ATHLETE IN PROFILE
Name
Super - Wells
Wells (That’s it. No nicknames. Really don’t need one.)
How did I find Crossfit
I remember hearing something about it in a MN Kali Group newsletter last fall. Then last December I was at a weeklong training session and the trainer kept pushing Crossfit. I followed up a couple of months later, and here we are.
How long have you been with Crossfit
Almost 5 months.
What do you like about Crossfit
I’m someone who, if left to his own devices, would not do these workouts. So I need the structure. But I’m not interested in drill instructors, or having people motivate me by talking a lot of s—t. While Steve might put together some killer workouts, he gives us quiet & sincere encouragement. Everybody is congratulated at the end of the workout by Steve, and it’s not BS. He treats everyone with respect and dignity, which goes a long way to motivate me to show up. Everyone wants to see each other succeed. We have a great group.
And I work hard and sweat. Those are good things too.
Proudest achievement so far
Pulling off a solo pull-up, albeit just one, was pretty cool. I don’t drop to me knees to do pushups anymore. Little victories. I may never be the first to finish the workout, but I will finish it. I think anytime you finish a workout, that’s something to take pride in.
Oh yeah, and Ninja’s called me out a couple of times, and I’ve won each time. Easily in my top 5 favorite things about Crossfit. You try to mess me around, but you just let yourself down. J
Favorite exercise
Favorite? Uhhh…
I like the various presses we do. And knees to elbows are pretty good.
Least favorite exercise
Burpees. I hate burpees. In fact:
Dear Mr. or Mrs. Whoever The Hell Invented Burpees,
F—k you.
Regards,
Wells
Other hobbies
Live comedy. Check out Stevierays.org.
What would you tell others about Crossfit
This really is a vehicle for people to achieve some personal health/fitness victories. People of all shapes & sizes. There’s no judgement. Just come and do your best, whatever that means. You will see some great gains in your abilities. You will see results.
WELCOME OUR NEW ATHLETES !!!!
June athletes
IKE
GleeAlbatross
Jake the Snake
Phil
Dina "Big D"
HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF CROSSFIT
1. Don’t pick your workouts – yes, there are certain exercises you hate – but those are the ones you should be doing….CrossFit is a program that punishes those who specialize – work at what you suck at so it sucks less.
2. Give 100% every time – You can’t take the workouts home with you – every time you don’t give 100% it’s a blown chance to get better.
3. Show up 3+ times a week – 3 is the minimum to really get the most out of CrossFit. That being said, don’t show up 6 days a week and don’t do any more than 3 days in a row (2 days in a row for beginners) You will notice a really crappy 4th day.
4. Give your attention to warm ups – we don’t do them just for the hell of it – it’s to get your mind and body ready for the workouts – that being said, I’ll try to mix ‘em up a little so you don’t become bored
5. Stretch !!! Immediately after the WOD – either at the gym or at home – as a non-flexible dude, this is one of the most limiting factores for me in doing better at my workouts. And it’s something that I am going to personally concentrate on. If you don’t stretch, you’ll be stiff as hell the next time. it only takes about 5 minutes – and it’s worth it. Also try the foam rollers for SMR – I’ll help you out with that if you want it.
6. Nutrition !!!! This affects your workouts, recovery, body composition, everything. For more information, check out Buttons’ Paleo section of this newsletter. (Eat perfect 100% of the time – no – 90% – 10%)
7. Take pictures now, in 3 months, and every 3 months after that. You should notice big changes in how you look, how your clothes fit, etc. If not, check out # 6 again.
TIP OF THE MONTH
Rest weeks….CrossFit is a very demanding workout / sport. This isn’t the usual weight lifting / running program. In CrossFit, we push our bodies to the limit. As such, we need to be aware of not enough recovery / overtraining. Signs of overtraining / not enough recovery include…
Constant soreness
Not wanting to workout (several days / week in a row)
Decreased performance for a week or more.
Beign tired / feeling worn out
Change in sleeping habits
How do fix this ? Take a week off. If you work out 3 x a week, take a week off every 10-12 weeks. If you are regularly working out 4+ times a week, take a week off every 8-10 weeks. This will allow your body to recuperate, nagging injuries / soreness to disappear, and mentally you’ll be refreshed and back in the game. When I take a week off, I am chomping at the bit to get my ass back in the gym. I feel better, refreshed, and I usually kick ass in the workouts. You will not lose strenght, stamina, endurance in one week – trust me on that.
MYTH OF THE MONTH
If you want to run long distances in a race, you have to run long distances in practice.
No, you don’t. It has been proven that short, intense sprint workouts (tempo, intervals, the occassional longer run) will benefit you much greater than pounding out those long slow distance runs (LSD).
