Ages ago, I posted about squats and how good they are for you. Since then I’ve still had to occasionally defend this movement, more for our newbies than our regulars, but I think this is a good time to revisit the topic. I’m sure every now and then you may encounter friends, relatives, etc who tell you to be careful as squatting is dangerous.
When the gluteus maximus (one of the prime movers in the squat) develops, it grows back (not out). If squats did widen the hips, Olympic lifters, who devote as much as 25 percent of their training volume to squats, would be built like mailboxes.
Myth #2: Squats are bad for the knees.
Not only are squats not bad for the knees, every legitimate research study on this subject has shown that squats improve knee stability and therefore help reduce the risk of injuries. Providing you don‘t relax or bounce in the bottom position of the squat, you‘ve got nothing to worry about. In other words, don‘t relax at the bottom of the squat and allow your connective tissue to stretch out like a piece of saltwater taffy.
Myth #3. There’s only one way to squat.
Whether you switch from doing squats with the barbell on the clavicles to having it on the traps you‘ll force adaptation and growth. The front, back, high-bar, low-bar, goblet, or Zerscher squat all have their place and purpose in making you stronger.
Myth #4. You should squat till you puke.
Strength movements are not metcons. Do not treat them as such.
Myth #5. Smith machine squats are safer than regular squats.
The Smith machine squat is very hard on the patellar ligament and the anterior cruciate ligament, both of which act as stabilizers for the knees. With a Smith machine, the bar is on a track, and this increased stability decreases the requirement of the body‘s neutralizer and stabilizer muscle functions. Therefore, the strength developed on such machines has minimal carryover to a three-dimensionally, unstable environment such as occurs during the free-standing squat. This is an especially important fact to those who use weight training to improve sports performance.
Myth #6. Squats are bad for the back.
As long as you squat with the proper form, the center mass of the barbell will not be far away from the center of gravity, and this in itself will help prevent injury.
Myth #7. Squats make athletes slower.
Squat performance can be directly related to success in track and field sprinting events, as well as in many other sports. Great examples of the relationship between squatting and athletic performance are the successes of bobsledder Ian Danney, who has become one of the most successful strength coaches for professional football players. Danney has front squatted 418 pounds for 2 reps at a bodyweight of 185 pounds. Other impressive athletes I‘ve seen are skier Kate Pace, who back squats 264 pounds for 3 reps at a bodyweight of 150 pounds; and alpine skier Michelle McKendry-Ruthven, who squatted 66 reps in 60 seconds with 70 percent of her bodyweight.
Myth #8. Squats can damage the heart.
Squats will temporarily raise blood pressure, but the heart adapts to the stress in a positive fashion by making the left ventricle grow larger. Interestingly, studies have shown leg press performance on a 45-degree angle will increase the blood pressure three times more than the squat will. Obviously, if you suffer from cardiovascular disease or if it runs in your family, you should consult an experienced sports medicine practitioner before engaging in a serious squat program.
Last night, Mike caught me eating a sweet potato post-workout and asked if I did anything to “spice” it up. I sadly admitted that it was just baked in the oven until it caramelized but was otherwise plain. He then asked if I ever tried putting them on the grill, which reminded me of this recipe. You see, I haven’t had the chance to make these in a while since I can’t have a grill at my current apartment building, but they are quite tasty.
Spiced Grilled Sweet Potatoes
Ingredients
3 lbs of sweet potatoes, washed and peeled
1 teaspoon course sea salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
Instructions
Cover potatoes with cold salted water in a large pot, then bring to a boil. Simmer until slightly resistant when pierced with a sharp small knife, 5 to 7 minutes. Drain well. When cool, slice potatoes lengthwise.
Mix together salt and spice; coat potatoes in oil. Sprinkle spice mixture on sweet potatoes, coating thoroughly.
Grill potatoes on a lightly oiled grill rack over medium heat, until grill marks appear and potatoes are cooked through, about 15 minutes.
While it’s pretty easy to cut these in thick slices, I also sometimes prefer to cut them again lengthwise to make fat “steak fries” out of them. If you’re fortunate enough to have a grill, give this recipe a try and let me know what you think!
