Israel

This thing with Israel is nuts. First of all, 2 points about anything I say about it.
1. I've really just scanned articles and headlines, and do not know details in depth.
2. My points of view are completely 100% based on biases, stereotypes, and paranoia.

That being said, I am a huge supporter of Israel, and as a Jewish person am extremely defensive of it. However going through news reports it seems like the Israeli press was trying to feed the public a lot of bull shit. Obviously they are not going to be completely neutral, but it seems that its been especially thick. I hope that Israel is in the right here, and they should be willing to allow outsiders to investigate. If they are in the wrong and used excessive force then they should face their consequences. I understand their feeling of a need to barracade gaza is to protect from rockets, but perhaps there is a way to allow aid to innocent civilians (which I'm sure there are some).

John Welbourne

Check out the new blog of John Welbourne, the creator of CrossFit football, where he answers questions about the program: http://talktomejohnnie.com/

First some good news for me! I maxed out on my deadlift, squat, and press on Monday. I set a huge PR (personal record) of 25lb with a 450lb lift. It really didn't feel heavy, and my next goal of 500 is in my sights. I hit a 10lb PR on squat with a 325lb with our coach Craig seeing the sight. It feels good after not being able to squat like a human being when I started. This again felt light. I'm still stalled on my press and can't get it going. I was told to work on handstand pushups and variations to improve that.
WOD
For time:
20 175lb overhead
40 burpees

time: 5:40
Scaled to 135 on recovery day, burpees still suck


There was a very interesting entry but one of my friends on our gym's blog (www.crossfithoboken.com) about trying to go RX (perscribed) on our workouts. For examble that would have been doing 175 today. He had a great point that to improve, you should challenge yourself even if it means not having the best score in the gym. It was excellently well written and I will repost it here hopefully. It was a very inspirational post and I agree with it mostly, except that most people especially beginners need to understand that there has to be a reasoning behind the workout. For example, we have a workout 21-15-9 of thrusters and pullups, called Fran. Fran is the most painful workout, and the record is around 2 minutes. So yes if you can complete the 95lb thrusters and real pullups in 20minutes you did it RX. You also completely missed the point of the workout, which is meant to be short and challenging. Whereas this same person could scale it to 55lb thrusters and pullups with a band, and do it in 7 minutes. Which is better? I say the second option in which you minimized breaks and maximized effort. So go for RX and if you can be in the realm of what the workout hopes to affect, go for it, but keep the WOD's goal in your mind.


I felt somewhat introspective tonight, and realized something. If you have true passions in life, true feelings, or true beleifs, that needs to be put ahead of what anybody else thinks. I have some passions, but I've realized that no matter what my reason is, I need to be into it for me and not for anything else. I love fitness and nutrition. I love to talk to people about it and if they ask me questions I'm totally game to go all night. I also realized that most people truly dont care. I'm never going to look like a calvin klein model (thank God) or a huge powerlifter, no matter how strong or fit I get, and I realized thats not at all my goal of working out, whereas that may have been the reason I started caring. My workouts are challenging mentally and physically. I get to challenge myself in strength, stamina, and power every day, and every day is different. Some days I only put in 80%. some days its the full effort. Here are some things I have learned in the past 10 months:


-It's ok to fail. Our coach Bennett just posted this about his failed attempt to climb Denali: When a critical part of your self is defined by competition, you begin to judge everything by the outcome, not the effort. I really don’t care about the preparation, the training, or anything else. I wanted the summit. Therefore, I failed. People have tried to console me on this very topic, calling it a “failed attempt” or saying “safe return” was the goal. This is simply not true…I FAILED. The question is whether it is bad to fail, and the answer is absolutely not. Through failure, you learn more about yourself, your ability to weather adversity, how strong you really are, and what you are truly made of? I like to think I am all guts, a tough guy, nothing phases me.

-You can work out on your own, but working out with others is almost always far better. If your a competitive person this can drive you way past any effort you can do on your own.

-The impressive feat is not going balls-to-the-wall in a single workout. It’s doing it the next day. And the next. And the next. Forever. It's not just workouts. It's everything you care about in life, everything you are passionate about. It's making sure every practice you coach and 8 yr old baseball team you help the worst player as much as the best. It means that at work you go out of your way to find out what will help the most and do it without being asked. Whatever it is for you, do it. And then do it again.

