RX THE WOD

How CrossFit Are You?

Posted on March 17, 2012 by

The CrossFit Open is a great challenge to test mental and physical endurance once a year. For those of us relatively new to CrossFit I think a monthly or quarterly checkup tool would be great to tell us where we are making progress and give us some road markers along the way. While the benchmark workouts are fantastic indicator of overall fitness, they rarely tell us how we are progressing in terms of strength or endurance and what we should work on most. I always liked the Level 1-4 benchmarks coined by CrossFit Seattle and it inspired a simple benchmarking tool.

I wanted to track over time progress in 4 specific areas: strength, technical gymnastics, bodyweight exercises and endurance. I created a spreadsheet to give me the 4 metrics for each of these areas and track average and overall progress over time. The strength benchmarks are a function of bodyweight the others are standard for all. The results are showing below the overall progress and also the need to work as much on endurance as on strength. I now have 3 quarterly results since I started CrossFit last June until this month. Great progress in all areas, but clearly need to go for a long run today for endurance… (Anyone interested in the spreadsheet please email me (tamas AT rxthewod.com) and I’m happy to send along. Hope you can improve on it.)

Posted in Benchmarks, Skill Training, Top Posts | Comments Off

CrossFit Training Periodization

Posted on March 16, 2012 by

Being in the middle of the CrossFit Open reminds me of high school sports and doing road races after college. In most sports we go through training periodization from winter conditioning to sports specific training with the objective of being in peak shape for the competition. Leading up to the Open most athletes were working on their weaknesses. Apart from that, even pre-Open every gym tended to do the same WODs for general conditioning. Looking back I do think more specialized training is simply necessary especially for those (like me) who didn’t weightlift or do gymnastics through college because form and body parts tend to fall apart in high volume competitions. The other thing is stamina. Leading up to competition longer runs, longer WODs, more rowing make a ton of difference.

There is a lot of discussion online about CrossFit and training periodization and specialization strategies here, here, here and here. Hopefully these strategies help me better prepare post-Open for the spring race season, like the Broad Street Run, CMC and some fun skiing events!

Posted in Competition, Skill Training, Top Posts | 3 Comments

Are we Nuts? – Paleo and CrossFit

Posted on March 15, 2012 by

No, I’m not questioning the movement… 🙂 I did recently start to wonder though about eating nuts especially roasted almonds during high intensity training. In the open WODs 12.1 and 12.2 I almost had to quit due to abdominal cramps and after some (painful) experiments I narrowed the problem down to almonds (my favorites) and learned more than I needed to know about phytic acid… Digging around Paleo gurudom I found many cautions about eating too much of them from Cordain, Sisson and other articles. So until I sort this out – I guess, no more almonds for me…

Today’s WOD was to prep for the inevitable 12.4 treatment at moderate pace to get in the mood…

WOD – 12.4 Prep
5 minutes of Wall Balls (20lbs @ 10ft): 56
5 minutes of Double Unders: 97

Posted in Paleo, WOD | Comments Off

Food Subsidies, Obesity and Paleo

Posted on March 14, 2012 by

Yesterday’s flight from London was a study in nutrition gone haywire. I had plenty of time to estimate the components of the airline food served on Virgin Atlantic:
– 450g carbs (bagels, biscuits, OJ, breads galore, jam, potato, rice, veggies, chocolate mousse, non-fat ice cream, pretzels, crackers)
– 10g protein (token meat and cream cheese)
– 20g fat (cream cheese, meat)
This reminded me of a study by the University of California on how obesity is caused by diets skewed by government dietary guidelines and farm subsidies. While the study was done in the US and the airline is British, they obviously were inspired by similar guidelines…
The most interesting part of the study was the analysis on the elimination of farm subsidies. If they went away we could be consuming 10-33% less sugar, grains, rice and also less soy and corn. We would, however, eat more fruits, vegetables, and about the same amount of meat. All in all, without the subsidies we would be that much closer to Paleo… (see graph below).

WOD @ CF KOP
3 rounds for time:
– 400m run
– 15 cleans (115lbs)
– 30 deadlifts (115lbs)
TIME: 23:24

Posted in Paleo, Top Posts, Travel, WOD | Comments Off

CrossFit Life Lesson 15 – Choose Your Identity and Outcomes

Posted on March 13, 2012 by

I ate vegetarian for 15 years and now I do Paleo. Recently I had a conversation with a friend who pointed out that these were opposites (and “how could I possibly switch sides”…). From the discussion came a very important lesson that I followed at work and in fitness as well:

Do not confuse What You Do with Who You Are

There is a world of difference between ‘being vegetarian’ and ‘eating vegetarian’. One is who you are, the other is what you do to reach an outcome you have. I ate vegetarian because I believed it helped with my outcome of ‘being healthy’. When I found out that was not true I changed my diet. The outcome never changed. I still want to ‘be healthy’ and I now believe Paleo gives me that outcome far better than vegetarianism. Some of my vegetarian friends whose identity is ‘vegetarian’ will never make the switch even if it harms their health. Their outcome is to ‘be vegetarian’ for ethical or other reasons which are noble, but my outcome is ‘health’ and vegetarianism no longer serves that goal.

Same is true with Crossfit. I do Crossfit because I believe it helps to reach my outcome of ‘being the fittest’ I can be. Like many others, I did marathons, cross training, P90X, Insanity and other programs until I found CrossFit. My identity was never a ‘marathoner’ or ‘P90X-er’. It was ‘athlete’. Now I believe CrossFit serves that goal the most. The outcome of ‘being the fittest’ never changes. In that sense, ‘I am a Crossfitter’ as long as it serves the outcome of ‘being the fittest’.

Business actually teaches us this lesson many times over. In sales, we have a major global revenue target. Noone cares how we get to the outcome as long as we deliver. If I have to go to London or Beijing to do so, then that is the way. If I spend extra time with just one customer in need, then I do. The arrogant mantra that ‘This is the way we do it because that is who we are’ destroyed many businesses. The right approach is ‘We will do whatever it takes to get to our outcome’. Our identity is not ‘we’re doing things our way’ but ‘we’re delivering no matter what’.