Saturday 090802

"Nicole"

Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
Run 400 meters
Max rep Pull-ups

Post number of pull-ups completed for each round to comments.

Compare to 090626

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Paul Siratovich - Barkadalur, Iceland

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Gillian Mounsey, American Gladiator, and CrossFit - video [wmv] [mov]

Wednesday 090729

Run 10 K

Post time to comments.

Compare to 090701.

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Greg Glassman and Margie Lempert (CrossFit South Brooklyn), CrossFit 101 at CrossFit Watertown

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Mike Burgener on "Splitters" by CrossFit Again Faster, CrossFit Journal Preview - video [wmv] [mov]

Thursday 090730

With a continuously running clock do one 135 pound Clean and Jerk the first minute, two 135 pound Clean and Jerks the second minute, three 135 pound Clean and Jerks the third minute... continuing as long as you are able.

Use as many sets each minute as needed.

Post number of minutes completed to comments.

Compare to 090102.

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Jen Conlin, CrossFit Watertown

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"Human Potential, Steroids, and CrossFit" by Dave Tate, CrossFit Journal Preview - video [wmv] [mov]

I am the classic "hardgainer" - tall and skinny with a high metabolism, losing weight is a default state for me.  I have to consciously watch my diet to maintain weight, and take some pretty extreme actions to gain any.  Over the past three years, since I got serious about fitness, I've made several serious attempts to gain muscle mass - most of them have failed.

A few months ago, I tried again with a 12-week strength cycle that was my most successful venture yet:  I put on 16 pounds, about 8-10 pounds of which was muscle.  For those of you interested in putting on some muscle, I will share what I've learned.  None of this is a secret:  it's all freely available out there on the internet.  But it takes some experimentation to separate the wheat from the chaff, and then you actually have to DO it, which is the hard part.

I should point out that gaining MUSCLE and gaining STRENGTH are not necessarily the same thing.  Plain Vanilla CrossFit is actually quite good for gaining strength, but is not likely to add a lot of muscle to your frame if you're naturally skinny.  How does this work?  Well, when you flex a muscle to move a weight, you're not using anywhere near all of your muscle fibers to accomplish this task.  Regular training will train your Central Nervous System (CNS) to recruit more fibers from the muscles you already have, which will make you stronger without actually adding any bulk.  If you're a climber or otherwise averse to additional mass (muscle or otherwise), this can be great, but there are diminishing returns - you'll never get to 100% recruitment, and at some point you will need to add more fibers to continue to make gains.

Just like losing weight is a hormonal event, so is gaining muscle.  Your primary job is hormone manipulation:  stimulating the ones you want (hGH, Testosterone) while keeping the detrimental ones (insulin, cortisol) at bay.  There are essentially two places you need to make changes to make this work:  the kitchen and the gym.  I'll cover them separately.

The Kitchen

Not surprisingly, the most important thing you have to do is EAT.  A lot.  Way more than you think you should be eating.  More than seems reasonable, or maybe even safe.  You see, while you CAN get stronger without getting bigger (see above), you cannot gain MASS without a regular caloric surplus.  It takes a lot of energy to make new muscle fibers, and unless you're a teenager your body is reluctant to make that investment.  You need to convince it that it is flush with resources, and can afford new cells.

Living in caloric surplus, some amount of fat gain is inevitable.  Sorry.  You'll just have to lose it later.  Body builders refer to the cycles of gain and loss as "bulking" and "cutting," and wil frequently do what's called an "uncontrolled bulk," where they simply devour everything in sight, with no regard to macronutrient ratios or quality or caloric content.  Easy, but lazy, and can have some disastrous consequences on your performance when you gain 3 pounds of fat for every pound of muscle.

Better, in my opinion, to do a "controlled bulk" - where you ride the edge of just enough caloric surplus to put your body in growth mode, but keep fat gain to a minimum.  It's difficult to do, but your friends won't start calling you "Chubs" and you'll still be able to do a pullup.  Here are some tips:

• If you know your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate - the amount of calories you need to take in each day to roughly balance the amount you burn), aim for at least 500 calories above this.  Shoot for between a half-pound to a pound of weight gain per week - any more than that and you're piling on too much fat.
• Keep the carbs low, and low GI on the carbs you do eat - insulin spikes will just deposit all the energy you take in as fat.  I would aim for no more than 200g/day of carbs, on average.
• This leaves protein and fat.  Consume mass quantities of these.  Animal protein is far superior to vegetable protein in terms of bioavailability, and the most efficient source of protein (both in terms of bioavailability and price per gram) is the egg.  Omelets, frittatas, scrambled eggs etc are all your friends.  I would make meals out of nothing but rotisserie chicken, slices of cheese and nuts.
  
• A common technique, particularly among CrossFitters, is GOMAD (Gallon of Milk a Day).  This is a great way to add a couple thousand calories to your daily regimen without too much fuss or expense.  The only downside is that you have to actually drink a gallon of the stuff each day, which can be intimidating.  If you go this route, the milk should be whole and organic, and you should be under 25 years old - over that and you're likely to get chubby from all the carbs.  This technique is really designed more for Matthew and Jonathan than to the older among us.  I went with QOKAD (Quart of Kefir a Day) instead, and it served me very well.
• Keep food quality HIGH.  You don't want to be pumping chemicals into your bloodstream in large quantities, as your body will just have to filter it all out - and you want it focused on one task.  Eat your veggies with plenty of olive oil and butter, and avoid packaged foods, artificial sweeteners, and anything that comes in a tub with a picture of a ripped athlete on it.  That isn't food.
• Which brings me to supplementation.  Normally I avoid it, but in this case I did have a spoonful of Creatine Monohydrate a day (mixed in my kefir).  It's cheap, been around for ages, and has proven results.  It will cause you to retain more water, though.
• Stop eating 2 hours before you go to bed.  Large meals of any variety (high carb, protein or fat) have been shown to diminish the body's growth hormone response.  Human Growth Hormone (hGH) is the single most important chemical in this endeavor, and you really want to maximize it.  The body releases hGH in waves throughout the day, but by FAR the greatest release occurs in the first two hours of sleep.  Getting to sleep earlier (ie, before 10) also increases hGH release.
• For this reason, be VERY conscious of your sleep.  Get at least 8 hours a night, in a dark room, early and relatively fasted.