Adapted from this recipe: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/2571
All Ginger jokes aside, let’s take a few minutes and discuss sleeping and your lack thereof. As Dallas Hartwig, from Whole 9, puts it, “In the realm of athletics, sleep seems to be the red-headed stepchild: clumsily acknowledged, generally overlooked, yet permanently part of the family.” In today’s society where the Type-A, hard charging, stay up to get “more” done and “out-work” your competitors mentality seems to be rewarded, we are actually doing ourselves a disservice if we skimp on our sleep. 7-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep is what I’m looking for. “Why,” you ask? I’ll defer to Dallas on this one and summarize some of his main points found in his Performance Menu article “Sleep: An Undervalued Ergogenic Aid“:
Lack of sleep increases inflammatory markers in your body, and chronically high inflammation has been linked to autoimmune disease, impaired metabolism and diabetes, and some types of cancer. Also, lack of sleep weakens the immune system making you more susceptible to illness.
Through hormonal interactions, lack of sleep can lead to the body feeling hungry more often and craving more carbohydrates oftentimes leading to poorer food choices.
Sleep improves your recovery from training and improves strength building via secretions of growth hormone and testosterone that only occurs during your slumber.
Sleep deprivation of 1-2 nights leads to a noticeable deterioration in psychomotor performance, meaning you know that you’re not up to part after not sleeping well after a night or two. However, when compared to a milder sleep deprivation (only 6 hrs/night), over a sustained period of time, the decrease in motor performance is similar but the athlete’s perception is significantly reduced. This means they do not recognize their performance is lackluster and less than thriving.
Our lifts and workouts have a huge neurological component to them and if your central nervous sysem not only from yesterday’s workout but also your lack of sleep, you’re setting yourself up for a rough day at the gym. It has been shown that athletes perform better on skill based movements after getting “extra”, likely due to the recovery their CNS gets.
Now that many of you have made it a priority to eat better this past month, start moving sleep up towards the top and do yourself a favor. Not only for the benefits highlighted in Dallas’ article, but also for the improved quality of life. If you’re looking for another way to help yourself reach your goals, it doesn’t get much easier than improving your sleep habits. Other Intrepid articles to peruse on sleep are: Enter Sandman, Siesta Anyone?, When Red Lights are a Good Thing, Jet Lag, Battling the Z-Monster, & Perchance to Dream.
By popular demand we have opened a Friday 7pm Group Class. It’s available now to sign up so get your weekend started on the right track with a great workout!
I’ve gotten a few questions lately about how to set goals for personal performance gain. People want to know what to pick, how high to reach, and how soon they should check it off their list. The beauty (and bane) of CrossFit is that there are so many damn movements to learn, much less master, it can feel overwhelming no matter how long you’ve been at it. CrossFit pulls from many specialties: gymnastics, olympic weightlifting, power lifting, kettlebells, strongman, rowing, running, and now even swimming. Add that to the necessary regimen you need to recover and adapt to rigorous training: recovery, mobility, rest, and nutrition.
Even if you can make it your full-time job to master all of the movements, it would take a lifetime to do it. We often see a bit of A.D.D. when it comes to athletes and goal setting. For example, an athlete sets out to work on double unders only to see someone in class working on snatches. The next shiny thing catches his eyes, he drops the rope, and wanders over to work on snatches instead. Focus on your goal, attain it, and then move on.
A few tips when setting goals:
If you don’t set a goal, you’ll never reach it: don’t get overwhelmed by all the things you want to be better at. Commit to your goals. Work on them.
Pick ONE skill you want to improve: Certain movements are skill based and require repetition to learn such as double unders, handstands, rope climbs, and muscle ups.
Also, set one short term goal: This goal can be the same OR different from the skill you want to improve. The difference is that there is a time limit to achieving it. Pick one thing you want to do by the end of the month. 100 push ups in a row, a sub-1:30 time on a 500m row, 15 strict pull ups, push ups off-knees, better shoulder mobility, etc. Work on them at home, before/after class, and on Skills Days.
Then, set one long term goal: This goal is something you give yourself 6 months to a year to achieve. It can be a sub 40 minute 10k, a strict pull up, a 2x bodyweight deadlift, body weight snatch, 300# clean, a triathlon, etc. With this goal, you still have to check in and assess the status of your progress at least once each month. Work on it when you can. Focus on improving any form, weakness, or mobility issues that may stand in your way of the goal.
Every athlete’s goals will be different, so sit down, write down a list of things you suck at. Write down a list of things you’re good at. Be honest and realistic. Prioritize the list and get to work. Grab a coach or seasoned athlete whenever you get a chance and get some tips. Be persistent.
