575# (200 squat, 110 press, 265 deadlift). Did WOD this morning since I can't be at class tonight. I haven't done backsquats at CF before, so I was kind of improvising for weight. Deadlift form was hideous, but I've done this amount before. Must be because of the squats.

The 2010 CF Games page is up now with detailed info on the sectionals and affiliate cup.

http://games2010.crossfit.com/

Looks like there will be affiliate qualifiers in May and our section is last year's NorCal region. The NorCal section feeds into the California-Arizona-Hawaii region.

This is a horrendous misinterpretation of science. Evolution maximizes the average reproductive success of the species. This is a SINGLE VARIABLE into which every nuance of life must be reduced with no room for contradiction. Evolution optimizes for more babies. Not strength. Not health. Not long life. Unless i'm missing something, with the exception of Bill and his exceptional Matthew, in the eyes of evolution, we're all failing. Because evolution reduces everything about us to a single variable, nuance and contradiction are lost. For example, you have a high chance of reproductive success if you eat more fruit, but less chance of success if you get killed by a snake. These are only two out of billions of variables that evolution must reduce to a single value. The problem is that if snakes live in fruit trees, evolution will select for people who hate fruit. EVEN IF FRUIT IS A GREAT THING TO EAT! and it's likely that people will keep hating fruit long after we're left the garden and have the developed the knowledge to keep snakes out of our fruit trees.

Second, the evolutionary process can't predict the future. Evolution maximizes the reproductive success of the species IN CURRENT CONDITIONS. And I think more than a little has changed in the past 2000 years. Most of us alive today will live to be over 100, compared to about 30 a millennium ago. Am I going out on a limb suggesting that perhaps the optimal diet to stay healthy for 100 years of mostly sitting and thinking might be a little bit different than the diet that was optimal for less than 30 years of chasing down dinner while running from what thought you'd make a good dinner?

Third, a Differential Optimization process like Evolution finds a LOCAL MAXIMUM and you're implying that 2000 years ago it settled on a global maximum. For example, if asked to find the highest point in the bay area, if it found grizzly peak, a process like evolution would stop right there Why would you rely on a process like this when with knowledge we can do better? Hell, standing atop Grizzly peak, a person might just might look up from their toes and see Mnt. Diablo in the distance, and take a little stroll to check it out.

If you want to eat more nuts and leaves, that's great, and it might very well be the optimal diet but please stop using the concept of Evolution to justify it. To paraphrase Jon Stewart "You're hurting Science".

CrossFit East Bay and Princess Raindrop: Hurting Science Together Since 2009!

I was paradise!

Seriously the science is a little soft, but there is no question in my mind this stuff works. I don't really care why.

The evolution argument doesn't do much for me, but I'd be hard-pressed to argue a pasta and sausage diet is as good for you as a kale, sweet potato, and fish diet. Similar calorie/carb content different nutrient content. In the simplest form that's really what the paleo addition to the zone is, no (allergens and all that aside)?

Sorry forgot the workout. I still have some knee soreness, so I limited this to 3 sets of RDL and press... Definitely not the same workout anymore, but better than either nothing or further injury. I'm thinking I'll work back into a full range of lifts in the next cycle.

RDL: 290-295-300(f)
Press: 140-145(f)-145(f)

Yeah, I'm not arguing that the diet isn't better for you than shakes made from mixing cupcakes and hotdogs in a blender.

My point -- and it's important -- is that for a whole litany of reasons, evo bio is useless as a guidebook for nutrition and claiming otherwise misuses science and likely leads to bad dietary decisions.

The diet might be great, but drawing a conclusion about anything after a 60 day test with a sample size of one and a totally bs mechanism smacks of quackery.

I'd let it go, but my new years resolution is gonna be to call out bad reasoning and I need the practice.

My version of the anti-evolutionary-diet rant:

Any approximation of eating like cavemen is not only impossible but extremely dangerous. Virtually none of the plant-based matter that cavemen ate is available to us today---agriculture has led to the extinction of most of the edible plants that would have been available to the caveman, and we would not be able to chew the roots that he ate, because we don't have the jaws for that anymore. (We evolved, you see.) He would not have been able to find meat regularly, and much of the meat that he ate would have been partially decomposed.  Being raw, this meat was hard to chew, tho decomposition would help with that. Red meat would have been particularly hard to deal with---the caveman probably scavenged bones for the marrow as much as for the meat. Insects were more readily available, and he ate them live.  The caveman's diet included intermittent starvation, gastrointestinal parasites ingested with his food, and the microbial effects of eating rotting meat. So, who wants to sign up for a diet of termites, rats (if you can catch them,) roots, rotting bones, tapeworms, and hunger?  That's what the cavemen were eating when they had the babies that became our ancestors...whether or not it would make us strong and healthy is up for debate. I would say give it a try, but that would be impossible---the food available to us now is simply of too high a quality to make such a scientific trial at all viable.

My what big jaw muscles you have:
http://www.science-art.com/image.asp?id=1599
The better for chewing on roots for 10 hours a day, my dear.

(Further references available on request.)