The Gym

One of the things that makes CrossFit so great is its adaptibility.  With just a little tweaking, you can keep CrossFitting while still focusing on gaining strength and muscle.  The goal here is, again, hormonal manipulation:  you need to send the message to the body that it really does not have sufficient resources to do what is being required of it.  The most effective way to do this is to lift VERY heavy weights in movements that stimulate the largest number of muscle fibers.  Typically, the two movements that are acknowledged to provoke the greatest CNS response are the Deadlift and the Squat.  (I just read an article last week that quoted Charles Poliquin as saying the Snatch-grip Deadlift off a 4" box is the single greatest muscle-building exercise that exists).  There are a couple ways to go about this.

• The most straightforward is probably Max's Simple 3x5 routine for CrossFitters, which he first wrote about ages ago.  Set aside two days a week just for lifting, and do Deadlifts and Squats with a couple smaller complementary movements (ie, Press and Bench Press), and then just go up 5 pounds every week until you can't go up anymore.  People have been doing essentially this routine for decades, and it is tried and true.
• There's been a lot of fuss lately about CrossFit Strength Bias (CFSB), which is an adaptation of regular CF WODs to promote greater strength gain.  It's gotten good reviews, but would essentially prevent you from training with CFEB while you were doing it, which would make us all very sad. 
• CF Norcal promotes Max-Effort Black Box (MEBB), and they proved its efficacy with their showing at the Games.
• In MY latest cycle, I went with a hybrid of CFSB and the 3x5 routine.  It was quite challenging, but wound up putting 30 pounds on my squat and 40 pounds on my deadlift, which I was very happy with.  If you have any questions about this routine, fire away.
  
• You'll notice the common denominator of all of these plans is that they have heavy weights, short rep schemes, and full-body movements.  Whatever you wind up doing, make sure you have these elements in place.
• Avoid high-volume.  Regular metcons are great, but try to keep your workouts under 45 minutes, and don't do any long-distance running/cycling/etc.  Long workouts will spike your cortisol and can actually be catabolic (ie, burning muscle for energy), and will send the message to your body that now might not be a good time to add more mass.

More info

I found these articles to be particularly helpful when I was figuring things out for myself.  If you're serious about putting on some muscle mass, I highly recommend reading all of them through.

• How to Build Sleeve-ripping Arms by Working out your LEGS?!
• How to Gain Weight and Build Muscle
  
• Building Muscle 101
• Hardgainer No More

WOD 090729

AMRAP* in 20 minutes:

5 C2B Pull-Ups
5 Handstand Push-Ups

Post number of rounds completed to comments.

*As Many Rounds As Possible

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/27/DDFM18K35E.DTL#ixzz0MTl3mSBw

 

 

Social Climbing at BIW 6-9PM

Come climb with the CFEB crew. If you don't know how this is a great opportunity to learn to top-rope: you don't need to own equipment, but there is a nominal fee for harness and shoe rental.

Post routes completed or attempted to comments.

 

WOD 090726

Noon

Four Rounds
Run 800 Meters
30 Kettlebell Swings 1.5P/1.0P
30 Burpees

Post time to comments.

1PM

Power/Weight Challenge

Details HERE

Cost: $50.00 to participate, free to audit.

Test:

1. Bodyweight
2. % Bodyfat
3. % Fat Mass
4. % Lean Mass
5. Max Rep Overhead Squats @ Bodyweight or % of Bodyweight 1RM
6. Max number of C2B Pull-Ups
7. Max number of Static HSPU
8. Max number of muscle-ups
9. Max number of static muscle-ups

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WOD 090725

11 & Noon

Squat Clean 3-3-3-3-1-1

Post loads to comments

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6PM

Polly's Birthday Dinner:

Flavors Of India
BERKELEY
3211 College Avenue
Berkeley, CA
510.658.3461

8PM

Drinks at:

Kona Club

4401 Piedmont Ave
(between Pleasant Valley Ave & Ramona Ave)
Oakland, CA 94611
(510) 654-7100

Wednesday 090722

"Cindy"
Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Squats

OR

"Mary"
Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
5 Handstand Push-ups
10 One legged squats, alternating
15 Pull-ups

All Pull-Ups chin over bar. henceforth all pull-up WODS will be specified chin over or C2B. Standards will be the same for men and women.

Post your choice of girls and rounds completed to comments.

OR

"DT"

5 rounds
12-9-6
Deadlift 155/105
Hang Clean 155/105
Push-Jerk 155/105

Post time to comments.

WOD 090723

Press 5-3-3-1-1

Post Loads to comments.

WOD

1x2400m run
2x12 c2b pull ups
3x8 2pd kettle bell swings
4x6 HSPU
6x4 reverse burpee
8x3 Kettle bell snatch
12 x 2 muscle up
24 x 100 meter sprint

Post time to comments

From a typical nutrition textbook: "When you eat too much you get fat, when you don't eat enough you get thin, everybody knows these simple facts but nobody knows exactly how to account for them". This is an oversimplification with a lot of truth to it.

There are some folks (you see a lot of them at a climbing gym) who have a really hard time adding any muscular mass, and can, for all intents and purposes eat whatever they want in pretty much any quantity without gaining significant bodyfat. These folks are ectomorphs, skinny and often tall: the "98 pound weakling" of yore. They are also known as "hardgainers" and have a difficult time gaining muscle mass or getting strong.

On the other end of the scale is the endomorph, who easily gains fat mass, but generally can easily become strong. Almost all unlimited weight class Olympic lifters seem to be of this type.

Those who are smart enough to have picked the right parents are mesomorphs, like pretty much all of the top males and most females at this years CrossFit Games. They are lean and muscular, a cultural ideal.

These body types can be mixed: meso-endo and meso-ecto. It may be that the different body types have different insulin sensitivity: Dr. Barry Sears in The Zone, thorizes that about 25% of the population have a poor reaction to carbohydrate leading to obesity when consuming a high-carb, especially high glycemic carb, diet. He postulates that significant genetic adaptation may have taken place in about 25% of the population that enables them to eat a high-grain diet with little or no ill effects (they stay skinny and don't get tired even if they eat giant pasta meals). Finally, everyone else is somewhere in the middle: his Zone DIet is designed to work well for all the types.

