WOD 101210 "Barbara"

Ryan fighting though some ring push-ups on thursdays WOD

WOD:

Barbara

20 Pull-ups

30 Push-ups

40 sit-ups

50 squats

Rest Exactly 3 minutes between rounds 

You are responsible for keep track of rest periods and time of rounds 

Post Total time to Comments/ Chalk Board

It’s time to talk about journaling. Until now had you do the minimum required in your journals and that is to track progress. This means that at the end of your WoD you copy down the work out and write down your score. This was the next time the same or similar WoD is up on the board you have something to compare it to. Many of you have used your journals well in this regard. Tracking your progress over a period of months and all of you have seen great results thus far. Now however it is time to take it to the next level. Your performance in the gym will be affected by any number of different factors. All of which you have some control over others. Yes you will have more control over some than others but still you will be able to control all of what we will look at to some degree. So lets take a look at what we will be tracking from here on out.

WoD

Both score and feeling

Nutrition

Everything you ate from the right after the last WoD to right before the one you are about to or just completed.

Hydration

Tied to but still independent of nutrition. The best anabolic/fat burner is water, that’s not just my opinion it’s a fact you must be hydrated for your body to function properly.

Sleep

You need a certain amount and while everyone is different I’m willing to bet the amount you need will fall somewhere between 7-9 hours give or take an hour either way.

Relationships

Friends, significant others, family, co-workers, it all affects you in some way

Relaxation/Meditation

Everybody needs some alone time, some need a few hours, and for some 15 minutes will suffice. Take some time every day to be alone and get a little introspective.

Warm-up

Tied to the WoD but we need to track it separately as it will have some slightly different goals

Stretching

Could be the Mob WoD or some stretching you do at home

This is CrossFit of course we need measurable results and rules on how to score each of these categories. Well you are in luck because I have just the thing. And here it goes each of the categories will be graded by you on a 10 point scale. There will be groups that the categories will wall into that will help us monitor and track general trends without having to over analyze each category

Nutriton:

3 points for breakfast

2 points for lunch

3 points for dinner

And 1 point for 2 other snacks during the day

Obviously the better food you eat the better off you will be but for now lets just focus on getting into eating 5 small meals a day

Hydration

1 point for every time you finish off a FULL glass or bottle of water up to 10 points. If you don’t finish it, it doesn’t count you cannot count to half glasses at 2 different times of the day.

Sleep

Minimum number of point is 6 points for 6 hours of sleep anything less than that you get zero points in the category. Add 1 point for every extra hour you get up to 10 points

Relationships

Obviously this is a category with out exact rules. If all your relationships are going great give yourself 10 points if you had a fight with your Brother, but you and your significant other have never been closer, maybe a 6 or 7. If every one hates you including your dog then its probably a zero and you should work on that.

Relaxation/meditation

2 points for every 15 minutes you spend alone up to 10 points or  1hr:15m ( watching T.V. does not count) if you are a person of faith prayer or study is a great way to spend this time, if you are not simply being a little introspective ( perhaps about why even you Dog seems to hate you right now) is acceptable. You do not have to do this all at once 3 separate bouts of 15 minute quiet time gets you 6 points for example . or 2 bouts of 30 minutes Gets you 8.

Warm-up

The goal of the warm-up to get your body temp up, maybe start sweating a little and spend some time working on your specific goals. This will be subjective much like the relationships category but there are some things to look for. Was it real hard to get yourself going today didn’t do much during the warm-up and just went through the movements, maybe you only get a 3. Came in early warmed up and spent 10-15 minutes working on your goals probably an 8,9 or 10. Late and missed the warm-up completely 0 points or even negative points

WoD

This category had both subjective and objective pieces to it. If you crushed the WoD did everything unbroken and set a PR then you get 10, if you just moved half heartedly through it because you felt like you should be there. Maybe only a 4. if you skipped a day you were planning on coming 0. Took a planned rest day and actually rested 10 screwed up and went on a 5k run on your rest day probably a 1 or 2.  Perhaps you felt great but performed poorly anyways( or vise versa), Well that is where it gets subjective maybe you give yourself a 6 for it. Over time you will get the feeling for what is a 10 for you and what is not.

Stretching

Minimum 4 points for 4 minutes. That is just enough time to see some sort of change, though likely not permanent. 1 minutes = 1 point. Bonus points are allowed up to 5 points. So less than 4 minues stretching = 0 points anything 4 minutes and over = 1 point for 1 minute if you do a total of 15 minutes you et 1 points but that is the max points you can get. You do not have to do all the stretching in one sitting but anything less than 4 minutes at a time does not count. That means you have to spend at least 4 minutes stretching any time you want to earn points for this category.

Add it all up and you have a max score of 85/80 points for the perfect day. I am willing to bet if you have sting of theses types of day you will be setting a number of different PR’s during that time.

