Risk is simply executing a movement that is likely to be missed or botched; originality is a movement or combination of movements unique to the athlete—a move or sequence not seen before. Understandably, novice gymnasts love to demonstrate risk and originality, for both are dramatic, fun, and awe inspiring—especially among the athletes themselves, although audiences are less likely to be aware when either is demonstrated.

Virtuosity, though, is a different beast altogether. Virtuosity is defined in gymnastics as “performing the common uncommonly well.” Unlike risk and originality, virtuosity is elusive, supremely elusive. It is, however, readily recognized by audience as well as coach and athlete. But more importantly, more to my point, virtuosity is more than the requirement for that last tenth of a point; it is always the mark of true mastery (and of genius and beauty).

There is a compelling tendency among novices developing any skill or art, whether learning to play the violin, write poetry, or compete in gymnastics, to quickly move past the fundamentals and on to more elaborate, more sophisticated movements, skills, or techniques. This compulsion is the novice’s curse—the rush to originality and risk.

The novice’s curse is manifested as excessive adornment, silly creativity, weak fundamentals and, ultimately, a marked lack of virtuosity and delayed mastery. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to be taught by the very best in any field you’ve likely been surprised at how simple, how fundamental, how basic the instruction was. The novice’s curse afflicts learner and teacher alike. Physical training is no different.

What will inevitably doom a physical training program and dilute a coach’s efficacy is a lack of commitment to fundamentals. We see this increasingly in both programming and supervising execution. Rarely now do we see prescribed the short, intense couplets or triplets that epitomize CrossFit programming.

Rarely do trainers really nitpick the mechanics of fundamental movements. I understand how this occurs. It is natural to want to teach people advanced and fancy movements. The urge to quickly move away from the basics and toward advanced movements arises out of the natural desire to entertain your client and impress him with your skills and knowledge. But make no mistake: it is a sucker’s move. Teaching a snatch where there is not yet an overhead squat, teaching an overhead squat where there is not yet an air squat, is a colossal mistake. This rush to advancement increases the chance of injury, delays advancement and progress, and blunts the client’s rate of return on his efforts. In short, it retards his fitness.

If you insist on basics, really insist on them, your clients will immediately recognize that you are a master trainer. They will not be bored; they will be awed. I promise this. They will quickly come to recognize the potency of fundamentals. They will also advance in every measurable way past those not blessed to have a teacher so grounded and committed to basics. Training will improve, clients will advance faster, and you will appear more experienced and professional and garner more respect, if you simply recommit to the basics.

There is plenty of time within an hour session to warm up, practice a basic movement or skill or pursue a new PR or max lift, discuss and critique the athletes’ efforts, and then pound out a tight little couplet or triplet utilizing these skills or just play. Play is important. Tire flipping, basketball, relay races, tag, Hooverball, and the like are essential to good programming, but they are seasoning—like salt, pepper, and oregano. They are not main courses.

CrossFit trainers have the tools to be the best trainers on earth. I really believe that. But good enough never is, and we want that last tenth of a point, the whole 10.0. We want virtuosity!!

About 4 weeks ago, we ran a six-part series on running technique, evaluating the Pose and Chi methods for running. In that series, we looked at:

For the conclusion from the series check out:http://scienceofsport.blogspot.com/2007/10/pose-running-reduces-running-economythe.html

The official format for the Games will be announced and posted here to the CrossFit Games site, on Wednesday, July 2nd at 6pm PDT. All scoring, workouts, exercises, and standards will be explained in detail. You will be expected to be familiar with this when you arrive on Saturday for the competition.

There will be multiple events, and you will have until Friday, July 4th at 8am PDT to request your preferred sequence for doing these events. An email address will be listed for you to send that preference. The preferences will be honored as much as possible, and on a first come first served basis. We make no guarantees, though, that you will get your preferred ordering.