So what happens in the body to the carbohydrate, protien and fat we eat? It is pretty complicated, but here is what you need to know for fat loss or muscle gain. Please bear in mind the human body is an almost incomprehensibly complex machine: what follows is a vast oversimplification. Additionally metabolism is not fully understood, so this represents what I think is the best understanding we have today.

Our bodies are constantly burning fuel, simply to exist, even when asleep. this is called basal metabolism. Generally this is fueled by a 50/50 mix of fat and glycogen (the product of carbohydrate). Any food over and above metabolic need is converted to bodyfat, or excreted. During moderate-intensity aerobic work, this ratio switches to favor fat burning perhaps 70/30. During intense exercise (short metcon) the body is burning through glycogen at a blistering rate, preferring nearly 100% of energy needs from glycogen. Intense work of this type increases the bodies metabolic need quite a bit subsequent to the actual work, so additional bodyfat may be burned afterward. So given adequate glycogen, fat can be burned through exercise and bodyfat can be decreased. Very little, if any, muscle wasting occurs as long as nutrition is adequate.

However, when we intentionally deprive the body of calories (fasting) the following comes into play: the body can actually power itself quite well for up to about a day on stored glycogen and fat, which are turned into glucose and fatty acids and flow into cells to power them. (this is assuming you are not doing Murph in addition to fasting), however, the brain needs glucose to work, and in the absence of glycogen, the body will begin breaking down lean muscle tissue to create glucose, a metabolically very expensive process. This is why starving yourself will not work. Anything below 1500 cal a day for men and 1200 cal a day for women, on average, is going to result in significant muscle loss. And this is average: most CrossFitters have more muscle and more metabolic demand.

So: without even considering the protein requirement we see that just the right amount of deficit must be created to lose fat and not muscle. One reasonably simple way to get it right is the Zone Diet, the CrossFit diet of choice. Find your block count, and then take 1-4 blocks off of that depending on how fast you wish to lose weight. Of course the more you take off, the more danger you are in of losing muscle. It is ESSENTIAL to weigh and measure everything on this diet, certainly for the first few weeks.

Next: The Hardgainer

 

Here is the format for the Power/Weight Challenge: This is specifically NOT a weight loss challenge, those might be fine for TV, but focusing only on weight lost is simplistic and not for athletes, some of who need to gain, not lose, weight.

Losing "weight" is really, really easy. Losing fat mass, without losing significant lean mass (muscle, bone) is difficult. Losing fat mass while gaining muscle mass is quite difficult indeed but by no means impossible. Gaining muscle for some is just as hard as losing fat is for others. 

So: each participant will pony up $50.00 for each 5 week challenge, winner take all.

Stats will be taken at the beginning and end of each challenge, including lean body mass/body fat using a decent bioelectrical impedence scale. Come fully hydrated for each test to minimize the error of the scale (it actually measures total body water and extrapolates LBM from that). Picture optional.

Challenge "A" will run from Sunday, July 27th to Sunday August 30th
Challenge "B" will run from Sunday September 27th to Sunday November 1st.

This will give us time to concentrate on FGB IV training and also not have our metabolisms spun down much. Done correctly this will result in significantly improved athletic ability, not to mention looking better naked.

Each participant will choose a category (I will not allow gaming, you must choose the proper category, If you don't know, I will guide you):

Ninja AKA Hardgainer AKA Ectomorph
Tank AKA Chubby AKA Endomorph
Hybrid AKA Everyone Hates You AKA Mesomorph

Points are assigned thusly:

Ninja - 1 point per pound of mass gained.
Tank - 1 point per pound of fat lost -.5 for each pound of muscle lost
Hybrid - 1 point per pound of muscle gained, 1 point per pound of fat lost

Overhead squats:
from .25 to .5 BW 1 point
from .5 to .75 BW 1 point
From .75 to BW 1 point
Each additional rep @ BW 1 Point

C2B Pull-Ups:
One point for each addtional point above baseline, including zero.

Static HSPU
One point for each addtional point above baseline, including zero.

Muscle-ups:
Two points for each additional point above baseline, including zero

Interesting study (note it was not done on athletes)

More than anything else (even chocolate), coffee is my vice.  Particularly now, having (temporarily) eschewed dairy, coffee is the one remaining food that I consume more of than I really probably should.  I love it so $#@*%# much.  I try to limit myself to only four shots a day (two in the morning, and two in the afternoon), but if I'm stressed out or an opportunity presents itself, I rarely turn down an opportunity for more.

Is it really all that bad?

When you talk about coffee and health, what you're really talking about is caffeine - which also includes tea (another favorite of mine), energy drinks and supplements (no.  just no.), and, in tiny doses, a handful of other foods.  As far as I can tell, the jury is still out on the health benefits/detriments of coffee and caffeine.  Depending on where you look and whom you ask, coffee is either a perfectly healthy dose of antioxidants (it does have quite a few) that can save you from Alzheimers, or it will give you heart attacks and raise your blood sugar levels.  Oh, and as far as exercise is concerned, it will reduce blood flow to the heart and/or lessen the pain, allowing you to push harder.  Every month or two someone posts a "Is coffee OK?" thread to the CrossFit nutrition forums, and it erupts into a war of opinions formed from some recent study or other.

So whatever.  Until someone comes up with something conclusive, you can pry my double americano from my cold, jittery, overcaffeinated hands.

How do you take yours?

One of the best gifts I have ever received was a fully automatic home espresso machine, given by my wonderful and understanding wife.  Push button: get espresso.  A logic both perfect in its simplicity and stunning in its effect.  For several years now, we've lived in a mild, darkly roasted buzz of contentment.

The machine is great, and we won't be giving it up anytime soon (we've already repaired it twice).  It does, however, have its drawbacks.  First of all, it's expensive to buy and, if it breaks, expensive to fix.  With all the moving gizmos and computerized whatnots it contains, there's a lot that can go wrong.

Drip coffee, the default choice of most Americans, is definitely a lot cheaper, and almost as easy to make.  The biggest downside is that, in comparison, it really doesn't taste very good.

Since we stopped dairy, we've been drinking our coffee black, and doing this has been eye-opening in more ways than one.  You see, cream does an excellent job of masking deficiencies in both bean and brew, so when you drink the pure stuff, you get more of the good as well as more of the bad.  And if it's bad, it's very very bad.  Cream also counters the acid that can dominate a hot-water brew--acid that is the primary motivator of that scrunchy-nosed wince you gave when I mentioned drinking black coffee.