- Take a break. Some people are total A types, can go hard nonstop in everything and never need to slow down. I'm not like that at all. I need to rest and relax. I need to "shut off" with some relaxing at night. It's important for mental (and physical) health.

- Music makes it better. it makes your workouts go faster. And for me, it makes everything better. I love music and will hopefully adding some selections to this blog. I used to love to play music, and still play a little guitar, but have learned to really enjoy all sorts of music.

-Step outside your comfort zone. this is one of the biggest. doing 100 squats at body weight for time was really hard. I went through the entire emotional spectrum, from self doubt, to agression, to legit sadness, to actual anger. I was way out of my comfort zone and felt it. For the next couple of days i felt like i could do ANYTHING. It was awesome. Repeatedly taking yourself out of the comfort zone lets you do much better things. I have been doing well in the gym with it, and need to take it out to the rest of my life. Being out of your comfort zone is good in real life to, and I will start doing that more.

-Something unrelated. try and look in your own eyes in the mirror. you can't do it. maybe it takes looking at the people you surround yourself with to understand who you are. hopefully their eyes are what makes your happy.

Nutrition: Are we crazy?

From Robb Wolf, and Norcal Strength and Conditioning

NorCal Nutrition: Are We Crazy?

Posted by Robb on November 04, 2008 - Posted in News
There are 47 comments, Add yours!

You might have noticed that the nutrition approach we recommend at CrossFit NorCal is a bit...oh, shall I say, contrarian? Where the USDA, AMA and the rest of the Government sponsored entities recommend grains and legumes as the base of the diet, we recommend lean meat, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.

That’s crazy, right? aren’t we going to die from heart disease and cancer if we eat meat? How will we ever get fiber if we don’t eat grains!? I mean, fruit and veggies...what have they got to offer?! I’m being fecetious here, I hope you get that. I do understand our recommendations fly in the face of what we are told to eat from nearly every source you can find...what’s the deal? Well...the deal is, our nutritional approach, a diet the attempts to emulate that of our paleolithic ancestors, is without a doubt the best route to optimized performance and health. Big claim? Yep, but easy to back up. Folks start with us, tweak their food, then look, feel and perform better. Every measurable bio-marker such as cholesterol, triglycerides or blood pressure improve...depression resolves. It just works, because this is the way we are wired to eat. But hey, what the hell do I know? I’m just the crazy guy in the shed telling people to do weird stuff like sleep more, take fish oil and increase their protein intake. How could I possibly be right about this? Well...here are a few interesting things for y’all to consider:

1-A Paleo diet, calorie per calorie, beats any other diet you can compare it to. Here is a nice look at this in a paper from Loren Cordain. If you notice, the basic diet presented here looks like taking a nutritional supplement. Now, if you are ambitious, you can take ANY of those listed Paleo foods, Lean meats, nuts, seeds, fruits and veggeis and compare them to the same calorie content of grains, legumes or dairy (non- fortified...just the way nature made them!) and you will decrease the relative nutritional content of the diet. Don’t believe me? You can actually do this experiment with the USDA Nutrient Database. So before you start waxing eloquent about how “nutritious whole grains are” give this a shot...build a diet the way our government recommends you do it via the food pyramid, then compare that to Paleo foods.

2-Many of the best coaches in the world recommend a Paleo diet. Granted, many also do not, but there are an ever growing number of coaches who recognize that optimized performance will not be found at the bottom of a box of cereal or served on a bagel.
Want a concrete example? How about Joel Friel, US Olympic Triathlon coach and author of The Triathletes Training Bible and Co-Author of The Paleo Diet for Athletes. I could use different examples but the endurance crowd is absolutely the most entrenched in this notion that optimized performance comes from a tube of GU or from some kind of Franken-Food like a Cliff-Bar. Here is an excerpt from The Paleo Diet for Athletes in which Joel talks about the Challenge Loren Cordain placed on him to try the Paleo diet for one month. check it out:

“I have known Dr. Cordain for many years, but I didn’t become aware of his work until 1995. That year we began to discuss nutrition for sports. As a longtime adherent to a very high-carbohydrate diet for athletes, I was skeptical of his claims that eating less starch would benefit performance. Nearly every successful endurance athlete I had known ate as I did, with a heavy emphasis on cereals, bread, rice, pasta, pancakes, and potatoes. In fact, I had done quite well on this diet, having been an All-American age-group duathlete (bike and run), and finishing in the top 10 at World Championships. I had also coached many successful athletes, both professional and amateur, who ate the same way I did.”

