CrossFit Oakland

The Love/Hate Duel

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:53:26 -0800

DUEL
Pronunciation:
\ˈdü-əl also ˈdyü-\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English, from Medieval Latin duellum, from Old Latin, war
Date:
15th century

1: a combat between two persons; specifically : a formal combat with weapons fought between two persons in the presence of witnesses2: a conflict between antagonistic persons, ideas, or forces; also : a hard-fought contest between two opponents.

MJJ sparked an excellent idea this morning that we thought we should roll out to the entire membership! It's a way to play strengths and strengthen weaknesss CrossFit style, and we're calling it the "Love/Hate Duel"!

The next rest day (Friday) we would like for everyone to challenge their closest skill/strength matched CrossFit member(s) to a WOD-duel that incorporates at least two of each person's strengths and weaknesses. Mini and MJJ are going to go at it and below is an example of a WOD we came up with for their Love/Hate Duel:

18-12-6

Handstand Push-Ups
Burpees
Muscle Up
155# Squat Clean

Duel announcements and WODs to comments!

Another CFO Vee T-Shirt Run?

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:17:27 -0800

The CrossFit Games CFO T-Shirt

We've been getting a lot of inquiries lately about the t-shirts Vanessa designed for us for the CrossFit Games and whether we're gonna do another production run.

And the answer is a conditional yes. We'd like to do it as soon as possible, as long as there is demand.

So by a virtual show of hands in comments, let us know if you would like another of our special CFO t-shirts, and if so, give us quantity and size.

Infinite Scalability: CrossFit for Seniors

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:27:36 -0800

David, Joan, Sean, Karen and Janelia

We have just begun our second month of the CrossFit for Seniors Class at CFO! We are now up to six regulars who come every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 11a.m.. Our main focus has been learning the fundamentals with a special emphasis on balance and range of motion. The last week has been full of breakthroughs of all sorts and we're starting to sense the CF fire is ablaze! Stay tuned for the development of the fittest seniors on the planet...

Post your witticisms to comments.

Gymnastics Cert at CFO?

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:32:33 -0800

Jeff Tucker, of CrossFit GSX fame, recently inquired about coming out here to do a gymnastics seminar at our box.

But before that happens, we have to make sure we have enough people who'd be willing to participate in such a seminar.

This seminar would cover such skills as handstands, the basics of tumbling, ring work, back levers, front levers, etc.

So give us a quick show of hands in comments on whether you'd like to take part in such a gymnastics seminar.

Retro-Running

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 22:33:00 -0800

A Brief History of Backwards Running from Run the Planet: http://www.runtheplanet.com/resources/historical/backwards.asp

Backwards, forwards, what's the difference? It just depends on which way you are facing. True, if you are standing still. Now try to run. You'll be fully aware of the differences after your first few steps.

Backward running, backward walking, and retropedaling are developing and quickly becoming more popular in all parts of the world. The popularity of backwards running can be traced back to the American pioneers of this new and different way of running. From the beginning of the century great names such William Muldoon, Gene Tunney, Bill Robinson, Ed Schultz and others, used backward running in their training regime. But it was not until the 1980's that backwards running began its real development and began gaining popularity.

The professor Barry Bates was one of the first pioneers to not only practice backwards running techniques but to also publish his findings. These very publications have been reproduced and reprinted by countless media sources. The doctor Robert K. Stevenson published the first book on the subject of backwards running in 1981 and particularly interesting is the book "Backwards Running". Ron Austin was also one of the great protagonists of backwards running for the United States of America for many years.

At the same time in France, Christian Grollé began an effort to make athletes and trainers aware of the numerous benefits of this new way of running. Even with the efforts of many pioneers it would not be until the 1990's before the development would gain momentum in all parts of the world. At first in Italy, where Stefano Morselli became one of the greatest protagonists of "corsa all'indietro". He repeatedly won the races of Prato (near Florence) and Poviglio (near Parma). For India, Arvind Pandya, is also one of the great retrorunners. He ran backwards across America, Los Angeles to New York, in 107 days (18 August/3 December 1984).

But it is the new millennium that will see the beginning of a new fashion developing a little in the whole world. Like jogging which in the 1970's spread through the planet, "retrorunning" (backwards running) could indeed during the next decade conquer the world. In March 2000, backward-running.com (no longer in service) was launched and offered, for the first time, the beginning of a global vision for the development of backward running. New medical publications, resulting essentially from United States, continue to make therapists, sportsmen and trainers alike aware of this method of running. At present athletes in numerous sports (football, basketball, tennis, athletics, fitness, and so on) utilize backwards running in their training.