Now lets talk about groups, You may see you own groupings present in this categories but I see three important ones.

Workout/practice

Includes:

Warm-up 10/10 points possible

WoD 10/10 points possible

Stretching 15/10 points possible

Total of 35/30 points possible

Recovery

Includes:

Sleep 10/10 points

Nutrition 10/10 points

Hydration 10/10 points

Total of 30/30 points possible

Life

Includes:

Relaxation/ meditation 10 /10 points possible

Relationships 10/10 points possible

Total of 20/20 points possible

You can give yourself a grade in each of these groups i.e 27 and up in workout/ practice is an A 24-26 is a B ect. And if you notice that any one area is falling behind then you have something to focus on.

CrossFit is about be prepared for the Unknown and the unknowable. That means more than just coming into the gym and hitting the WoD with everything you have it means you are recovering correctly and that you are living a balanced life. There is no one thing on here that is more important than the others. If you fall behind in one the others will soon suffer as well.

It is time to start taking responsibility for all areas of your life to insure you are living a balanced well rounded one.  So take the time to implement this into your journaling everyday, Be honest you are the only one you sees your journal this is a great tool if you would use it like this.

Example journal entry:

Sleep

6 points asleep by 11pm up by 6 am. 7 hours but woke up in the night a few times.

Nutrition 8

Breakfast: 3

3 points eggs and fruit

Lunch 0  had a surprise meeting so I didn’t get to eat

Snack 2 brought beef jerky and nuts to work and munched on those through the day

Dinner: 3  wife made enchiladas… yum

Hydration: 10

Seems like I spent all day re-filling my water bottle

Warm-up: 6

Got to the gym a little late but was nice and warmed up in time to start to WoD but didn’t get a chance to work on my goal of 300lb clean

WoD: 7

Was real hard to push the work out maybe my warm-up wasn’t as good as I thought. Or it could have to do with the fact that I hate burpees

21-15-9

Cal row

HPC 155#

Burpees

12 : 36

Stretching: 10

Spent 10 minutes on the Mob WoD after wards. Felt good my squats are feeling a lot smoother now.

Relaxation/meditation 6

15 min reading the bible this morning 2 points

30 min turned off the radio on the way to work and just thought/prayed instead 4 points

Relationships5

Brother got mad that I still haven’t paid him back, but Dad and I plan on going fishing this weekend and I am really looking forward to it

Workout/practice

Warm-up 6

WoD 7

Stretch 10

23/30( C+ )

Recovery

Sleep: 6

Nutrition: 8

Hydration :10

24/30 ( B- )

Life

Relaxation/meditation 6

Relationships 5

11/20  ( F )

Total of everthing

58/80 ( C- )

 So what should we look for with this type of journaling.

Well first off we want all aspects of our life to be relatively high. This imaginary person should probably think about paying his brother back because it is obviously impacting him. Next we want the recovery grouping to be equal to if not slightly higher than the workout/ practice grouping as this will ensure that we are protecting ourselves from over training. It will also be important to watch for any changes in these categories and how they affect your performance in the gym. If the life grouping is down and you notice that you haven’t hit a PR in a while perhaps you are more affected by that than you thought.  While I doubt that any one is capable of getting perfect scores in all of the categories for a sustained period of time it is important to make sure that you are not sacrificing one or 2 areas for the sake of others. Balance is the goal.

WOD 101112

The 4 o'clock group trying out the new pull-up bars

5 rounds for time
8 snatches (135/95)
10 wall ball 2 fer 1's (20/16)

Many of you have been having fun warming up on the new pull-up bars in the gym. Thats great one thing CrossFit does well for most people is to get them to do their first pull-up, and then their first set of 10, 20, 30 pull-ups and so forth. Doing Angie as RX'd is a huge mile stone and CrossFit  can get you there. However with great power comes great responsibility. As you increase your capacity in pull-ups make sure that you properly warm up before grabbing the bar and cranking out a few pull-ups. a Proper warm-up includes a general and a specific warm-up. A general warm-up involves increasing you heart rate and body temperature. It can be anything from rowing to running, squats or jump ropes. This is the reason for the progression of our general warm-ups that we do in the gym every day. The specific warm-ups involves increasing mobility in a specific joint and gradually loading the joint so that it is ready for the movement and stress you are about to place on it. When it comes to pull-ups this is the reason we do the shoulder mobility circuit the SMC includes the shoulder pull-throughs, over head squats with a pvc or light bar and kipping on the pull-up bar some optional additions are sottz presses and snatch balances with pvc or light bar.  This all serves to prepare the shoulder joint for the pull-ups and should be done before even the pull-ups involved in the warm-up. The shoulder is the a common problem area with injuries plaguing plenty of people abd warming up properly before pull-ups can help protect you from any damage you might do to your shoulder with pull-ups ( especially kipping pull-ups).

