Category: Myth Busting Monday

3/9 Myth Busting Monday

3/8/2020

Coach Kendra leads the nooners through some calf mobility to get them ready for overhead squatting.
A few Monday's ago I addressed the myth that if you want to lose weight you need to to more cardio, and more cardio for most people means a long slow run. When most people consider what they need to do "to get into shape," they mostly think about doing long slow runs. The long slow run has a tight grip on the misbelief that it is the best way to lose weight and get into shape.
Don't get me wrong, a long slow run has its place in a well round and varied fitness program. We regularly program 5 and 10k runs for the gym, and a bunch of us are running at 10K or half marathon next weekend for Run to the Pub. Most of our Pub runners have been doing at least one long slow run every week to get ready. That's great! A long slow run combined with 3-4 days of CrossFit is an excellent training program.
A long slow run is also great for mental health. A long slow run can help you get into a mental state where you can either solve all of your problem, or completely forget about them.
However, long slow runs do not build muscle, or help increase bone density, or help improve other metrics of fitness such as speed, power, strength, flexibility, stamina, balance, agility, coordination and accuracy. The long slow run focuses on metric of fitness only - cardiovascular endurance. I argue that its not even that great, for the average person, at improving endurance.
Recently, Outside magazine interviewed retired marathoner Ryan Hall, arguably one of the best American marathoners of all time. Hall has made some significant changed to his fitness program and consequently he looks very different from his competitive marathon days.

When asked by Runner's World about his body composition changes, Hall replied:

“I’ve been small and weak my entire life—just, like, totally underdeveloped,” Hall told Runner’s World. “I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to be big and strong.”

“To be an elite marathoner with a body that’s light and lean: while you’re running, you feel amazing. You’re fluid and economical, floating along without having to carry a lot of muscle mass,” says Hall. “But the rest of the day, to be honest, is not a lot of fun. My energy was super low [throughout most of my career]. I took naps every day and felt pretty much useless when I wasn’t running.”

Useless is the absolute opposite of the type of fit person CrossFit aims to develop. Of course, we must remember that Hall was a marathon specialist, thus developing and maintaining his general physical preparedness (GPP is what we build through CrossFit) was antithetical to running fast marathons. However, when most people start a fitness program aren't looking to specialize. They're looking for well rounded fitness and when they look to running as the sole modality for getting fit they're losing of potential fitness gains by neglecting cross training, high intensity intervals and strength training.
Now that his competitive days are behind him, Hall encourages people who are wanting to look and feel good to place a greater emphasis on weightlifting and include easy runs in a cross training program. Huh, that sounds exactly like what we do every week at True Spirit CrossFit. We cross train our way to fitness, thus we become CrossFit.
You know another way to cross train your way to fitness? Do an obstacle course race! The Spartan Race is in Big Fork on May 2-3 and Coach James and WORLD SPARTAN CHAMPION Meg are ready to help you train for the Sprint (5 miles), Beast (13 miles), or the Ultra (about 30 miles).
Our OCR (Obstacle Course Race) Prep Course starts March 25 and meets Wednesdays at 6:30pm in the gym and Sundays (probably at 4:30PM) outside. If you want to do something FUN and change up your workout routine, this course is for you! Talk to Coaches James or Leslie for more info, or you can go here: https://www.truespiritcrossfit.com/ocr-training.html

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2/3 Myth Busting Monday

2/2/2020

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Jeremy is doing Femme Fatale Week and thinks you should, too.

The Myth of Food=Happiness and Exercise=Sexiness

I recently had a realization that we've been fed a lie. This lie is pervasive, persistent, and perturbing. We've been lied to our entire lives by the media, our families, our friends, doctors, food companies, exercise "experts," and all manner of well-meaning acquaintances. The lie is this: eat certain foods to feel a certain way and do physical exercise to look better. The realization I had is this is the complete opposite of the affect of food and exercise.
The food we eat has the most significant affect on our physical appearance. Six pack abs are not made through a thousand sit-ups, they're made through counting your macros. The food we eat can bloat our bellies, alter our hormones, give us GI distress, make our skin break-out, and make us look puffy, tired and sick. But, all of the messages about food is that we eat it to feel good. It's a treat. It's comfort. Have you had a rough day? Drink wine and eat chocolate to feel better. Want to celebrate a special occasion? Eat some cake and drink some champagne. Just had an epic bike ride or a big ski day? Go out for nachos and beer. Eat this to feel that.
We are told that eating and drinking will make us feel better. But, that's a lie. Physical activity makes us feel better. How many times have you dragged yourself to the gym in a dark and foul mood only to skip out the door after your workout feeling happy and unconquerable?
We are told that we can get a beach body, six pack-abs, big guns, tight buns, and "toned" (whatever toned means) by exercising. But, that's a lie. We get a beach body and all the rest of the things by eating meat, vegetables, nuts & seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar in amounts that support exercise but not body fat.
You can't out exercise your diet and you can't eat your way to happiness. Oh sure, you can try; but, the results will not be what you want. If you want to be happy and feel good, then you need to exercise (even when you don't feel like it.) If you want to look good naked, then you need change what you eat.
What should you eat? Well, a damn good place to start is to eat meat, vegetables, nuts & seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Coach Audy can help you get that dialed in.
What should you do for exercise? Well, a damn good place to start is practice and train major lifts: deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc., hard and fast. Five or six days per week, mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.

