Unbreakable Fitness

This is a short post that goes with the front squat workout we had at PCF yesterday.  I was trying to explain the seemingly contradictory instruction to rack the bar securely on your shoulders so that you do not hold it with your wrists OR let it slide down your chest.  But at the same time I want you to stand fully upright with your shoulders pinned BACK .

The tendency is for people to roll their shoulders forward in order to give the bar a shelf to sit on.  The problem with this is it tends to pitch you forward when you are coming out of the hole in the clean and it places you in a less than ideal position from which to jerk the bar overhead.

Elbows High, Shoulders Back

Here are some examples of how one racks the bar well while maintaining proper position with your shoulders.

Elbows Down, Shoulders Back

Last note is to notice elbows.  Some are down a little and some are up a little.  Especially before the jerk, elbows up is not the Holy Grail of the clean and jerk.  It is a useful cue and something we can yell at VERY inflexible folks who cannot rack the bar.  A useful but less than nuanced cue.  The position of your body is more important than the position of your elbows, though the two are often related.

Fruits and Veggies

I was asked to give a snapshot of a typical day eating for me.  Since I can’t really take pictures of my food at work, I basically wrote up a summary of a “typical day.”  Here you go.

Breakfast is typically 4 hard boiled farm fresh eggs and either a little bit of fruit or some veggies.  For fruit I will usually stick to apples or berries, but sometimes go outside to more sugary fruits like peaches and oranges.  I don’t eat veggies for breakfast everyday because 1) I like fruit and 2) it is hard to carry around enough veggies for three meals and I eat three meals at work every day.  I don’t usually eat added fat with breakfast because I eat the yoke of the egg which provides plenty of good fats.

At around noon I will have lunch.  Erika and I usually have leftover meat from the night before or a batch of meat that got cooked on Sunday and is meant to get us through the week.  We will either do chicken breast (you can cook a lot in a short time) baked with some kind of marinade.  Nothing special.  I will also have veggies that we either ate the night before or something I got just to bring to lunch.  Our veggie choices usually look like this.

If we ate it for dinner it is often:

1. Sauteed greens
2.  Roasted Asparagus
3. Sauteed Cabbage
4. Roasted Zucchini
5. Sauteed Broccolini

If I got it just to take to work it is usually

1. Snap Peas in a bag
2. Broccoli slaw from a bag with salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar
3. Salad with dressing
4. Green beans roasted with oil and Parmesan

I keep almonds at work and usually have some of those with lunch.

I will then have something similar for a meal around 3:30 or 4:00, though I try not to eat the same thing.  So sometimes one meal will be leftovers and the other will be whatever we cooked for the week on Sunday.  If I am in a hurry or lazy I will eat a paleo kit, which is beef jerky, nuts, and dried fruit.  If I am really lazy I will skip this meal and eat a handful of almonds.

If Erika and I teach, we will often get take-out for dinner.  This is often from Moby’s next door where we get the chicken with salad.  We get eggplant and hummus usually but don’t eat all of it.  It comes with bread which we rarely eat or only eat a little of.  It also comes with goat cheese and yogurt sauce which we almost always eat (at least I do).  This is one of those forest through the trees things guys.  If your dinner is grilled chicken and lettuce, you are 95% there.  We may also get thai food and not eat the rice.

Meat

If we cook it is meat and two veggies (I am fine with one veggie, but Erika always wants two).  It could be chicken, steak, shrimp, or pork.  We eat burgers, chili, scampi, pork chops, or whatever.  We don’t pay too much attention to what we cook it in and it will sometimes have a little cheese in the recipe, but not always.  Often the second veggie is sweet potato cut small and roasted in the oven.  I usually don’t eat much if any of the potato.  We will often have fruit and/or sunbutter for dessert.  Leftovers are lunch the next day.  Erika usually has a couple glasses of wine with dinner.  I will either have a few sips of hers or drink a glass or two of my own.

This is typical for the week.  Weekends are different.  We splurge a little.  We might have Indian food with some naan or a dessert with a good dinner.  A little bread with a meal or even a sandwich with a lot of meat are not unheard of.  We’ll drink a little more wine.  What we will NOT do is eat a plate of pasta, just have pancakes for breakfast, or order a pizza for dinner.