The official time slots and ordering will be announced Friday, July 4th at 4pm PDT. There will also be detailed information on Saturday morning when you register telling you exactly where to be and when throughout the weekend.

And, in case you were wondering, the format is significantly different from last year. It will, though, reward athletes with tremendous work capacity in broad time and modal domains.

Be sure to check http://crossfitgames.com/ regularly for important updates from now until when the Games begin.

Thank you!

Deana

It admits that during exercise, muscles stop the biochemical reactions used to maintain themselves such as replacing and resynthesizing the proteins needed for day to day activities. It’s not that exercise is damaging your muscles; it’s that they halt the maintenance process until exercise is over and that to do this maintenance, muscles must make protein, and to do so they need to absorb amino acids, the constituent parts of proteins, from the blood. Just after exercise, perhaps for a period no longer than a couple of hours, the protein-building processes of muscle cells are especially receptive to amino acids. That means that if you consume protein, your muscles will use it to quickly replenish proteins that were not made during exercise.

But muscles don’t need much protein, researchers say. Twenty grams is as much as a 176-pound man’s muscles can take. Women, who are smaller and have smaller muscles even compared to their body sizes, need less.  10 to 15 grams of protein is probably adequate for any adult. And you don’t need a special drink or energy bar to get it. One egg has 6 grams of protein. Two ounces of chicken has more than 12 grams.

Muscles also need to replenish glycogen, their fuel supply, after a long exercise session — two hours of running, for example. For that they need carbohydrates. Muscle cells are especially efficient in absorbing carbohydrates from the blood just after exercise.  Once again, muscles don’t need much; about one gram of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight is plenty, Dr. Tarnopolsky said. He weighs 70 kilograms, or 154 pounds, which means he would need 70 grams of carbohydrates, or say, 27 ounces of fruit juice, he said.

But the interest thing about the article is that it talks about how over rated suppliments are and the value of “real” food.  They also say that that athletes who take a day or two to rest or do less-intense workouts between vigorous sessions can pretty much ignore the carbohydrate-timing advice.  The only time it becomes improatant is for elite athletes doing 2 workouts a day.  But people who are running a few miles a few days a week don’t need to worry about replenishing their muscles

I registered for the games months before I hurt my quad, and since the jumping squat incident I have been holding on to my spot figuring that I would see how the recovery progesses and make a last minute decision whether I would compete or not.

Recovery is progessing (been doing lots of low resistance rowing and high hang power work-which has actually been good for me as I frequently short the extension on my pulls and rely on my big squat to save lifts but now I’m up to doing working sets of 50kg power snatches.  I’m still planning on competiting at the o-lifting competition in White Rock end of June, and think my snatch will be ready, but my clean and jerk…Friday was the first o-lifting session where I felt any power comming from the leg-really odd thing, full range of motion and no pain, just no power running through it.  Friday was also the first session where we started doing back squats again (although I went from doing 3 sets of 3 at 105kg before the incident to 3 sets of 3 at 75kg on friday).  Dan (my coach) told me that if the quad felt good on saturday do some more strength work (3 sets of 3 back squats at 85kg and 3 sets 5 snatch deadlifts at 70kg) so I woke saturday morning and the quad felt good, but I could feel the glute, hamstring and thigh on the left side… but it all went good and today my body feels good.

But after having a much needed dinner with a good friend and making the comment about how if I go to the games and I still have my spot you never know what would happen-I was reminded (and already knew-just needed to hear it from my trusted advisor  exactly what would happen, I would end up competing, going full out, probably doing pretty well, but end up tearing more muscles, possibly even more seriously and shooting the resting of the lifting season. 

So I went home, typed up the email and waited about 5 mintues before actually pressing send, but now that I have withrdawn, I’m happy with the decision and can purely concentrate on O-lifting and rebuilding the quad.

I’m still going to attend the games, actually going down a week early to workout at Mikes Gym and work on some olifting stuff with Brad and Josh, but will help coach the Crossfit Vancouver team instead of compete.

