I have this pet peeve. It's when one of you post some fantastic image of you doing something amazing in our gym and your Facebook friends tell you how unsafe it is. Oh really? I'm so glad people outside the gym have such a grasp of human movement and the science of strength and conditioning. Most of these "well meaning" Facebook coaches comment on photos of all of you doing something to the standard, which is the FULL RANGE OF MOTION for all the things we do in the gym. Flexibility is one of the 10 general physical standards we develop through our programming. Flexibility is our body's ability to maximize the range of motion at a given joint. Full range of motion is something we're born with and declines as we age if we don't actively train it. Increasing our flexibility keeps us healthy and durable. Increased flexibility decreases potential for injury. This is why we hammer movement standards and continually push you all to increase your flexibility. I'm sharing an interesting podcast from BTWB on why it's important to train to the standard and keep our range of motion as maximal as we can through our training.
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Today's workout is programmed by Coach Chris Hinshaw of the Aerobic Capacity Specialty Course. The workout is designed to help you develop pacing and knowing when you're in trouble in a workout. A skill many of us don't understand is knowing when we're OK and when we're not. You will work on that skill today. Coach Hinshaw coached Mat Fraser, Rich Froning, Katrin Davidsdottir and a whole squad of CrossFit Games athletes. He is the master at helping athletes understand their maximum sustainable pace. According to Coach Hinshaw, "The more common way we hear that is lactate threshold or anaerobic threshold,” he explains before delving into the science of individual endurance capabilities. Check out a preview of how to determine your anaerobic threshold in the video below. Click here if you'd like to watch the entire 9 min video. Coach James is attending a continuing education seminar with Chris Hinshaw in September. We are excited to offer more aerobic capacity seminars after he completes his training. We coaches get asked frequently how long it will take someone to do something as prescribed. Or how long it will take to improve in CrossFit. Our answer is always, "It depends." Not satisfying, we know.
It really does depend though. 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. The only challenge with using your BTWB Fitness Level to track your improvement or transformation is that it's dependent upon you completing a workout as prescribed. Not all of us are at that level, yet. Repeating workouts is an excellent way to see if you've increased your fitness. CrossFit defines fitness as increased work capacity. Before we found CrossFit, most of us lacked an observable, measurable and repeatable definition of fitness. We thought we were fit if we felt better or looked better. Sure, those are aspects of fitness, but they are aspects that are hard to measure. One of the benefits of CrossFit training is the measurement of fitness through how fast we run or row, how many unbroken pull-ups or double unders we can do, how much weight we can deadlift, squat or press, etc. In fact, we try to measure as many fitness variables as we can. While all of these measurements can validate our hard work and help us stay motivated to continue our training, they can also highlight our weaknesses. It takes only about 2 months of consistent CrossFit training for us to be unceremoniously humiliated by our weaknesses. It takes a lot of mental toughness to work on our weaknesses. Its way more fun and wholly enjoyable to work on the things we're good at. But, to deliberately practice what we suck at, well, that takes letting go of our ego and being willing to admit we're not perfect. Why is this so damn hard? Most folks would rather avoid the things they're not good at. But, they remain frustrated and angry when those things come up in a WOD. What are they waiting for, a Festivus miracle? Working on our weaknesses will help increase our mental and physical fitness. Want to be a better person? Work on the things you suck at. Good luck! Our nutrition prescription is to eat meat, vegetables, nuts & seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Sugar is one of the most addicting substances on earth. It lights up our brain's happiness zones and spikes our insulin. It can derail our best efforts at eating high quality food, and it makes us fat. Sugar affects a whole bunch of our hormones and can send us into a hangry spiral in just a few hours after consuming it. Too much sugar puts on us the path to Type II Diabetes and a variety of metabolic diseases. Sugar added to food has absolutely no nutritional benefit. It's primary purpose is to make food sweet (so we eat MORE of it) and to prevent or delay food from spoiling. Naturally occurring sugar, like fructose in fruit, can be a great source of energy and it doesn't have the same affects on our bodies because (when you eat the fruit, NOT DRINK IT) it is bound with fiber to slow its absorption. Fruit juice however is a serving of insulin spiking fructose because there is no fiber in juice. Sugar is a difficult substance to avoid, it's in most packaged and processed food. If you eat something out of a box, bag, bottle, or can, it likely has sugar. Check out this short informative Ted talk on sugar in food. As the video shows, there are many names for sugar, and it's important to read labels and get familiar with all of sugar's pseudonyms. Here's a handy sheet from the Whole30 program on all of the names of sugar. Now that you know what you're looking for you can avoid added sugar. Of course, I think the easiest way to avoid sugar is to eat whole, real foods, not things that come in bags, boxes, bottles or cans. Remember our simple food rules? Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. I'll cover the not too much idea next week. So, now you're all sad because you realize that NO SUGAR means no chocolate. Well, not so fast. Here's a legit and yummy no sugar recipe that you'll turn to again and again. Try not to turn to it too often, however. These Fudge Babies by Elana's Pantry are a treat and not a regular component of an ass-kicking-CrossFit-low-sugar lifestyle. Click on the image for the recipe. BTW - these fudge babies are also vegan.
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