Unbreakable Fitness

You Will Notice a Theme in Daily Eating

I said I was going to try this, so we’ll see how it goes.  A couple of points up front.

1. Excuse my pictures.  They are taken on my phone and I have a hard time editing them.
2. I am currently trying to eat better than I have been.  I make no claim this is representative, but I hope I will be eating a little better for a while.
3. I am not weighing and measuring.  I may even use shorthand.  Just giving you an idea of food choices.

Tuesday: Coffee and sausage for breakfast; salad with chicken, lettuce, oil, vinegar, and sunflower seeds for lunch; one and a half cheeseburgers with no buns for a snack; shake post WOD, pork chop and zucchini cooked in lard for dinner.

Wednesday: Coffee, pork chop and zucchini for breakfast; sirloin steak and collard greens with chorizo for lunch, shake post WOD; chicken, lettuce, tomato, feta salad olive oil and vinegar and yogurt dressing; Sunbutter for dessert.

I also often have an afternoon coffee and I admit that I put one Splenda packet and a splash of half and half.

Large but Healthy Meal

As part of my update series on what I am doing and how that will play out over the next 10 months, I wanted to do a post on what I was eating.  Much of this will not be a surprise to people who read the PCF blog or come to classes there, but I am experimenting a little.

First, I am not doing the 4 week Paleo clean that a lot of our clients are doing.  I am considering doing it in the future, but am not inclined to at the moment.  Instead, I am trying to tighten up a little.  I think of myself as trying to maintain an 80-20 eating style.  I eat right about 80% of the time.  However, I realize that someone who does not log their food and acknowledges eating poorly sometimes probably ACTUALLY eats well about 60% of the time.  So I am going to shoot for 95% compliance, which will hopefully actually get me to 80%.  Make sense?

When I say “eat well,” what do I mean?  Meat and green veggies is a perfect meal.  Meat and fruit is a 95% meal.  Out at a restaurant and having a nice meal, but sneaking a piece of bread and having a glass of wine I will put at 80%.  As of the last few days, I am well within in that 80-20 range.  I am letting fats take care of themselves.  I am not intentionally adding extra fat nor am I restricting it.  In other words, I don’t have a hand full of almonds just because.  I do cook in lard and oil, don’t shy away from olive oil on my salad, eat guacamole because it is delicious, and sometimes have sunbutter for dessert.  Maybe once a week I will have some ice cream.  I drink moderately on weekends (multiple drinks but don’t get wasted).

I Would Call This a Splurge With Tortillas and Black Beans

I think if I ate this way all the time I would be VERY healthy and would probably lose weight (which I am not sure I want to do, by the way).  Of course, I don’t eat like this all the time.  For the past month or so it has been a little uglier.  The flat bread they give me with my salad and chicken is too good, so I would have a decent hunk of that.  One small ice cream a week was more like two.  My birthday happened (cake, beer, chips) and then the following weekend we had to have people over to help us finish the beer.  Summer always brings Mexican food, which is not unhealthy in itself but often involves chips and margaritas.

And with this long list of problems, you could get the impression I am a fat slob, but let’s keep perspective.  The fact of the matter is I eat better than 95% of people.  I don’t eat sugar every day, I never have meals based around pasta, pizza, bread, legumes, rice or potato, and at least half of my meals in a day consist solely of meat and veggies.  When you have had a healthy lifestyle for almost a decade and the functional metabolism that brings, you can absorb a few bad weeks or even months with little effect.

Nevertheless, I am going to tighten back up so when I go visit family in August and eat my favorite pizza and pasta, it will be a departure rather than a continuation of my current habits.  Also because I am curious how it will affect my body and performance.  Even though I lost most of the weight that went along with my mass gaining experiment (30lb in 30 days gain), I still carry more fat than I used to.  I’m not sure if that is my new natural state, whether it is one of the things that happens when you’re in your 30′s, or whether I have just been too undisciplined to lose it.    We’ll see.