Pictured above is from Mike’s first workout with us at CrossFit Intrepid, back when we were teaching classes at Rec Park. As one of our most OG members, he has been exposed to our Paleo-leaning nutrition advice since day one and yet has been pretty steadfast in choosing to ignore it. I was surprised that he and Stephanie chose to participate in the Whole30 challenge this time around, but have been impressed with his progress. Mike shared with me some of the things he has learned along the way and I figured I would also link to past posts where we covered similar ideas.
Despite my amateur move early on in the Whole 30 that disqualified me, this challenge has definitely helped re-engineer the simple things I once perceived as time consuming, inconvenient and not a good use of my time.
That being said, my perspective has changed so much since the start:
I now notice the difference in the quality of black coffee (The Other Black Gold)
I spend more time in the kitchen than on my computer
I have a system when grocery shopping (Prioritizing the Grocery List)
I know the layout of Trader Joes, Whole Foods and my local grocery store
I’m aware of what I eat (Thought for Food)
I can cook a decent dish
I’ve fine tuned my multitasking skills in the kitchen
I’ve maximized the economy of my ingredients in different dishes (The Food Matrix: Paleo for Dummies)
I need to finish my backyard so I can recreate my garden (Green Thumbs)
It really doesn’t take long to prep and cook a decent meal (Simplify Your Cooking)
I now understand why Steph buys all the kitchen accessories that I once thought were useless (My New Best Friend: the Food Processor)
I am honing in on my food planning each week
I’m saving money (Nutritional Q&A 3)
For those of you on the current challenge or have played along in the past, what have you learned?
Now that we’re well into the football playoff season, people are gathering to watch the exciting games leading up to the SuperBowl. Try out this super simple avocado salsa to serve at your next party and serve it with carrots or crispy bacon, or even lettuce to make lettuce wraps.
CrossFit is becoming increasingly popular as the means for people to test their competitive mettle. The “sport” aspect of CrossFit can be debated, but as coaches we just want you to compete in something. Whether you play soccer, basketball, ultimate frisbee, run half-marathons, or compete in CrossFit competitions, having a competition on the horizon helps to focus your training and push you past the complacency that might set in otherwise.
As you’ve likely heard, many Intrepids have found their way into competing in CrossFit and the 2012 CrossFit competition season kicks into high gear on February 22 with the five-week, five-workout CrossFit Games Open. Each week a workout will be posted on the CrossFit Games website and athletes will have the remainder of the week to complete the workout, post their scores online, and have the score verified by the affiliate they worked out at or a judge online if they submit a video. Scaling is allowed, however, in order to be eligible to advance to the next level workouts must be completed as they’re written. Each week, the workout will be announced on Wednesday at 5 p.m. PT (starting February 22). Everyone will have until the following Sunday at 5 p.m. PT to complete that week’s workout and submit their score. You can do the workout at your local affiliate or film your attempt from any gym, a garage, or park.
Once you submit your workouts to the Games site, you’ll be able to find your rank, both worldwide and in your region. You get one point for each place (i.e. five points for 5th place) for each workout. Your overall score is the sum of all the workout scores, and lowest total points wins. You can compete both as an Individual and on a Team. Individuals are divided between men and women, and Masters are divided by gender and age.
The individual athletes and teams that perform the best across the five Open workouts, in each of the 17 regions, will be invited to compete at the second stage of the Games, the Regionals. The top 20 Masters in each age and gender category will earn an automatic spot at the Games in July.
Everyone in the world is invited to participate to see how they stack up. Tens of thousands of athletes from every continent will visit affiliates and submit videos in the quest to prove their fitness. If this is something that you’re even remotely interested in I encourage you to talk with one of the Intrepid coaches. Athletes must be registered as individuals in order to compete as a team, and teams for regionals consist of 3 men and 3 women. Registration opens up on Feb 1, 2012 so give it some thought and let us know if you’d like to sign up.
WOD 1.21.12
In teams of 4:
Complete:
12 rope climbs
40 hspu
200 box jumps
2k row
12 muscle ups or 48 ring dips
400 dubs
C/o Bonus: Traverse one lap around the pull up bars.
The Box Squat, seemingly innocuous, is relatively easy to learn, highly effective at increasing your overall strength, and can leave you with less muscle soreness than regular squats. Louie Simmons posted an article on Elite FTS about this fantastic lift and here are some key points from it.