“Our discussions eventually led to a challenge. Dr. Cordain suggested I try eating a diet more in line with what he recommended for one month. I took the challenge, determined to show him that eating as I had for years was the way to go. I started by simply cutting back significantly on starches, and replacing those lost calories with fruits, vegetables, and very lean meats.”

“For the first two weeks I felt miserable. My recovery following workouts was slow and my workouts were sluggish. I knew that I was well on my way to proving that he was wrong. But in week three, a curious thing happened. I began to notice that I was not only feeling better, but that my recovery was speeding up significantly. In the fourth week I experimented to see how many hours I could train.

“Since my early 40s (I was 51 at the time), I had not been able to train more than about 12 hours per week. Whenever I exceeded this weekly volume, upper respiratory infections would soon set me back. In Week Four of the “experiment,” I trained 16 hours without a sign of a cold, sore throat, or ear infection. I was amazed. I hadn’t done that many hours in nearly 10 years. I decided to keep the experiment going.”

“That year I finished third at the U.S. national championship with an excellent race, and qualified for the U.S. team for the World Championships. I had a stellar season, one of my best in years. This, of course, led to more questions of Dr. Cordain and my continued refining of the diet he recommended.”

“I was soon recommending it to the athletes I coached, including Ryan Bolton, who was on the U.S. Olympic Triathlon team. Since 1995. I have written four books on training for endurance athletes and have described and recommended the Stone Age diet in each of them. Many athletes have told me a story similar to mine: They have tried eating this way, somewhat skeptically at first, and then discovered that they also recovered faster and trained better.”

So, if you missed the gist of that, Joel was able to train harder, longer and recover faster using a Paleo diet. He recommends the diet to ALL his athletes and includes this information in all his books. Oddly enough, we even have one of his staff dieticians, Kelly Cawthorn, available at CrosFit NorCal.

3-The Paleo diet describes our past, shines a light on our current situation, and provides predictive value for our future. The Nutritional “Sciences” are anything but. In theory they are a subset of Biology. The basic tenant of biology is evolution via natural selection...yet this fact absolutely buggars those in the nutritional sciences. The folks at CSU Chico Nutritional Sciences absolutely HATE the concept of the Paleo diet, yet offer no counter point or model that better describes the data at hand, nor offers the least bit of predictive value. They are awash in “paradoxes”. French Paradox, Spanish Paradox...things are only paradoxical in the nutritional sciences because they made bad assumptions and abandoned the scientific method. I get fired up about this because peoples lives are at stake here and the information we are fed is WRONG. It starts from faulty premise and worsens with every step. Here is an excerpt from The Protein Debate, a work we sponsored between Dr. T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study and Prof. Loren Cordain. Here is that excerpt which is the introduction for Prof. Cordain’s piece. The over-arching topic was the role of protein in health and disease in humans. As a side note: I’m a graduate of CSU Chico in biochemistry. When we sponsored this debate, between two of the most highly regarded researchers in the world, I thought the CSU Chico Nutritional Science department might be interested that a former student had sponsored and spear-headed this original work. I forwarded the Protein Debate to the members of the Nutritional Science department. Response? NONE. Sorry, I’m just bitter I guess, here is that introduction from Prof. Cordain:

