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.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

9 O'Clock Chickens


I'm not sure if every store does this or not but, I like the rotisserie chickens that sell for $9-10 that taste ohh so good and are already cooked for you. (because I'm too lazy to cook a whole chicken)

Anyways at 8:59 they are regular price, but in my store that closes at 10pm at 9:00pm they are $4.50.... I don't even have more than 4oz of it when its hot anyways. what a deal!
I get home and strip the chicken of its skin and then split it into its 4 and 2 block portions. this takes only a min or 2 with a nice digital scale and a tare feature on it. And at 50% savings it taste so much better.

of course this doesn't happen every day(because they all sell before then), but I've been able to get a 9 o'clock chicken on Fridays pretty regularly.

who said prepared food has to be pricey!

stripped from the bone I got 26oz from mine

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Ladies Night!

Tues Night is ladies night, if your not a girl invite one( 6-7pm) , if you are a girl invite 2!
or at least show them this article....

article from againfaster:

If I were feeling a little more lawless, I’d gather all the copies of Cosmo and Seventeen, douse them in kerosene, and strike a match. I’d throw in reams of print ads from Calvin Klein and watch with delight as Kate Moss’ stick-thin image was reduced to carbon. I’d add copies of Shape and Runner’s World until the flames reached toward the heavens, and then I’d crank call the editorial desk at Muscle and Fitness until they stopped publishing pictures of women on steroids.

I’d get the master tapes of America’s Next Top Model and dub over them with “Nasty Girls”, broadcasting the results on every television station in America. I’d skywrite “CrossFit.com” across the Boston skyline, and gently admonish the hoards of long distance runners trotting along the Charles River—with a bullhorn.

I’d take every woman with mass media-induced ideals of beauty, and I’d show them what it really means to be beautiful.

Beautiful women are strong and powerful. They are athletes, capable of every feat under the sun. They have muscles, borne of hard work and sweat. They gauge their self-worth through accomplishments, not by the numbers on the bathroom scale. They understand that muscle weighs more than fat, and they love the fact that designer jeans don’t fit over their well-developed quads.

They know that high repetitions using light weights is a path to mediocrity, and “toning” is a complete and utter myth. They refuse to succumb to the marketers that prey on insecurity, leaving the pre-packaged diet dinners and fat-burning pills on the shelf to pass their expiration date.

Beautiful women train with intensity. The derive self-image from the quality of their work and their ability to excel. They don’t wear makeup to the gym, and they wouldn’t be caught dead with a vinyl pink dumbbell. They move iron, they do pull-ups, they jump, sprint, punch, and kick, and they use the elliptical machine—as a place to hang their jump rope.

They spend their weekends in sport, climbing walls, winning races, and running rivers. They laugh as they sprint circles around the unschooled, turning the image-obsessed into benchwarmers. Beautiful women don’t care if they’re soaked in sweat and covered in dirt, if their nails are chipped or their hair out of place. They care only about quality of life.

Beautiful women are happy, healthy, and strong, and they’re right there beside me, tossing conventional beauty on the ever-growing flames of what used to be. Be beautiful.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Modified workouts


When doing a crossfit workout in the beginning of my own personal training I was demolished within seconds of starting quite a few of them. I quickly learned that I will need to scale down the weight and or type of movement I will be doing.

Lessons learned:
1.) when scaling down the weight/movement alternate from doing a heavy day to intensity day. There is a reason the loads are the loads for crossfit. So for example even though it will take you an extra 5 mins to do the workout add that weight to push your strength to a new level. If lung power is the problem and you find you have to always do less reps to get through something, then make sure to do all the reps regardless of time.
2.) Read the FAQ's on the main crossfit site to see adequate substitutions, Use Brand X modified workouts to give you an idea of where your at... feel free to mix and match based on ability.
Brand X modified workouts

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

sean sherk



it doesn't need an explanation, except that it is the fittest 155er in the UFC