And thats that!

Your body has enough glycogen and fat stored to get you through a normal workout. Just eat healthy pwo and you will do fine. Digestion takes a ton of energy….so hence your CNS response is greater on an empty stomach…add in some coffee/caffeine and you will be exploding out of the gates.

However be careful because there’s a big difference between training on an empty stomach and training with depleted glycogen stores so how well you’re able to perform following a fast largely depends on how active you’ve been during the fast and how much stores you have left.

Give it a try and see if it works for you.  For me, I like doing crossfit metcon workout on an empty stomach, but I struggle through o-lifting session if I haven’t eaten enough before hand.

Another concern of the fat-free-post-workout camp is the blunting of the insulin response. The rationale of maximizing the insulin response is to counteract the catabolic nature of the post-trained state, switching the hormonal milieu into an anabolic one, thus speeding recovery. Although this might benefit those who train fasted or semi-fasted, many don’t realize that a pre-exercise meal (and in some cases the mid-exercise meal) is doing more than enough spiking of insulin levels for anticatabolic purposes.

It’s an important objective to not only maximize muscle protein synthesis, but also minimize protein breakdown. However, the latter doesn’t require a massive insulin spike, but rather just a touch beyond basal/resting levels. To illustrate this, Rennie & colleagues found that even during a sustained high blood level of amino acids, no further inhibition of muscle protein breakdown occurred beyond insulin elevation to approximately 15 ?U/l,20 which is slightly above normal basal levels of 5-10 ?U/l.

To reiterate, the pre-exercise meal can have profound effects on insulin levels that surpass the length of the training bout. Tipton’s team found that as little as 6g essential amino acids + 35g sucrose taken immediately before exercise (45-50 minutes of resistance training) was enough to keep insulin elevated to roughly 4x above fasting levels 1-hour post-exercise.21 It took 2 hours post-exercise for insulin to return to resting levels. A similar insulin response was seen with 20g whey by itself taken immediately preworkout.22 If carbs were added to the pre-training protein, there would be yet a greater insulin response.

As far as solid food goes, Capaldo’s team examined various metabolic effects during a five hour period after ingesting a meal composed of 75g carb (47%), 37g prot (26%), and 17g fat (27%).23 Although this study didn’t examine training effects, this meal would make a nice post-workout meal due to its absolute (and proportional) amounts of protein and carbohydrate. The fat-fearing camp would warn against the meal’s fat content interfering with the insulin response. However, this meal was able to raise insulin 3 times above fasting levels within 30 minutes of consumption. At the 60 minute mark, insulin was 5 times greater than fasting. At the 300 minute mark, insulin levels were still double the fasting level.

Elliot and colleagues compared the effect of fat-free milk, whole milk, and a higher dose of fat-free milk (to match the calories of the whole milk) taken 60 minutes post-resistance exercise.24 Whole milk was superior for increasing net protein balance. Interestingly, the calorie-matched dose of fat free milk containing 14.5g protein, versus 8.0g in the whole milk (an 81% advantage), but still got beaten. The investigators speculated over the possible mechanisms behind the outcome (insulin response, blood flow, subject response differences, fat content improving nitrogen retention), but end up dismissing each one in favor of concluding that further research is necessary to see if extra fat calories ingested with an amino acid source will increase muscle protein synthesis. Lingering questions notwithstanding, post-workout milkfat was the factor that clinched the victory – at least in overnight-fasted subjects.

To put another nail in the coffin of the insulin spiking objective, post-exercise glycogen resynthesis is biphasic.25 Unlike the subsequent “slow” phase which can last several hours, the initial “rapid” phase of glycogenesis lasting 30-60 minutes immediately post-exercise is not dependent upon insulin. Maximizing post-workout hyperinsulinemia may be beneficial for athletes with more than a single exhaustive endurance-containing training bout separated by less than approximately 8 hours, but in all other cases, the benefit in “spiking” insulin is nil.