Introducing cold-brew coffee

Even with the Italian wondermachine on our counter, we found that once our coffee cooled down a little, we would be grimacing at the bitter, acidic tang.  I had tried cold-brew coffee at Cafe Gratitude, and liked it, remembering something in their woo-woo menu  about how the cold-brew had less acid, so I let my fingers do the googling to see if it was doable at home.

Turns out it's really, really easy.  And soooooooo good.  Iced, hot or lukewarm, every sip is free from bitterness but full of flavor.  And it is powerful stuff, too!  I didn't know it was possible for me to feel the effects of caffeine anymore, but I made my first cup a bit too strong and spent the morning in a highly productive and somewhat bemused cloud.

You see, the extended brew time extracts about 90% of the flavor and caffeine elements, but only 10-15% of the oils and acids that make up the bite we associate with normal coffee.  It's the same drink in many ways, but remarkably different.  If you LIKE bitter coffee, you probably won't care much for cold-brew - it seems people either love it or are singularly unimpressed.  But if, like me, you love and accept coffee in ALL its glorious forms, then you should definitely give this a try.

Here's all you need to do to try it yourself.  Mix one part coffee (coarse grind) with four parts water in a container (I use one of those half-gallon glass jars with the flip-top lids).  Stir and let it sit overnight, in your refrigerator or on your counter.  10-12 hours is optimal, but anything over 5 hours will do.

In the morning, filter out the grounds.  I use an old french press I had sitting in a cupboard, but you could use a paper coffee filter or even a fine-mesh cheesecloth.

Be careful:  the resulting brew is concentrated coffee, too strong to drink as is.  You'll probably want to keep this in your fridge and dilute it again about 50% when you make your drink.  This stuff is awesome for iced coffee, as it's already cold so it won't melt your ice cubes.  Enjoy it with apple slices smothered with almond butter. 

Heaven.

Social Climbing at GWPC 6-9PM

Come climb with the CFEB crew. If you don't know how this is a great opportunity to learn to top-rope: you don't need to own equipment, but there is a nominal fee for harness and shoe rental.

Post routes completed or attempted to comments.

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WOD 090719

3 Rounds

16 Kettlebell Swings 2.0/1.5P
12 Burpees
8 Hang Power Clean 135/95
4 Thruster 135/95
Run 400 Meters

Post time to comments.

CFJ_Warkentin_RedeemingABadRun.pdf

This years games were amazing to watch. Mikko Salo proved himself and there is absolutely no question he deserves the title of CrossFit Champion.

However. For my money, the most exciting athlete at the games this year, by far, was Jason Kalipha. Of course he is a local boy and we know him personally, but his come-from behind performance from 72nd to 5th, was, frankly, legendary. Anyone who might have been mumbling that his win last year was a fluke has been silenced, and he is a strong, strong contender to be the first two-time CF champ. Oh and in case you don't know? Kalipha can run, whatever happened on that first event was not indicative of his general running performance.

The first time I saw Kalipha in action was years ago at CrossFit Oakland: there was a hopper throwdown to inaugurate their new space:

3 rounds
21 Front Squat 95
21 Jump Squat
3 Muscle-up
Run 400 meters

Jason blazed through the first round so fast ( he was out the door for the run in barely over 2 minutes) that I was sure he was finished. This huge dude, clearly had never done CF and was about to die any second. So wrong. Jason finished in a little over 14 minutes, far, far ahead of the nearest competition. So I was not surprised when he won last year, and I won't be if he wins next year.

WOD 090719

Clean and Jerk 5-3-3-1-1-1

Post loads to comments.

Team CrossFit East Bay Crushes Third WOD @ 2009 CF Games

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Run 6.2K

Followed by:

Max Deadlifts in 90 seconds 185/135

Last runner starts 10 minutes after finishing run. Runners are seeded for deadlift in reverse order (last goes first, first goes last) every 90 seconds after last runner starts.

Scoring - 1 pt for first place in each event, 2 pt for second place in each event, etc. Lowest score wins. Tiebreaker - best time in run, if still tie, most reps in DL. If still tie, sudden death 30 sec max DL, 2009 Games rules 315/185

WolverAndy and Doron Bromance

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WOD 090716

In this workout you move from each of eight stations after three minutes. The stations are:

squat cleans (100/155 lb.)
toes to bar
box jumps (20/24 inches)
muscle-ups
Single-Arm Push-Press 1.5P/1.0P
double-unders
thrusters (95/135 lb.)
pull-ups (chin over bar)
burpees
walking lunge steps with 45/25 lb. plate overhead

The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of "rotate," the athlete/s must move to next station immediately for good score. One point is given for each rep.

You must perform at least 15 of each exercise to qualify except: 10 muscle-ups for men, 5 muscle-ups for women.

There will be scaled versions and/or heats available for all levels of ability.

Post number of reps completed to comments.

WOD 090715

Run 800 Meters

5 Rounds

Barbell Hang Snatch 45# 28 Reps/18 Reps
Barbell Thruster 45# 28 Reps/18 Reps

Run 800 Meters

Post time to comments.

If you missed the 2009 CrossFit Games, you missed a hell of an event. Hopefully you were able to piece together some of what was happening from the blog posts, official videos, facebook and twitter updates, but in order to connect all those dots, I'm going to undertake a detailed summary of our experience at the Games this weekend. You might want to go get a cup of coffee, as I suspect this is going to take a while.

Thursday: Anticipatory Jitters

Thanks to some clever thinking and dedicated organization on the part of Rebecca Hodges, our accommodations were, in a word, plush. While other affiliates crammed into tents, Rvs and hotels, we had a beautiful house in Santa Cruz just a couple blocks from the beach. Our setup at the games was also great, as Max went down early with the Touchstone pavilion and snagged us a great spot in the Affiliate Village. Most of us, however, carpooled down after work, grabbing dinner when and where we could. Energy was high, and temptation ran strong to enjoy our surroundings and live it up a little, but everyone knew what a difficult day lay ahead of us, so it was lights-out by about 9:30 or so.