Hundreds of persons in the United States begin backwards running because of its numerous and appreciable benefits: better oxygenation ; cardiovascular system increases; it burns one third more calories than forward running; it develops considerable balance, velocity and stamina; it works more quadriceps than forward running; it reduces the ground impact; it promotes a greater flexibility of the body; and it reduces the risks of injuries. The benefits are so numerous that new books will not delay being published on the subject.

Barry T Bates website on retrolocomotion:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~btbates/backward/backward1.htm

If you want to check out the world record retro-running champions click here:
http://www.recordholders.org/en/list/backwards-running.html

Post your retro-running experiences to comments.

TG/HDL Ratio

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:36:08 -0800

A few people have recently reported the results of their blood lipid panel.

We thought it would be a good idea to share with you the ratio Dr. Sears (of the Zone fame) suggests to use to gauge your blood insulin level.

You simply take your triglyceride count and divide it by your HDL (the good cholesterol) count. In shorthand, it's TG/HDL. This is from page 120 of his Omega Rx Zone book, pictured above.

The lower the number, the better. Sears assigns the following states of well-being (or lack thereof) to various ratio values.

4: Diseased
3: Poor
2: Good
1: Ideal

The good news is that the CFOers who've reported results from their recent panels have had ratios less than one!

I guess CF plus a solid diet does pay off.

Permission to Fail

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:33:01 -0800

From Jon Gilson of Again Faster (http://www.againfaster.com/articles/)

Give a guy with four pull-ups and two dips a set of rings, and he’ll pine for a muscle-up. He’ll pull on those rings two or three times, confident that the next rep will be the one. On rep five, his gaze finds the ground, and the little muscles surrounding his eyes relax. By attempt ten, he’s defeated, and the swearing starts.

The curse of the novice is two-fold. Along with a wanton desire for progress comes a concomitant failure to realize that advanced skills are not the province of the beginner.

Little attention is paid to such lowly matters as the air squat while the newly christened athlete seeks the clean. The push press is left aside in favor of the split jerk, and the pull-up gives valuable practice time to the muscle-up.

This phenomenon is unavoidable in our culture of instant gratification, so there is little point in disparaging our collective lack of patience. Without fail, we’d rather be the CEO than the mailroom clerk, and ambition should not be dampened.

Nonetheless, our ring-wielding athlete is unprepared to succeed, and he hasn’t given himself permission to fail--a surefire recipe for rage.

Make your preparations, and assault your target, never forgetting that victory is the end state of persistence. The first step to mastery is preparation. The dips and the pull-ups need to be there prior to the muscle-up attempts, or the frustration will be unending. Our athlete needs to own the basics, or advanced movement will never happen.

Even with proper preparation, the athlete must be willing to fail repeatedly, practicing the impossible until it is no longer so. This journey, a seemingly endless parade of incompetence, is hard on the psyche. At every moment, it’s easier to quit than continue.

The ensuing struggle between ego and reality is won by the ego more often than not, and practice ceases in favor of easier tasks and quicker victories. This keeps experience within narrow bounds, impeding athletic progress for the sake of transient happiness.

Recognize that competence lies on the other side of slogging failure. Make your preparations, and assault your target, never forgetting that victory is the end state of persistence. You’ll find that the curse of the novice is no longer yours, as you’ve recognized that success comes only by embracing failure at every stage of the game.

POST YOUR MOST MEMORABLE CROSSFIT FAILURE TO COMMENTS.

FUEL Seminar Aug 16 11am to 1pm

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:53:26 -0800

Our next F.U.E.L (Feeding U Energy for Life) seminar will be Saturday, August 16 from 11am to 1pm.

As usual, we will be covering a variety of topics, including but not limited to the following:

Strategies for healthy eating in the real world
Foraging in the urban jungle
How to eat “in the Zone”
Fat is not the enemy
Real World Eats
The real deal on carbs
Real women eat real food
Top Fuel eating for serious athletes
Adult Beverages 101
Paleo/Zone (the ultimate fuel for athletes)
Hormonal effects of food
Disease prevention with food

The cost for the seminar is $100/person and includes food and drink (we've gotta put you to the test afterward and make sure you can apply what you learn in the seminar!).

To register for the seminar, contact us at (510) 595-9348 or info@crossfitoakland.com.