In line with this theme, interesting research has surfaced in recent years challenging the idea that highly glycemic (and thus insulinemic) carbohydrates taken post-workout are the optimal for recovery. Erith’s team found no difference between post-exercise high- and low-glycemic index (GI) carbohydrate intake on exercise performance the following day.26 In a similar study, Stevenson’s team actually saw better next-day performance in subjects who consumed low-GI post-exercise carbohydrate than those who consumed high-GI post-exercise carbohydrate.27

Is spiking insulin necessary post-workout? Generally not.

-No greater inhibition of muscle protein breakdown has been seen beyond insulin elevation to approximately 15 ?U/l, which is slightly above resting/basal levels of 5-10 ?U/l.

-In one study, whole milk was superior for increasing net protein balance post-workout, despite the calorie-matched dose of fat free milk containing 81% more protein.

-The initial 30-60 minute “rapid” phase of glycogenesis immediately post-exercise is not dependent upon insulin.

-There’s no need to attempt to spike insulin for recovery purposes since maximal effects are seen at minimal elevations. Simply getting enough total substrate surrounding the training bout suffices, at least within the context of a 24-hour separation between exhaustive training of the same muscles. Multiple depleting endurance-type bouts per day (i.e., < 8 hours between bouts) may be the exception to this rule.

-On a related tangent, it’s been commonly recommended to maximize post-exercise hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia by consuming high-GI carbohydrates. However, this strategy has been seen to offer no benefit on next-day performance, and one recent study even saw endurance impairment.

Did absolutely nothing on the leg Friday-Wednesday and then Wednesday night returned to o-lifting to do light power work. Absolutely no squats, just worked on power snatches and cleans from high blocks working and getting full extension and then some light snatch deadlifts. Quad felt pretty good after the session (although I didn’t really use it for anything) although I could feel the outside of hip an the inside of the knee, but went straight from o-lifting to my sisters place (my sisters husband is my rehab therapist) and got things re-aligned again. On Friday I then went back and Power snatches and cleans from the ground (again with comparatively light weights and no full squats). Snatches felt really good, but with the cleans I was having problems generating power from the legs and just felt weak, but then today the light cleans felt much better and I was actually able to get some power transfer from the legs, but still no squats or anything heavy.

So progress is being made, but it will be a while before my leg will be at full strength. Starting to build it up slowly by doing low resistance rows and will start incorporating LIGHT squats to gradually re-build it. Will actually be good for me in that I rely on my leg strength way too much and tend to short the pulls (which I am not able to do power snatching and cleaning from high blocks).

I drank tons of water and ate lots of food and stretched them out and as the day went on they started to get warm and puffy.

This morning my right leg felt much better, (still some puffiness but just a regular stiff muscle thing going on), but my left leg…was swollen from the knee to the hip bone and felt like there was fluid between the muscle and skin but yet I still have full range of motion-weirdest feeling ever, just felt sick.  I taught at Langara from 9-2 and it started burning while I was teaching and it was weird because going up the stairs was OK, but going down the stairs felt like the muscle in the quad wasn’t there and were just going to give away.

I remember how sore my legs were after doing tabata squats the first day but this is totally different, then it was muscle pain trying and difficult to walk up stairs, now the muscles themselves don’t hurt, it feels like the muscles aren’t there and its something in between the skin and muscles and walking down the stairs is the challenge.

SO I went to the Drs. office on my way home.

I came so close to punching the guy in the face.  His first comment was “Wow there is a lot of Inflammation”, but I think my favourite comment was “I don’t think there are any broken bones”-what bones am I going to break in my quad from doing jumping squats???  Then he asked me to demonstrate a squat and his response was “wow that’s a nice squat” and then he brought another dr. in and said “check out this squat” and commented on how strong I was (I sware If he asked me to do one more squat I was going to punch him) but then he showed the other doctor my quad and said he has never seen anything like it and that there is obviously some muscle strain but has no clue why there is so much fluid build up or what is causing it.  They pretty much suggested I take lots of anti-imflamitorries and wrote a referral to see a physio and left it as “don’t do any more jumping squats and hopefully it will just go away on its own and the muscle will rebuild”.