Friday: Team CFEB

Affiliate Cup registration started at 6am, with a mandatory meeting for all teams at 8. We stumbled out of bed at 5am to catch a little breakfast before heading out. Those who came down to cheer us on gamely tolerated our early morning boisterousness, and a lucky few were able to catch a few more Z's before joining us at the Ranch.

The CrossFit Ranch is a no-longer-working cattle ranch on a hillside overlooking Highway 101. Everything centers around the barn, which is the first thing you'll see when you get there. The barn was off-limits to all but those working and competing in the games, as were two of the three workout areas: a long, narrow strip on one side dubbed the "stadium", with a steep hillside topped with four banks of bleachers, and a smaller "north pad," bisected by a permanent pullup structure. The third workout area was the hill that looms over the whole scene, run through with a labyrinth of what might generously be called "groomed" trails. As long as it wasn't being used for an event, the hill was open to everyone, and you could see people trying their hand (or feet, as it were) at the hill run throughout the weekend. North of the ranch was a series of tents where vendors and sponsors hawked an array of gear sufficient to make any CrossFitter drool, and where you could get an assortment of (mostly) healthy food and really good beer. Next to this was the Affiliate Village, where any attending affiliate could set up a pavilion or tent to provide a space for their athletes to rest and socialize between events.

When we arrived, the weather was foggy and really freakin' cold. While I had anticipated a long line for registration, it actually went quite quickly, and we spent the extra time setting up our pavilion. They called all the teams down to the stadium for a meeting at 8, where they basically just went over the various workouts and went over the movement standards. The first workout started at 9, and our heat started at 10.

10am: Hill Workout

Team members: Elaine, Ynez, Andy, Gita

The workout: It was basically a simple relay race with a twist. The course was a 500m loop, with about 120m of very steep uphill and downhill, with the rest being relatively flat but extremely uneven ground. Every team member would run the loop once, and then the whole team would run it together.

Elaine started it off for our team, and she put her motor into a gear I didn't know she had, taking off up the hill like something with very sharp teeth was chasing her. She paid a price for her enthusiasm, though, as lactic acid buildup in her legs forced her to slow down on the flat stretch. She FLEW down the backend, making up some lost time before handing the baton off to Ynez. Ynez had a tough time on this one - her allergies kicked in with all the dry grass and dust, and she came back down the hill tasting blood in her throat. Andy rocked his lap, careening down the hill on the edge of losing control before handing the baton off to Gita, who was chomping at the bit. Despite running on a sprained ankle, Gita turned in the fastest lap and made up precious time. After the final lap as a team, CFEB completed the workout in 13:22.

12 noon: North Pad Workout

Team members: Elaine, Rebecca, Max, Andy

The workout: in 20 minutes, every team member was responsible for contributing a 3-rep-max Overhead Squat, and 3 max-rep pullup sets. The score for the team would be the sum of these 16 numbers.

This workout was difficult to watch, and I don't mean in any sort of painful way or anything. It was literally difficult to see what was going on, as the team's bar was away from the crowd, behind the pullup bars. The team did well on the pullups, each member knocking them out and making them look easy, but despite Max's impressive 185-pound OHS, we just didn't have the amazing overhead numbers of some of the other teams. Andy did, however, succeed in getting one of the judges to call him "Wolverine," which was a personal triumph. We finished with a score of 700.

2pm: Stadium Workout

Team members: Rebecca, Ynez, Andy, Gita

The workout: Tricky to describe. Basically, this workout was a nightmare version of Fight Gone Bad - for the official description click here. We had been watching it chew up teams all day, particularly the wallball. The target was higher than 10', and there was something about it that made it much more difficult than regular wallball (which, as we know, is usually a walk in the park) - some said it was uneven footing, others that the target was away from the wall and visually difficult to focus on. Fully a third of all teams DNF'd. The team was nervous.

They did a fantastic job. Ynez started it off, and kept a slow and steady pace that allowed her to keep hitting the target, avoiding the trap of desperation that ensnared other teams who would keep trying to hit the target through muscular exhaustion, burning themselves out further. They finished the wallball in 9-and-something minutes, hitting the round-robin of workouts in high spirits--Andy even singing and dancing along to the music while rowing at a 1:38 pace. This did not continue, as the reps and rowing took their toll on each member. Gita, a confirmed atheist, found himself praying to God to let him survive this workout. They got to the deadlifts, and the expressions of agony on each team member's face as they pulled that weight off the ground through metabolic exhaustion made their effort clear to everyone (Rebecca in particular had a rather startling grimace of pain, as you can see from the photo a couple days ago). With a minute thirty left on the clock, Ynez stepped up to the bar for the final round of deadlifts. It didn't look good. Dave Castro, the emcee, directed the crowd to cheer her on and, facing several hundred audience members wildly clapping and yelling, Ynez grabbed the bar and started pulling. Her first few lifts were pretty quick, but a bit erratic, and her attempt to sneak a bar bounce past the judge was unsuccessful. With less than a minute remaining and her legs giving out on her, Ynez fixed her eyes on the horizon and cranked the remaining lifts out in a single set, finished the workout at 24:50 and putting CFEB in the company of all the other affiliates who were grateful just to have finished the beast.

Team CFEB did not achieve a high ranking at the Games this year. But I couldn't be more pleased with the way things went. Every team member achieved a personal moment of triumph, and faced a moment of extreme personal challenge. These highs and lows are the fundamental building blocks of CrossFit, training the mind and spirit as well as the body to face extreme adversity and learn to persevere. These Games will stand out to these athletes as a time when their training took a big step forward and they learned a great deal about themselves and what they are capable of. I am immensely proud of them.

The relief in the air on Friday night was palpable, as everybody had a chance to tell and retell their stories, and look at the pictures and videos and relive the day. Not to mention the hot tub. And the beer. Max was very strict about a 9pm quiet time in the house, though, so Polly could get her rest before her big day on Saturday. Some folks, all tuckered out from the day, just went to bed, while others went down to the harbor bar for some more...recovery. The weekend was far from over.

Saturday: Apollonia takes the Helm (ha!)

Polly confessed to having weird, beast-infested dreams that night. She had to get to the ranch pretty early, and a handful of people went early too, for a chance to explore the course of the 7.1k trail run before the competitors would get on it at 9am. Alex, Jenn and I went running on the trail to see what was over the hill, and were pretty amazed with what we found: an astonishingly steep hillside, covered in poison oak, without much trail to speak of. It was difficult to WALK it. I thought maybe the announced course was a joke--that they couldn't seriously ask over a hundred athletes to RACE up and down that hillside. Turns out they could.