The CrossFit Prescription for Nutrition

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:47:42 -0800

The CrossFit diet
The simple prescription is this:

Protein should be lean and varied and account for about 30% of your total caloric load.
Carbohydrates should be predominantly low-glycemic and account for about 40% of your total caloric load.
Fat should be predominantly monounsaturated and account for about 30% of your total caloric load.

What Should I Eat?
In plain language, base your diet on garden vegetables, especially greens, lean meats, nuts and seeds, little starch, and no sugar. That's about as simple as we can get. Many have observed that keeping your grocery cart to the perimeter of the grocery store while avoiding the aisles is a great way to protect your health. Food is perishable. The stuff with long shelf life is all suspect. If you follow these simple guidelines you will benefit from nearly all that can be achieved through nutrition.

What Foods Should I Avoid?
Excessive consumption of high-glycemic carbohydrates is the primary culprit in nutritionally caused health problems. High glycemic carbohydrates are those that raise blood sugar too rapidly. They include rice, bread, candy, potato, sweets, sodas, and most processed carbohydrates. Processing can include bleaching, baking, grinding, and refining. Processing of carbohydrates greatly increases their glycemic index, a measure of their propensity to elevate blood sugar.

What is the Problem with High-Glycemic Carbohydrates?
The problem with high-glycemic carbohydrates is that they give an inordinate insulin response. Insulin is an essential hormone for life, yet acute, chronic elevation of insulin leads to hyperinsulinism, which has been positively linked to obesity, elevated cholesterol levels, blood pressure, mood dysfunction and a Pandora's box of disease and disability. Research quot;hyperinsulinism" on the Internet. There's a gold mine of information pertinent to your health available there. The CrossFit prescription is a low-glycemic diet and consequently severely blunts the insulin response.

Caloric Restriction and Longevity
Current research strongly supports the link between caloric restriction and an increased life expectancy. The incidence of cancers and heart disease sharply decline with a diet that is carefully limited in controlling caloric intake. “Caloric Restriction” is another fruitful area for Internet search. The CrossFit prescription is consistent with this research.
The CrossFit prescription allows a reduced caloric intake and yet still provides ample nutrition for rigorous activity.

There are countless people at CrossFit Oakland who have made the Zone a lifestyle! Look around you, ask questions and when your ready to take the leap talk to us, and we can help you get started!

Here's an excerpt from "Getting off the Crack" by Nicole Carroll

That said, at ten blocks per day, I found the first three weeks of the Zone to be
some of the hardest days of my life.

Day 1: The 3pm tuna sandwich put me over the edge. I had been hanging on by a thread all morning. I ate the two ounces of tuna, one piece of toast, one tablespoon of Mayonnaise, and lettuce that was supposed to be a satisfying lunch…twenty minutes later my stomach was grumbling and I was FREAKING STARVING! To this day I will not eat tuna sandwiches. The hunger was the worst. I could not believe I would survive on such a small amount of food. I was living meal to miserably small, unsatisfying, two-block meal. At some point each day for the first
week I ended up on the couch crying. Maybe some part of me really thought I was going to die.

Day 2: CrossFit Santa Cruz: I told the Glassmans I was starving. They said, “You’re not hungry. It’s just a craving for the insulin response.” I argued, “No. I really am hungry; my stomach is grumbling twenty minutes after eating. I think I need more food…DON’T TELL ME I’M NOT HUNGRY!” To which Greg responded, “Eat two blocks of low-GI [glycemic index] veggies at your meals and then tell me you’re honestly hungry.”

I tried it. It helped. Broccoli became a truly beautiful thing in my life. Meals held me over longer. But socially I was useless. Every ounce of energy I had was going into just sticking with it. People would ask the daily nicety “How are you?” and all I wanted to say was, “I am on this stupid diet and it’s killing me.” And so it went for many days.

Day 13, CrossFit Santa Cruz: Fat Fran. I was using 65 pounds for the thrusters and it felt like 165. It sucked. Everything sucked. I would cry on warm-up runs, in the bathroom after workouts, if someone looked at me weird. I cried A LOT. I was also craving fat like it was ice cream. More than anything I wanted to sit down with a jar of almond butter and a spoon. I was clearly too lean. I was at 111lbs. from 115 and ripped. My performance times were down by minutes and I was an emotional wreck. Because I was somewhat lean to begin with Greg originally suggested I start the diet at 2 or 3x fat. I ignored him, thinking less fat would be better. I was stubborn, stupid and fat phobic. Now I was paying the price.

Day 14: I began to add more fat into my diet.

