Bro..were good bro

Here we are again. Back to the basics of elite fitness. Hopefully your new to reading this because of me being a great advertiser among other things.





So pretty much you should read all of the other posts I have. They may be old but they are like the freaking holy koran of fitness info. We dont mess around. Well get reading foo!

Today we are talking about mobilizing. Bro we got to get mobilized up in here! What does this mean? Stretch and move your joints around to loosen them up and gain range of motion.

Range of motion is STRENGTH! So if your trying to be swoll and win ladies over with your gargantuan muscles, you might want to be more flexible than Mr freaking fantastic. Overhead squats are a great leg workout to hit parts of your legs that back squats dont. If you arnt flexible in your shoulder capsule then you might as well not even overhead squat at all.

In movements like snatch and overhead squats it is key to be flexible in your shoulders which makes everything easier allowing easier reps and dumps when you fail but we dont fail because failing is for fools... jk

So how do we mobilize our shoulder joint? Simple, first we stretch it. There are videos by Kelly Starett about shoulder stretches but my favorites are grabbing a band from behind you, holding your arm straight and lean forward to feel that stretch in your shoulder.

Another great mobility exercise is a pass through with a pvc pipe. Grab a pvc pipe with a wide grip and keeping straight arms pass it from in front of you to straight overhead then continue in that path until the bar is behind you against your back. then bring it back through the same way it went over. Keep moving your arms in until you can no longer keep straight arms through the whole stretch. Then do a few more pass throughs and reap the benefits.

The most hated of them all is the lacrosse ball. Simply put a lacrosse ball on the ground and lay on top of it with it making contact with your scapula and shoulder region. Roll around on it until you find a hot spot or a knot. Pretty much find a spot that hurts like a beezy and stop there. feeling the pain that will make you wish you were a girl so you can cry legitimately, begin to rotate your arm around in a straight motion to move the muscles under the ball. This will help rub out knots. Make arm circles essentially. It should hurt like hell, if it doesnt then man up grow a pair and find a spot that does hurt because everybody has those spots.

The lacrosse ball also opens up joint capsules and connective tissues sheaths by moving them around and loosing them when they become attached and experience heavy friction with the skin and muscles and connective tissue in the area. When you move the muscles around the ball everything gets loosened and moves around nicely.

As with all mobility drills, test and retest the area that you mobilized to see your results that you can obtain in minutes. remember to do both sides, the dominant and the complimentary side because there is no such thing as a non dominant or weak side.


Props to Jon B and Justin N for the added knowledge I have gained on this.


Workout for today:

Easy workout since the open starts tomorrow

EMOTM:

8 minutes

2 front squats 185#
6 KBS @ 2 pood

Done with ease but dont want to be wrecked for tomorrow

Oh yeah!

Its funny how this thing called college takes all sorts of time and focus. Time for fitness? Yes. Time to study? Yes.Time for ladies? Yes. Time for beach? Yes. Time for tetris? Yes. Time for Breaking Bad? Yes. Time for saving the world for the obesity and bad health epidemics? Now there is!

So I am not really going to his on a whole lot of things today because I want to save them for later posts. Yeah, that right there is information hunger. Thank you COMM 103 for that little tid bit of knowledge! So that's that, time to get into the BEEE LAWWWGGG! Before some of you think that I am some immature little kid who writes like a child, just know that fitness is fun so therefore I can have fun with it....Haters.

So recently, I ran a little something I like to call the NorthFace Endurance Challenge Gore Tex 50 mile race. It was a 51.2 mile foot race through the Marin Headlands with a total elevation gain of 10,000 feet. By far the biggest test of mental and physical toughness I have ever done. Not to mention,by far the most fun I have ever had in fitness. My training however was put on hold due to two torn ligaments in my ankle 2 months before the race. This really put a damper on me.Not to mention, I had to run it in Nike Free shoes, and got some G.I. problems during it. But none the less, I finished proudly.

As for next year, I am going to take off all heavy lifting two months before the race, keep training in the off season and do crossfit only three times a week to maximize the benefit from my running. I am out for that sub 11hr mark next year and I WILL get it!

Well that is that, but here is what you can take away from this. Sign up for races and competitions, not just for the fun but to prove to yourself that you can and you will. I was nervous about this race and even finishing it, but I did and I proved to myself that I can do anything I set my mind to.

The mind is the most powerful thing in fitness and should come with its own form of training too. That set of 15 on Fran or those last 3 miles in a marathon, are your legs really giving out on you or is your mind telling you that your legs are fried. I will let you guess, but give you a hint in saying your legs are fine. So train thew mind! Push it to its limits so it has to be forced to realize that your limits are beyond what you thought. I guarantee that your times will drop on Helen, Cindy and Barbara.

