. Oh yeah, I have seen you swearing like a sailor while doing those double-unders. There is even a hole in the wall where someone let their frustrations get the best of them during some failed rope climbs.

Take Action, CrossFit Bliss

So are you going to do something about it? Are you going to start working on your goat during your warm-up or between workouts? Are you going to see if one of the trainers can help you or give you suggestions for improvement? Are you going to focus in on your goats so that your overall fitness is better?

Maybe strength is your goat, take my strength class next round and/or come see me for some supplemental things you can do. Maybe your endurance sucks, takes Reid’s Tri class or ask him for a supplemental training schedule you can do on weekends. Snatch got you down? Take Carlo’s Oly class on Saturdays. Assign yourself a double-under goal and ask one of trainers for a plan to get there. Look for new things that are fun and challenging and routinely practice them. Use some of your warm-up time if needed and/or get the trainers permission to work on them instead of doing the WOD.

I think you will be surprised at how fast you can achieve some of these elusive things with just a little bit of regular practice and focused work. Don’t be afraid to try new things like Planche push-ups or back-levers. Whatever it is find a goal and go for it deliberately and actively. This, my friend, is how you achieve CrossFit Bliss!

-Greg

Eric’s Journey – 70 pounds later!

Eric Liebman walked into our gym before we officially opened in October 2009.  He had one of the most powerful things a person can possess: A Goal.  Obviously very insecure and unsure of himself, right down to the obligatory sarcastic saying on his t-shirt, Eric was very quiet.  I remember day one, he struggled to [...]

Strength Blog 04/10/2011

Next Strength Class
I have had many of you approach me at the gym and ask when the next strength class was going to be held. Originally Ty and I had talked about modifying it to an every other month program. This would give participants the opportunity to focus on strength for one month and then spend a month recovering and doing regular CrossFit workouts. While we still plan on doing this, Ty and I decided to delay the next class until after the sectionals.

We also decided to modify the format a little by changing the the times and the days to MWF from 6-8pm. I am hoping this new schedule will be more convenient and allow more people to participate. Look for the next class to start immediately following the sectionals.

CrossFit Initiative Paleo Cookbook

I have also been charged with maintaining and publishing a CrossFit Initiative Paleo cookbook. I am super excited about this as we seem to have many great recipes floating around the gym. Starting right now, I am making a call for recipes. Please send me your favorite Paleo recipes. I am especially interested in those easy, goto meals that you find yourself making regularly because they are both convenient and delicious. Hopefully, we can put a PDF together that will be packed full of useful delicious recipes that will be helpful to our members, especially those just starting the Paleo lifestyle.

Please send your Paleo recipes to greg@crossfitinitiative.com.

See you at the gym,

-Greg

Strength Blog 02-27-2011

Strength Class Results 02-27-2011We have completed yet another class with fantastic results. It never gets old watching people amaze themselves as their strength continues to improve week after week. This time we went 5 weeks straight, had people actively trying to lean out, and managed to maintain everyone’s cardio ability while still achieving great strength results.

Leaning out

Many people in the fitness industry will tell you it is impossible to to have big strength gains and lean out at the same time. I can tell you first hand, that the two can coexist peacefully. The trick is to eat Paleo and get most of your carbs from vegetables. However, it is important to get enough carbs to support your activity level and a great strategy for this is to eat them right after working out. For example, a post workout sweet potato is a great way to top off your glycogen stores. Just make sure you are getting plenty of protein and fat as well. Another great leanness technique that Stan uses is to Intermittent fast once a week for 18-20 hours. I typically will pick Saturday and not eat from Friday dinner until Saturday dinner. I also try to run a 5k in the afternoon during the fast. I do so at an easy pace as to not stress myself too hard. This seems to work really well for me. I do this not to calorie restrict myself, but because intermittent fasting turns on some mechanisms in the body that allows it to clean house and helps get rid of that some of that stubborn belly fat. I don’t recommend this for everyone. If you are still metabolically deranged from eating the western diet for 30+ years, you need to get that corrected before trying this. If you do try this and find yourself dizzy, shaky, and comatose, then you are probably not ready for it. I get hungry when intermittent fasting, but it doesn’t make my blood sugar crash or affect my energy levels. IF-ing longer than 18-20 hours can raise Cortisol levels and cause your body to break down muscle tissue. This will negatively impact your fitness and appearance goals so be careful with intermittent fasting.