Day 21: I was eating five times the fat allotted in the standard Zone prescription, up from the original 15 grams to 75 grams per day. Once I made that change, it got much easier because the benefits came quickly. With the “crack” cravings quelled and little thought of wanting more food, I was now chasing results.

How did I make it to this point? What kept me going through the first brutal weeks? Most likely it was a combination of stubbornness, anger and curiosity. I was pissed that this moderate way of eating was kicking my ass. I thought it should not be this hard and that I should not give into my own weak will. Furthermore, around day 3, I was told that I was complaining too much to get a cheat day. Then I became doubly pissed. I decided I would show her, and do the freaking diet even if it killed me. Finally, I was intrigued. Clearly this was powerful stuff. I started to feel more confident that if I got over the hump and dialed it in properly, it would have a profound affect on me.

And indeed it did. I had never experienced so directly and consistently the practice of not giving up when it gets hard. Every time I entered my kitchen I had the opportunity to fail. It would have been so easy. But I didn’t, and I cannot describe emphatically enough the rewards—both physical and mental— that getting through that has brought to my life.

I went from not believing I could survive on the Zone to not believing how much I could thrive on it. In just 4 weeks.

Try it.

Post your own version of getting off the crack to comments.

2 Spots Left For Angela's Next Clean Clinic

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:59:30 -0800

Angela, along with Jo Ann Arnold, will be holding her next Clean Clinic on Sunday, August 10 from 2pm to 4pm.

The clinic is limited to five spots, and three of them have already been sold.

The two remaining spots will be filled on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Who is this Man and why does he have such good color sense?

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:43:19 -0800

Who is this man? Why is he dressed this way? What possible athletic advantage is he hoping to capitalize on?

Post your best guess to comments.

Fuel2Go Meal Orders

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 19:56:14 -0800

A scrumptious slab of flank steak

Lance has given us the Fuel2Go menu for this Monday, July 28:

Natural grilled flank steak chili verde, with white hominy, kidney beans and oregano

(Sounds delicious!)

Going forward, we'd like everyone to place their order for food on Lance's Fuel2Go Blog. To that end, we've place a link on the lefthand side of the page named "Zone Meals To Go," which will take you directly to Lance's blog. The link is just below the "2009 CF Games Training" link.

All orders must be posted to his blog no later than 5pm on Sunday 7/27.

Now for a little inspiration...

Post to comments your meal ideas for Lance. This dude can seriously cook and on top of that, he has a keen understanding of the Zone. So fire away, and don't be surprised if your suggestions show up as one of the Monday meals.

Olympic Weightlifting Seminar: Catalyst Athletics Event

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:00:32 -0800

Olympic Weightlifting Seminar

Saturday & Sunday October 18-19
10:00am - 5:00pm

CrossFit NorCal
Chico, CA

The Olympic lifts develop unparalleled explosiveness for athletes of all types, but because of their relatively great technical complexity, they are often performed incorrectly, limiting their effectiveness, or even avoided entirely.

Spend two days learning complete progressions for the snatch and clean & jerk, and dramatically improve your own lifting technique.

Registration includes a 102-page excerpt from the book Olympic Weightlifting: A Complete Guide for Athletes & Coaches by Greg Everett

Requirements & Expectations
No previous experience with the Olympic lifts is required, but attendees should be reasonably experienced with basic strength lifts such as the squat and deadlift. This seminar will be hands-on for its duration.

Featuring
Greg Everett, CSCS, USA Weightlifting Coach
Aimee Anaya, National Champion Weightlifter

CFO Throwdown Blog Has Been Resurrected

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:20:03 -0800

More tomfoolery from the CFO Games meeting

We're going to be covering a lot of territory over the next few days regarding CF Games training, in particular the schedule of our upcoming CFO Throwdowns.

Because this kind of stuff tends to take on a life of its own, we're resurrecting the CFO Throwdown Blog. I've already done the first post, which covers the schedule for the CFO (internal) throwdowns over the next year.

We've added a link to the lefthand side of the blog, right under our CFO Best Performances of the Day section, named 2009 CF Games Training, which will take you to our CFO Throwdown Blog.

And for those of you who don't know anything about the CF Games or CFO Throwdowns, don't worry. I'm sure there will be at least one more post devoted to the topic before it's all said and done.

Let the 2009 CF Games training begin!

Our Own Awards Ceremony!

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:45:08 -0800

Thank you all who stuck around tonight for our banner unveiling and celebration of the team! Stay tuned for the fall Throwdown program and Bay Area Affiliate competitions hosted at CFO!