You Are NOT Smarter Than Your Body

Your body is beyond smart. Don’t forget to listen to it. Learn to distinguish “good” pain from “bad” pain. Lower back pain and shoulder injuries are some of the most frequently reported issues amongst CrossFitters – so pay special attention to these body parts. Pain is not just random. If you’re feeling serious sharp pain anywhere in your body, something is wrong and probably needs to be fixed. If you continue to work through the pain, you are soon going to be looking at the long road of rehab. The point is your body is smart. It will compensate for individual muscle weakness. You need to address each and every weakness you have in order to avoid increased imbalance and eventual injury.

Overtraining???

Here are some signs of overtraining:

1. You repeatedly fail to complete your normal workout
2. You’re losing leanness despite increased exercise
3. You’re lifting/sprinting/HIITing hard every single day
4. You’re primarily an anaerobic/power/explosive/strength athlete, and you  feel restless, excitable, and unable to sleep in your down time
5. You’re primarily an endurance athlete, and you feel overly fatigued, sluggish, and useless
6. Your joints, bones, or limbs hurt
7. You’re suddenly falling ill a lot more often
8. You feel like crap the hours and days after a big workout.
   

Take Time OFF & REST

When is the last time you took a FULL week off? By a full week, I mean seven full days of NO training or anything even remotely related to working out. If it's been more than 6 months, or you can't remember the last time, then guess what... it's time! It's only during your time off that your body gets a chance to rest, recuperate, repair, and rejuvenate so that it's ready for the next time you go into battle. Other telltale signs that you need time off:
You've plateaued in your performance
You've been sick more than two times this year
You keep getting injured
You have a hard time sleeping more than 4-5 hrs and you're exhausted.
Take a REST DAY!

Over-Training

Most people are worried about getting enough exercise. But there are some people who forget to take a day off or put a goal before good health. Too much exercise or overtraining can lead to injuries, illness, and diminished performance.

How can you tell when you're doing too much? Here are some things to look for:

•washed-out feeling, tired, drained, lack of energy
•mild leg soreness, general aches and pains
•sudden drop in performance
•insomnia
•headaches
•decreased immunity (more colds, sore throats, flu)
•decreased training capacity - drop in intensity
•moodiness and irritability
•loss of desire for sport/fitness
•decreased appetite
•increased incidence of injuries
•compulsive need to exercise

Over-Training??

So then, what is overtraining? Well, overtraining is pretty much exactly what it sounds like it is... it means you are training too much. Too much for what, exactly? Too much for your body to properly recover from. And, if your body can't recover properly, your body can't (and won't) progress or improve. Your muscles don't grow in the gym. Your body doesn't improve during your workouts. All of the growth and all of the improvements take place when you are resting, not when you are working. I want to make a clear distinction here. Muscle soreness does not mean over-training. Research indicates that muscle soreness is more than likely caused by micro trauma to muscle fibers. This is not a bad thing. So next time you feel tired, maybe you should listen to your body. REST DAY! It's always good to follow a 3:1 ratio(3 days on, 1 day off).

Nutrition and recovery

1. Get 8-10 hours of sleep per night
Your major growth hormones are released for recovery during this time.

2. Eat breakfast
Your body is in starvation mode, since you have not eaten since supper, and needs nutrients right away. Breakfast is your most important meal of the day.

3. Post workout stretch/massage
This helps the body return to normal quicker and speeds up the recovery process.
Stretching and massage on off days, or later in the day after training, also help speed recovery.

4. Eliminate alcohol and caffeine consumption
Alcohol and caffeine are diuretics – they suck the water out of your cells which leads to dehydration.
Alcohol increases fat deposition, decreases testosterone, and decreases protein synthesis (the protein that you take in for repair of muscle tissue, caused by training, is not being utilized fully for recovery).
Caffeine disturbs your sleep cycles.

5. Eat five fruits and vegetables per day
These provide your vitamins and minerals needed each day for various functions of the body.
Eat the rainbow: make sure you get a variety of colors – each kind contains a different vitamin/mineral.

6. Drink one gallon of water per day
If your body is even 5 percent dehydrated then you will have a significant effect on your performance.
The best way to track your hydration is to check your urine – if it is clear you are hydrated if not you are dehydrated.

7. Consume 4-6 balanced meals/day
Each meal should contain a protein source (meat, fish, or dairy), a carbohydrate source (fruit, vegetable, etc) and a fat(avacado or oil).

8. Take one day completely off per week for mental and physical well being
With all the physical activity you are putting yourself through it is important to take one day completely off. Try to just kick back and relax – nothing too intense. Make sure you are not trying to add more training in on your scheduled days off or you will overtrain. Sometimes it is better to work smarter and not harder.

9. Consume a post workout meal or shake
Your second most important meal of the day and it should be taken within 30 minutes after your training has ended.

10. Have fun
Make sure you are training because you enjoy doing it.
Do things that you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.