Femme Fatale Week starts next Monday!

Are you Ready? Sign up NOW!

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1/27 Myth Busting Monday

1/26/2020

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I believe I can fly!
MYTH: Women are not small men.
Women are different from men in so many important ways, and unfortunately, most modern nutrition and exercise research does not include the study of women. SERIOUSLY!
Dr. Stacy Sims, PhD, is an Environmental Exercise Physiologist and Nutrition Scientist specializes in sex differences.
In today's #mythbustingmonday blog I am sharing her Ted Talk on the unique qualities of women's physiology. She highlights the most important feature of being a woman and how we can work with that feature to make us healthier and happier.

Are you ready for Femme Fatale Week?

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1/20 Myth Busting Monday

1/19/2020

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We inchworm our way to progress. 

Myth: Progress is a linear progression,
or
you "should" always lift more, go faster, be "better" than yesterday.

It's a common myth amongst new CrossFit and power athletes that we should be better, faster, and stronger than yesterday, or last week, or last month.
In the CrossFit Level 1 training seminar, aspiring coaches are taught that an athlete's performance will vary based on

The force and time of the workout of the day
The nutrition of the athlete.
The amount of recovery between workouts.
The physical and psychological tolerances of the individual.

In other words, how you perform the workout of the day today may not be the same as how you performed it yesterday or could perform it tomorrow. Your progression is not linear because there are things that affect your performance, like your nutrition, your recovery, and your mindset.
Athletic development, what we do in CrossFit, rarely follows a linear path because, well, shit happens. We have a bad day, we don't sleep well, we eat too much of one thing and not enough of another, or we have an unrealistic expectation of what we "should" be able to do. Your TSCF Coaches call this "shoulding on yourself."
Don't should on yourself, please, it's a mess to clean up.
You may "want" to have a straight path to amazingness, but the reality of our path to becoming a badass is filled with bad days, potholes, deep dark holes of scariness, pizza and beer, not enough sleep, fights with our family, disagreements with our gym buddies, cold mornings, not enough sun, the wrong kind of coffee, zippers that won't zip, and the list goes on and on.
In fact, it looks a lot like this:

I argue that what we learn about ourself when we overcome these challenges is much more important that the satisfaction of being "better." The resiliency and mental toughness we gain learning how to fight our way out of the pit of despair, or making our next meal on target, or getting enough sleep, and learning how to take a rest day, will have far more benefit than a 1 second PR. As will learning how to not jump into the pit of despair when you don't get a 1 second, or 1 rep, or 1 round, or 1 pound PR.
In fact, as a Coach and Programmer for the gym, I can tell you that I expect all of us to follow the principle of progression. That means I intentionally program light days, long days and "easy days," because I need you to have some recovery before we build again. One of our biggest building blocks is coming up, it's Femme Fatale Week. I want you to be fresh and ready to tackle all 5 or 6 Femmes that week. Therefore your performance over the next month might very well look like this:

My own CrossFit and Olympic Weightlifting experience has followed this path. I enjoyed meteoric novice improvement my first 2 years then I leveled out and oscillated. Now that I have a coach, she programs specific training cycles where I don't get heavy. I'm in one right now and it was a big test of my mental toughness and ego to compete on Saturday and SPECIFICALLY NOT go for PR matches. I was only to lift up to 80% of my 1 RM, and I followed this plan because I know in April when I compete in the National Championships I will go for new PRs. Now is the time for training and practice, not competition. That's the subject for another blog post.
For now, know that I program for the gym knowing that progression is not liner and that we need to alter volume, load and intensity to allow for adaptation and progress.

Tell me in the comments what you have learned about your performance. What factors affect it this most? How have you incorporated this knowledge into your recovery practices?

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