The window to my world

If you live in the Mentor, Ohio area and looking for a place to get into shape then checkout The Gorilla Pit. The Pit has some great coaches, Ty Phillips and Jay Ashman are just a couple of people at the Pt that will work with you to develop a fitness plan to meet your goals.

I’ve been following their programming on Facebook and their website and like what I see. I know where I wold be training if I lived in the area, The Gorilla Pit.

Robb Wolf over has posted a video over on his blog that provides an introduction to his upcoming book The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet. The book can be pre-ordered on both Amazon’s and Barnes and Noble’s websites.

The video provides a good overview on what the book is about, and why Wolf did some things the way he did in the book. I’m looking forward to release and will be reading it as soon as I get my hands on a copy. Watch for a review of the book shortly after that happens.

If you haven’t heard, over a dozen high school football payers from Oregon were sent to the emergency room. Looking at the situation the cause is pretty obvious, the coach is a moron and should be fired. Why do I say that? Take a look at how the kids were training:

“The players cycled through 30 seconds each of chair dips and push-ups, then repeated, decreasing the time of each cycle until they reached five-second intervals, then stopping to spot a partner. It was unclear how many times the cycle was repeated, although players said that by the end of the drill, which lasted longer than 20 minutes, their sweat had pooled into small puddles on the ground.

If a player wasn’t working hard enough, or was slacking off, everyone would have to reset and do the exercises again, Cordie said. Players got no water until after the workouts. No one was allowed to leave until everyone was done, he said. “

Now this was done in a  room that was at a temperature of around 115 degrees. This is just a giant recipe for disaster, which could have ended in the death of some of the kids. A coach (Kearin in this case) doing something like this with all the knowledge we have on proper training is inexcusable.

What is even worse is some of the school officials trying to point the finger at creatine monohydrate, a safe supplement. The reason for this was the presence of creatine in the blood work of the students. Well duh, when talking about rhabdomyolysis or compartment syndrome this should be expected.

Tracy Anderson is personal fitness trainer and founder of the Tracy Anderson Method. Her workout routine is what I would spastic movements. Jump around frail your arms and legs, and charge people lots of money to do her method. Her claim to fame is having famous clients such as Madonna (who has since dropped Tracy)  and Gwyneth Paltrow, who has been diagnosed with osteopenia.

If anyone with even a basic knowledge of exercise and diet listens to Anderson they quickly come to the conclusion she doesn’t know what she is talking about. How would one come to such a conclusion? Easy when she says things such as:

• Women shouldn’t life more then 3 pounds to avoid getting bulky
• Using the treadmill without varying your routine (as in jump around in it as if you were having a seizure) will make you bulky
• Prescribing diets that range in the 800 calories range

Brain St. Pierre has a nice blog post going a little more into Tracy Anderson and her health thoughts.

Now if Anderson was just following her own advice, I wouldn’t mind as much. The problem is Anderson is marketing her program and too many women follow her looking to get into shape. Doesn’t help with Anderson stating she has helped women lose 9 inches in 10 workouts (starvation is good for losing weight, especially muscle). I won’t say anything about these ladies, they are trying to get into shape and think they found the magic way to do so. I place the blame on Anderson.

Ladies, if you want to get into shape, here are some basic tips:

• Eat real food, veggies, lean meat, some fruit and some nuts. Avoid sugar and even consider avoiding grains. Eat enough to support your activity level. Plenty of places on the Internet that can give you advice. I would suggest the Nutrition forum at the Crossfit site for asking advice.
• Do some resistance training, i.e. lift some weights. Unless you have some really strange medical condition you will not get bulky.
• Do some short, high intensity cardio work. Think high intensity type of training. 2 or 3 different exercises done at high rate for a short period of time.
• Get plenty of sleep

I usually suggest people check out “The Primal Blueprint” by Mark Sisson, great introduction to health. Robb Wolf has “The Paleo Solution” coming out this fall, should be a good introduction book too.

The following are some of my thoughts and observations from hanging around the gym. Nothing I write here should be considered professional advice but rather just my rambling opinion.

1. After many hours of watching people attempt it, you can’t do a proper squat in a Smith Machine.
2. Have a plan when going to the gym.
3. It’s a squat rack, not a rack for holding the barbell so you can do arm curls.
4. Ask yourself from time to time, “what is the exact purpose of the exercise I am doing”? If you don’t know the answer to the question, stop doing the exercise.
5. Spending 30 minutes on the treadmill, then 30 on a bike, then 20 on the elliptical machine, what the hell do you think you are doing? Working different muscles isn’t the answer.
6. If you aren’t getting your thighs to at least parallel when squatting, don’t fool yourself on how much you can squat .
7. Along those same lines, unless you have a specific for not doing so, full range of motion when doing resistance exercises. Doesn’t matter if it is a push-up or a dead lift, full range of motion.
8. If using a barbell, put the weights back where they belong after you are finished lifting. Your mom isn’t here to clean up after you and if you are trying to impress people with how much you are doing quarter-squats with, we aren’t impressed.
9. Don’t mock other people in the gym. If someone is doing an exercise that you know 100% is wrong, then offer advice. If they refuse then shrug your shoulders and go away.

