what a crew

Here's some of the evening crew. What a good looking group. Back row, right to left: Chris G, Rob G, Andrew, Chris H and Krista front and center

Here's the workout they just finished.

They look good, really good, considering the 25 minute workout they just finished. What a crew.

Gone Hunting

Andrew has been away from training for a handful of weeks as he recovered from a back injury. All he kept telling people was how much he missed the workouts, how eager he was to return, etc, etc. So back he comes with a vengeance into the first Metcon grinder, eager to hit it hard.

Hard enough to leave him assuming the "post serious intensity" position. He's back, allright. Good to have you back in the mix.

Farmer's Carry

Grab a couple of heavy weights, one in each hand, and walk. Sounds pretty easy, right? Check out the expressions - some have intensity on display and some have intensity well disguised.

The tough guys:

Happy and the Whistler:

who CrossFits with us?

CrossFit has a well deserved reputation for growing superhuman performance with individuals who live, eat and breath training - weighing every gram of protein, carefully journalling every workout, memorizing the details of every aspect of the CF culture. I call them firebreathers, and I respect the hard work they sustain to create rare levels of athleticism. And then there are people I class as functional athletes - working out two, three, maybe four times a week, looking to wedge training time for a broad, inclusive, general level of fitness in the middle of a busy schedule. Not all that mindful of records and comparisons to other people's performance, not ramping up for the CF games, just seriously aware that the road ahead is best taken with strength, power, endurance, etc.

Here's one: Chris G - teacher, mother, wife, and classy addition to the group with a background in dance. She's embracing intensity with deadlifts and farmer's carries to develop and maintain BIG (broad, inclusive, general) health. We love having Chris in the group.

Hand Jivin

Line up a bunch of obstacles - assume the pushup position and start shuffling your body sideways, moving your hands alternately onto the obstacles and back to the ground. Shuffle to the left, then to the right. What you wind up doing is what we call "Hand Jivin" - part of a workout brought to a gym near you today - and, once again, this exercise looks alot easier than it really is. Group was smoked at 20 mins, 1 sec.

Full workout: 20 min AMRAP of:

Round trip of Hand Jivin' (left shuffle, right shuffle)

15 KB swings (44 lbs men, 36 lbs women)

15 knees to elbows

15 mountain climbers.

The paraplegic dog drag

Yup - that was one of the exercises in the big group room on last Friday morning. Here's the group in action.

Snatching the weight overhead

Form practice on the snatch - not a terribly easy move, but it was time to revisit last week.

Here's a couple of pics of the action courtesy of the early morning class.

Veteran's Day

The eleventh month, eleventh day, eleventh hour marked Armistice during World War I, key to why we celebrate Veteran's Day on this day - history of Vet's Day here. Tell a Vet thanks today.

We promote intensity in workouts as being key to the gains produced, despite a long history of recommendations from medical and fitness experts that almost any activity that raises your heart rate constitutes exercise. Intuitively, this shouldn't make sense to the most casual observer, despite the commercials that prompt you to purchase a Nintendo Wii gaming device with the "Wii Fit" program as an effective fitness program.

Even the American Council on Exercise (ACE), a robust proponent of all things aerobic, has recently released a study that calls the Wii Fit workouts "underwhelming." In the ACE study, caloric cost (an indirect measure of intensity) was evaluated for different Wii Fit games, and the highest intensity game produced a whopping 165 calories. For us here at StrengthDoc, that constitutes a great warm up for all but the most sedentary.

In what sounds like a lame effort to be polite, the study concludes that Wii Fit "burns twice as many calories as normal video games." That reminds me of the compliment one of my cohorts concocted on prompting by his mother to "say something nice about your cousin." Best he could come up with was "she don't sweat much for a fat girl."

Tuesday - strength day

Slower pace today, not for time, opportunity to work on form and strength development with the following workout that involves lots of Cleaning and Pressing away from the laundromat.

7/7/7 reps of Power Clean, Front Squat, Push Press

5/5/5 reps of Cleans and Push Press

7/7/5/5/3 reps of Thrusters

High Performers use 1/2 bodyweight

Functional Athletes take on 1/3 bodyweight.

High Performers are those training in the group eager to achieve very high levels of strength and conditioning - typically to bring more fight to a sport or outdoor endeavor. These folks are eager to develop warrior class fitness.

