This Week From My CSA 26 May

Posted by admin on May 30, 2012 in Nutrition, Slider | Comments Off

Once again, I was unable to pick up the vegetables from my CSA. This time I can’t complain because I was in Griffin doing the South Atlanta Showdown and took 5th place. So yay for me.

So I had Erich pick up my stuff. This means I really have no clue what all I got, but I’m not letting that stand in the way of eating the hell out of all of it.

This week I was lucky that I got a lot of things that I am comfortable cooking and eating. I think I’m just about radished out for the rest of the season, so I was happy to see a decreased quantity of them.

Lots of different types of squashes and zucchini, carrots, red and sweet onions, a beet, a few radishes, some turnips, and a cucumber. Cucumber is probably my all time favorite vegetable. Those or olives depending when you ask me.

There was a wide variety of the shapes and sizes of the zucchini. One of them was star shaped. I couldn’t tell the difference after I cooked them. I don’t know if its a different variety or that one was just special.

I also got some dill for seasoning. Which works great with ground beef and zucchini I found.

I didn’t realize that this crazy U-shaped thing was a cucumber until I started slicing into it. I figured it was a zucchini. It looked different then a zucchini looked and I was sort of overwhelmed and surprised by how good this cucumber was. I ate the whole thing while standing there at the cutting board cooking.

Food Log Review

Posted by admin on May 30, 2012 in Nutrition | Comments Off

This is a pretty good example of a food log of someone whose making a major lifestyle change by altering their diet in the midst of some life changes:

Breakfast:

2 eggs with a banana and Coffee with 2 creams & 1 sugar

 

Lunch:

Grilled Chicken and Salad with Ranch

 

Snack: Strawberries and blue berries

 

Dinner: 2 grilled Bratwurst and Green beans

 

Sunflower seeds

 

Thursday

Breakfast:

Steak tips with Bell pepper and scrambled eggs Coffee

 

Lunch: The remainder of the steak tips with bell pepper and cabbage Water

Snack: Strawberries and Blueberries

 

Dinner: Smoked Pork Chops, Steamed Brocolli with bell pepper, and Cucumber slices in rasberry vinegarette dressing water

also had a decaf coffee with 2 cream no sugar

 

Friday:

Breakfast:

Bacon and scrambled egg, Coffee 2 cream 1 sugar

 

Lunch:

Grilled Chicken and salad with ranch water

 

Dinner:

Chicken burrito with rice and beans, chips, salsa, cheese dip coke

 

Saturday:

Breakfast:

Bacon and scrambled eggs coffe 2 cream 1 sugar

 

Lunch:

Ramen noodles and water

 

Dinner:

Steak tips with bell pepper, Broccolli and cucumber

 

Sunday:

Breakfast:

Bacon and scrambled egg, Coffee 2 cream 1 sugar

 

Lunch:

Ramen Noodles and water

 

Snack Strawberries

 

Dinner:

Grilled Chicken and brocolli with cucumber

 

Monday

Breakfast:

Bacon and scrambled egg, Coffee 2 cream 1 sugar

 

Lunch:

Grilled chicken with onion and mushrooms with broccolli and water

 

I am sorry I have been so busy with getting ready for my daughters graduation and her party I did not keep up with what I had Monday night and Tuesday and I just can’t remember. My brain is on melt down trying to make sure I have everything for the party. I am not a party planner and I am freaking out.

 

Also I will not be working out for the next week. I have a little fluid on my knees so I need to give they time to heal.    I have not been good Wed or Today.  I know NO EXCUSES but  i’m so busy and I did not prepare meals for the week.  I promise to commit 100% when this graduation is over.

 

Chiropractor

Posted by admin on May 29, 2012 in Crossfit | Comments Off

I recently started going to a chiropractor. Dr. Michael Beres is a gym member at Crossfit Inception, so I decided that if I was going to try this out it might as well be with someone that I know. You can find his site here. 