CrossFit Games Day One Report

The contest to decide the Word's Fittest Man and Woman began three seconds after the American national anthem ended.
"Three, two, one... Go!" said Games Director Dave Castro.
Moments earlier, Coach Greg Glassman had opened the Games with a brief speech to a loud and enthusiastic crowd gathered in the sunshine at The Ranch.
The athletes, all carrying computer chips, sprinted over the timing pads and across the Stadium to open the run down the road and up and around The Hill. When asked afterwards if The Hill was as steep as he thought it would be, James (OPT) Fitzgerald--who was covered in dirt and grass--was blunt: "It's worse."
After opening the competition with an endurance event, Games organizers chose a deadlift ladder for WOD 2.
Sixteen men managed to pull their way through a series of bars loaded from 315 to 505, creating a log-jam tie for first, while 21 females broke the 300 lb. mark.
WOD 3 was a sandbag sprint with sandbags on shoulders--one 35 lb. bag for women, two for men. Athletes tore out of the Stadium and up the hill only to find a grind of a climb on the way up the viciously steep slope. For some the sprint turned into a walk.
The fourth event was a "blue-collar workout" that featured 500-meter rows bracketing a sledgehammer stake drive. Tommy Hackenbruck crushed the WOD in a top time of 4:36 and attributes his success to his old job: up until three months ago he worked construction and used a hammer six days a week for three years.
Sunday's final WOD was savage: three rounds of 30 wall-ball shots and 30 squat snatches. Early in the first round of the first men's heat, it was clear the workout would be a challenge that would send many athletes home from the games with a solid kick in the ass.
The regional qualifiers produced CrossFit's top athletes, and the Day 1 WODs distilled them further. Only 32 athletes will return to compete on Day 2, where one man and one woman will be crowned the 2009 CrossFit Games champions.
Click link to the right..........................................

CF Games & Recovery

Since the CrossFit Games are this weekend, I thought I should post my thoughts on what can happen. Five events Saturday ... X ("multiple") events Sunday ... I wonder if "they" are going for a decathalon of endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, accuracy events? This is all going to come down to recovery. So this is where DOMS comes into play and Yoga is going to help. It's going to be hard for any human to recover after 5 WODs first day and X WODs the second day. Mental, physical, and spirtiual are key factors for all the top CrossFitters this weekend. The FITTEST person in the WORLD needs to have a well rounded ability in all lifts and movements of CF. Who cares if they can kill Fran but do horribly on a run; they aren't the fittest. I hope all the CF athletes this weekend have their A-game ready. Rapid recovery is the key word. In the pics above are 4 of the 75 competitors this weekend. Dutch Lowry, Breck Berry, Jason Boag, and Lance Cantu. Good luck to all and stay focused.

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS)

DOMS is caused by exertion beyond a muscle's normal capacity, but it is made far worse by exercises that involve a lot of repetitions with a heavy eccentric movement. An eccentric movement is any movement that lengthens the muscle against resistance like slowly lowering from a pull-up. At its most extreme, muscle strain can result in rhabdomyolysis (aka rhabdo), in which damaged muscle tissue leaks into the bloodstream, causing kidney failure. Rhabdo is rare, and typically occurs with people who are fit but untrained doing a large number of movements that feel easy but incorporate a heavy eccentric movement. Rhabdo is serious and potentially fatal, but regular DOMS is just part of working out. Most of us feel that if we aren't sore, we haven't been working hard enough. However, applying several layers of microtrauma to the same muscles, like working out sore can lead to overreaching and eventually injury, so we should try to prevent this. Not just for training purposes, but also for our daily existence. I find the ability to stand up and walk around greatly enriches my quality of life. There is no magic pill to prevent or cure DOMS. But there are many small things we can do before, during and after workouts.

PRE-WORKOUT
Dynamic stretching. I would save the static stretches for afterwards, but preparing your muscles for activity with some quick dynamic stretching will help prevent damage.
Warm-up. Always spend 15-20min getting your body warm. Do you just start your car on a cold day and drive off?

DURING WORKOUT
Always keep moving, not letting body cool down. If it's a strength workout, don't sit down and rest between sets. Keep the blood flowing by walking around.
Don't work the same muscles back-to-back. When you're not in charge of programming, you don't have a lot of control over this, and sometimes CrossFit might demand that you hammer the same muscle groups in consecutive workouts. But when you DO have control, try to let the damaged muscles recover while you focus elsewhere.
Recovery workouts. Taking a workout at half-weight can help you recover faster than just waiting it out. Maybe a skill work day would be beneficial. Because you will be bringing fresh blood to the muscles.

POST WORKOUT
Eat lots of quality food, usually a balanced diet like the zone. Your body is in dire need of all the building blocks that food provides us, so feed it. Like it's your job. But make sure it's good quality food: every time you put crap in your body, you're making more work for it to no benefit. So keep the drinking to a minimum (a little red wine is OK), avoid processed foods, sugars, any ingredients with chemical-sounding names, bad fats, and factory-farmed meats. Stick with lots of organic fruits and vegetables, good fats, eggs, quality meats, and nuts. I will explain "The Zone" in more detail in a later post.
Sleep. This is where the majority of repair happens, so don't sell yourself short. Eight hours minimun.
Fish Oil. A natural anti-inflammatory agent, fish oil ups your Omega-3-to-Omega-6 ratio, which is beneficial for keeping your cell receptors open for nutrient transfer.
Cool-down. As a group, we're not very good about this, and we should try to be better. This is where my Crossfit Yoga comes in, stayed tuned for more posts on that. After a very hard workout, don't just collapse - or at least collapse only as long as necessary to breathe again. But get back up and walk around, and do some light movement to keep the blood flowing while your heart rate goes back to normal. Now, while your muscles are warm, do some Yoga stretching.
RICE it. Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation.
Massage. A good massage goes a long way to alleviating soreness. If you can afford it, go for it.