Do’s
Place your feet on the ground with toes forward, screw your heels into the ground so the toes move out slightly and maintain tension in your glutes
Keep tension in your hamstrings and your weight on your heels
Push your knees out so they are directly over your ankles
Push your shoulders (traps) into the bar
Pause slightly on the box
Don’t's
Rock forward to stand back up
Allow your knees to come forward during the squat
Relax while pausing on the box
WOD 01.20.12
Box Squat 5×3
2 Rounds:
1 Minute Work, 1 Minute Rest
Burpees
Kettlebell Snatches
Sandbag to Shoulder
Push Press
Hopefully in all our posts about nutrition, we trainers have gotten across the importance of reading your labels on foods you buy. Nothing is worse than thinking you’re doing yourself good and yet having some undesirable ingredient inserted into your food.
One of the most common additives is sugar of some sort. Whether the dreaded HFCS or plain ol’ sucrose, you want to avoid these in your foods. Most specifically if you’re on the challenge, since you wouldn’t want to get DQ’d for something as lame as Heinz ketchup, right? (Most ketchups have sugar, Heinz uses HFCS.)
A good rule of thumb is that if the ingredient ends in -ose, it’s a sugar of some sort. Our friends at Whole9 ran an article last year that I linked to that covers this exact topic:
Today’s post is dedicated to calling out all of the sneaky ways SUGAR may try to hide in the foods you eat, and shining a light on the misleading claims that are made in support of one form of sugar or another. They (the high fructose corn syrup people, the agave people, the Stevia people) claim because a sugar is “natural” or “low on the glycemic index” or “non-nutritive” that it’s somehow healthy for us. On top of that, they sneak it in under the guise of a label that sounds vaguely plant-like and harmless, or in plain sight under its scientific name, easy to overlook because you just plain don’t know what it is. The truth? Sugar is sugar is sugar, regardless of the form it may take or the claims it might make. And on no planet does added sugar ever make you healthier.
Below is a list of the most commonly employed sneaky ways “they” find to sweeten the foods we eat. Don’t be fooled. Educate yourself, read your labels and avoid regular consumption of products with added sugar, in any form.
There’s a long list of the different sugars, both natural and artificial, over at the original post at Whole9. I don’t want to completely plagiarize their post, so go there — now — and educate yourself!
On January 28-29th, the Los Angeles Fitness Expo is going to be at the LA Convention Center in Downtown LA. Last year a group of Intrepids made it out to cheer on Ruth who was competing at the American Record Makers Weightlifting Competition, which is just one of the many competitions held at the LA Fitness Expo.
Ruth lifting at last year’s LA Fitness Expo
Once you get past the freakish bodybuilders, models with a few too many plastic surgeries promoting the most obscure products, and the realization of the commercialized nightmare that has become the fitness industry you’ll find that there are a number of interesting exhibitions and competitions at the Fitness Expo to be aware of:
2012 American Record Makers Olympic Weightlifting Competition (men lift 12pm Sat, women lift 12pm Sun)
All-American Strongman Challenge
CrossFit Kids Obstacle Course and “The Gauntlet” (CF Kids teen competition)
These are just the ones that stood out to me as I glanced over the list on thefitexpo.com website. I couldn’t find details as to the times of each competition but they typically start shortly after the expo opens for the day. The floor plan can be seen here to get an idea of where the major areas are that lists all the booths as well. Hours on Saturday Jan 28th are from 9:30am-6:30pm and on Sunday from 10am-5pm. Tickets are $20 but we have fliers for $5 off at the gym by the notebooks so grab one even if you’re only mildly interested just in case you’re looking for something to do over that weekend.
Here are some of the competitions from last year:
WOD 1.18.12
Jerk 2-2-2-2
Pick Your Poison:
4 Rounds:
100m Sandbag Run
8 Heavy Kettlebell Swings
16 Sledgehammer Strikes
OR:
4 Rounds:
200m Run
14 Kettlebell Swings
18 Ball Slams
Begins on Jan 30th-Feb 10th: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 5pm. Sign up now here! Class is limited to 5 athletes.
Free Trial Class!
Trial Classes available on Tuesdays 6:30am, 7:30am, 12pm, 4pm, and 5pm, and Saturdays 9am and 10am ONLY. Reserve your free first class by selecting "Drop In" and using the "FREE" code in the promo box!
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