Sports Fitness

Many of you emailed me last night regarding the Overtraining CD and it was not an advertisement, just a reminder that even in the internet age information is not always easily available. What is exciting is Håkan Andersson is having his annual seminar on training, and it should be a good one. I am going to be especially interested to see how much Pfaff or Tellez influence has when Takanori shares his information. Mladen, who is making a name for himself in the data driven world of sports will be sharing his understanding on periodization and his experiences in the US. I am interested to see what PJ Vazel is going to share, since his interviews and contemporary approaches is clearly making an impact on the Kinetics Manual after I read a few pages. The seminar should be filmed and more information will be available later. If you are interested in the seminar and wish to meet up in Finland or Sweden please contact me via private message. A directors cut roundtable will likely be recorded with questions on drug free training. Takanori Suyibiashi JPN- Japanese sprint training. Roland Lööv SWE- Reflections regarding his work with junior elite sprinters and hurdlers. Mladen Jovanovi? RS – Do you think that periodization is confusing? Mladen will try do straighten out the questions marks! Aki Salo UK – Optimizing the 4x100m relay. Experiences from two Olympic cycles with the British relay team. Pierre Jean Vazel FRA – Sprint training a from a historic perspective, current trends and the future.

If I told you that you could have the body you’ve always wanted (Fit, mobile, athletic, strong) by simply moving like a child, would you believe me? Some of you reading this would believe me. What if I told you that you could lose weight and pick up your metabolism by simply moving like a child? Would you believe that, too? I can hear your thoughts now: “Sure, anyone could lose weight if they bounced off the walls all day long like children do. They are so full of energy” Yeah, that might be true, but I’m not talking about moving like a child in that respect. I am talking about simply getting on the floor each day and learning how to move again: learning to roll and crawl - things like that. Hopefully you already know how these simple childlike movements can help you move better, feel better and restore your body back to its Original Strength. However, these simple childlike movements can also help you digest better, handle stress better, and pick up your metabolism too. Think about it. If rolling and rocking improve your reflexive strength and movement vocabulary, if they improve the efficiency of your brain, they can also improve the efficiency of your metabolism. If you improve one facet of your body, you can improve the whole. Do you think kids have so much energy and are able to “bounce off the walls” because they are kids? OR, do you think it is possible that they have so much energy because they spend time moving, and keeping things “right.” Kids can eat almost anything they want (kids that move - we have a whole other discussion here for a later time!) and stay fit, healthy and active. Why? Because they move. They move like they were designed to move. They crawl, roll, skip, run, laugh, play. What would happen to your body if you did those things? What would happen to your stress levels? Your stress hormones? Would you be more relaxed? Would you have more energy and less inflammation if your adrenals weren’t always in fight or flight mode? Would you digest food better? Would you suffer from acid reflux in indigestion? Would your metabolism pick up and burn “red-hot”? Would you be able to bounce off the walls? We dismiss a lot of things kids do by saying things like: “I used to be like that when I was a kid” , “kids have so much energy” , “when you get older, the body just slows down and things wear out.” Do you know what you should do with thoughts like those? THROW THEM AWAY! If you buy into thoughts like that, you will live out thoughts like that. You were made to move well, sleep well, eat well, feel well. Anything less than that is living below your design. If this is you, get some gumption and go after what is yours. Stand up, get down on the floor, learn how to move again and regain your body, your mind, and your life. Do not simply chalk things up to childish ways. Look at things through a different lens. You can completely change your life through the lens of a child. Can you believe that?

