Most of you have seen Dan around SPARK…our resident ‘Ginger’ Firebreather.  If you’ve seen him workout you know he brings it everytime.  There is never any doubt as to whether or not he will be challenging for a top spot and that has earned him my respect as well as those that are also of Firebreather status.

For those of you that don’t know, Dan plays for our Men’s National Handball Team and has been offered a spot to play Pro in France.  He leaves today.  This ins’t permanent though and he will be back at Christmas to get his butt whooped and in 10 months-ish the season will be done.

In the past few months Dan has lived and breathed CrossFit.  He has recruited many a friend and colleague to join our ranks and I’m sure will be responsible for more than one Frenchman tossing his cookies while doing a WOD overseas.

Due to his work schedule he comes to SPARK at 8am most mornings and we just sit and chat.  Because of this I have gotten to know Dan on a more personal level than most and I am proud to call him a friend of mine.  He is just as stand up an individual in life as he is in his WODs.  The only time I don’t see him with a smile on his face is when he stops long enough to tell me to F**k Off and that he hates me!  And even then…in his deepest Ginger Rage he can’t stop his smiling from coming on.

Dan, your work ethic and attitude are infectious and it has been awesome having you here.  You will be missed and we can’t wait to see you again.

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For Dan’s final workout we made him wear a 20lb vest, eat a cupcake (thanks Jenny) and drink 2 litres of Homo Milk (thanks Jana).  Even with all of that he still didn’t puke!  And not once did he try to get out of it.

“The Vortex” (original created by CrossFit LA)

• 1.5 Mile Run

Each minute on the minute stop and alternate between:

• 10 Stick Jumps
• 10 Kickbacks

If you do not finish the exercises within the minute and you just keep repeating them you are caught in the Vortex…ignore the exercises and just finish your run.

Feel Free to post your results in “Comments”

Sorry this is a bit dark…I didn’t make it.  Anyway, its good for a giggle and kind of goes along with today’s topic.  And there just might be a bit of strong language (ok one F-Bomb) so mind where you watch it.

Now give this a read.  Is what you’re doing really making a difference?  Absolutely!

Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week?

Written by: Gretchen Reynolds - The New York Times

A few years ago, researchers at the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Japan put rats through a series of swim tests with surprising results. They had one group of rodents paddle in a small pool for six hours, this long workout broken into two sessions of three hours each. A second group of rats were made to stroke furiously through short, intense bouts of swimming, while carrying ballast to increase their workload. After 20 seconds, the weighted rats were scooped out of the water and allowed to rest for 10 seconds, before being placed back in the pool for another 20 seconds of exertion. The scientists had the rats repeat these brief, strenuous swims 14 times, for a total of about four-and-a-half minutes of swimming. Afterward, the researchers tested each rat’s muscle fibers and found that, as expected, the rats that had gone for the six-hour swim showed preliminary molecular changes that would increase endurance. But the second rodent group, which exercised for less than five minutes also showed the same molecular changes.

The potency of interval training is nothing new. Many athletes have been straining through interval sessions once or twice a week along with their regular workout for years. But what researchers have been looking at recently is whether humans, like that second group of rats, can increase endurance with only a few minutes of strenuous exercise, instead of hours? Could it be that most of us are spending more time than we need to trying to get fit?

The answer, a growing number of these sports scientists believe, may be yes.

“There was a time when the scientific literature suggested that the only way to achieve endurance was through endurance-type activities,” such as long runs or bike rides or, perhaps, six-hour swims, says Martin Gibala, PhD, chairman of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. But ongoing research from Gibala’s lab is turning that idea on its head. In one of the group’s recent studies, Gibala and his colleagues had a group of college students, who were healthy but not athletes, ride a stationary bike at a sustainable pace for between 90 and 120 minutes. Another set of students grunted through a series of short, strenuous intervals: 20 to 30 seconds of cycling at the highest intensity the riders could stand. After resting for four minutes, the students pedaled hard again for another 20 to 30 seconds, repeating the cycle four to six times (depending on how much each person could stand), “for a total of two to three minutes of very intense exercise per training session,” Gibala says.

There’s a catch, though. Those six minutes, if they’re to be effective, must hurt. “We describe it as an ‘all-out’ effort,” Gibala says. You’ll be straying “well out of your comfort zone.” That level of discomfort makes some activities better-suited to intense training than others. “We haven’t studied runners,” Gibala says. The pounding involved in repeated sprinting could lead to injuries, depending on a runner’s experience and stride mechanics. But cycling and swimming work well. “I’m a terrible swimmer,” Gibala says, “so every session for me is intense, just because my technique is so awful.”