Introduction
Although humanity has been interested in diet and health for thousands of years, the organized, scientific study of nutrition has a relatively recent past. For instance, the world’s first scientific journal devoted entirely to diet and nutrition, The Journal of Nutrition only began publication in 1928. Other well known nutrition journals have a more recent history still: The British Journal of Nutrition (1947), The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1954), and The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1988). The first vitamin was “discovered” in 1912 and the last vitamin (B12) was identified in 1948 (1). The scientific notion that omega 3 fatty acids have beneficial health effects dates back only to the late 1970’s (2), and the characterization of the glycemic index of foods only began in 1981 (3).
Nutritional science is not only a newly established discipline, but it is also a highly fractionated, contentious field with constantly changing viewpoints on both major and minor issues that impact public health. For example, in 1996 a task force of experts from the American Society for Clinical Nutrition (ASCN) and the American Institute of Nutrition (AIN) came out with an official position paper on trans fatty acids stating,
“We cannot conclude that the intake of trans fatty acids is a risk factor for coronary heart disease” (4).
Fast forward 6 short years to 2002 and the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine’s report on trans fatty acids (5) stating,
“Because there is a positive linear trend between trans fatty acid intake and total and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol concentration, and therefore increased risk of cardiovascular heart disease, the Food and Nutrition Board recommends that trans fatty acid consumption be as low as possible while consuming a nutritionally adequate diet”.
These kinds of complete turnabouts and divergence of opinion regarding diet and health are commonplace in the scientific, governmental and medical communities. The official U.S. governmental recommendations for healthy eating are outlined in the “My Pyramid” program (6) which recently replaced the “Food Pyramid”, both of which have been loudly condemned for nutritional shortcomings by scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health (7). Dietary advice by the American Heart Association (AHA) to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) is to limit total fat intake to 30% of total energy, to limit saturated fat to <10% of energy and cholesterol to <300 mg/day while eating at least 2 servings of fish per week (8). Although similar recommendations are proffered in the USDA “My Pyramid”, weekly fish consumption is not recommended because the authors of these guidelines feel there is only “limited” information regarding the role of omega 3 fatty acids in preventing cardiovascular disease (6). Surprisingly, the personnel makeup of both scientific advisory boards is almost identical. At least 30 million Americans have followed Dr. Atkins advice to eat more fat and meat to lose weight (9). In utter contrast, Dean Ornish tells us fat and meat cause cancer, heart disease and obesity, and that we would all would be a lot healthier if we were strict vegetarians (10). Who’s right and who’s wrong? How in the world can anyone make any sense out of this apparent disarray of conflicting facts, opinions and ideas?
In mature and well-developed scientific disciplines there are universal paradigms that guide scientists to fruitful end points as they design their experiments and hypotheses. For instance, in cosmology (the study of the universe) the guiding paradigm is the “Big Bang” concept showing that the universe began with an enormous explosion and has been expanding ever since. In geology, the “Continental Drift” model established that all of the current continents at one time formed a continuous landmass that eventually drifted apart to form the present-day continents. These central concepts are not theories for each discipline, but rather are indisputable facts that serve as orientation points for all other inquiry within each discipline. Scientists do not know everything about the nature of the universe, but it is absolutely unquestionable that it has been and is expanding. This central knowledge then serves as a guiding template that allows scientists to make much more accurate and informed hypotheses about factors yet to be discovered.
The study of human nutrition remains an immature science because it lacks a universally acknowledged unifying paradigm (11). Without an overarching and guiding template, it is not surprising that there is such seeming chaos, disagreement and confusion in the discipline. The renowned Russian geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) said, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” (12). Indeed, nothing in nutrition seems to make sense because most nutritionists have little or no formal training in evolutionary theory, much less human evolution. Nutritionists face the same problem as anyone who is not using an evolutionary model to evaluate biology: fragmented information and no coherent way to interpret the data.
All human nutritional requirements like those of all living organisms are ultimately genetically determined. Most nutritionists are aware of this basic concept; what they have little appreciation for is the process (natural selection) which uniquely shaped our species’ nutritional requirements. By carefully examining the ancient environment under which our genome arose, it is possible to gain insight into our present day nutritional requirements and the range of foods and diets to which we are genetically adapted via natural selection (13-16). This insight can then be employed as a template to organize and make sense out of experimental and epidemiological studies of human biology and nutrition (11).

This is a REALLY long post but I want to make a point. We DO NOT endorse a fad for a nutritional program. Our recommendations are based on the best of both science and the empirical evidence of the worlds best coaches. Take some time and educate yourself on the topic.

Easy Side Dishes

Spinach: Heat some olive oil in a pan, and throw in some garlic, feel free to do a lot. In this picture I also added shallots. Just as it's begining to brown, put in as much spinach as can fit in the pan.
The spinach will wilt down to about 1/10 its size when fresh so go wild with it, stack it up, put in the whole bag, it will not be nearly as much as you think.
After the spinach has wilted down, serve and enjoy!



Super Easy Guacamole

All you need for the basic guac is a couple of fresh ready avacodos (They should be halfway between soft and firm on the outside, and easy to scoop inside when ready) jalapenos or habeneros, and some lime juice.