Despite cancers, obesity, widespread poverty, and the best efforts of Cocacola and Phillip Morris, we are now the healthiest and the prettiest we have ever been in the history of the species, we are living longer than we ever have, and if it came down to a reproduction competition between us and the cavemen, we would win hands down. A lot of the time they probably weren't eating well enough to menstruate. Us today, we don't have a kid a year anymore, but we could if we wanted, and they'd all live, and we could feed them too.

OF COURSE we are not evolved (yet) to live on Coke, Skittles, Cheetos, and Krispy Kremes. OF COURSE we are healthier and stronger with fruit, vegetables, meats, and GRAINS. And some of us with milk, tho only roughly half the planet---makes the other half strong, tho, apparently. If you can make a scientifically sound evolutionary argument for any type of food, it would be, hands down, grains. The whole planet of humans has gotten where it has through bread, noodles, and rice. If we measure world power based on diet, who is winning, the bread-eaters or the hunter-gatherers? Evolution is definitively and uncategorically going to pass on the genes built on grains. Are we going to say that evolutionary biology has determined that bread-eaters are superior and that hunter-gatherers are unfit? If you were a cowboy in the wild west, you would have used this argument to justify shooting Indians, who were savages and going extinct (not withstanding that almost all Indians were farmers, a fact that history intentionally buried because farmer Indians wouldn't have been so clearly savages, and if they weren't so clearly savages, they wouldn't have been so easy to shoot.) Evolutionary arguments make me sick, sicker than Skittles. Besides CrossFitters and cowboys, who makes evolutionary claims? Nazis. The KKK. White supremacists of all kinds, often to justify wholesale murder. (And Gita, but we like him, and he means no harm.)

Eat vegetables and meats. They are better for you than donuts. Cut grains out of your diet, if they don't make you feel healthy. But the most recent finding of CFEB is Daniel's realization that adding more carbs to a diet that had been nearly Paleo probably made him feel smarter, happier, and more energetic. And happily, this study didn't rely on psuedo-science, which is not only stupid but dangerous, and has proven to be especially so in its evolutionary guise.

Bill you made my day. Strike that, I would like rephrase my statement. You made my month; possibly, you will get the whole year we will see soon enough.

305# (150# deadlift, 70# press, 85# squat)

I really think this isn't as complicated as some would make it seem. Eating fruits, nuts and most non processed meats=good diet. Eating hard to digest meats, simple sugars and other processed carbs=bad diet. Using the average life expectancy 2000 years ago to back your point is a very simplistic way of thinking and doesn't take into account many many variables. anyway, I didn't squat today because of sore quads. 145-150-155f on the press, 345-355-365f on the deads. added in a 19:27 5k on the treadmill for shits and giggles

355-135-245 = 735 - sort of forgot to eat for a few days. Oops. There seems to be a complete lack of hunger on this awesome Caveman Diet I am experimenting with!

It seems to me that you're being awfully literal about the evolutionary arguments behind paleo and primal. I don't really buy them at face value either (and I have more than a few quibbles about the prohibition on grains and dairy), but I do agree with the more generic message of "we perform better when we eat these (old) foods than when we eat these (new) foods, and that is probably because we've been eating the older foods longer and are thus evolved to maximize nutrient absorption and utilization from them."

I also think there's an important difference between how we (as athletes) approach diet versus how we (as humans) do. It's performance vs. propagation. As humans, Alex is right that our prerogative should really be having more babies and fewer barbells. If you want to measure the score of your life in terms of benefit to the species, then you should spit out as many babies as you can between the ages of 13 and 40, and then you should die. To achieve this, you'll be primarily interested in a diet that has far more to do with volume and cost than it does with quality - ie, all the cheap corn-based crap that Michael Pollan is continually warning us away from. You only have to make it to menopause, anyway, after which you'll only be a drag on the rest of us.

If you'd rather measure your life by the number of healthy and productive years you can attain, then yes: that is different from what evolution wants you to do. This is where quality becomes more important than quantity, and the higher you get in your goals of achieving the most your body has to offer, the more you're concerned with rather esoteric things like "celiac disease" and "insulin response."

"Paleo" or "Primal" are shorthand terms that Len Cordain and Mark Sisson have adopted for the latter goal, whereas you seem to think they really apply better to the former. Fair enough, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - their reasoning may be flawed, but their findings are valid - for our purposes, at any rate. If it bugs you to call a real food diet "paleo," then perhaps we just need to come up with a better name.

DL: 315-325-335

Press: 120-125-130F

Squat: 235-255

Gotta learn how to count my weights. Thanks Gita :o)

Total: 715

Wait, who wrote the great...great grandparents response? Alex, damn well done. I considered this in the (local maximum, single variable) but the Bill and Matthew line threw me, a swing and a miss. Today is a good day, now I must work.

DL: 175-180-185
Press: 68-68-68
Squat: 135

Total: 388

Haven't done CFT before so this is a good benchmark. I've added strength on my DL but lost some on the press and squat. Guess I know what I need to work on...

DL: 160-175-185
Press: 55-65-70(PR)
Squat: 120-130x2-130
TOTAL: 385

DL - 135-145-150(15# PR for 3rm), 5# shy of 1rm
Press 50-55(f)
Back Squat 65-75-80(f or rep #3), i just got stuck, i think i could have done it if i tried again.

DL: 245-255-265
Press: 95-100-105x2f
Back Squat: 105-110x2f-110x1f

Squats are hard especially after heavy deadlifts.