Back in my teens and early 20′s I used to lift weights. By lifting weights I mean I did bench press and arm curls. Never bothered with squats, dead lifts, or other types of lifts. So you can say I never really lifted weights. Now I’m 45 and doing lifting, presses, squats, dead lifts, bench press, more squats, etc. Why at 45 do something like this?

The why in a nutshell is I want to improve my strength, which means I want to get stronger. I’m not looking to be a powerlifter or do any type of competition, this is to address in area of my fitness where I’ve noticed a weakness (no pun intended). So I went and got a copy of Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore, read through it, and decided to hit it. Here are some observations.

First, not in my 20′s anymore (duh). Currently I can’t bench press as much as I did 20+ years ago. No big surprise, muscles ain’t going to stay big and strong by themselves. Nor is my recovery time as good as it used to be. I knew this one just from simple injuries like spraining an ankle. My body needs more time to recover.

Second, like all goals I need to keep mine realistic. This goes right in hand with my first observation. As Mark Rippetoe said:

“Testosterone levels peak in our mid-twenties, hold relatively steady for another decade, and then begin to fall like women’s clothes at the kinds of parties we don’t get invited to any more.”

My strength will go up, just not as fast as it would have in my 20′s. This means I’ve been tweaking my programming. I’ll still be increasing the weights on the lifts every workout, just not as much as I was hoping to increase them.

Last reason is I want to make sure I’m functional into my old age. My son will argue I’m already old but I can still kick his butt. As we get older we do tend to get weaker. I can handle losing how much I can max for a squat, but as long as I can still squat with weight on my back then life should be doing pretty good.

So for now I’ll keep following the principles outlined in Starting Strength, maybe later after linear progression has stopped I’ll look at going to the 5-3-1 program. Plus I’ll still keep up my Crossfit style High Intensity Interval Training. You are never too old to start.

Check out their 603 PTP Program. A good way to build up your strength.

I mentioned before about Robb Wolf’s gym being kicked out of Crossfit. Now another group, Whole 9, has lost their affiliation. From the letter Whole 9 received from Crossfit HQ:

“I am writing to thank you for your year of affiliation with CrossFit and to inform you that we will not be renewing your affiliation when it expires on 3/17/2010. ..  Since you are moving in a different direction, we cannot continue to carry you as an affiliate and we feel that our continued association is no longer mutually beneficial. We wish you the best of luck in your new endeavors.”

Seems strange to me. Whole 9 has  a successful and popular program going, but Crossfit doesn’t like the direction Whole 9 was going. Probably too much strength work and not enough met-con for Crossfit’s liking. I could post some of the babble Crossfit posts at time, cream rising to the top, let’s see who has the best program, yada yada yada.

I wonder who will be next to lose their affiliation?

Maybe you should take a peek at some recent news across the pond:

Hundreds of NHS wards to be shut in secret plans

To save money, you shut things down. Don’t worry, I’m sure services won’t suffer.

Stafford Hospital caused ‘unimaginable suffering’

Doctor’s worried about costs, because the government tells them they got to meet the budget, and patients suffer.

If you don’t think the same things would happen here in the US once the government starts calling the shots then I got a ocean front property in Arizona to sell you.

Want to lower health care costs? Start allowing people to purchase insurance across state lines, do away with the minimum package an insurance company has to offer. As a single male insurance covering the cost of pregnancy is of little concern. Allow people to purchase insurance with pre-tax dollars. Just a few things the government could do to help lower health care costs.

What we all can do is get some  exercise, eat right, and get plenty of sleep. Since this involves personal responsibility I don’t have high hopes for it succeeding.

I wrote before about some of the things that make me shake my head over on the Crossfit boards, but I’m at the “you just got to laugh at the craziness” stage. I should add it’s Crossfit’s message board that they offer for free so they can make the rules and do what they want.

One of the way Crossfit promotes itself is as “open source”, meaning they say here is what you do if you think you have a better way lets hear and debate the issue. Sounds great, unless the Crossfit powers that be don’t like the message. Starting yesterday on the message boards if you posted a link to the Starting Strength website or Robb Wolf’s website the links get filtered, meaning they get changed to *******. In effect those sites are now banned on the Crossfit message board.

Why you may ask? Well those two along with others have stated they think they could do something better than the way Crossfit is currently doing something. In Robb Wolf’s case it is nutrition, for Mark Rippetoe (Starting Strength) it’s the importance of strength. In these cases Crossfit becomes closed-source. I’ would guess that it has to do with Crossfit’s tie-ins with Barry Sear’s of The Zone and Louie Simmons.

Crossfit even does some wacky things if you try to link to their message boards and they don’t like you. As an example if you post a link to the Crossfit boards in The couch thread (a thread making fun of Greg Glassman and Crossfit) on the Irongarm boards, you’ll just get bounced back to Irongarm if you click on the link.

As I said, their boards, their rules, but what are they afraid of facing? Someone that may have a better idea?