First workout: 7.1k run

They assembled the athletes on the stadium, with electronic chips in their shoes that would record their elapsed start and finish times as they ran over special pads, so they wouldn't have to jostle for space at the starting line. They sang the National Anthem, then Coach Glassman came out and said a (remarkably) few words before handing the mic off to Dave Castro, who caught everyone off-guard by simply saying, without any preamble, "3-2-1 go."

The run was a mile of flat on the road, then three laps of increasing length and steepness on the hill, then a final mile on the road. With so much looping around, it was hard to get a sense of where the competitors stood at first, but it was a lot of fun to watch Polly come flying down the hill, passing other runners like they were standing still (unfortunately, once the road started going up again, they'd often pass her again). It was NOT fun to watch two women run themselves to mental and muscular failure - one falling down the hill as though she were completely drunk, and the other falling down and unable to move her legs less than fifty feet from the finish line. They were taken to a hospital, where hopefully their prognosis is good.

Polly finished the run in good time and good shape, saving her energy for the rest of the day.

Second workout: Deadlift ladder

This was completely fascinating to watch. They lined up 40 barbells, 20 for each gender, at 10 pound increments. The men went from 315 to 505, the women 185 to 375. Each competitor had 20 seconds to complete their lift, and 10 seconds to move to the next barbell. They used a particularly cruel reverse seeding mechanism throughout, so that the athletes who finished the run last started the deadlift ladder first. The athletes went as far up the ladder as they could before failing. Several men made it all the way through, but only one woman did. Polly made it to 265, a 25 pound PR for her.

Third workout: Sandbag sprint

Starting down in the stadium, athletes had to sprint a short distance to their sandbag(s) (one 35# bag for women, two for men), pick up their bag, then sprint to the top of the hill approximately 170m away. This was my least favorite event, from a spectator's point of view - they ran it in heats of five athletes, but didn't announce or post scores so there was no way of knowing where anyone stood or how well they needed to do. One very interesting moment was the heat with Jason Khalipa and Chris Spealler, athletes at opposite ends of the spectrum. Speal's first-place finish in the run but very weak deadlift put him solidly in the middle of the pack, as did Khalipa's nearly-last place run and completion of the entire deadlift ladder. On the hill sprint, they wound up neck-and-neck, finishing within 1.5 seconds of each other. Polly started strong, leading her pack out of the stadium, but fell behind as the grade got steeper and steeper. She still did well with a time of 1:26.3.

Fourth workout: Row/Sledgehammer

What a bizarre workout. Row 500m, then hammer a metal stake into the ground, then row again. The separation on this one between the people who knew how to use a sledgehammer and those who didn't was huge - some people knocked it down in almost no time, while others kept flailing away at it, either missing or not using enough force to push it down. The audience tried to cheer on the latecomers, but it was all outside our experience to try and judge. Due to the quirks of the ranking setup, Polly wound up sitting right next to CFO's Candace Hamilton, her rival (at least as imposed on her by us). So that made for some good cheering. Polly used the flat of the hammer to settle the stake in the ground, which served her well, but waited a bit too long to turn the hammer and use it properly, slowing her down. Her time of 7:56 wound up putting her in her lowest ranking of the day - 52^nd place (50^th overall).

It was enough to keep her out of elimination, though, something she seemed decidedly ambivalent about - storming back into the tent demanding her lifting shoes and cursing up a storm about having to do the final workout - a brutal couplet of wallball and squat snatches.

Fifth and final workout: Couplet

3 rounds, 30 wallball and 30 snatches (75#/45#). Remember, this is the same wallball that wrecked the affiliate teams the day before, and wallball is a longtime nemesis of Polly's. To be honest, I kind of expected her to phone this one in - it was impossible for her to make the top 16 to advance to Sunday, and she'd already done four difficult workouts that day.

She didn't phone it in. She attacked that thing with a level of ferocity I haven't seen in Polly before. She came up with a good rhythm of letting the ball drop off the target, catching it on the bounce and throwing it back up that suited her well, but where she really shone was the snatches. Disliking the slant of the ground when facing the audience like they wanted her to, she turned around and faced the woman behind her, working the snatches in what looked like an eye-to-eye competition. This put her back to us (we were all crowded around the fence), so we yelled as much encouragement as we could in the hopes that she could hear us. It damn near killed her, but she came in second in her heat and 20^th overall, her strongest performance of the day.

It was a long, long day. Most of us wound up missing the last couple heats and heading home so we could get dinner started (Polly, Gita and Max stuck around). With all restrictions on being responsible lifted, I believe there was some rather...rambunctious celebrations downstairs. I don't really know, though - I was passed out in my bed.

Sunday: Planet CrossFit

The final day was a relatively lower-key affair, with some folks having to head home early, some folks enjoying the opportunity to sleep in a bit at last, and having to check out of our lovely house. Most of us missed the first event, a 1RM snatch workout. We got there in time for the second workout, though - an AMRAP triplet of HSPU's, kettlebell swings and GHD situps that had a few athletes looking completely rocked. Jason Khalipa was particularly impressive on this one - he basically never stopped moving, coming in second.

The Affliate Cup final was exciting. Although it was essentially a foregone conclusion that Northwest CrossFit would win, it was thrilling to watch Invictus and Calgary come from behind and then finish the workout in a neck-and-neck race. The individual final for the men and women did not have as many tight races, but it certainly had some great moments - watching the Icelanders (Annie and Sven) learn how to do a muscle-up during the final workout of the CrossFit Games had the crowd going nuts, even though neither of them were able to finish the workout because they couldn't get the necessary 10 muscle-ups. Charity Bell turned in a breathtaking performance, often 2-3 exercises ahead of her closest follower. Jeffrey Leonard (a local and a favorite at CFEB) had great difficulty getting through his muscle-ups, but cracked everyone up when he walked over to the 40# dumbbells for the push-press, picked them up and started strict-pressing them like they were 2-pound womens' calisthenic weights. Mikko Salo turned in a solid, no-nonsense and no-drama performance like always, taking the title from Tommy Hackenbruck, who just couldn't maintain his lead. Jason Khalipa turned in yet another fantastic performance, quieting all the critics who said he didn't deserve the title last year. If not for the trail run where he performed so abysmally, Jason would almost certainly have gotten the title again this year.

