Debbie is an Age-Group Quarterfinalist!Firebreather = 1. One who faces the triumphs and tribulations of great physical opposition with an indomitable spirit. 2. An optimistic energy associated with the heart of an athlete.
Debbie is a firebreather who had a goal this year. At our New Year Check-in she shared with me that she wanted to make the 2024 Age Group Quarterfinals. Debbie has been doing CrossFit since 2014. She started when she was 57! She is one of our strongest athletes and when she told me she wanted to make Age Group Quarterfinals I knew she could do it. Debbie is a regular in our 9am class. At 67 years young she is not the oldest in that class! She inspires everyone, young and old, to show up and do the work. Debbie finished strong in the last 2 CrossFit Opens, the first step for everyone to get to the CrossFit Games, but life threw a few punches at her that prevented her from progressing to the next level. She knew this would be her year. Not only is she in excellent condition, the CrossFit Games expanded the field of qualifying athletes to the top 25% worldwide. When that news was released she knew this year was her year! At our Check-in we came up with a plan to make sure she would be in her best form for the Open. It didn't include extra workouts or skill work. Debbie did a 75Hard challenge starting in January with a commitment to sobriety, a diet of whole unprocessed foods, and daily rucking and GOWOD mobility. She didn't need to work on anything extra. She just needed to eat well and keep her body moving well which her daily GOWOD practice provided. The daily rucking was a low intensity activity that gave her plenty of Zone 2 training and active recovery from 4 days a week of CrossFit training. Her Age Group Quarterfinal workouts were released last Wednesday, April 17. She had to submit scores for workouts 1 & 2 by Saturday, April 20 at 5pm and workouts 3 & 4 by Monday, April 22 by 5pm. Debbie regularly does CrossFit 4 days a week, but her training temp is 1 on and 1 off. Now she had to do 2 cycles of 2 on and 1 off! She was nervous, and she absolutely crushed it! Workout 1 included barbell snatches, rowing, and weighted step-ups to a 20 inch box. Well, 20 inches is darn near half her height. Those step-ups were HIGH and she did SO MANY! Her extraordinary effort earned her a top 200 finish IN THE WORLD! Workout 2 included wall balls and box jumps to a 20 inch box! Debbie had not done 20 inch box jumps since she was in her 50s. She did 35 box jumps! She did enough box jumps to place 199th IN THE WORLD for this workout! Workout 3 started with handstand push-ups and toes to bar. When she practiced on Friday she was unable to kick up into a handstand. When she did the workout on Monday she got FIVE handstand push-ups! We won't know for a few days how she finished in this workout, however it doesn't matter. Debbie went from none to FIVE! What an absolute personal best and total victory! Workout 4 was a difficult clean and jerk ladder at 65#, 75#, 85# and 95# pounds in a 10 min time limit. Debbie did all 10 of the 65, all 10 of the 75, and then after all that got one 85# clean and jerk! That weight is almost 75% of her bodyweight! Again, we don't know yet where this tremendous effort will land her, but to get that weight after all those other reps is incredible! Once Workouts 1 & 2 were verified she found herself in the top 250 IN THE WORLD! If her amazing efforts in Workouts 3 & 4 keep her there she will be moving on to the SEMIFINALS! WAY TO GO DEBBIE! Be sure to give Debbie a hearty, "WAY TO GO!" when you next see her. She is proof that you can be a firebreather at any age!