Here is the only link you will need to train for endurance events (5K, 10K, half and full marathons)
Seriously – this is the new way to train – it’s contrary to everything else you’ve heard..but the athletes who follow this programming are setting PR’s on a routine basis. You simply do CrossFit 3-5 times a week and do the running portion 2-3 times a week (intervals, tempo, time trials) and make sureyou have 2 rest days during the week to recover.
EXERCISE, PROTEIN, AND WOMEN
Several years ago, Dr. David Rowlands, a senior lecturer with the Institute of Food, Nutrition and Human Health at Massey University in New Zealand, set out to study the role of protein in recovery from hard exercise. He asked a group of male cyclists to ride intensely until their legs were aching and virtually all of their stored muscle fuel had been depleted. The cyclists then consumed bars and drinks that contained either mostly carbohydrates or both carbohydrates and protein. Then, over the next few days, they completed two sessions of hard intervals. One took place the following morning; the next, two days later.
Dr. Rowlands found that the cyclists showed little benefit during the first interval session. But during the second, the men who ingested protein had an overall performance gain of more than 4 percent, compared with the men who took only carbohydrates, “which is huge, in competitive terms,” Dr. Rowlands says. Other researchers’ earlier studies produced similar results. Protein seems to aid in the uptake of carbohydrates from the blood; muscles pack in more fuel after exercise if those calories are accompanied by protein. The protein is also thought to aid in the repair of muscle damage after hard exercise. Dr. Rowlands’s work, which was published in 2008, was right in line with conventional wisdom.
Not so his latest follow-up study, which was published online in May in the journal Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise and should raise eyebrows, especially lightly plucked ones. After his original work was completed, Dr. Rowlands says, “we received inquiries from female cyclists,” asking to be part of any further research. So, almost as an afterthought, Dr. Rowlands and his colleagues repeated the entire experiment with experienced female riders.
This time, though, the results were quite different. The women showed no clear benefit from protein during recovery. They couldn’t ride harder or longer. In fact, the women who received protein said that their legs felt more tired and sore during the intervals than did women who downed only carbohydrates. The results, Dr. Rowlands says, were “something of a surprise.”
Scientists know, of course, that women are not men. But they often rely on male subjects exclusively, particularly in the exercise-science realm, where, numerically, fewer female athletes exist to be studied. But when sports scientists recreate classic men-only experiments with distaff subjects, the women often react quite differently. In a famous series of studies of carbo-loading (the practice of eating a high-carbohydrate diet before a race), researchers found that women did not pack carbohydrates into their muscles as men did. Even when the women upped their total calories as well as the percentage of their diet devoted to carbohydrates, they loaded only about half as much extra fuel into their muscles as the men did.
Why women respond differently seems obvious. Women are, after all, awash in the hormone estrogen, which, some new science suggests, has greater effects on metabolism and muscle health than was once imagined. Some studies have found that postmenopausal women who take estrogen replacement have healthier muscles than postmenopausal women who do not. Even more striking, in several experiments, researchers from McMaster University in Canada gave estrogen to male athletes and then had them complete strenuous bicycling sessions. The men seemed to have developed entirely new metabolisms. They burned more fat and a smaller percentage of protein or carbohydrates to fuel their exertions, just as women do.
What all of this emerging science means for women and the scientists who study (or ignore) them is not yet completely clear. “We need more research” into the differences between male and female athletes, Dr. Rowlands says. In his own study, a particularly intriguing and mysterious finding suggested that the female cyclists somehow sustained less muscle damage during the hard intervals than the men did. Their blood contained lower levels of creatine kinase, a biochemical marker of trauma in muscle tissue. Did estrogen protect the women’s muscles during the riding? And if so, why did the female cyclists who ingested protein complain of sore and tired muscles during the sessions? “Honestly, I don’t know,” Dr. Rowlands says, adding that he does not think that his findings suggest that women should skip protein after exercise. “It’s true that we didn’t see evidence for a benefit,” he says. But his study was one of a kind. The findings need to be replicated.
In the meantime, female athletes should view with skepticism the results from exercise studies that use only male subjects. As Dr. Rowlands says — echoing a chorus of men before him — when it comes to women, there’s a great deal that sports scientists “just don’t understand.”
ZONE DIET
http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/15_03_Nutrition_Full_Issue.pdf
A great source for the Zone Diet from CrossFit Journal. It’s really not too difficult – you just have to figure out your blocks. Basically, you have an equal amount of blocks of Protein, Carbohydrates, and Fats each day – every food has a number of blocks and is either a protein, carb or fat.
The number of blocks needed each day depends on male / female and body size.
The CrossFit journal has more articals on the Zone Diet. Check it out !!!