I found out in mile 38 that my mind told me that I was done for, but what happened? I ran 13.2 more miles proving to my mind what I am really capable of. SO keep in mind that your limits are not physical, but they are mental.

Nutrition section :)

Post race diet....... uhhh we wont go there


Workout

Post Race rest... still. Feet=Dead

When And Where... Whatever

Here we are on the night of preferential with the lovely ladies of Alpha Phi. I found out the other day that I gave my rose to a senior, but that does not phase me. I take on Fran everyday and come out on top so a senior will not phase me. She does CrossFit too so that is an instant bond! Anyways I am a nerd at chemistry as I destroyed my test but let us get to fitness and CrossFit.

Some people feel as if they cannot get a good workout if they are out of a routine. Say yo go to the 6am class everyday, but this morning you just could not get up. That certainly does not mean you cannot workout for the day. Who cares if it is in between classes or during your lunch break, CrossFit can happen anywhere and anytime. Doing some simple tabata push ups or squats will suffice if they are in a CrossFit Gym or in the corner of your office, it is still a workout.

That leads me to my next topic that is strayed away from this post but very important. The deadlift. DO NOT DO IT WRONG! This lift will turn your back into the devil if done incorrectly. So I just want to go over this real fast because today in the gym on campus I saw some frat meat head body builder doing deadlifts. or at least his excuse for them. Sure it was 315 and he looked good for the ladies but he was wincing in pain with every rep.

1- Grab the bar a little bit outside your knees and use whatever grip you feel comfortable.
2-Make sure your hips are back, hamstrings are tight.
3-Ensure that your back is in a tight lumbar curve. You need to imagine that no matter what happens, even if I were to come at you and pounce on you, that your back will keep your lumbar curve nice and tight!)
4-Start the lift with your legs.
5- After the legs comes the hips. Open them up.
6- The back should stay in a tight lumbar curve and end straight up as you open your hips
7- Stop when straight, don't do that globo gym douche over extension of the back. It is worthless and looks funny. We all can tell that you just want to demonstrate a pelvic thrust.

With that being said. Hit the squats, grow those legs and stay paleo.

Strength


Every Minute on the Minute for 15 minutes
2 Deadlifts 225#
2 HSPU

WODs

5 rounds
15 sit ups
10 ab thrusts
100 bicycle cash out


20-15-10
Wallballs 20#
Push ups
Squats

Short metcons but I had to get something in

Nobody Is Perfect

Ladies and gents, nobody is perfect. That is excluding Katie Hogan, Stacie Tovar, a few girls I have seen lately and of course Carrie Underwood. So other than them nobody is perfect at all.

Let's say we got Mr. Hotshot doing a workout today. He is a 4 minute Fran guy trying to get a pr. He does it, pukes his guts out and ends with a 5:15. Did he pick the weight wrong? No. He has a bad workout. THEY HAPPEN! So instead of cussing yourself out for not getting that new pr, or not getting that extra rep. JUst chill bro.

Do you think Chris Spealler Snatches over 200lbs on every attempt? Hell no he does not! For all we know one day he may not even get 185. But he knows that not every day can be a great day for working out. He accepts it and does not let it phase him the next workout he does.

Just because we are athletes of various levels does not mean we cannot hold ourselves to the standards of the games' athletes. We also need to learn to accept our own failure and off days. Sure we may not train 5 times a day like they do (though it may feel like it) it does not mean that we should let one bad workout judge us for the rest of the day.

Just a little food for thought (paleo of course). And actually about paleo, being a paleo man full time with the exception of two cheat days a month, I decided to try something out starting monday. Paleo in the zone. Yes you heard it right. Zone meal plan blocks all of paleo food. I will give it 4 weeks to see how my numbers look and see if any changes occur with the portion control of zone blocks. From what I heard when I talked with Josh Everrett in person (yes he is amazing) zone is the way to go.

Workout

         NFEC Training
7 mile run @ 9:00 min/mile

                 Strength

Press- 2reps every minute for 12 minutes at 65%

Bench Press- 3-3-3-3-3 @ 65%

     WOD
4 straight tabata's

push ups
squats
sit ups
pull ups

College Has Not Killed Me....yet

Back to the blog! Yeah that's right! This guy is not done telling the world of his fitness epiphanies! But I do not blog here as an 18 year old high school student now..... I blog to you as



A LEVEL ONE CERTIFIED CROSSFIT TRAINER!

Dig it.

A lot has happened since my last post. College has happened.Pr's have happened. Ladies appear out of nowhere in gaggles. New gym has been joined. So let us get to the good stuff.