Functional Athletes are those who want to move through life with greater strength, stamina, endurance, etc but are not necessarily chasing down optimal fitness at any level of suffering or soreness. These folks are eager to develop high levels of health and wellness.

Both groups are welcome to workout side by side, modified and scaled to capabilities and goals, and encouraged to embrace productive suffering (aka intensity) during the workouts. Like Mike G is doing below.

Metcon Monday...Plus

Today's workout is named after Sisyphus, the mythical king who rolled a boulder up and hill only to have it roll back down. The group spent the workout alternating between running on the treadmill upstairs and moving weight downstairs:

Run 1/4 mile - 50 Push press with 1/3 bodyweight

Run 1/4 mile - 50 KB swings with 1/4 bodyweight

Run 1/4 mile - 50 Front Squats with 1/3 bodyweight

Run 1/4 mile - 200 yards of Farmers Carry with 1/2 bodyweight

Krista and Chris are both smiling because the workout is finished!

Benefits of Exercise

Today's workout for the group:

"No Free Lunge" - Four rounds for time of

35 yards, bodyweight lunges

15 reps each arm of 1/4 Turkish getups with 10 percent bodyweight

35 yards, bodyweight lunges

15 reps each arm of dumbbell push presses, 25 lbs for men, 15-20 lbs for women

Why bother with all this exercise, anyway? We'll all eventually die, right? Well, sure, but isn't there something satisfying to know we're working hard to make ourselves harder to kill? Specifically, the mechanisms behind that "harder to kill" state are outlined in a 2006 Canadian Medical Association Journal article by Warburton, Nicol & Bredin entitled Health benefits of physical activity: the evidence. Find a link to the article here.

Summary of the benefits of exercise captured in the article are:

Improved body composition
Improve weight control
Improved coronary blood flow
Improved cardiac function
Improved endothelial function
Improved high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol
Improved glucose metabolism
Improved insulin sensitivity
Improved autonomic nervous system tone
Improved psychological well-being
Reduced blood pressure
Reduced systemic inflammation
Reduced blood coagulation
Reduced abdominal adiposity
Reduced triglyceride levels
Reduced low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol
Reduced stress, anxiety and depression

Thanks to Len Kravitz, PhD of University of New Mexico for the nice summary list of exercise benefits from the Warburton et al article. Link to Dr Kravitz's website here.

Know Squat

Today is Squat practice:

7/7/5/5/3/3 Front Squats

7/7/5/5/3/3 Back Squats

Here's Tom demonstrating a great squat!

just another Metcon Monday

Kinda manic, but not totally a Manic Monday - just a quick little interval style metabolic purge upstairs.

Today's workout: Miracle Mile style: 4 round for time

1/4 mile run (sub 500 meter row)

25 dumbell push presses - total 20% body weight

15 supine ball exchanges

10 pushups

Why high intensity and interval style training? One reason to take this high intensity, shorter duration approach to health and fitness is for prevention of heart disease, as outlined in a study promoted on the American Heart Association's website. This article "self challenges" the conventional AHA "moderate intensity, moderate duration" prescription for treatment of metabolic syndrome, a precursor to serious cardiovascular disease. To quote the study:

Barry Franklin, Ph.D., an American Heart Association spokesperson and an author of the association’s physical activity guidelines, noted that several recent epidemiological and clinical studies now suggest that if the total energy expenditure of exercise is held constant, exercise performed at a vigorous intensity appears to convey greater cardioprotective benefits than exercise of a moderate intensity.

Besides, we finish our workouts alot faster...........

Spooky Core Work

Wednesday and Friday we hold class in the big group exercise room - high pace, lower loads for a heart-racing MetCon mix. We invite other Summit Fitness members into the class to mix it up with the CrossFit group, using more traditional exercises, but formatted in a CrossFit approach. Friday's dose centered on core muscles (yes, that's a pun).

Scary to the Core

5 rounds of this Tabata Variant with 40 secs work/20 secs transition time - 20 mins total

Situps

Static Plank Hold

Tossing Italian Twists - like a Russian Twist, but no twist - toss the weight from hand to hand

Knees To Elbows on the pullup bars

Stars (Pushup optional) - rotation and extension of the weight overhead from a plank position.

Mike, Zack and Marti joined in on the CrossFit style fun.