The End of the Milk Experiment ... 220lbs

Now for the part that so many CrossFitters won’t like.  I am also experimenting with some supplements.  I am currently taking creatine once a day.  I have a shake after workouts.  I take ZMA before I go to bed.  Certainly nothing compared to body builders, but more than some of our Paleo Police.  I have reasons for all of them.

Creatine: Top end strength and mass has always been a weak spot for me.  I have overcome this in the past by drinking a gallon of milk a day.  I got bigger and stronger … and fatter and slower.  Creatine is the most studied and “agreed upon” supplement out there to make you bigger and stronger (legally).  I thought I would try it and it fits well with my regular strength program.

Shakes: It’s not real food.  But one problem I have is that I often teach after I workout.  I also already bring 2-3 meals a day to work before I go to the gym and don’t want to bring another.  Despite near universal advice to eat within 30 minutes of working out, I was having trouble doing this.  The shake is easy.  There is no sugar in it.  It does contain glucose (faster absorbing) and is about 50-50 protein and carbs.  If I want to take advantage of the compensation that occurs in my body after a WOD and improve my recovery, this seemed like a good bet.  If I am in a situation in which I need to lose weight, I will probably cut this out and see if I continue to progress.

ZMA: Maybe it is a placebo, but it seems to make me sleep better.  I’ll take it.  Supposedly it has some muscle recovery components as well, so that can’t hurt.  It is just zinc and magnesium.

I do not advise or support use of any of these things, but I am experimenting with them and am pretty confident they will not hurt me.  The truth is the only thing I have ever done that I have seen make a dramatic difference in my performance is just DOING CrossFit.  Everything else is up for debate.

In order to test my hypothesis that when I think I am doing 80-20 I am actually doing 60-40 and when I think I am 95-5 I am actually 80-20, I am going to keep a bit of a food log.  I am notoriously bad at daily posting, but maybe this will be motivation.  I’ll include pictures when available.

I I posted yesterday that one of my short term goals was a 225lb clean and jerk.  This is a very modest goal for someone who is 200lbs and whose other lifts are proportionally much bigger, but 225lbs was a symbolic number.

Yesterday I got 225lbs.  One of the difficult things about fitness is you don’t always know why things happen.  We call it the Black Box.  You feed inputs into the box and you record the outputs.  What happens inside the box is a mystery.  Here are my inputs:

1. I have not clean and jerked for a long time.
2. I have been doing a consistant and dedicated strength program.
3. I made a change to my jerk position (see my previous post on shoulders and elbows).
4. I spent 45 minutes loosening my shoulders before I clean and jerked.
5. I took off the day before.

Many at PCF will swear it was one or the other of those 5.  I don’t know which one it is, but probably some combination of all of them.  And I will respect that and probably spend more time getting stronger, loosening my shoulders, and not underestimating what good rest can do.

The new goal will have to be to jerk the same amount I can clean.  Wish me luck.

The competitive season is over for me.  After the Regionals Affiliate Competition I began a 10 month journy toward the next real competiton.  We will have a few more at which to practice between now and next spring when the Sectionals are held again, but the goal is still to peak for Sectionals.

I did not have a great competitive season.  Rapidly improving competition, an unfriendly draw of workouts from the hopper, the neglect I showed toward improving some of my major weaknesses, and a string of unfortunate injuries resulted in a mediocre finish at sectionals and a pretty average performance by me as part of the Affiliate team at Regionals.

Part of My Poor Weighted Cindy Performance

This has left me with a long list of goals.  Last year I also had a long list of goals nd I am not sure that exercise helped me, so I am faced with the question of how to fix that this year.  I have not yet figured out everything, but I want to use this blog to let all of you know what I am doing while I figure it out on my own.  I’m not laying out my whole plan right now because I don’t know what it is.  Rather I will give you components of the plan as it falls into place.  Here is what I have so far.