In general, I try to eat protein (real protein meaning meat or eggs) with every meal and at least to never eat carbs alone.  I avoid dense carbs and prefer fruits and veggies.  When I encounter those grains I treat them like a small sideshow at the meal.  I’ll have a few bites because they taste good but don’t consider it the part of the meal that is nourishing me or filling me up.

I do not eat perfectly.  Few people do.  But I try to have good habits so that I eat well without really trying that hard and make sure I am very aware of when I am eating poorly.  I make the choice to have a cookie or some bread or birthday cake.  I don’t unconsciously eat them just because they are there.  And I really enjoy them when I do eat them.

No, my face is not always that red. My knees seem to be coming in.

I should be writing more but I haven’t been.  So let me take this opportunity to brag a little.

The two big PR’s are a 400lb squat and an 8:23 Helen (3 Rounds 400m run, 21 KB Swings, 12 Pull-ups).  What made me excited about this is that they came one day after the other and they are OPPOSITE workouts.  1 Rep heavy squat versus light weight/bodyweight/running WOD.

What this means is that despite gaining 30lbs in 30 days with milk and gaining a bunch of strength, I have managed to come down in weight and maintain a higher strength level than I had before I put on the weight.  At the same time I ran 2 miles in 12:37 and this Helen.

What is the lesson?  Getting strong is nice and short term strength/weight gains do not ruin your metcon.  It really doesn’t take that long to get back.  So IF you have stalled in strength it might be worth focusing on it in the off season at the cost of getting a little fat and slow.  You’ll get it back.  Next I want to do 30 Squats and a 1 mile run and see what my time is.  I think 7 minutes in the bench mark.

And don’t worry, I’m not too skinny.  I just got my BF tested at 18% and still weigh 200lbs.

In future posts I will talk about my new recovery attempts.  It includes rather expensive massage.

First a quick review of last few weeks.  I worked out decently while I was traveling.  Got in 3 WODs in a 6 day trip which is not bad when you consider two of those days were travel.  I also got my first consecutive muscle ups (I had never been able to string them together without coming off the rings before.

Upon returning home I promptly sat on my ass with a sick wife and then was sick myself.  It was bad.  Little exercise.  I’m still recovering.

But I am at least feeling good enough to be back in the gym.  The big competitions are coming up in March and I want to be as ready as I can be.  I have started paying more attention to my food ratios and amounts.  I want to eat a lot, but I want to eat in a manner that improves my performance across all domains.  I don’t know what kind of eating that is yet, I just know hat I need to pay more attention to figure it out.  I am also eating a lot more veggies to reduce inflammation and hopefully to prehab against injury.

But I am have to admit.  It is hard to eat a lot of veggies and eat a lot of food at the same time.  Veggies are filling without a lot of calories.  Which brings up the point that if you are trying to lose weight and not eating as many leafy green veggies as you can, you are not trying very hard.

It is time to start thinking about your goals for the year.  They should be specific, they should include a plan, and there should be bench marks for getting there.  I will post mine soon and you can feel free to post your here.

Obviously, I am not posting as often during the holiday.  A quick update.

Food: it has sucked.

WODs: I did 5 days on, 3 days off, and about to do the second of the a 2 day on, 2 day off.  I don’t mind mixing it up like this, it is probably good for me.  As long as I avg 4 a week or more I feel pretty good.

Nothing special in the WODs, though I was proud to do a WOD with 235lb cleans and my metcon seems to be in full recovery after the milk experiment.  I am placing high in the metcon stuff and still weigh over 200lbs all while maintaining heavier lifts.

I admitted a few days ago that routine is essential for me to get in good workouts.  If I am on a strange schedule or traveling I have a very hard time exercising.  And it shouldn’t be that hard.  If I can convince myself to do ungodly things at Potomac CrossFit at my usual time with the my usual people, I should really be able to do some push-ups and squats while I’m on vacation.  Just 5 minutes would be ok.  But I never do … or more likely, I do once and that’s all.

Why do I bring this up?  First, I am about to go away for a week.  There is a CF gym where I am going.  Will I workout?  We’ll see.  I predict two workouts in my 6 days.  I guess I’d be ok with that.