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Eat to Support Your TrainingA few weeks ago I blogged about how the Menopause transition is NOT the time for us to eat less and exercise more. Since then I've heard from a few of you about how do you determine how much to eat. First, aside from making us feel nourished and healthy, our food intake should fuel our daily activities. We need to eat enough that we can adapt to our training demands. We need to eat enough so that we have enough ENERGY to get us through our busy day, training session at the gym, and all of the other things we do throughout the day. So how do we determine how much to eat? First we start with taking some important, albeit, uncomfortable measurements. To know how much to eat we need to know how much lean mass we have. I can do that for you with excellent accuracy during our check-in. You can also go to MSU and measure you lean mass via the BODPOD. I mention these measurements can be uncomfortable. Not because the tests are uncomfortable but rather the results can be upsetting for some. In order to understand what our lean mass is we first have to measure our body fat percentage. That can be upsetting for some folks. However, we can't determine mathematically how much to eat without that vital statistic. Once we know our lean mass we can determine 2 important nutrition targets, our daily total calories which we will call Optimal Energy and the amount of protein we need. Knowing Optimal Energy is important because there is an increasing trend amongst the active aging population (that's all of us CrossFitters, women and men over 40) to not eat enough because we are trying to lose weight or are concerned about gaining weight. This is NOT the time to eat less and exercise more. It can lead to a dangerous condition called Low Energy Availability (LEA). According to the Menopause continuing education course I just finished from the smart scientists at Feisty Menopause: Active women are especially at risk for LEA because of high training loads and the traditional emphasis on being as lean as possible for many sports. If you have days, weeks or months when you feel like you just don't have enough energy to do ALL. THE. THINGS. and your performance in the gym decreases, you might just be in an LEA state. The menopause transition is an especially vulnerable time because as we are trying to ride the crazy waves of natural hormonal fluctuations we need to eat enough to continue to build muscle like its our job. Because my strong and powerful sisters, it is our JOB to build muscle in menopause. Low energy availability is a state we slip into after just a few days of not eating to support our optimal energy. Here's what I learned in my Menopause CE course: Clinical studies show that when you reach an EA less than 30 calories per kg of lean mass, your health starts deteriorating after just several days. Now that we know our optimal energy ratio is 30 for women and 25 for men (i'm looking out for you guys, too:) we can determine how many calories we need each day. We do this by multiplying our optimal energy ratio and our lean mass (in KG) to get the calories we need to eat each day just to survive.
For example, my lean mass is 135lbs. To convert that to KG, I divide by 2.2 to get 61KG. Now I multiple that by 30 to get 1840 calories. That is the minimum calories I need every day just to keep my body operating. This number 1840 is pretty darn close to the number of calories I need based on my BODPOD test. It calculated 1921 calories on a SEDENTARY day. On active days I should eat more. I mentioned that our lean mass is important for a second nutrition target. It is the minimum protein we need daily to maintain our current lean mass. In other words, I should eat at a minimum 135g of protein to prevent any loss of bone and muscle. If I'm trying to increase my bone density and lean mass (muscle) I need to eat more protein to support my training. How much more? We will cover that in another blog. Do you need help determining your optimal energy? Book a check-in with me and we can will calculate it together. Linda, Why Do You CrossFit?1. What was your fitness life like before you started training with True Spirit CrossFit? I wasn’t a gym person before joining TSCF. I had a few brief samplings of gyms over the years and was never impressed. My philosophy was keep fit for life by staying active in daily life, and hike, bike, ski for fun and fitness. Through this I kept some aerobic fitness, but I was losing muscle, strength and mobility with age. My son, TSCF member Thomas, was convinced I would enjoy CrossFit if I tried it. 2. What brought you to True Spirit CrossFit in the first place? A broken leg. A son that knew better than I did what I needed to gain back fitness from 3 months of none weight bearing on the leg. A paradigm shift: some gym memberships are worth fitting in the budget. 3. What was your first impression? Somewhat awed by the super-athleticism of some of the members (there were some super bad-ass girls in 6am class back then). I must admit that I felt pretty pathetic with my mega-scaling, but excused myself owing to my 'senior' status. I continue to admire the gym super--athletes (male and female), but no longer hide behind my age and I feel pretty pleased with where I am on my fitness journey. I now know to embrace the scalings, but those occasional Rx workouts do feel pretty sweet. 4. What was the first thing fun or positive thing you experienced while training with us? In first few weeks I ran a mile--I didn't know I still had a mile run in me. 5. Are you working on any special CrossFit related skill now? I never stop working on double--unders and rope climbs, both of which regularly regress back to ground zero. I would really feel more positive about calling my push up, a true push up if I could tighten the core and stop the 'sway' back. But currently my 'biggie' is working on my squat 'mobility'. To get better strength, stability, and form in air squats and other squats, I need to work on ankle, hip, 'back' mobility and core strength. (This realization emerged during mobility month.) 6. How has you life changed since training with TSCF? Definitely physically stronger and therefore more capable in the activities I participate in--yard/garden/land, skiing, hiking, (biking). I feel like I know my body better than I have ever know it. 7. What's your favorite True Spirit CrossFit memory? Maybe when TSCF hosted Festivus. After signing up, I got pretty freaked out about my ability to participate, but the level of mutual support and encouragement was in high gear, and I did fine. Lil' OLD me a cross fit competitor--who'd ever have thought it!!! Congratulations, Linda, on qualifying for the CrossFit Games w65+ Age Group Quarterfinals!How Long Does it Take to Increase Your Fitness?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. Increasing from 3 to 4 days per week is associated with 10% faster improvement. 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. 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! Join us for Chad with Nick tonight at 5:30pm! This is a fundrasier for the Step-Up Foundation and Nick's 30th and final Chad. |
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