Overall, going to the CrossFit Games was a bit like going to a different country - if not a different planet. Nearly everyone there, women included, looked like they could easily kick your ass, yet they were without exception the friendliest, most easy-going people I've ever hung out with. The crowd, made up entirely of CrossFitters, knew the pain the competitors were going through at the most personal level, and cheered just as wildly (if not more so) for someone in last place as they did for someone in first. The Castros and the Ranch did a fantastic job of hosting, and the whole thing moved very smoothly - impressive considering it's only the third annual games, and it has grown so rapidly.

I'm already looking forward to next year.

CFEB Ultra-Hard Recovery Protocol

Polly's secret recovery protocol. Polly went from 50th place (just squeaking by to be able to participate in the 5th WOD) to 34th based on her strong performance in the final workout.

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Games update: the affiliate team worked hard, but glory was not to be ours today. On to the individual competition tomorrow.

CFEB Beach HQ, Santa Cruz

You can keep apprised of our activities and status this weekend in a couple ways:

1) Facebook.  If you're not already on Facebook, make an account and request to be my friend (Daniel Olmstead) and Rebecca Ralls.  We'll be posting photos and updates throughout the day.  So will others, I'm sure.

2) The official CrossFit Games site.  You can check it out now for some videos and previews of the events, and they've promised to update it with scores in real time.  CrossFit Radio has said they'll be webcasting live.  There's also a Twitter feed from Sevan and Carey, the semi-official CrossFit filmmakers.

If you need to reach someone, you can try me at 510-684-0103.

Andy M. 2 Pood Swing

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Individual and Team WODs will be announced tomorrow: Team members, Captain, plus Polly please plan on being at BIW at 7PM to stragegize.

WOD 090708

Run 800 Meters x 4 every 9 minutes on the ninth minute.

Post splits to comments.

090709 - No Class

090710 - Affiliate Cup Competition, Aromas CA
090711 - Individual Competition, Aromas CA
090712 - Final Elimination Individual and Affiliate Cup

Barry Sears's Zone Diet is - by default if nothing else - the official diet of CrossFit.  It is what they taught me at my certification, and it is by far the most popular eating plan of the most performance-oriented CrossFit athletes. Within that population, however, there exists an even more hardcore dietary philosophy, espoused by CrossFit gurus at the highest level and followed by the most dedicated of athletes.

While Zone may be the official diet plan of CrossFit, it only deals with proportions. There is in fact a higher commandment, handed down by Coach himself in one of his earliest Journal articles and posted at CrossFit.com - so ancient that he suggests you use "alta vista" for more information about it.  The commandment is this:

"Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds,
some fruit, little starch and no sugar."

And that's it. As it happens, this is a perfect synopsis of the paleo diet.

What is Paleo?

It goes by many names.  Mark Sisson brands his version "The Primal Blueprint."  Art Devany calls it "Evolutionary Fitness."  But the source of paleo is usually attributed to one man:  Dr. Loren Cordain.  Regardless of the source, however, the core philosophy is the same:  humans evolved over millions of years to thrive on a specific diet of things that could be hunted and gathered.  Then, about 10,000 years ago - an evolutionary eyeblink - the invention of agriculture changed everything.  And as agriculture was refined and industrialized, it became an ever-increasing part of our diet, bringing with it an ever-increasing list of ever-increasing ailments: everything from heart disease, diabetes, cancer, all the way to bad teeth.

The paleo response to this is simple:  don't eat anything that paleolithic man would not have eaten.  You wind up with a menu essentially like the one quoted above.  It sounds pretty great, actually, until you get into the details of what you can't eat:  No grains, sure, but also no beans, potatoes, dairy, alcohol, caffeine, sugar... or salt?!

It's not that simple, really

A couple points that I feel need to be made here, right up front.  While I agree with the fundamental argument of paleo, in common practice I find it to be both naive and drastically oversimplified.  First of all, evolution didn't stop 10,000 years ago.  Yes, it's a tiny fraction of time compared to 2 or 7 million years, but we haven't exactly been sitting on our evolutionary asses all this time.  We've gotten much better at digesting and processing foods that would likely have killed our ancestors outright.  Secondly, as far as I can tell, all the dietary restrictions of paleo are built around a series of intolerances that are not consistently represented across the population - that is, foods that are a problem for some folks, but not others.

A more nuanced take on paleo, therefore, would suggest finding those things that YOU are intolerant of, and cutting back on just those things.  Much better, right?  So, what are the candidates?

The Intolerables

Grains
This is the big one, so lets start here.  You see, the trouble with grains is that they pack a double wallop of dietary disaster.  First of all, they provoke a much larger insulin response than they really should.  This is true of whole grains as well as processed ones, though the processed ones are definitely worse.  Second, grains contain a group of antinutrients called phytates and lectins (most specifically gluten) that, in some cases, cause a severe autoimmune response called Celiac Sprue.  Not everyone has a severe response, but everyone shows some degree of inflammation from consuming gluten.  And the hyperinsulinism and toxicity feed off each other, compounding the damage wreaked by each.  Personally, I find the evidence persuasive enough that I eat very little grains.

Sugar
We've covered this one.

Beans/Legumes
The argument here is that these require some degree of processing/cooking/blanching in order to become edible, and many of the toxins present in the raw plant remain.  It's basically the grain argument again, with the same cast of characters:  beans are high in phytates and lectins, antinutrients that can cause some folks a lot of damage.  The biggest bummer?  Peanuts and Cashews are legumes.

Dairy
I remember some authoritative and self-righteous vegan once telling me that humans are the only species that continues to consume milk after weaning, and the only one that consumes the milk of another species.  I don't know if that's actually true, but I can't think of any counterexamples off the top of my head.  Dairy and all of its many delicious, creamy byproducts are a result of animal domestication and agriculture, and therefore off the menu.  Plus:  lactose intolerance is a real thing, and not uncommon.

Nightshades
This one is so hardcore that it's controversial even within paleo.  Nightshades are a particular class of plant that includes potatoes, eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers.  They contain a high concentration of alkaloids, which can impact nerve function and digestion.  Those who abstain say that they cause a kind of soreness/lethargy throughout the whole body.