Cut the avacados in half along the pit, and empty flesh into a bowl. Finely chop jalapenos and add to avacado. I used about 1 jalapeno per avacado, and it was slightly spicy. Add about a half-shot worth of real lime juice per 2 avacados and using the back of a spoon, mix together into a paste.

And that is ready to go guacamole.

Weekend Review

Lets see... this weekend was a lot of fun, and was just busy the whole time. I like weekends like that so much more, and really every day like that, because I don't have to worry about that feeling of just wasting time. I had a conversation with my friend the other day who says he gets that feeling whenever he sleeps past like 8am on weekends! Now I may never enjoy waking up early, but he's right, you get to be much more productive that way. Plus the afternoon naps are more enjoyable this way.

Friday night I went to "Friday Night Fights" with my friend Jesse. He is one of the funniest, and perhaps most offensive people I've ever met. He just keeps me laughing nonstop. These fights were Muay Thai Kickboxing, and were pretty entertaining. Unfortunately we didn't get there early enough to get seats so had to stand the whole time. When we got tired of standing, we headed to Bryan's and just hung out for the night.

Saturday I went to the Union Square Farmer's Market (See post below) and hung out with my friend Jake. I ran my frozen meat home, played some poker, and then headed back into the city for the night for Bryan's best friend Buddha's birthday. We went out to Bryan's club Red Velvet and hung out there. There was this group of like 50 yr olds that would not leave us alone even though we had a big group and wanted nothing to do with them. I beleive Bryan's roomate Joe may have hooked up with several of them, but he refuses to comment. He has an interesting point of view. He claims to have very high standards, just not the ability to stick to them. I also heard this weekend, "If they can get it up, they can have it."

Sunday I headed home and went to the open gym without really a plan, but just felt the need to get some aggression and sweat out the weekend. I did 2 nasty couplets, the first being 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 of wallballs and pullups, but didn't time that one. Then with with Craig (owner/trainer) we did 5 rounds of 5 95lb snatch and 10 box jumps. The snatches are pretty easy, but I HATE box jumps and am really slow with them. A workout like this is really awesome beause its all mental. It's short enough that endurance won't be a factor. Its light enough that strength won't be an issue. This makes it so much worse because your lungs and heart just burn because you are able to exert maximum intensity for an extend period of time. I finished in 4 minutes exactly and he finished in 3 minutes. Later I took the giant farm tractor trailer and starting hitting it with a sledge hammer. It sounds rediculous but is one of the most gratifying experiences you can imagine. It's animalistic and aggressive all rolled into slamming a giant hammer as hard as you can into something. I then decided flipping the tire would be a good idea, much like they do on late night ESPN 4's worlds strongest man competitions. That also was incredibly rewarding and also quite fun.

After that was some FIFA with friends, which for some reason i totally love even though I hate the sport of soccer. After we headed to see Robin Hood at the new theatre in Hoboken. The place is tucked away and could easily get passed by but was actually really nice. Robin Hood was good, and can best be described as gladiator 2. It really was, down to the speach and marcus aurelious dude. I stopped by the Hoboken high school football field where our gym had a football game. After seeing that we had the game in the bag (I'm a superstar cheerleader!) I headed over to a bbq. I was sort of late but i got to see my friends Jeff and Jess who I hadn't seen for a while. By the time I headed home I was tired and ready for bed.


In other news I'm stoked that I start baseball tonight. I coach an 8 year old little league all star team with my Dad every summer. It's so much fun and I love doing it. This age is great to teach baseball because many of the kids we coach have never even played with a hard ball before, and at the end of the season are ready to play with kids 4 years older than them. So it's the gym, then figuring out how to entertain 25 kids while we do a parents meeting. Burpee contest? Perhaps.. perhaps...

Farmers Market

I stopped by the Union Square Green Market today, and it was pretty cool. Lots of in season flowers, vegetables, and grassfed/free range etc meat. There was so much I wanted to get but I tried to ration myself. These types of places are generally your best bet on local organic foods that are in season. Heres what I picked up:
Some apples, some avocados (guac!!!), spinich, shallots, grass fed ground beef, grass fed short ribs, grass fed bison bacon. I look forward to figuring out some great combos to cook up, with the short ribs definitely going in the slow cooker for a few hours.