Cardio and Strength Work

While I agree that Marathon training and Strength work cannot work very well together, I did discover that by changing the warm-ups, I was able to maintain the entire classes metabolic conditioning while achieving some substantial gains in strength. This go around I changed the warm-ups to high intensity and short duration cardio. We still stretched in-between the warm-ups and the workout, but the warm-up was a single activity performed at high intensity. Some examples are:

2 min AMRAP Burpees
4x400M interval sprints 30 seconds rest between each interval
1 mile for time
2 miles for time
3x500M rowing intervals, 30 seconds rest each interval
Row 1k
2 min max effort double unders
Annie
This worked really well for our class and I haven’t heard one person complain that their cardio suffered because of it. If you recall nearly everyone in the last class complained that their cardio had suffered because of the strength class.

Maintaining Your Newly Acquired Strength

Ty is working really hard at hitting all the strength areas in his monthly programming. I have to say I am really impressed at the job he is doing so far. That being said, you might miss a day here and there and need to do some extra work to ensure you maintain your strength. Here is a guide to help you ensure maintain your strength:

Weekly:
Bench Press (Perform at least one of the following each week)
Speed Bench
5,3,1 Max effort
Bench negatives
5×5 or 3×5 linear progression
Back Squat (Perform at least one of the following each week)
Speed Squat
Box Squats
5,3,1 Max effort Squts
5×5 or 3×5 linear progression
Good mornings
Deadlift (Perform at least one of the following each week)
Straight Leg Deads
5,3,1 Max effort
3×5 or 3×3 linear progression
Shoulder Press (Perform at least one of the following each week)
5,3,1 max effort
5×5, 5×3, linear progression
Shoulder Press negtives
Heavy push press or push jerk work.
Core (Perform at least one of the following each week)
Weighted or high rep unweighted GHD situps
Back extensions, hip extensions, or hip-back extensions – performed weekly
Knees to elbows
High rep or weighted ab mat situps
Supplemental work (Perform at least one of the following each week)
GHRs
Ring dips
Body Rows
Pullups
Rope Climbs
Monthly
Perform each of the above exercises at least once a month
Results

So how did the last class do? In one word, Awesome. Here are some notable achievements:

Barret – 40# increase Back Squat and Deadlift, 20# increase Bench Press.

Pete – 50# increase Back Squat, 30# increase Deadlift, 55# increase Bench Press.

Mayra – 27# increase Strict Press, 25# increase Back Squat, 20# increase Deadlift and Bench Press.

-Greg

Gaining Strength – 1/2/2011

New Class Starting Jan 10th

It’s a brand new year, what better way to start it then by doing some focused strength work. Strength is one of the many pieces of the fitness puzzle and a very important one. I will be starting this new class on the 1oth.

What is the Gaining Strength Class?

This is a 5 week class that will be focused on strength. This class has limited availability so please email me (mailto:greg@crossfitinitiative.com) if you are interested in attending. It will start January 10th and run Mon,Tues, Fri, at 7pm; and Sat at 11:00am. It will run 5 weeks to Feb 12th. Each session will be approximately ~ 1hr and 30 minutes long.

It is common for crossfit gyms to offer a ‘Starting Strength’ program. This is a linear strength progression based on a the book, ‘Starting Strength’ by Mark Rippetoe. Both Ty and I have tried the this progression and found it to be very hard on the connective tissue and yielded only mild gains in strength.

Thae, Ty ran into Chad Aichs, who is a local power lifting monster. We figured that someone with an 1100# back squat probably knew a few things about getting strong. Chad has been good enough to offer seminars/workshops from time to time at Crossfit Initiative on his techniques and power lifting wisdom. Chad and I sat down at the first opportunity and he helped me develop a ‘Gaining Strength’ protocol. It is based on some Westside Barbell protocols and has been ‘Crossfit-tized’ by me to not only help you gain strength but develop it in areas that are directly applicable to Crossfit. By employing dynamic and static techniques we see greater gains with less work and injury than a typical linear progression. Finding the smartest ways to get fit with the least amount of work is one of the principles that Crossfit was founded on.

What kind of Gains can I expect?

Well that depends on your physical makeup and your diet. I tried the GOMAD diet last round and this round I am going to stick with strict Paleo diet but with and increase protein and calorie intake. The last session which was 8 weeks long yielded 60# increase on my back squat and dead lift, 30# increase on my bench, and a 15# increase on my strict press. Many participants were able to do full range of motion handstand push-ups, ring-dips, and muscle-ups after participating in the last class. This class will make you stronger and better at most, if not all, of the typical Crossfit movements.

Who should take this class?

Anyone that wants to get stronger and and improve their ability to do workouts prescribed. Last class had several women including Ty’s mom, Karine, Sue, and CJ. All of which really enjoyed the program and were able to see significant gains. This is not a group of testosterone pumped alpha males, rather it is ordinary Crossfitters trying to get stronger and fitter in a friendly, fun environment.

Hope to see you in the Gaining Strength class.

-Greg

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