But now I’m off to have an ice bath and will get my sisters husband (who is a rehabilitation therapist) to look at it tomorrow…

Anybody have any tricks to get swelling in the quads down?

L-sit walks are nice combination of support work, static abdominal strength and dynamic movement. They are especially useful in group training situations, as the intensity of the movement can easily be tailored to a wide variety of athletic abilities within a particular group by simply adjusting the distance assigned to each athlete.

To get started, first decide on a distance which you THINK you would like to traverse. Be challenging, but fair. Remember, if you fall prior to reaching the designated mark, you must return to the beginning and start again. This tends to be a wonderful incentive to focus and get the job done. Now assume a standard L-sit position on the floor. The arms should be locked, with the chest high and the legs extended out in front of you. To travel forward, lean slightly to one side while swinging the other arm forward; all without allowing the legs to drop to the floor. Continue this stepping motion until the desired distance is covered. Do not bend the knees. Do not allow the glutes to touch the ground. Sliding the feet along the floor is also not acceptable.

I generally use this movement as a finisher at the end of my athletes’ conditioning. It is rather strange, but on the days that I use this exercise, I am not nearly as popular with my athletes as on other days . I require intermediate athletes to travel 20′ and advanced athletes to traverse 40′. Invariably, there are those athletes who are unable to complete their assignment. In that case, they will simply continue attempting to successfully negotiate the distance for a ten minute block of time. Excessive rest between attempts is frowned upon. Those who complete their assigned distance, may immediately move on.

A video clip of L-sit walks is available below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXwNBdyEewg

The kid makes it look so easy!! but since most of us aren’t quite that advanced yet, I have posted some progessions I found bellow:

Obviously you must be able to do an L-sit in support for the L-sit walks and for these progressions (unless specified) I’ll assume you can.

First off work support L’s on floor or p-bars (if you can’t then use the same progression as in coach sommer’s hanging leg lift article) then move to rings (this will help extremely with L-walking and can be used even if your more advanced).

Next is dynamic support work, if you are training static support L’s (straight or tucked) and aren’t very proficient at them then start with penguin walks (walking along p-bars or something you can walk along in a regular support position). If your proficient at tuck L’s or are working on straight L’s you should work on penguin walks in tuck L. Eventually you should be able to perform in a straight leg L. These progressions are for people who are beginners (strength wise) who particularly want (to work) this conditioning skill .

Now some variations. The first is V-sit walking, same thing just in V rather than L, work V-sits on rings statics and movements (some [little] dipping motion and just moving the rings around a little, all within your limits) then take it to floor or p-bars, strive to keep your hips still as possible (not swinging into manna).

The next is manna walking (this is just an idea, I’ve never seen anyone do it or heard of anyone doing it, it would be for advanced athletes), I won’t go into how to work up to a manna here (mainly because I’m not that knowledgeable on it) with this it would/will not be possible to keep perfect form just make sure there’s minimal swinging motion (if wanting to try these and your unable to perform static manna’s but can do V’s swing into manna as best as possible and hold as best as possible).

The final two are weighted and/or object carrying L or V-sit walking, this can be done in any number of ways, some for actually weighing you down others for keeping your form or balance etc. firstly the very obvious ankle weights (can be any weight carried between your ankles) I won’t spend any time explaining this one. I like carrying medicine balls on top of my legs (they weigh you down and force you to keep steady) or it can be any type of ball (basketball, soccer, etc) these can be placed anywhere along your legs for diiferent challenges. One fun and challenging thing to carry is a cup of water (wise to do this one outside) this one will really stop swinging.