âIs CrossFit Dangerous?
"CrossFit is dangerous." How many of us have heard this from a well-meaning friend or family? Here is the research. Now you can speak with real science to your friends and family. â
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Pat Tillman Hero WorkoutWe remember Patrick Tillman, whose end of watch was 20 years ago today. Tillman was a Arizona Cardinals football player who left the National Football League and enlisted in the United States Army in May 2002. He joined the Army Rangers and served multiple tours in combat before he was killed in the mountains of Afghanistan. He was a recipient of the Silver Star, the third highest honor in the military, and a Purple Heart. Pat is survived by his wife Marie. He is also remembered through the foundation named in his honor.
Founded in 2004, the Pat Tillman Foundation invests in military veterans and their spouses through academic scholarships – building a diverse community of leaders committed to service to others. The scholars chosen show extraordinary academic and leadership potential, a true sense of vocation, and a deep commitment to create positive change through their work in the fields of medicine, law, business, education and the arts. You can learn more about Pat Tillman in the book, Where Men Win Glory, by Jon Krakauer. Female Hormones and Body Composition
All this week I have been exploring how much to eat to support our training. By far, the most common question I get during our quarterly check-ins is, "How much should I eat?" Most of us have a goal to control our body composition so that we maximize our lean mass and keep our body fat percentage below a specific level.
Many, many of us have a weight loss goal. I understand and respect our desire to have a healthy weight. I also want to stress that it might be more important to track our lean mass rather than our body weight. Our body is amazing and the skin, muscle, bones, organs and body fat all play a vitally important role in our homeostasis. Lean mass influences our metabolism and body fat influences our endocrine system, aka hormones. This is why body fat percentages above 30% for men and women younger than 50 are a concern. Body fat is hormonally active and the more we have of it the more it impacts our insulin, cortisol, and other hormone regulation. Drop it below 30% and you reduce the risk of most metabolic diseases. Lean mass, notably, muscle, is metabolically active. The more we have the better we are able to stave off many diseases of aging (osteoporosis and sarcopenia, and to some extent diabetes and metabolic X syndrome.) You can ameliorate many of the health risks of high body weight by have more lean mass and lower body fat. That's why your body composition (lean mass and body fat) matter much more than your body weight. Remember, I can calculate your lean mass at your check-in or you can get it tested on campus. For us women, our hormones, during puberty, reproductive years, and the menopause transition can give us all kinds of challenges. This is especially true if we are athletes, which all of you at the gym are:) That's why I'm sharing this excellent and short podcast from Wild Health featuring Dr. Carla DiGirolamo the lead instructor of my Menopause continuing education course that I just finished. She provides an excellent synopsis of how our hormones impact body composition through all the phases of our hormonal journey. No matter where you are in your life, puberty, reproductive years, our menopause transition you will definitely learn something from Dr. DiGirolamo. Click on the link below to listen or go here. In this episode, Dr. Mike Stone and Dr. Carla DiGirolamo, board-certified Reproductive Endocrinologists who specialize in all aspects of fertility care, will be discussing a topic that is of utmost importance to many women - weight management and its relationship to female hormones.
I follow WOD Science on Instagram. They posted about a recent journal article on why middle-aged women do CrossFit. You can read the entire article here.
The research article states that: Women significantly reduce regular exercise during middle-age by up to 40%. Concurrently, women experience a reduction in basal metabolic rate and loss of lean muscle as they transition to menopause]; thereby increasing their risk for body weight gain and obesity. Obesity is associated with co-morbidities including diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers
It got me thinking about our gym and the amazing middle-aged women in it. Our gym is over 60% women and of those women 60% are 40 years or older. Clearly these women have heard the messages about the importance of lifting heavy shit and high intensity interval training as they age.
On the flip side, I have seen many, many people, men and women, come and go at our gym. So what makes you all so sticky and the rest of the population not? In my nearly 10 years of owning this gym I can usually tell by the end of Foundations how "sticky" someone is. Meaning, I have a good sense based after just 5 personal training sessions if someone is going to stuck with us or not. It's got nothing to do with physical ability. People who stick with exercise, particularly the kind we do at our gym, have particular mental toughness qualities. They are curious, want to improve, lean into hard things, and like having fun with other. The WOD Science folks found this factors lead to the best exercise adherence: CrossFit doesn't work well because it is more effective than other resistance exercise and endurance programs. CrossFit works well because it is fun.
What do you think? Why have you stuck with us for as long as you have?
Feel free to email if have ideas about what makes someone sticky. In the meantime, please take 2 mins and take my non-scientific poll. â |
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