Sure she is 28 and her bicep is the size of mine, but she is still in my league right????

I came down here going terminator on this hizzouse! In other words I was slightly "bionic" as my new nickname goes for my gym, Outlier Crossfit! I had a torn MCL in which I have no clue how I tore it. So what did I do? Workout of course! Destroy every and any WOD in my way of success and establish myself as a strong presence in the gym.

But now I am sick. A long weekend comprised of many long nights has lead this guy to illness. SO here the topic begins.

DO NOT WORKOUT WHILE YOU ARE SICK. Sure you may want to, yeah if you do not want to get better! It has been proven that you are six times more likely to get sick after running a marathon than before. So I know that is an extreme case right there because not everybody runs a marathon, but if exercise puts you at that much more of a risk, imagine what being sick already and exercising can do. Not good stuff. What happens is your immune system gets compromised and your body becomes the France of the world wars. Easy to invade. So in essence if you are slightly sick, your workout will be sub par, you will get angry and sicker. That is how the cookie crumbles.

WOD

Sick day

68 days until the North Face Endurance Challenge

The Games

Long time no blog eh? Well let's fix that. Over the past few days I have had some great experiences. I went to the Crossfit Games, and dropped in to two different boxes in San Diego.

Let us start out with the games. It was the single greatest event that I have ever been too. I have never such such athleticism or strength in my life. Those people truly are the fittest people on earth. They top any other sport on this planet. Hands down. I don;t want to waste too much time on this but it was amazing and you should watch the highlights on the HQ website.

Next, I dropped into two different boxes to begin my journey of finding the right box for me in San Diego. The first was CrossFit Socal which I really liked. Short ceiling so there are no true 15 foot rope climbs, but the trainer and facility was awesome. The next one was Crossfit San Diego. Didnt really care for the trainer but what I did care for was the pr I got on the Filthy Fifty. 21:03!!!!

But onto working out! I have not ran for about a week and a half due to knee and hip flexor injuries. It is difficult to rest from something like that but I know the only way I will get better is to rest. Now my knee problem is runner's knee. Whats the solution? Deeper squats!!!

Yes I said it, the way to the healthiest knee possible is to go deep on everything. I developed runner's knee from running a lot and my leg muscles were becoming imbalanced causing my patella to slide side ways. You can re balance the knee muscles out with deep squats. Each position on a squat hits a certain muscle, and when you go deep you hit those muscles that never get hit while running or doing a box squat. It seems counter intuitive but it is the truth I promise.

As for today's workout, there is none. I have a competition tomorrow that I want to be fresh for. I know I can destroy all the gymnastics and metcon in it, rope climbs, push ups, double unders, squats, dead lifts, pull ups, sit ups, box jumps are all a piece of cake. But ground to shoulder atlas stone of 115# could be interesting and the max lift is the snatch my favorite..... I am shooting for a good snatch of 135. I can get down in the squat with the qeight overhead, but I can never lock it out, I need to really throw my hips to catch it behind my head so I can lock it out because the weight always falls forward. We will see how the competition goes tomorrow!!!

Go Big or Go Home

I have not saved the world from obesity for quite some time. My excuse? I don't really have one. I get back from an intense WOD and the last thing I want to do is write about it. I am still a teenager and like to have some fun time so pardon my adolescence.

The CrossFit Games are coming up soon and I cannot wait one bit. I get top see the fittest people on earth and the love of my life Stacie Tovar! Now I know she is married and to her husband I say teach me your ways. But she is really a top 5 hopeful and with her snatch and HSPUs she is a real competitor.

Now for the life of fitness. I am a runner. As much as I do not want to admit it, my strength in CrossFit is running and metcon not strength. Don't get me wrong, I still move decent weight but it is not my greatest thing. So to fix it I have been trying to add on as much strength as possible using a Russian Squat Program Generator and it is amazing! Two weeks in and I added 20 pounds to my back squat. It works and you should try it.

There is some real science behind it. Now don't think too hard on this all you reluctant scholars. Too bad for you I cant type slow for you. It is a mental, physical conditioning program. Your body trains to support heavy weight by adding the number of mitochondria in each muscle fiber versus adding more muscle fibers. You are becoming more efficient. Sure you get more fibers but when you do lots of low rep sets you are conditioning mainly and growing secondly. As your body gets used to handling heavy weight the sheer fact of holding and controlling heavy weight becomes less of an issue allowing you to focus on the lift.

How do you add size? After your strength program throw in a few kill sets to failure or some higher reps and you will spark some real anabolism there.

Workouts


From the past

"Filthy Fifty" 24:44

"Annie" 7:48 ewwwww

CrossFit Football Squat Cluster 235#