Meanwhile, his lab is studying whether people could telescope their workouts into even less time. Could a single, two- to three-minute bout of intense exercise confer the same endurance and health benefits as those six minutes of multiple intervals? Gibala is hopeful. “I’m 41, with two young children,” he says. “I don’t have time to go out and exercise for hours.” The results should be available this fall.

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• Deadlift 3-2-1-1-1  Go after that PR!

Then…

• 7 Burpee to Box  24″ / 18″
• 7 Pull Us

7 Rounds For Time

Feel free to post your results in “Comments”

A little reminder of how fun 400m Lunge Day was.  You are all becoming machines!

Speaking of machines in a different light…you know, the ones that take up all the good floor space in Globo Gym…this article was written by Phil Hueston (same title as blog entry).

 

As you can imagine, we’re pummeled with marketing and advertising for the “newest,” “most cutting edge” and “next generation” of equipment for youth fitness.

What’s odd about this stuff is that it looks like “Mini-Me” versions of the same crappy, dangerous machines that parents and adults are getting unfit and unhealthy on in their “health clubs!” Fixed position, uni-planar, single movement “fitness” equipment that nearly always creates injury patterns in the people who use them.

Yes, building muscle will help you lose body fat.  Yes, regularly performing resistance training will help build muscle.  Yes, these machines were “engineered” to maximize (isolated) muscular output (and maybe for use at Gitmo?).  Yet a strange thing has happened to American adults, even those who use these machines to “get in shape”.

They’ve become so dependent on them that they’re no longer capable of performing strength building exercises without the artificial “intelligence” provided by these contraptions.  So when the time comes to apply their newly developed “strength,” they either get injured or realize they aren’t nearly as “strong” as the numbers on their exercise machines would indicate.Add to this the fact that more back, shoulder, knee, ankle and hip injuries are caused by the use of these torture machines in a year than in the NFL in 10 years, and it makes me wonder. It makes me wonder why we’d shove our children onto this junkyard fodder in the first place!

We know that “free-form” functional exercises, those that mimic real-life and sports movements, not only result in better movement patterns (think injury-resistance), they burn more calories and build more muscle! That’s right, functional integrated training stimulates the development of a far greater number of muscles than isolated, fixed position machine training.

Let’s look at a very popular exercise machine for both youth sports and adult fitness, the leg press. Plate loaded, selectorized (think weight-stack-and-pin) or otherwise resisted, it artificially stabilizes the body as the exerciser tries to perform hip and knee extension. The design creates higher levels of lumbar strain during the eccentric lowering, or negative phase of movement. Extreme hip flexion at the bottom of the leg press prevents proper glute activity and puts a tremendous amount of stress on the knees.

Squatting done correctly increases knee stability. The leg press reduces knee stabilization, increasing the risk of serious injury. Additionally, many exercisers, especially young athletes, load far too much weight on the leg press, in a misguided effort to increase leg strength. This can result in spinal injury and, potentially, permanent damage to knees, back and hips.

Good squat form may be a challenge to master but squatting develops far higher levels of functional strength. Here’s a great bonus: squats help athletes develop total body, multi-planar strength and power, compared with the limited strength developed on fixed position, artificially stabilized exercise machines designed to “isolate muscle groups.” (More on this fallacy in the future).

Speaking more generally, most exercise machines are simply not designed to support the adolescent body, let alone pre-pubescent kids.

Seated overhead press machines are typically designed in a way that places a great deal of stress on the lumbar spine. These forces far outweigh those produced during standing overhead pressing, when the core stabilization system is more readily recruited for spinal stability. Athletes often end up in severe lumbar misalignment in an effort to lift higher weights.

Leg extension and leg curl machines fix the body in the sagittal plane (think straight-ahead) and create hip flexion and shear force at the knee (leg extension) or extreme lumbar extension (lordosis) and hip flexion (leg curl.) Both seriously reduce the body’s ability to stabilize the knee and spine.

How then should children exercise in order to avoid the onslaught of the machines? Ground-based training, with an emphasis on bodyweight stabilization exercises first, with progression to bodyweight/implement based strength training, integrated along with speed, agility, balance, flexibility and power training, is the key to youth fitness and sports training success!

Better fitness levels for everyone? Higher levels of sports performance? And all of this while drastically reducing injury and extending athletic careers? Yes, yes and yes!

The strategy is simple…resist the “rise of the machines!” Your future depends on it!

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Workout of the Day:

• 10 Single DB Overhead Press / Push Press / Push Jerk (each arm)  45lbs / 30 lbs
• 10 Pistol Squats (each leg)
• 20 Medicine Ball Cleans  20lbs / 16 lbs

4 Rounds For Time

Feel free to post results to “Comments”