Thursday Morning (6/10/10) GPP, and Good Eats on a Buck a Day? Yeah, Right…

Nothin’ fancy about this one, just a straight-up, down-and-dirty, early morning GPP iron session.

farmer’s walks: 100 lb DBs for 1 lap (150 yards) x 1, 1, 1, 1
whip snatch + OHS: 115 x (3, 3), (3, 3), (3, 3), (3, 3)

Want to make 115 lbs feel like a friggin’ ton?  Whip snatch and overhead squat that piddling amount following a hundred-and-fifty yards worth of farmer’s walking with a pair of 100 lb DBs.  I did two “sets” of 3 each round — with a minimum break between the 2 “sets” — because I couldn’t perform 6 straight; not with anything resembling decent form, anyway.  I completed each lap of the walks with a single short break about midway through; had to take 2 breaks, though, on the 4th lap.

I followed that 4-round lovely with an additional 150 yards of farmer’s walking; this lap, though, with a break at the half-way point for some Nautilus 4-way neck work: 50 lbs x 10, front and each side and 60 lbs x 10 to the rear.  I reduced the tempo with these to 5/0/1/0.

Good overall workout.  The real key to pulling off this kind of a session is the same as in pulling off a successful HIT/SS session — battling the mind’s incessant calls to “throttle-down!”.  There’s just not much for the mind to fixate on during a farmer’s walk other than the suffering that the body is enduring.  I played mind-jedi games (20 more steps, 19, 18, 17…) and concentrated on “walking the line”, which also doubled as working the hip girdle even more (moving toward a “crossover” step.  Using these techniques, I was able to squeeze out a little more distance between breaks.

I Appreciate the Guy’s Moxie, I Really Do — But…

…but this seems to me more like a speed-shift into the metabolic-derangement fast lane — all for a low low $1 a day!! — than any kind of long-term “bargain”.  Hey, there’s a reason why these foods are cheap — for the most part, they’re subsidized by the government.  How many coupons do you ever see for grass-fed beef or locally grown vegetables?  Good food might cost me a little more than a buck a day, but I’ll gladly pay it.

3/20/10; A Little Bit of Everything Workout & Some Thoughts on Explosiveness vs. Elasticity

“Age is mind over matter — if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter” – Mark Twain

A long bout of fixie intervals, some barefooted sprints, and a little bit of iron heavin’.  Spring broke in a beautiful way here in eastern NC, so I got out and about and made the most of it.

After about an hour-and-a-half of fixie intervals about town, I hit the Rocky Mount soccer fields where I shifted from clipless bike shoes to Vibrams, and proceeded to knock-out 7 x 120 yard sprints; this following a good bit of hip mobility work to act as a transition between the “biking motion” and the “sprinting motion”.  I’ve mentioned before how difficult a transition this is — especially the longer and more intense the former activity (in my case, almost always biking) vis-a-vis the later movement.  Two more non-complimentary endeavors you’re likely to find.  I love each, though, and so I’m okay with the fact that each, by bio-mechanical necessity, reduces the efficiency and proficiency of the other.  At this point in my “career” I’d rather be a generalist than a specialist anyway.

Following the sprints, I went into the gym and, following a Bergener warm-up* (explanation here), I lit into the following:

Whip snatch to OHS x 1 + heave snatch x 3 @ 115 lbs
straight bar muscle-ups x 3

Three rounds of that, then –

GHR: 40 x 5; 50 x 4, 4, 4
Straight bar muscle-ups: x 3, 3, 3, 3

So, 7 total rounds of muscle-ups here.  The whip snatch, OHSs and heave snatches were mighty tough following the fixie ride and sprints.  *If you have access to the CrossFit Journal (if you don’t, you’re really missing out), make sure to check out coach Bergener working with Owen Franks of the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team at Mike’s Gym in Bonsall, Calif.

Explosiveness and Elasticity

I’ll come back to this more and more over the coming days, because it’s been kicking around in my mind lately; mostly because I hear the terms used — and wrongly so — interchangeably, and too because I think it might help to clean up some confusion when it comes to sporting comparisons and exercise prescription.