From what I gather, most people go to the chiropractor, or any doctor for that matter, because they have some form of symptoms. For most people, this is in the form of discomfort of some form. Mine never was discomfort or pain, it was poor positioning.

My friend at Regionals teammate Harpa basically told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to see a chiropractor. She also made fun of my suggestion that extra mobility and soft tissue work would make a difference. She also put me in a headlock until I made an appointment.

The catalyst for all of this was seeing this picture of me doing WOD 12.5

If you ignore the really, stupid look on my face and focus on my shoulders you’ll see some pretty scary godawful positioning.

I’ve always known that I suffer from a severe case of douche bag shoulders. I am internally rotated as a human could possibly be. This leads to me having really poor shoulder mobility and crazy head positioning when I do anything overhead.

Its especially bad when I do snatches or overhead squats.

I’ve done a lot of work to train the muscles around these joints, but it hasn’t really done much good. A lot of good functional coaches who work with real athletes will caution against merely adding strength to disfunction. It sort of makes it a recipe for disaster.

I guess it would equate to how much damage can I do to my acromion process with 65lbs versus 155lbs. Not that this is an excuse to execute shitty movement with light weight, but that adding increased loads to poor positioning is a recipe for disaster.

If you follow the Crossfit Games at all you’ll either hear the announcers talk about or witness for yourself how good of movers the top athletes are. It seems weird to say, but these people have some much control over their bodies and external loads that the movement looks nearly effortless.

Compare this to the average class in any gym where people struggle with the basic motor patterns of a movement.

Local competitions are interesting because you will see every manifestation of this.

You’ll see tremendous natural movers who are extremely efficient with their movements and have a significant amount of strength and work capacity dominating the field. You’ll see guys who have worked hard for strength and capacity, but who move like they have two left feet struggle with what should theoretically easy. You’ll see good movers aka natural athletes who are new or have done little to develop a specific capacity do surprisingly well.

So, in my quest to not suck and to stay healthy for life I heeded Harpa’s order and went to see the chiropractor.

In our first meeting, he took X-rays and I was actually kind of shocked by the results. I expected them to be bad. I did not expect that my shoulders were an inch forward of where they should be or that I had “old grandmother neck” because of my ridiculously chin-forward position.

After my first adjustment, I noticed a few things.

First, my head touched the head rest while I was driving for the first time ever. This may not seem like a big deal, but its honestly true. That’s how crappy my natural spinal alignment is from years of crappy positioning.

Second, I felt amazing. Sort of like being post-massage or post-ice bath.

I haven’t noticed any huge or significant difference in any PR’s. They’ve come pretty consistently, but no more so then before. I feel a little more stable in most of my overhead work and a lot more comfortable in the receiving position for a snatch.

I don’t think its enough to call it a game changer or to think it will allow me to make a run at the Games next year. I do think it will do a lot for my long term health. Dr. Beres was frankly amazed that I didn’t have any pain in my neck. I either have a high tolerance or a high level of stupidity. Probably a little of both.

I think I will see a long term performance benefit from this, but I’m not going to kid myself into thinking that I’ll be an elite athlete or anything.

I didn’t really know what to think of a chiropractor before this. I had never been adjusted and I had heard mixed reviews. I can honestly say that I’ve had a very positive experience. Maybe I would have a different opinion at a different facility. End of the day, I don’t see how it could do any hard to give it a try if you have pain or have positioning problems or are just a little bit beat up.

South Atlanta Showdown

Posted by admin on May 28, 2012 in Crossfit, Slider | Comments Off

This Saturday was the South Atlanta Showdown. It was minor event in the Garage Games series and on Memorial Day weekend, so there weren’t too many people who showed up. Honestly, I was very impressed with how well the event was run.

Going into it, I knew that it was there first event and it was in the head to head showdown format. Having done more Garage Games events then I can keep track of, I always just assume that these event will run long and have some form of major change to timeline.

