Thursday, October 4, 2007

Weight Gazing


"Weight Gazing"

You've seen the weight gazers on the floor. They're the ones in the middle of a kickass Fran or a raging FGB who feel the need to pause and assess the apparatus they've just spent hard won reps lifting, pulling, or slamming. Why? Because they have fallen into the mental trap of weight gazing. Most commonly they're just coming off a metabolically demanding exercise, and they spend valuable moments pausing before engaging a strength component. In our Fran example, the gazer comes off the pull up bar and stops for 10-30 seconds before starting to negotiate the Thruster. Instead, our intrepid Crossfitter should grasp the bar immediately and crank out as many reps as possible, even if it's only one or two, to break the psychological pause of moving from one exercise to another. Once that positive feedback cycle of exercise / progress / exercise has resumed the athlete can start to accurately assess his or her rest needs. The trap of weight gazing is almost exclusively mental - of course we're tired, but we make negligible metabolic recovery by abstaining from that first rep.

straight from the general


You’ve got to drive the body to the last inch of energy then go on! You gain nothing by just going up to where your body says you’re tired. The body will build and grow only to fit the demands the mind makes upon the lazy body. If all you do is exercise until the body is tired, the body will get lazy and stop a bit shorter every time. You must go to the point of exhaustion, then go on. That way the body figures out, “We’ve got to build up more strength if that crazy mind is going to drive this hard!” If you always quit when you are merely tired, you will never gain. Once you let the body tell the mind when to quit, you are whipped for sure. You can not gain by listening to the body. We can become much stronger if we drive the body. We use about on-tenth of the available strength of our bodies and less than that of our minds." -General George Patton

Justin C gets his first Muscle Up today... welcome to the club....

and Fun WOD in the rain:

20 Turkish getups
10 second L hold single leg/per leg
5 hurdles 2 foot gymnastics jump (8ft apart)

elimination based on hurdles (if you fail 3 hurdles your out)
each rd do 2 less TGU's and raise the hurdles by 2 inches

rds are endless until you have a winner

we finished at 42.25inches on the hurdles...

I just flipped on the tube and they announced the mens hurdles height of 42".... WOW is all I gotta say.... they do 10 of the in less than 13 seconds
I had no idea that they got that high!

chicken theme

In the past couple days I've been sick. I've been having trouble controlling body temperature and dealing with leftover doms as well as whole body achiness. I decided that having a contrast shower was out of the question I turned to something that I've done for quite some time and thought it might be useful for those to chicken to try the hot/cold routine.

Epsom Salts
Because of the high magnesium content, epsom salts bath can be helpful anytime you are suffering from achiness and muscle strain. It helps to clear out released and unused lactic acid
(lactic acid being a fuel for your muscles)

Epsom salts can be found at your local pharmacy/grocery store. Use 2-4 cups in a full bath (for a severe case of doms more is better), The temperature for the bath should be is hot as you can take it. you must soak in the bath for a min of 20 mins (severe doms 30 mins +) without adding any bath solutions or oils or soap, as these will change the chemistry of the water. After the time is up wash or rinse as you please.

lets all remember that we don't get stronger during the workout, we get stronger as we recover. efficient recovery is very important.

I would say following the zone, sleeping a regular schedule and some form of recovery routine (epsom salts, contrast baths, stretching routines) far out weigh the power of many supplements on the market today.