CrossFit Santa Rosa 1005H Cleveland Ave, Santa Rosa, CA 95401 (707) 542-7725

It’s sad but true that not everyday can be the best day of our lives, in real life and in the gym. A coach once told me, “You’ll have more bad days than good.” Her comment was in reference to training days. But either way I don’t believe that, because much of what makes a day “bad” is how it’s percieved.

Regardless, you can’t walk into the gym everyday expecting to put out the performance of a lifetime. You lose a little sleep here, you eat a little shitty there, you get in a fight with your significant other and all of a sudden your at less than a 100%, whether you know it or not.

Everything that takes place in your life outside the gym, gets carried in the gym. You can do your best to leave it at the front door, and that helps, but it’s not a cure. When your having one of those days where your performance is less than epic, do not exacerbate the REAL problem by stressing yourself with your frustration over said performance. Just be stoked you get to push weight with people you’ve come to know as friends and enjoy your time.

Then go home, sleep good, eat right, and destroy it the next day.

If you’ve been skeptical of our recommendations to get grains out of your diet,  the Whole Nine presents a good summary of the reasons Why We Don’t Eat Grains. And even if you’ve already eliminated grains and are feeling great, read up so you can explain exactly why.

Are you arriving to CFSR classes sluggish, hoping to gain some energy from working out? Been feeling more sore than usual, even after several days? Holding onto more fat than you’d like, despite eating primally and exercising? We keep our eyes on all of you to prevent overtraining, but some of you are still prone to it. Mark Sisson presents a good set of directions for reigning it all back in and keeping yourself healthy.

The Food Renegade shows us how to make a proper beef broth like our grandparents would’ve done. Traditionally-made meat stocks, using bones (not MSG or hydrolyzed something or other in little packaged cubes), are full of the minerals we need for joint health. Quoting Sally Fallon of the Weston A Price Foundation:

Stock contains minerals in a form the body can absorb easily—not just calcium but also magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and trace minerals. It contains the broken down material from cartilage and tendons—stuff like chondroitin sulphates and glucosamine, now sold as expensive supplements for arthritis and joint pain.

And lastly, CrossFit’s main page put up this video the other day. Even though we’ve got a bunch of you firefighters here at the box, I think the rest of us have no idea just how important CrossFit training is to the work you do. I was totally awed by this video and the thoughts of you guys (and gal) working every week and coming to the box on your days off. Thank you for what you do!

We don’t usually think of slow-cooking vegetables. And frankly, this dish doesn’t win points in the presentation category. But it sure is tasty, and a great way to get some good extra fat in your meal if you need that. It’s definitely got that warming, hearty feel that you want on a cold night. Winter isn’t over yet, so file this away for the next cold spell.

Slow Cooked Cauliflower and Greens

Choose some hearty vegetables that can stand up to the cooking. Here I used cauliflower and baby leaves of collards, chard, and kale that I got at the farmers market today.

Chop the vegetables any way you need to fit them into your pan. This is one reason I love this dish - no need to carefully create florettes!

Put the chopped vegetables into a saute pan. Pour a generous amount of olive oil into the pan. We're talking half a cup to a cup, no joke. It should come up about an inch from the bottom of the pan. Pour about a cup of water in after that.

Add some smashed garlic and red pepper flakes (if you'd like). Cover the pan and bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until the vegetables are crumbly and can be broken apart with a fork.

Last step: make a little hole in the mixture and add some sardines. Cook a minute or so until they disintegrate, then stir the whole mixture and serve with a squeeze of lemon over the top. (If you turn your head in disgust at the sardines, then try a few tablespoons of chopped cured olives and/or capers. Last resort: just use salt.)

This would go best with a simply cooked cut of meat, but here it's served with harissa meatballs. Like I said, it ain't so pretty - but it's plenty tasty!

Lots of questions have been brought up recently at the box regarding sleep. The most common of these is, how much sleep should I get?

If your waking up to an alarm clock your not getting enough sleep. Yes, that sounds ridiculous, but so did eating a side of broccoli when you were 12. The people who are telling you to get 8 hours of sleep are the same ones who say “eat 10 servings of bread a day”, these are not words of wisdom. Ideally you would sleep when its dark out, and further, coordinate with the seasonal changes and day/night ratio. You would be sleeping much more, some 10-12 hours a day, in the winter. And when it came time for summer, you’d put your party hat on. Now, I know people will stop listening to me if I tell them to get 12 hours of sleep, so let’s split the difference. Get 9.5 hours of sleep.

Why?

Before man invented artificial light (the light bulb and before that, fire) humans were sheltered in their cozy caves by nightfall, and if they weren’t then they were getting mauled by lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!). Man followed a circadian rythm like every other living entity on the planet. By introducing artificial light we have extended our awake time some 30-50% beyond what we were designed to handle, depending of course on how late you stay up. For more reasons than I care to write about, going rogue and running your engine 50% longer than it’s supposed to be run is going to lead to problems. Instead of more oil changes, you get things like radiation therapy and stents.

If you are getting less than 8 hours of sleep, your killing yourself. If your getting 8 hours of sleep, you can do better. Go to bed earlier!

Questions?

Most people come to CFSR with a goal of “losing weight”. Yes, there are you skinny folks who state that you want to get stronger and add more muscle mass. But mostly, people say they want to shed a few pounds. Nothing wrong with that.

You want to lose that spare tire, that muffin top, that pooch. You want to fit your skinny jeans. So you start training. CrossFitting. You’re working hard, and you want to see results. You step on the scale regularly – maybe even daily – to measure your results. And although your pants are feeling looser, the scale tells you you’re not losing much weight. Far less than you think you should be, anyway, for how hard you’re working and how well you’ve been eating. What’s going on?

You see, CrossFit helps you lose fat and gain lean muscle. That means that the scale, which measures your overall weight, won’t show you that you’re actually losing fat, losing inches around the waist, or gaining muscle. We’ve been so conditioned to think that our body weight, or even worse, the BMI, are important measures of health. The fact is that for CrossFitters, they’re not. So step away from the scale.

And then let’s reassess the situation. Instead of weighing yourself, pay attention to how you look, feel, and perform. Let’s say that again, all together now: pay attention to how you look, feel, and perform, in whatever order of importance you wish. These are the things that matter.

Try to forget the scale, or even our bioelectrical impedence thingy at the box that measures your body fat. Yes, those are objective measures that can be very helpful to track long term change, and especially to help those who are at high risk for obesity-related diseases. I’m not saying we should never use these tools; they wouldn’t be kept at the box if I thought they were useless. But relying on those numbers can sometimes end up being unhealthy and obsessive.

If you’ve got a scale at home, shove it in the closet or have a yard sale. Yes, we will still measure and record your weight and body fat every so often at the box. But if you’re feeling great, you’re getting PRs on the major lifts and benchmark WODS, and your clothes fit the way you like, those other numbers shouldn’t matter.

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