By Coach Leslie WOOHOOO! It's #foodiefriday! Just a week ago James and I were grilling in the 90 degree heat and today we are making stew. This is such an unusual summer. Ratatouille is one of my favorite ways to enjoy the summer harvest. Ratatouille takes advantage of your tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, onions and garlic. This Ratatouille recipe courtesy of The Splendid Table takes a long time, it's the perfect recipe for a cold summer weekend. Click on the video to learn how to make weapons-grade Ratatouille. Enjoy!
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Feed the Courage WolfBy Coach Leslie
One of my favorite mindset and mental toughness teachers is Navy Commander Mark Divine with SealFit and the Unbeatable Mind project. I have had the pleasure of working out at SealFit, attending Kokoro yoga classes, and reading most of Commander Divine's books. Commander Divine is a rare man. He's a retired Navy Seal warrior, a CrossFitter, a yogi, a devoted meditator, and a mental toughness mentor. All things to which I also aspire. One of the best lessons I've learned from Commander Divine is to feed the my courage wolf. He writes about this American Indian parable in his blog post What Wolf are You Feeding? In this parable, we have two wolves who reside inside us. In our mind is the fear (or hatred) wolf and in our heart is the courage (or loving) wolf. What type of person we are is dependent upon which wolf we feed. Doubt, self loathing, negative thoughts, etc., all feed the fear wolf. Compassion, encouraging others, and forgiveness feed the courage wolf. According to Commander Divine: "Feeding the wolf of love and courage makes us more kind, patient, tolerant, powerful and present. We will avoid conflict and be better leaders. We won’t hesitate to lean into the hard tasks; fear will cease being an influence in our lives." The nice thing is that by feeding the wolf of love and courage we will be simultaneously taming the wolf of fear. How can we feed the wolf of love and courage?
I challenge you to notice which wolf you feed. Which wolf do you feed when you're driving to the gym? Which wolf do you feed right before the coach yells, "3,2,1, GO!" Which wolf do you feed when the workout gets really, really hard? Do you feed the courage wolf and lean into the hard task? Do you feed the fear wolf and convince yourself it's too hard, too heavy, too...whatever. Feed the Courage Wolf. Feeding this wolf will make you happier, your family happier, your friends happier, your coaches happier, the world happier. by Coach Nick
Happy Wednesday everyone I hope you are all having a great week! Looking at the weather for the weekend and in light of the time of year today’s Wilderness Medicine Wednesday post is going to be about lightning! The focus of this post is going to be on some brief science behind lightning, general safety guidelines/myth busting, and injury treatment. Montana lies in a part of the country with a high frequency of lightning storms as I’m sure most of you know. Most of us like to spend a lot of time outside and lightning can come out of nowhere especially when hiking, it’s always good to be prepared. First, what’s going on with lightning, what is it? Basically, lightning is the earth’s way of balancing itself electrically. Rapid changes in heat and pressure create large clouds called cumulonimbus clouds. These clouds carry two different electrical charges, the top holds a positive charge, the bottom holds a negative charge, and the earth itself holds a positive charge. Inside the cloud there are constant collisions of air, water, and ice that build an electric charge that must be released. In order to do this the cloud releases a negatively charged leader that is met by a positively charged leader from the earth. When these two small currents of energy meet a connection is formed and what we know of as a lightning strike happens. Interestingly, lighting actually travels from the earth, UP into clouds. The lightning heats the air to over 50,000 degrees which creates a pressure differential and a loud boom that we know as thunder. The way that lightning travels is also interesting. Lightning travels over the surface of an object unless there is something within it that’s a conductor. In our case nerves and blood vessels are conductors, which is why lightning strikes are so dangerous to humans. Like most things in life, lightning prefers the path of least resistance. This is why there is some credence to the thought that lightning strikes the highest object around. While this is mostly true it’s important to note that this is not always the case! Taking this forward let’s think of a scenario in which we are exposed to lightning. Let’s say we’re hiking on the ridge in the Bridgers and we see a cumulonimbus cloud approaching. There’s a few things that need to be going through our minds at this point. First, a lightning storm does not have to be directly overhead to be dangerous, there’s a phenomena called blue sky lightning in which lightning can actually strike as far as 15 miles ahead of a storm, we should start taking precautions immediately. The worst places you can be in a lightning storm are mountain peaks, ridges (uh-oh), or near tall trees, cell towers, or any other really tall objects. Also stay away from open fields (where you’re the tallest thing around). It can be tempting to take shelter under natural overhangs or in shallow caves but resist this urge as the lightning can travel into these areas and still harm you. The best thing you can do is come off the ridge back into the treeline and take shelter in a low spot away from as many of the above mentioned objects as possible and sit on some sort of insulator like a foam pad. Put on your rain jacket and get ready to ride out the storm! It’s worth mentioning that if you’re in a group sit away from each other to minimize the possibility of multiple injures from one strike. As the lightning begins to approach you there’s a pretty simple system to determine how far away the storm is. When you see a bolt of lightning count the time between that instance and hearing the thunder then divide it by 5, this will tell you how far away the storm is. For example, if you see lightning