Probably the best praise that I can give the event organizers is that everything flowed amazingly smoothly. The heats were close together, but that’s out of necessity. I wound up doing eight total work outs (brutal), but I always felt well informed about what was going on.

There was some great competition all around. A few regional level competitors and a lot of people whose names we’ll start hearing in the future.

My friend Rio Landa from World Camp Crossfit won the whole event. She swept and went 3-0 and even PR’d her “Fran” on the last event.

My buddies Matt, Michelle, and Kaitlin all had really strong showings too.

I actually kind of prefer these smaller events. They are more intimate. Instead of having a few hundred people to meet and greet, you get a really good chance to bond with people that you sort of know. I’m friends with Rio and Brandon from the Cockdiesel family, but I hadn’t spent that much time with either of them until the Showdown.

Getting better acquinted with some Crossfriends is always a positive.

This was my best showing to date, and that was mostly due to luck. I am not a fan of the head to head showdown for that reason. Don’t get me wrong. It’s an interesting way to do things and its a great day of testing and training, but I don’t think its the best scoring system for a competition. Not to say I didn’t have fun, but that I played the game too much.

I lost my first two workouts of the day, which is devastating for a 3 loss elimination tournament. I had a heavy sled push and a row muscle up WOD. I pretty much had no chance at the sled push against a full grown sized gentlemen. I screwed myself on the muscle ups. I rowed a little faster then expected and just had super sloppy muscle ups. I know I can do all seven unbroken after a 1k row, I just was too wide and lost.

After that I had a streak of five workouts custom made for me.

1. 3 rounds: 15 toes to bar, 25 air squats

2. 5 min AMRAP: 15 snatch 75lbs, 35 double unders

3. Annie (aka my girlfriend) (aka the only true test of fitness)

4. 5 min AMRAP 35 double unders, 9 HSPU

5. 5 min AMRAP: pull up, burpee ladder

Body weight metcons, especially ones with double unders are awesome. Its good to know that you’re good at what you’re good at.

I definitely did these workouts only as fast as I needed to to win them. It almost bit me in the ass on the pull up burpee ladder, first because I started with a burpee because I’m an idiot and second because the guy I was going against sprinted at the end and I have a hard time breaking a pace.

Annie was kind of funny. I spent so much time talking trash about how good I am about it that I felt I jinxed myself before we started. Especially since my opponent, Ryan Sunshine, was no slouch on the double unders and pretty similar in size and build to me. I still won pretty handily, keeping my loving relationship with that WOD in tact.

It’s ok though, because he got his vengeance on the 1RM clean work out. It was a 3 way workout, so two advanced and one got the loss. My 1RM was 235 going into it. Ryan’s was 255 and the other guy was 275. I was kind of hoping that one of them would just be too beat down to get close. We all got within 10lbs of our PR. I tried 3 times for 245, which is what I would have needed to tie. The first time I had a barely successful deadlift attempt.  The next two times it got to my rack, but my elbows were slow and I was too far forward to catch it or stand it up. 245lbs is also my front squat 1RM, so I don’t know if I could have stood that up after seven other WODs.

I think that the 30 WODs that they chose were all pretty solid tests of fitness. There wasn’t anything goofy like burpee archery or asinine like burpee snatches. Just plain old burpess. Mixed with a lot of other decent tests of fitness.

Sure there were a lot of events that played to my strengths and a lot that did not. I got lucky in a lot of them too.

It was a great way to spend my only day off this Memorial Day weekend and I look forward to this event next year. Especially because it ended early enough that I didn’t mind the detour to Newnan to eat at Five Guys with Michelle to celebrate her first competition.

A big thanks to all of the judges and volunteers for making this happen. I know its a thankless job and I really appreciate the fair and honest standards and the enthusiasm throughout the day.

Kettlebell Workshop in Memphis

Posted by admin on May 27, 2012 in Uncategorized | Comments Off