Yipes!

Yeah, no kidding.  Cutting all that out would, in a word, suck.  Sure, you'd be safe from just about every autoimmune disease out there, but you'd also be a serious pain in the ass at dinner parties.  Better, in my opinion, to figure out which things really affect you and just limit those.  You don't even need to eliminate them completely - we're not talking anaphylactic shock as a consequence, here.  But at least you would know what digging into that ratatouille really means, so when you wake up aching the next day, you'll know why.  I hope it was worth it.

So how do you know?  Well, there's really only one way:  pick a thing, and stop eating it for a while.  See how you feel.  Measure your performance - does it go up or down noticeably after 2-3 weeks of rigorous abstention?  Reintroduce it, and see what happens.  If it's nothing, then yay!  You're all clear.  If you feel like a racehorse without it and a pile of horse crap after eating it, well:  sorry.  Now you have a story to tell at dinner parties when you have to explain why you're not eating whatever dish the hosts have lovingly prepared for you.  Jerk.

You see, if you've lived your whole life with a mild intolerance to a type of food, you likely don't even know it's there.  If you lived your whole life with a mild allergy to something in your environment, the constant mild aggravation to your system would just be background noise.  You'd be used to it.  Until you went on vacation somewhere else, and got a taste of life without those allergies - you'd suddenly feel phenomenal in comparison!  Same thing.*

Here we go...

So, in the interest of this personal experimentation, Rebecca and I have embarked on a journey of ridiculous difficulty:  30 days without dairy.  This was actually her idea - I swear!  At the end of which time, we shall down some cold, refreshing, achingly delicious organic milk, and pray that we don't feel a thing.

I am not a dietician.  CrossKitchen articles come from my personal experience, observations and research, and should not be construed as professional medical advice.

*Props to Byers for the metaphor.

CrossFit East Bay Games Prep from Maximus Lewin on Vimeo.

Here is video from our CrossFit Games Affiliate Cup prep series.

We (Gita D. and I) realized early in our training that we did not have the time to equal bigger stronger teams in terms or pure strength or power. It simply takes too long (years) to get really, really strong. For sure we will be working on this going forward into 2011 and 2012.

Instead we chose a dark horse strategy based on interpretations of Coach G's statements over the past year that we we chose to regard as clues. When I spoke with Coach at last year's games he stated that in 2010 he wanted it to be ungameable. The phrase he used was "farm work for time". He also mentioned an obstacle course. I read into the article coach posted with the phrase "an army lives on it's legs" as suggesting work capacity would be paramount. Finally, there is a remark buried in one of the videos where coach says the Games is an opportunity for affiliates to show the superiority of their programming, perhaps hinting that main site WODs might not be the best prep for the games.

Taking into consideration the logistical set up of The Ranch we supposed that one way to try to make it ungameable was carry heavy objects up the hill, stage them and work out with them at the top and/or along the way. We guessed that sandbags would be one way to do this, and, in fact, there are now many sandbags on The Ranch equipment list.

So: we focused on building capacity, teamwork and being comfortable in a variety of hostile environments (in the above video it is 109F). We also did some urban forest obstacle work. Another staple of our training was hill run metcons along the lines of Cath-22 from the Norcal qualifier. We worked out hard twice on Sundays for six weeks to prepare for the games format.

Once we chose our team, we built on our capacity base and have tried to optimize team members as "Tank", "Ninja" and "Hybrid".

If the event(s) is long-ish (20 minutes+) and focused on pure work capacity we expect to do well. If is a heavy weight metcon (like some of the NorCal Throwdowns), we expect solid mediocrity.

We have taken a bit of gamble here, but we feel it was our best shot, and, no matter what happens, I am very proud of my team and happy with the work they put in.

We are looking forward to game day.

More on Polly's individual training to come.

Photo: Doron Serban

WOD from 09.06.27:

In teams of 5:

Carry equipment up ridiculous hill in 109F heat.

5 Rounds each team member:

5 DL 275/165
10 KB swing 2P/1.5P
15 Jump Squats

Carry Equipment down hill.

Team "A" - 60:00
Team "B" - 63:00

WOD design by Torquedmada Jr. (Daniel Olmstead, L1)

Video to follow.

Blog Article.

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WOD 09.07.05

Noon:

Three Rounds
Run 400 Meters
21 Kettlebell Swings 1.5P/1.0P
12 Squat Snatch 95/65 (Mid-Atlantic Qualifier Rules)

1PM

"Row Faster I Hear Banjo Music"

530 PM

Final 2009 Affiliate WOD

Location and format TBA.

Andrea, Bill and Albino Dynamite

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4th of July Awesomeness WOD @ Tilden

WOD 090704

2PM and 3PM - Tilden Park, Berkeley (map).

Run X meters (TBA)
50 Table Jumps/Bench Jumps
50 KB Swing 1.5P/1.0P
50 Push-Ups
50 Barrier Jumps
50 Ground to Overhead 95#/65#
50 Burpees
50 Jumping Pull-Ups
50 Sit-ups
Run X meters (TBA)

Break up the reps in any order. Begin and end with an X meter run.

Post time to comments.

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This will in all likelihood take place at PADRE picnic area in Tilden, but it may be at a nearby area instead if that one is already taken. Call me at 510.910.2919 if in doubt.

There is a BBQ afterward with the folks from CFEB, Athletic Playground etc.

This event is open to EVERYONE. Bring all of your friends! If you were planning on going
to another party, bring all of them to this instead! =)

Bring
some yummy food to share with everyone. We will almost certainly be
able to get access to a BBQ if you want to bring veggie skewers, meat,
etc.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the park, take a look at this map: http://www.ebparks.org/files/EBRPD_files/brochure/tilden_south.pdf

WOD 090703

12-9-6

Deadlift 250#/185#
Thruster 115#/85#

Post time to comments.

In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. We've used this in 3 and 5 round versions. The stations are:

1. Wall-ball: 20 pound ball, 10 ft target. (Reps)
2. Sumo deadlift high-pull: 75 pounds (Reps)
3. Box Jump: 20" box (Reps)
4. Push-press: 75 pounds (Reps)
5. Row: calories (Calories)

The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of "rotate," the athlete/s must move to next station immediately for good score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each calorie is one point.

Post score to comments.