Category — Training Protocols and Strategies

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.

Kathy and Tom have been CrossFitting for about 8 months now, but until our move, they weren’t coming all that often. Recently, they decided to make a change and to increase the frequency of their training. And boy is it paying off!

The two of them are moving more quickly, more smoothly, and more accurately as a result of consistent training. And they’ve both hit new PRs this week! Tom upped his deadlift by 40 pounds, and Kathy perfectly pressed 50 pounds today. Congratulations, you two! I have the feeling this is only the beginning…

Sometimes we get a tad carried away with competition. A little friendly competition never hurt anyone. In fact, it probably helped you accelerate past what you would have accomplished working out alone. But there’s been some unhealthy competition brewing for awhile now.

Throwing form by the wayside and risking injury in order to attain the unattainable is about as smart as toasting bagels in the bathtub. Not only are you risking the longevity of your athletic career, you’re also severely impeding your progress by making no gain in the form column.

Do you ever wonder why a 5′ tall, 145lb  Olympian can put 2.5x their body weight overhead? Yes, they’re strong, but the answer lies in their form. When you see great form, you see efficiency. The people who take the time to become efficient with their lifting, by developing great form, are the ones that go on to drop jaws.

Don’t be the guy or girl catching a clean with heels in the air, bar 12″ back of mid line, body in a “C” position in order to beat your buddy, or keep up with the group. You’re robbing yourself of any long term progress for the sake of a number that’s going to be erased the next morning. Stupid.

Keep em’ legit.

At CFSR, class always begins with a general warm up – like a run or row – which is to get your blood flowing to your muscles and literally get you warmer. Following the general warm up is dynamic stretching. The dynamic stretches we prescribe are based on what the exercises are in that day’s WOD. We want you to move through a range of motion and hopefully increase that range through the stretching exercise, preparing your muscles and joints for the workout ahead.

We discourage static stretching before a workout. Why? Here’s a quick piece written for the general public that explains. Static stretching actually decreases the strength of a muscle in the immediate period after stretching. As the article notes:

Researchers now believe that some of the more entrenched elements of many athletes’ warm-up regimens are not only a waste of time but actually bad for you. The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds — known as static stretching — primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them. In a recent study conducted at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, athletes generated less force from their leg muscles after static stretching than they did after not stretching at all. Other studies have found that this stretching decreases muscle strength by as much as 30 percent. – Stretching: The Truth, NY Times Magazine

Static stretching is, however, appropriate after a workout. With a good cool down and stretching period post-WOD, you’ll have less soreness and be more limber when you walk in for class the next day.

Eating carb-heavy meals is about as American as Bruce Springsteen singing about Pink Cadillacs. Unfortunately, so is obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. So I offer you this, the sanest way to eat your mashed potato sandwich: do it post workout.

During a workout you’re expending muscle glycogen. Eating a carb heavy meal after a workout restores this depleted glycogen. You want to include simple starches (potato) because they turn into glucose almost instantly, whereas fructose (fruit) must be metabolized by the liver before being released back into the bloodstream as usable glucose (this takes awhile).

The best reason to eat these things after a workout is you’ll be taking advantage of an inordinately high insulin sensitivity. High insulin levels, hyperinsulinism, has been positively linked to the above mentioned American past times. The less insulin floating around in your circulatory system, the better.

The window for taking advantage of this heightened sensitivity to insulin is small. Most often, I hear and read that within 30 minutes post workout is gold, within 1 hour post workout is silver, and nobody wants the bronze. A guy I like said you have 3 hours, but  that sounds a bit much. The bottom line: the closer in proximity to the end of your workout, the better.

sweet potato fries

How much carb you eat post workout should be dictated by two things. First, the length and intensity of the workout. No, you should not eat the same amount of food for a 500M row that you would eat for Cindy. Gauge the amount of work you expended and dose carb in relation. Second, your percentage of body fat should be a barometer for how much carb you put in yourself. If you’re already a big person, and you put a load of carbs back in your body post-workout, you’re nixing the weight loss benefits of exercise that you just worked for. Like I said though, if you must have it, do it post workout.

We always recommend that you choose wisely when picking the vessel for which your macro-nutrients are delivered. Both twinkies and sweet potato are predominately carbohydrate. One will make you go the way of the average Jerry Springer guest, the other will not. Please realize that it’s much more important than just macro-nutrient content.

During workouts, you’re also making microscopic tears in your muscle fibers, which creates a need for protein. Eat the carbohydrates with some protein, preferably the kind with “souls and faces”, to repair the muscle damage you’ve made.

like this guy

So many good things in life come from nothing but hard work and mental fortitude. An expanded comfort zone is one of these. The basic means of expanding your comfort zone are by stepping outside of your comfort zone. And yes, the further and more frequently you step out of it, directly correlates to how fast and wide it expands. It takes mental toughness, the likes of which you thought you didn’t have, but do. Whenever possible, do one more rep, sprint the last 40, or try a new thing. This will fast forward your progress.

“Get comfortable with uncomfortable”  -  OPT

Sometimes, when going heavy, people make jumps that are too large. Realize that when you get smoked trying to come out of the hole on rep 3 of a 3x Front Squat, the likelihood of your next turn being a successful 10lb or 20lb jump is minuscule. You’d be better off either sticking with the same weight (tinker with a slightly shorter rest interval) or putting some sprinkles on the bar.

Many times in Weightlifting meets, the winner is decided by as small an amount as a 1/4 kilo. If you’re familiar with your wall then you’ll know why, and you’ll likely know when to apply the sprinkles. If you’re not, go with the “F*&% that last rep was hard” rule of thumb.  Going for a big jump, when you know deep down you won’t get it, is robbing you of your return on investment. You’d be better off with a full max effort rep than a heavy halfy.