Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Crossfit Ya Ya.

World-Class Fitness in 100 Words:
Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.
Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch.
Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds.
Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast.
Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy.
Keep workouts short and intense.
Regularly learn and play new sports.

1. Gymnasts learn new sports faster than other athletes.
2. Olympic lifters can apply more useful power to more activities than other athletes.
3. Powerlifters are stronger than other athletes.
4. Sprinters can match the cardiovascular performance of endurance athletes even at extended efforts.
5. Endurance athletes are woefully lacking in total physical capacity.
6. With high carb diets you either get fat or weak.
7. Bodybuilders can't punch, jump, run, or throw like athletes can.
8. Segmenting training efforts delivers a segmented capacity.
9. Optimizing physical capacity requires training at unsustainable intensities.
10. The world's most successful athletes and coaches rely on exercise science the way deer hunters rely on the accordion.

11. Glycogen depletion for fat burning - 1 hour plus at low intensity.

The bodybuilding model is designed around, requires, steroids for significant hypertrophy.
The neuroendocrine response of bodybuilding protocols is so blunted that without "exogenous hormonal therapy" little happens.
The CrossFit protocol is designed to elicit a substantial neuroendocrine whollop and hence packs an anabolic punch that puts on impressive amounts of muscle though that is not our concern. Strength is.
Natural bodybuilders (the natural ones that are not on steroids) never approach the mass that our ahtletes do. They don't come close.
Those athletes who train for function end up with better form than those who value form over function. This is one of the beautiful ironies of training.

Number one rule:
Don't cheat the movement! Don't cheat to get a faster time, don't cheat to lift a heavier weight!

The key to CrossFit is functional movements, performed on a variable set rep pattern with intensity. If the workout of the day involves 21 front squats do not substitute leg extensions and hamstring curls and say you did CrossFit. You will have missed the point behind functional movement. Do not take a workout and do it every other day for a month. You will have missed the point of Variance.

Oh, and your easy days are too hard, and your hard days are too easy, yah.

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