More importantly, routine is about more than schedule and location.  We have been doing some different WODs at Potomac CrossFit with different time constraints.  It gets us out of our routine.  There is something comforting about coming in, knowing exactly what to expect and when.  You don’t have to think about it which allows you to focus 100% of you attention on intensity.  That rules.  Hopefully, as people get used this format, that will return.

But wait, there’s more.  I contend that it is also important for some athletes (athletes who do not have trouble generating intensity under normal circumstances) to mess with their routine from time to time.  I could list a bunch of reasons, some of them good, some of them possibly full of shit, as to why this is.

1. We are training to be ready for the unknown and the unknowable.  While generating a ton of intensity during workouts puts you in the best shape, you need to learn to express that power and intensity in environments that are not what you are used to.  This is especially true of our military/first responder types or anyone who wants to be ready for anything.
2. It is good for people like me to be able to workout when they aren’t at home.  That would be great.
3. However, I think this is most important for people who compete.  Those who do find themselves in strange gyms, working out against strange people, in movements they may never have done (see sledge hammer stuff at last year’s CF Games) need to be able to perform.  From my own experience, I found what this resulted in wasn’t a bad performance, but a lack of intensity.  I spent a lot of time and effort remembering what I was supposed to do, where I was supposed to go, following the rules.  I hoped to make up for a lack of intensity with perfect execution (no missed reps, wrong turns, miscounts).  I was probably beat by people who could do that while still bringing the same intensity they did when they were at home.

What’s my point?  I’m not sure.  I thought it was an interesting observation and something to think about.  Routine is good because it brings consistency and a known environment that lets you focus your attention on intensity.  However, especially for those who compete, you have to move outside your routine.  It is a skill to move outside your routine and maintain intensity.  It must be practiced.

What have I been doing lately:

I’ll probably go 5 on 2 off this week.

I’ve been eating fairly well with a few Christmas cookies thrown in but no diet blow-ups.

Workouts have been quite good.  I set a PR in Nancy (5 rounds 15 OHS and 400m runs) with 12:38.  Should get sub 12 next time I do it.  This raised some interesting observation regarding strength versus endurance conditioning which I will explore in a later post.  Short version is I weigh 20lbs more and am stronger without having focused on running or longer conditioning WODs, but seem to be better and longer endurance type WODs.

3×185 in the push-jerk yesterday, which is not bad for me.  My split jerk is waaaaaaaay better and this was x3, so I’m confident I will PR split jerk and probably clean and jerk next time I do them.  I’ll bench and snatch today, so we’ll see how that goes.

In honor of today's WOD and a reminder of how much skinnier I used to be

I wish I could say that I am on the top of my game all year long.  The truth is that certain times of year I tend to hang on by my fingernails.  December is one of those.  My motivation goes down because it is dark and I never want to go anywhere or do anything.  I usually want to gain weight as it gets cold (that is pure pseudo-science on my part, but I become lethargic and want to eat more like I am getting ready to hibernate or something).  Holidays mean lots of junk food and a disrupted schedule.  If there one thing I learned over my life of fitness it is that routine is ESSENTIAL for me when it comes to exercise.

But it is not the end of the world.

And the other half of the lift. Notice hips and knees are a little forward for an olympic style squat.

For one thing, I try to make months like this a natural back-off month.  If you know those months are coming, hit it hard before that month and then plan on cutting your workouts in half for a while.  It is a healthy thing to do anyway, this just takes advantage of your natural schedule.

I use a different strategy.  I try to go 100% during these months.  I inevitably fall short, but falling short of 100% for me means hitting at least four workouts a week (it would usually be 5-6) and eating well 75% of the time.  Not terrible and still better than most people ever get.

This past week was a good example.  I wanted to be super good and super motivated.  What happened?

WOD Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

Rest Thursday

WOD Friday but had planned to do a bunch of stuff I needed to practice and ended up only doing the bench/push-up WOD.

Eat and drink too much Friday night at Vegas Mike’s going away to include an almost legendary comeback in flip-cup.

Saturday Rest (and not eat great), but got a massage.

Sunday Rest, though I practiced a few gymnastics movements you will all be getting to know very well very soon.