Explosiveness and elasticity came up in a recent discussion I had with a friend of mine, concerning the recent NFL combine and the collegiate “pro days” currently ongoing here in the US (basically, these are “tryouts” for the  professional level of American-style football).  Then, in a way that only S & C geeks will truly understand, our discussion shifted to a fantasy sprint match between American-style footballer Chris Johnson, (he of the 4.2 second 40 yard dash fame) and Olympic gold medalist and world record holder, Usain Bolt.  We agreed that CJ would have a good chance of winning a hypothetical 40-yard dash square-off, and most assuredly would take any version of a three-cone drill.  We also agreed that Bolt would take the hypothetical, straight-up 100 meter sprint, hands-down.  That he agreed here was a no-brainer.  But, the why behind our predictions is where we differed in opinion.

Bolt’s 100 meter superiority doesn’t all have to do with his gi-normous stride length — although that is no doubt a huge advantage, especially among athletes of similar, superior sprint-specific gifts.  No, I’d also say that Bolt has the one-up on CJ in what is commonly known as elasticity — the property of the human body to store and release energy.

Ahh, but CJ has the one-up on Bolt in explosiveness.

Think “shot out of a cannon” — explosiveness — vs the repetitive, bouncing super-ball; elasticity.

Plenty of ground to cover, here; more on this idea to follow.

And, as a nice segue into what will be the most obvious question to stem from an explosive/elastic discussion — can these qualities be effectively trained? — Here’s an interesting KQED Forum discussion on the “nature/nurture” debate; David Shenk (author of The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong).  Now, although I am convinced of the reality of significantly affecting your genetic hand (in both intellectual and physical realms), I happen to give a little more credence to the genetic side of the equation than does the author.  Still, though, and interesting talk, and certainly good food for thought.

In health,
Keith

2/22/10, MetCon and Unilateral Work, and a Couple of Interesting Stories Courtesy of NPR

Lead-off this morning’s workout with the following bout of MetCon work:

Barbell Whip Snatch* to full Overhead Squat: 95lbs x 6 reps each round

Reverse-Grip Pull-Ups: 45 x 6; 70 x 6, 6, 6

Weighted Dips: 45 x 7; 70 x 6, 6, 6

Four rounds of that, concentrating on the quality of each exercise’s reps as opposed to attempting to squeeze in everything in minimal time.  Overall time was a distant second concern.  Notice that the rep scheme here for each exercise was such that the time-under-tension fell at approximately 10 seconds.  This was not by accident, as I was targeting work on the anaerobic energy system.  I should have increased the weight a bit on the whip-snatch to OHSs and decreased the reps to 4 or 5, as I ran a little over time-wise here (approximately 12 seconds TUT to complete 6 reps, i.e. approximately 2 seconds per rep).
*Think explosive barbell muscle up, with a little more hip kick.  Or, somewhere between a power snatch and a barbell muscle-up.  Note: googling “whip snatch” or “power snatch” is…er…an interesting experience to say the least, and not necessarily safe for work  🙂

Then it was on to some more unilateral work — and some marked improvement in the function of my right leg’s pistol ability.  Good news!

Single-Leg Deadlift (reaching variation): 25lb plate x 7, 7, 7 (each leg)
Pistol Squats: 25 lb plate for both right and left legs x 7, 7, 7 (each leg)

These two exercises were done in superset fashion.  Nice to see the functionality in my right leg returning so quickly.

And in other news…

My contention has always been that diet success has more to do with one’s ability to adequately manage emotion and situations more than anything else.  Knowledge, combined with emotional maturity, can overcome any obstacle (be it weight issues or otherwise).  And to that end, NPR’s Morning Edition ran a story this morning (Rational or Emotional?  Your Brain on Food), that you might find interesting.

Hmmm, you say — leptin…what’s that hormone all about again?

Stephan, of the wonderful blog Whole Health Source, did a fantastic Leptin / Lectins series a while back (part I, part II, part III) that you might want to revisit after having taken in the NPR stories.  It always comes back to the avoidance of sugar and grains, doesn’t it?  How simple can you get?  Eating a healthful diet doesn’t require advanced intelligence, but it does require a bit of determination — and probably most important, emotional intelligence.

And then we have the follow-up to the Rational / Emotional story, Why We Gain Weight as We Age, with lots of discussion on age-onset muscle loss (sarcopenia).  All that’s required is the proper stimulus, though, coupled with the proper diet, to maintain healthy muscle mass well into one’s later years.  Just ask Art DeVany and his lovely wife, “Wonderwoman” about that.