We are starting our third week of the September Fitness Level UP Challenge! All of the workouts are loaded into BTWB and you can see them all now. So, how will you earn a prize? You can earn a prize each week if you unlock a Fitness Level Category. If you have more than 1 locked category you can earn a prize for each one you unlock. Your Coach will let you know the FL category of every WOD to help you know if it's one you need to do as prescribed. Last week Anne, Meg, Colter, Faith, Tami, Detra, and Craig unlocked a Fitness Level. Will this be your week to unlock a level? You can also earn a weekly prize for the MOST EMOJIS given on BTWB. I have the ability to track our BTWB engagement and last week Duane gave 118 emojis beating Meg, our previous week's winner, by just 2 emojis!
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Last summer, for GORUCK Tribe, we read an excellent book by Micheal Easter called The Comfort Crises. I blogged about it here and here. In The Comfort Crisis, Easter, discuses an emerging issue in our modern era of the Comfort Creep. Comfort creep is an insidious incremental increase of ease in our everyday lives with a commensurate decrease in our toughness. Easter describes it this way, "We sleep on the most comfortable mattress possible in our climate controlled home. We wake up and walk less than 20 feet to get into our climate controlled vehicles to work in another climate controlled building. Then we drive home to eat dinner that we didn't need to grow, forage or hunt. Then we sit on a comfortable sofa until it's time to go to sleep in our comfortable bed." One of the most powerful methods Eater recommends to stave off comfort creep is to attempt a misogi. Miosgi is a Japanese word that describes an arduous journey that transforms you. According to Marcus Elliot, a Harvard-trained sports scientist, modern misogi are designed to test our physical and mental edges. He says misogi need 2 criteria: 1. You should have a 50% chance of completing the journey 2. Don't die Misogi is meant to circumnavigate our human potential. During your misogi journey you will be tasked with exploring what you're willing to put yourself through to become a better human. Ultimately, whatever you decide to do for your misogi it will be an exploration and it should change of your comfort zone. Last year I completed 2 misgois, the Femme Fatale-A-Thon with Nick and the Badass Babes weekend in October. I'm repeating the Badass Babes next weekend with a dozen Montana badass babes. I'm still considering what my second misogi will be this year. I'm seriously considering attempting the Hero workout Kalsu. Tell me in the comments if you think I should make Kalsu my second 2022 misogi!
I have blogged several times about the impact of alcohol on our performance and recovery. Most of our True Spirit WHOOP group members have noticed how alcohol has a deleterious effect on the body, lowering HRV, RHR, and subsequently recovery scores, while also reducing sleep quality. Recently, Whoop's Senior VP of Data Science & Research, Emily Capodilupo published a study in the science journal Frontiers on just how much every incremental drink consumed affects our physiology. This research is important because Whoop has analyzed how alcohol impacts HRV and Sleep, and how long alcohol consumption can impact your body, and not until now, have they investigated the relationship between the number of drinks you have and the timing of those drinks with next day metrics. Here are some of the important key points from Whoop's research: WHEN YOU DRINK AFFECTS YOUR RECOVERY Timing of when you have a drink plays an important role in how recovered you may feel the following day. Alcohol has a half life in the body of between 4 and 5 hours – meaning that it takes your body that amount of time to process out half of the alcohol in the bloodstream. Given the slow processing time, the longer before bed that you stop drinking, the more time you give your body to process the alcohol and reduce any negative repercussions to sleep. THE NUMBER OF DRINKS YOU HAVE IMPACTS YOUR RHR, HRV & RECOVERYIf you’re having drinks, bedtime isn’t the only important factor to consider. The amount you consume matters as well. Typically, your body’s liver is able to process about one standard drink per hour – so every additional drink accumulates alcohol in the body until your system is able to metabolize it. We know that your fitness is improved by how well you RECOVER from your training sessions, not necessarily from how hard you work during training sessions. This research shows that you can effectively cancel all the positive impacts of CrossFit with just a few drinks. If you're frustrated with your rate of fitness improvement or you're struggling with stubborn body composition, taking a critical look at your alcohol consumption might provide some insight into your wellness and fitness. If you're interested in learning more about Whoop's research and how you can improve your wellness, listen to the podcast embedded below. Here are the highlights: 3:06 – How recovery is captured
3:46 – The negative effects of alcohol on recovery 5:32 – Effects of every incremental drink on recovery 7:48 – Effects on men vs. women 10:14 – WHOOP member trends tracking alcohol 11:44 – Holiday drinking 14:54 – Alcohol consumption relative to bedtime – and why it matters 17:53 – Drinking hacks to optimize recovery 21:17 – The importance of water before bedtime Play the audio file below to listen to the entire podcast. We are starting our second week of our September Fitness Level UP Challenge and already we're seeing folks unlock their Fitness Levels and some people are seeing tier overall Fitness Level increase. All of our Coaches have been asked, "How long does it take to increase my fitness level?" It Depends. The answer, it depends, is not satisfying. However, it does put YOU in control of your fitness journey. That's a satisfying thought, your improvement is not up to chance, it's up to you. It depends on your current level of conditioning, it depends on how consistently you attend classes, it depends on how much extra work you put towards skill development by taking specialty seminars, skill sessions or private training. It depends on how well you eat, how well you recover, how many hours you sleep. It depends on your lifestyle. However, our good friends at Beyond the Whiteboard, who are data geeks like us, have crunched the numbers for us. They looked at Fitness Level data from over 65,000 athletes over the past 6 years and analyzed it to see how long it takes to increase your Fitness Level. They found, on average, it takes 5-6 months of consistent CrossFit to improve your Fitness Level by 10 points. BTWB looked at Fitness Level data from over 65,000 athletes over the past 6 years. They found it takes 5-6 months of consistent (3 days per week or more) to improve your Fitness Level by 10 points. Of course, you have to be able to do most of the workouts as Rx for them to count towards your Fitness Level. They also found that working out 5 days per week week produced 27% faster improvement than 3 days per week. Even increasing from 3 to 4 days per week is associated with 10% faster improvement. We’ve often heard people discount the value of only working out 2 days per week, but the data shows that those athletes only progressed 7.5% slower than their 3 day per week counterparts. Of course, you need to be able to do the Fitness Level workouts as prescribed. Do you notice how many BTWB Fitness Level workouts we do every week? How many of those are doable by everyone? All of the Speed, Power Lifts, Olympic Lifts and Endurance workouts can be performed as prescribed by everyone. Many of the Bodyweight workouts such as 100 sit-ups or 100 burpees for time, 2, 3 or 5 min max reps double unders, can be done by most people. Even if you get ONE double under in that time you still did it as prescribed. It all counts. This week alone, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday's workouts all count to your BTWB Fitness Level. Next week, 5 of the workouts count toward the BTWB Fitness Level. We program these workouts regularly so that you can keep working on your BTWB Fitness Level. The BTWB folks found that improvements come quickly for new CrossFitters, and those of who who've been doing it for a while have a diminishing margin of return. They also found that improvement depends upon nutrition, sleep and recovery. New & Intermediate CrossFitters can improve quickly The bottom line is fitness is a journey. It takes consistent daily effort. You may have breakthrough workouts, you may regress. Improvement, while an upward trending line, is never exactly linear. You will have ups and downs, your diet may go sideways. No matter what happens, just keep on trucking. Get back on track, get your ass to the gym, eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Get 7-9 hours of sleep. Good luck!
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