1. Re-emphasize more traditional CrossFit as the heart of my training.  I feel as though last year, in an attempt to attack weaknesses, I specialized a little too much.  As a result I LOST skill in places I had previously done well (this was best demonstrated by a poor finishing in the weighted Cindy at sectionals and the sumo deadlift high-pull/box jump WOD at sectionals).  I lost a good deal of bodyweight skills and conditioning in my desire to improve my strength and size.  I think that the amount of bodyweight work in the WODs we do at PCF will get me back to where I need to be.
2. Take a slower and longer term approach to strength building.  One of the reasons I dropped off in a good portion of my other skills was because I took an approach to strength building that precluded me from continuing to work on other things.  I still believe I need to get stronger and I still believe the best way to accomplish that is a steady progression using squats, deadlifts, and presses.  I will lift with the gym 3 or 4 days a week switching between sets of 5′s and 3′s with occassional 1 rep efforts and max number of rep efforts.  This should result in me adding 10lbs every 3 weeks rather than the 10lbs a week I was at before.
3. Solidify my strengths.  Unfortunately, there are not a ton of things I stand out in.  Running and rowing are probably the two things in which I am in the top 5-10% of CrossFitters, and those two things don’t produce a huge margin over people who are bad at them.  Still, I need to have something that pops up out of the hopper that makes me say, “I got this.”  I don’t have to work on these thigs often to maintain or progress, but I cannot take them for granted.

I believe that if I follow these broad parameters, I will be on the right track.  This will set the stage for specific work I need to do on things such as shoulder mobility and improved high rep olympic lifting.  I have not yet decided the best way to accomplish those things.  I have long term goals but don’t feel like they are always very useful.  Instead I am compiling a list of shorter term goals that I think can be accomplished in a the next three months.

Poor Shoulder Mobility is Part of the Reason Sectionals Didn't Go Well

1. 225lb Clean and Jerk: Higher top end strength, improved jerk technique.
2. Sub 19:00 5k: One runnig WOD per week.
3. 1000lb CrossFit Total: Higher top end strength as a result of linear strength progression.
4. 400+ Tabata Something Else: More bodyweight workouts
5. 17:00 Angie: More bodyweight workouts
6. Helen PR: A good combination of improved running, pull-ups, and GPP from doing more CF style WODs.  I should be competitive with the best CrossFitters in the world on this WOD.

This is not the end of this discussion, just the beginning.  I had another VERY modest goal of 10 HSPU which I accomplished relatively quickly with some dedicated work.  Another part of this conversation will be a discussion on how much work you need to do to maintain a skill a once you have achieved it.  I am not sure I could do 10 again right now.

Dragging Our Athletes to Better Running Times

I have not posted in quite some time.  I was trying to figure out why that is.  What have I been doing?  Well, beside working and coaching, I have my own fitness to look after.  Other than that, I spend a good deal of time planning and programming for Potomac CrossFit.  As it turns out, that takes more time than one would think.  If I haven’t been writing a lot I think it is because most of what I think about fitness is espressed in the programming I do for the gym.
For the most part, this is the program I follow as well.  So, why am I writing now?  Because there are two things I am doing that you couldn’t figure out just by following my workouts and reading PCF Blog.

First, I have been following a slightly different strength progression than the gym.  As one advances in many strength movements, it becomes more difficult to put weight on the bar every time you lift and recover from near max effort lifts on a regular basis.  That is not to say it’s impossible for me.  If I eliminated a lot of the other conditioning work, doubled my food intake and drank a gallon of milk a day, I could progress .  The last time I did that I always felt terrible and never wanted to train, but I was big and strong.

Instead I am following Jim Wendler’s program which has you rotate through sets of 5 and 3 at weights well below your 1RM.  On the last set of each lift you go for maximum reps.  I don’t have enough data to say if it works.  With the little max effort testing I have done I can say it does not make me weaker.  I can also say I “feel” good and healthy and strong.  A few of us at the gym are doing this and when I have more data I may consider programming it for people who are stalling on their lifts.

Second, I am programming endurance work for some of our advanced athletes who are poor runners.  It is helping me figure out how to program endurance work into a more traditional CrossFit template.  It is also testing whether some people are beyond help when it comes to running.  So many bad runners are bad because they never do it.  When they do run it is painful and they don’t like doing things they suck at so they stop.  This time they are complying for the most part, so we will test after 8 weeks of 2x week running and see what happens.

I will keep you all up to date!

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.