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I worried incessantly; a searing hot white noise in my mind. I worried I’d get into another fight, get another beating by the teachers, be humiliated in class, be shamed the doctors, be abandoned again by my family, become broke without food or medical attention, be ill-prepared, incompetent, unworthy… I worried death would come too early before I had the chance to understand the purpose behind my despair and suffering. My grandmother had seen it on my face. She cupped my face, and looking down at me, said, “Worry is a total waste of time. It can’t change anything. It robs you of your joy, by keeping you very busy doing absolutely nothing. You want to stop worrying so much? Start laughing and DO something about your situation. You may look crazy but you’ll feel great… You may not make the right choice to change the situation, but you won’t be worrying anymore, and eventually you’ll figure out the right choices.” Only later in my life, when I started to make nutrition and exercise changes to resolve my health issues, did I come to understand what she meant. When you first start exercising, you heart pounds, your head hammers, your lungs burn, your muscles strain, your joints ache, your stomach turns, your mind races with every imaginable excuse for you to stop, why you’re going to get hurt, why you’re not capable, competent, prepared, why you can’t possibly continue. This is called: “first wind.” You suffer because the mind doesn’t know that this is not the end of your fitness, only the end of its initial gear… until, for some magical ingredient of willpower, you laugh it off and keep going. Then, something amazing happens in your brain: it rewires to a new gear of efficiency; it floods your receptors with feel-good chemistry, your heart synchronizes, your head clears, your breathing normalizes, your muscles groove the movement, your joints smooth out the motion, and your mind focuses on your tempo and technique. This is called: “second wind” - a cerebral adaptation to your perseverance that scientists call neuroplasticity. But we have to survive our first wind. Most of us, most of the time, stop before we get to our second wind. And don’t you think for a second this only applies to exercise! Everything we do is a physical activity for our nervous and endocrine (hormonal) systems; even sitting or laying down. When you worry, your brain lights up EXACTLY as if you were in a crisis! We stop before the shift happens. We surrender before giving the miraculous design of the human body a chance to adapt and provide us with the clarity, energy and effortlessness which WILL come. The cells in your body react to everything your mind thinks. When you stop in first gear, perseverating with worry, despair and suffering, you make yourselves literally ill. Most of the groups that I train - soldiers, police and firefighters - have a mortality of age 54, specifically because of the horrific level of stress they must endure, and how it slowly erodes their immune system; the number one killer for them being stress-related diseases. Negativity suppresses your immune system. Positivity, on the other hand, bolsters it. So, the best choice to make when you feel stuck at first wind is to insert a positive attitude. Unfortunately, we usually only try wishful thinking. Wishful thinking tries to convince us that this is good for us, that something better will come, that it’ll soon be over, that it isn’t real. But wishful thinking rarely can survive against the potency of worry, despair and suffering: in life’s true battles. Positive thinking is a decision; a choice to fight against the vacuum pulling us down into negativity. When you worry, laugh out; when you despair, take action; when you suffer, hang on. Laughter, action and perseverance are the antidotes to worry, despair and suffering. Practice these in every small thi

Rest Day Mobility Skill: High Hang Snatch Catch up Day Post results to comments

I am in the midst of GAIN withdrawal syndrome. What is that? Well it is actually pretty simple, after you spend five days with highly motivated coaches, therapists and teachers who are hungry to learn and willing to share and you leave there is a very empty feeling. It is so stimulating and uplifting to be in that environment that it is difficult to return to the daily routine. Only 12 more months until GAIN 2014! Fortunately we have a GAIN forum and Google + community to continue to share ideas and continue the GAIN experience. GAIN has grown and evolved in the past five years into a very special experience for professional development. The days are long without breaks, so that it is a total immersion in athletic development. In many ways GAIN is defined by what it is not, it is not a course in the traditional sense of the word, it is certainly not a boot camp, it is not a clinic, the best way I can describe it is it is an experience. It is what Seth Godin calls a tribe, a learning circle where everyone may not agree but they agree to disagree civilly and in a manner that fosters learning. The faculty is the best people in their fields who are actually producing results working with athletes and teaching physical education. They are totally accessible to attendees at all times. Rather than try to capture the whole GAIN experience in one post (That would not do it justice) I will write subsequent posts on the presentations and the lessons from this years GAIN. If you are interested in attending next year mark the second week of June on your calendar, enrollment is limited and it is open by application only. Our goal is define the field of athletic development and change that world.

The Top Endurance Exercises Athletes have become bigger and stronger and are in better shape nowadays, and the trend towards endurance training has only accelerated this phenomenon. It used to be that a baseball player, for example, would focus on exercises specifically designed to improve the specific skill set that they needed to succeed on [...] Related posts: Ramp Up Your Conditioning With Speed Interval Workouts How to Mix HIIT and Endurance Cardio High Intensity Intervals are Far Superior to Endurance Cardio

Press 3-3-3-3-3 Then, Bottom to bottom Tabata SquatsImmediately followed by a 1600m Run time trial Post loads, reps and time to comments. Log results online (Beyond the Whiteboard)   

I like numbers, facts, and use them to inform my business and life decisions. S I’m come to the conclusion that $50 is more expensive than $189. Here is my case. I do not have unlimited funds so I shop around like anyone else for services. However, since starting CrossFit, I shop around a lot less. When I see a good service that will deliver the results I’m looking for, I now tend to pull the trigger and go with it. So far, very happy with this change in habit and attitude. There is a long list of reasons why people don’t do CrossFit. One of them is CrossFit is clearly 3-5 times more costly than a traditional gym membership. $189/$50 = 3.78. Fact. I would hope that a CrossFit gym is 3-5 times more effective! Effectiveness in a gym membership can be measured in many ways. One clear measure is attendance. If you don’t come to the gym, you aren’t training. So lets look at attendance at a CrossFit gym versus traditional gym. In a given week at CrossFit Portland, 73% of our members come and are coached through their training sessions. Most come to at least 3 classes. Compare this to one example I’ve learned about at a traditional gym. 20,000 members, 700 use the gym in a week. 3.5% of the members used the gym – those are staggering odds against your fitness goals! Cost = $189/$50 = CrossFit is 3.78 times the cost of a traditional gym. Attendance = 73%/3.5% = At CrossFit, you are 21 times more likely to show up. You decide which membership costs more.

STRONG Push Press 3-3-3 WOD 5 RFT 6 Shoulder to overhead 95/135 6 Box over jumps 28/36