And back on track Monday.  I really wanted to workout both Saturday and Sunday failed, but in the end that left me with 4 workouts last week.  Could be worse.

Yesterday for me:

3 eggs for breakfast

Chicken, asparagas, and snap peas for lunch

Same for a snack

Nothing post WOD

Dinner of shrimp, sauteed greens, and pepper and radish salad with berries and coconut milk for dessert.

That was pretty good food, but probably bigger meals then I should have been having.  Remember, I am trying to keep meals at or under 500 calories to reduce inflammation and the glycemic load of whatever carbs are in there.

Workout:

PR ON THE SQUAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

375lbs went up pretty easy.  I think I have more in me.

1 min row, box jump, double under with 30 seconds rest in between was harder than I thought.  Proud of getting 30 on the first row.  Might have liked 20 inch jumps rather than 24 because it slowed us down and I wanted near constant effort.  Oh well.

373 total calories, jumps, double unders.

Bench mark today is Nancy.  See my comments on the blog about that one!  I am Aaron - PCF for the two of you who read this and are not PCF Members.

Thanks to Rogue Fitness for the Picture

This touches on a subject I have written about before, but a few recent posts and workouts brought it back to mind.  The key takeaway is this:

THERE IS NOTHING MAGICAL ABOUT THE REP AND WEIGHT SCHEME WE USE IN ANY PARTICULAR CROSSFIT WORKOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!

What do I mean by that?  I mean that the same rep and weight scheme can have VERY a different effect on different people.  And many times as a coach, I am looking to produce a certain effect and NOT an arbitrary number of reps completed.  There are complicated and easy ways to accomplish this goal.

The easy way is usually a small tweak to a workout.  The purpose of Cindy (5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats as many times as possible in 20 minutes) is to get you to move for almost 20 continuous minutes.  The numbers are supposed to be relatively easy to maintain.  If you have to start doing 1 pull-up at a time, you are not getting the desired output.  You are resting too much.  I could scale it to 2 pull-ups and keep everything else the same.  Similarly, I can scale a weight down.  If the intent of the workout is to choose a weight that will allow you to get through 21-15-9 reps basically unbroken, I will simply lower the weight to  something that you can do for that many reps.  There is nothing magical about 95lbs.

This is easy and many people do this (though many still have a tendency to NOT maintain the intent of the workout and try to do it RXd instead).

The harder strategy is to design workouts from scratch that play with your limits and abilities.  Ricki Frausto defined this as the ability to tolerate pain.  I am not entirely sure he is correct.  I think when people improve they sometimes think they are just getting better at enduring pain when in fact they are becoming more efficient and developing a higher level of fitness.  You just think you are enduring more pain because it doesn’t seem to get any easier, but you are doing better.  Nevertheless, he is undoubtedly correct that learning to cope with discomfort plays some role.

Anyway, the example he gives is with burpees.  If you cannot do more than 10 in a row, you do 5 sets of 8 taking a minimal amount of rest in between.  Keep going up either by one rep or by shortening rest.  Why do 8 when you can only do 10?  Is 80% a magic number?  No, it is more an art to choose what will work.  Different people have different thresholds before they redline and can’t recover.  A good coach with good athlete feedback will find that line and exploit it.  We do it in running all the time.  Finding the pace that allows you to work a certain pace for a certain time, but not overdoing it such that you can’t recover so the rest of your run becomes a jog which has no fitness value.

If everyone has a personal coach, every workout is designed for them to accomplish this task.  But in reality, we workout in a group that does not allow this.  So athletes need to become assistant coaches and help us scale you in the group.  It may even be severe scaling (not as in going WAY down but as in significantly changing the WOD to fit your needs).  Yesterday’s WOD was a great example.  Rather than increasing reps on each minute of your dips, it will be better if you take some % of your 1 set max and do that over and over in the WOD.

Some workouts will be designed to allow you to do this.  In the coming months you will see WODs that call for a % of your 1RM.  Everyone in the class will have a different weight.  If it is a relatively low % then you are supposed to go fast and the reps will be higher.  If it is a high % it is designed to be heavy and make you stronger even at the cost of being slower or with lower reps.  You have to help us.  You have to be cognizant of what your maxes are and you have to record them somewhere.  Do it here, do it on the PCF blog, or do it on your own blog but know your ability and record your progress.