then hear the thunder ten seconds later, the storm is 2 miles away. A good rule of thumb is if the time difference is less than 30 seconds the storm is about 6 miles away and you need to take precautions immediately. Before we get into treatment, let’s talk some other guidelines for lightning. If you are on water in a storm you are not safe. It is important to get to shore but even more important to go at least 100 yards inshore as the shoreline is one of the most dangerous places to be. If you’re on fresh water lightning is absorbed into it due to the lack of conduction, however lightning will travel through salt water due to the presence of the sodium. There’s two other ways (other than direct strike) to be struck by lightning called splash and step voltage strikes. After lightning hits it can jump from something like a tree to you, it can also travel over the ground or through water to strike you. That’s why it’s important to shelter somewhere as dry as possible and away from tall objects. Finally, after the storm passes ensure that you wait at least 30 minutes before resuming your activities (again with the blue sky lightning phenomena). I hope this is never the case for any of you but if you, or a member of your group are struck by lightning there’s a few important things to do and remember. First, a person struck by lightning will not hold and electrical charge so do not hesitate to help them. Always remember the D in DRGXABCDE, make sure the scene is safe before treating a patient, be especially watchful for falling trees or newly started fires. The good news of a lightning strike is that 90% of people actually survive direct lightning strikes believe it or not. The most likely injuries you will come across are severe burns, skull fracture (look for fluid coming from the ears or Battles sign which is bruising around the ears) , and disorientation. The moral of the story here is that the patient needs to be evacuated immediately if they are struck by lightning. Do your best to treat any injuries in accordance with DRGXABCDE but you need to focus on getting them to a hospital. Also, lightning can commonly trigger cardiac arrest. If the patient doesn’t have a pulse and is not breathing this is likely what is happening, begin to administer CPR immediately. When evacuation a patient who suffered a lightning strike it is important to assume that their spine was compromised, do your best to immobilize their neck and back on the way out. As we enter a part of the summer where temperatures vary greatly through the day lightning become and ever-present danger. Keep these recommendations in mind as you venture out and you will be prepared (always carry a waterproof jacket!). In mountainous areas lightning storms can come out of nowhere and come and go within 30 minutes. As you are hiking constantly think to yourself where you would go if you were about to get stuck in lightning storm so that you always have a plan! Do not tempt fate, if you see a storm forming don’t go for that summit, turn around and live to fight another day! As always I hope this post was helpful and relevant to you all! Today's Tips for Performance Tuesday post is a bit different. Rather than sharing a movement performance tip, I'm sharing a bit about my programming technique. As most of you know, I program the daily workouts for the gym. I use workouts created by CrossFit Training, Beyond the Whiteboard, and ones I create myself. I follow the definition of CrossFit which is constantly varied high intensity functional movement. Every month we track and celebrate your firsts and bests in our strength, endurance and other work capacity workouts. Don't you love getting those PR cards each month? Every quarter I review our programming to ensure that we are achieving a balance and improvement across varied time and domains. You can also analyze our programming to assess the balance of your training. You can do this by clicking on the 3 horizontal line icon in the upper left corner of the BTWB app. Click on Analyze and then select Modalities. Within the Programming Analysis menu you can select 1 Year, 6 Months, 3 Months, or 12 Days. Here is my programming analysis for the past 6 months. While this analysis is of my training sessions, I follow the gym programming Monday. Wednesday and Friday and do a fun and unusual workout every Tuesday, so it's a good representation of the balance of the gym's programming.
BTWB defines a weightlifting workout as anything with a barbell, dumbbell, kettlebell, wallball, sandbag, sledgehammer, slam ball, or anything else that is weighted. A gymnastics workout is one that is solely bodyweight with no weighted apparatus and a monostructural workout is just running, rowing, rucking and/or jumping rope. Our weekly programming always includes one heavy day, one day sans any overhead movements, 3-4 workouts in the 8-15 minute time domain, 1 workout that is short or untimed and 1 workout that is longer than 18 mins. One workout is a repeat, one workout is a BTWB Fitness Level workout, one is from another CrossFit source and the rest I usually create. I am not surprised that most of you set new personal records each month. The last 6 months of programming have been constantly varied high intensity functional movement, in other words, for the past 6 months we've all done CrossFit and we've all seen a measurable increase in our fitness. We've increased our strength even though we didn't do a specific strength/barbell cycle, we've increased our endurance without a specific endurance program, we've increased our stamina, power, speed, and our general fitness across broad time and modal domains by doing CrossFit. It's amazing how well this elegantly simple system of constantly varied high intensity functional movement works to make us stronger, more durable, faster, more powerful, more agile, more coordinated, and increases our endurance, stamina, flexibility, agility, and balance. I hope you've enjoyed the past 6 months of programming and how much your general badassery has increased. You're welcome. It is my pleasure to program for you. I look forward to the next 6 months of constantly varied high intensity functional movement. |
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