We Moved

CrossFit Tulare has officially opened at 138 S K street in Tulare CA. If you are ever in the vicinity check it out. We now also have a Website with its own blogs for nutrition and work outs. So check out www.CrossFit-Tulare.com

Coming Soon!!!

There are some new things happening here at Big Mike's Gym. The First is a name change. Thats right, I Just received the paper work to officially become a CrossFit Affiliate. So on Wed. when I return to Tulare I will send it in and then just wait for it to be official. This means that we will be listed on the main site and have opportunities to be featured on the affiliate blog. In Light of this, our current blog will be left behind :( in favor of a new Website with more features and a cool new look. So be on the look out for a link to the new site which should be coming very soon.

Scaling and Power

(This Article is taken From www.AgainFaster.com, I did not write this article they did. I liked it so I thought I would share it with you. They have plenty of other great articles so please go check it out after reading this article)

You could struggle like a rocket trying to take off on regular unleaded, or you could actually get stronger.

You’re the kid who saw one phenom go from high school straight to the Major Leagues, and figured “What the hell?  If that skinny punk can do it, so can I.”  Attention, achievement, some sliver of recognition, nothing less will do.

You’re Rx’d.  You made the Major League jump. Except, you really, really shouldn’t have, and now you’re striking out.  Slow your roll, tee ball slugger.

It’s okay.  I did the same thing, and if I don’t admit it, the pot would definitely be calling the kettle another piece of kitchen equipment.  Learn from my stupidity.

This is not what we meant.The whole point of our sport is power output: do more work faster.  Intrinsic in this little missive is “faster”, but every guy secretly wants to be bigger and stronger, and figures that what we actually meant was “heavier”.

It comes down to simple physics: power is the product of speed and strength.  Too much of either (without the other) will result in extremely blunted power.

Imagine speed and strength on the see-saw together, and strength is the fat kid.  The really fat kid.  In fact, he outweighs speed by a factor of ten.  The see-saw stays stuck, and no one has fun at recess.  Escaping my metaphor, if the load is too large and speed is too small, power is zip, much like multiplying by zero always gets you zero.

Now, imagine speed and strength are balanced, each kid weighing about the same.  This parity allows them to act in concert with each other, and the see-saw really flies.  We get power.

“Heavier” isn’t the answer.  Balance is the answer.

On page six in The Science and Practice of Strength Training, author Vladimir Zatsiorsky posits that maximal power output occurs at approximately 30% of maximal velocity and 50% of maximal load.  I’m in love with page six, and simultaneously dumbfounded by its mathematical exactitude.

Applied to CrossFit and our never ending pursuit of power, this unforgettable page states that we’re looking for a load that you can move with 30% speed, one that tends to occur somewhere around your 50% of one-rep maximum. 

Of course, CrossFit won’t ask you to move the bar once, but perhaps ten or twenty or fifty times.  To maximize your power across this broad spectrum of work, you’ll want to load to than 50% 1RM, and continue to try to move the hell out of the bar.

Holy shit.  A formula for scaling.

For too long, we’ve focused on strength bias this and power animal super athlete that, when this entire program is predicated on power. Stop thinking of scaling as something to keep Grandma in the game.  We scale to the physical and psychological tolerance of the athlete for one reason: it enables the individual to produce as much power as possible.

Following Zatsiorsky’s formula, if you can’t thruster at least 190 pounds, you shouldn’t be doing “Fran” with 95.  If you can’t clean and jerk 270, don’t do “Grace” with 135. You’re blunting your power output.  Scale that weight down; it will make you more powerful.

I did not just tell you to abandon heavy weights. In fact, I want you to lift heavy.  A lot.  Just not in the middle of your WOD. 

If you increase your 1RM, through any number of methods, your 50% 1RM will go up as well, and you’ll climb into the Rx’d echelon via this prescription.  You thruster 150, you do “Fran” at 75 pounds or less.  You thruster 200, welcome to the Big Leagues.  

In other words, don’t strength bias your WODs—strength bias your strength, and scale your WODs to your current strength level.

Proof? Take a look at the strongest men in the world, not by fiat, but by actual numbers lifted, the gargantuan boys of Westside Barbell.  Their program regularly calls for moving 50% 1RM as fast as possible.  In fact, it was a conversation with Louie Simmons, the founder of the Westside Method and its Dynamic Effort Days, that persuaded me to pick up a copy of The Science and Practice of Strength Training in the first place.

I’m sure he’d be disappointed I never made it past page six, but I bet he’d love it if you stopped trying to do Fran with 65% of your 1RM.

The successful implementation of scaling demands a simple recognition: there are an infinite number of weights that can be loaded on a barbell, and every one must be removed from ego and firmly affixed to power.  When this mental shift occurs, we’ll get more powerful athletes, guaranteed.

Stacey attacks the box jump at CrossFit Fenway.  Picture courtesy of Ethan Bickford.