All you PCF’rs reading this, if you think it is helpful to the way you think about WODs, pass this on to others.  We will be discussing this and doing it at at the box very soon and I want to get it out there a little and make sure it makes sense before I have to explain it in 5 minutes during a class.

OK, now for my stuff.

Breakfast of eggs and clementines

Lunch of roast beef and snap peas

Snack of roast beef and snap peas

Protein and sweet potato post WOD

Chick with salad (small amount of cheese, small amount of break and eggplant dip) for dinner

I also had a small piece of ice cream cake at work for a birthday.  Yes, I am ok with that.

My weight is going down a little.  Maybe I need to eat more or I can keep trying to lean out a little without losing strength.  We’ll see how I perform over the next couple of weeks.

Workout was

5 rounds

21 KB Swings (2pd, unbroken)

30 seconds GHD situ-ups

I did all unbroken and got 15-15-15-13-14 on the sit-ups.  And I can still walk, which is not always a guarantee after GHD sit-ups.

Then 5 rounds 1 minute double under with 30 seconds rest.

100, 54, 63, 64, 64.  I can do better.  Fighting a minor calf injury still or I would have done 10 rounds.

Today is a rest day and I am going to get a massage this weekend.  I also stretched and rolled out more than usual yesterday.  I still contend it is voodoo because it never seems to make me more mobile or hurt less.  The massage is the next step in this experiment.

And some of our folks made the affiliate blog! Awesome!

I feel like I used to be really good at air squats for high reps and good speed.  Not so much any more.  My body got very used to the low bar back squat and it is having trouble adjusting.  But as much as I complain, it could be worse.

WOD

Bench: 12×185, 11×185, 8×185

Weighted pull-up: 3×53, 3×72, 3×77, 3×77, 3×77

50-40-30-20-10

Air Squat

Sit-up

9:38

Pretty happy with all of these.  I think I used to be better at weighted pull-ups, but that was when I weighed 15lbs less.  My max used to be about 110lbs.  Haven’t tested in a while.  This is also better for bench at 185, though again, I weigh more now.  Still, absolute strength gains are nice.  Sometimes 185 is 185 and it doesn’t ask you how much you weigh before you have to move it.

The metcon went pretty well, though I think I used to be faster.  I am still bad at sit-ups (nothing new).  I am not debilitated by the squats today, so that’s good.

Food wise:

Three eggs, a little ham, and 2 clementines for breakfast.

Tortilla soup for lunch

Chicken and asparagus for a snack

Jerky and sweet potatoes post WOD

Chicken sausage and cabbage for dinner

I am trying to keep my meal sizes smaller since I listened to the Barry Sears interview and he discussed how even IDEAL foods can cause inflammation when eaten in large quantities.  Doesn’t mean I eat less, just less at one time.  I eat a little more often to make up for it.  If I plugged everything in I would guess I am between 2500-3000 calories.  That is more than a sedentary person, less then many active people.  I am trying to make such great food choices that I can squeeze every bit of energy out of each bite of food.  Stick to meats, veggies, nuts, seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar and I should be ok.  Food quality starts to slip and I would probably need to eat MORE.  You know grains hinder the absorption of nutrients into the body.

20 reps at 275 is not easy

Yesterday was a strength day, which for me is an opportunity to test whether I have lost a great deal of strength after losing weight, lifting less often, and not drinking a gallon of milk.

I am actually pretty happy.

Squat: 5×225, 3×275, 5×315, 5×325.

Press: 5×115, 5×135, 5×135.

My best press at my biggest was 3×5 135lbs.  I don’t know if I could have done that again yesterday, but if I can do it for two sets I am still pretty happy (or as happy as I can be with such an atrocious press).  The squat I got up to 3×5 335lbs.  I can MAYBE do one set of that now, but not three.  I lost the most on this, but am still much stronger then I was before I did the strength stuff.  Pretty happy.

Food was good:

Ham for breakfast

Tortilla soup for lunch

Shrimp and guac for a snack

Protein powder post WOD

Steak, greens, butternut squach with some parm for dinner