Training Log: 03/10/10

Here is the latest entry in the training log.  Warm weather is returning to Chapel Hill for which I am extremely grateful.  This week is Spring Break for the rest of the University, so campus is largely empty.  Unfortunately, I will probably not be able to take full advantage because it is set to rain for the next few days. 

As always, you can find the rest of the log here.

Hope you enjoy it - and give some of it a try!

Los Angeles

I am finishing up a week in Los Angeles – I lived out here for 8 years before moving to Chapel Hill and nearly a year has passed since my last tour out west.  It has been an interesting trip – a wonderful opportunity to see many old friends, and an occasionally overwhelming stroll down memory lane.  I am very grateful to everyone who opened up their homes, let me crash on their couches, and ferried me around the city.

My friends out here all work a full schedule, so I found myself alone during most days – the first time I’ve been on my own in the city for many years.  I took the opportunity to visit many of my favorite day-to-day places from when I lived here – I shopped in my old grocery store, hung out in the park where I tried my first gymnastic skills, ate at my favorite breakfast spots, etc.

I got my first muscle-up on these rings...

While I enjoyed visiting these places, I was struck for the first time by the sense that LA was no longer a home for me.  The past few times I came out here I got the sense that I was returning to an origin point.  This time, I got the sense that I was definitely an outsider.  That being said, there were a few moments that taught me how certain parts of my life are still powerfully connected to this place.  I spent many highly formative years in LA and I don’t think I will ever fully exorcise it from my system – I’m not sure I’d ever want to.

 A few key lessons from the trip:

1)  Dominion is an incredible game and you should all try it.

2) Beware the Lulu’s bottomless cup of coffee as it can quickly get out of hand.  The breakfast, however, is just as good as I remember.

 Lulu's House Scramble = how to start a morning

3)  LA is not a great city for parkour.  But props to Brendan for letting me use his back yard and for trying a little of it himself.

Brendan's first speed vault

4) On a related note, PX90 in my opinion is a complete waste of your money… but, as I’ve said before if it works for you…well… I guess it’s better than nothing.  Maybe.

5)  To all people in LA who are my age or younger:  your posture, broadly speaking, is quite poor.  I implore you to spend more time on your feet and away from the laptops and blackberries – it is odd to see such beautiful, stylish people moving so poorly.

I am proud of all of my friends out here – They are taking some big steps in their lives, working incredibly hard, and facing some truly challenging situations with grace and determination.  To all of them;  thanks for making this a memorable trip – you are all welcome in Chapel Hill whenever the traffic gets too thick, the work gets a little too overwhelming, or you just feel like seeing some trees.

Crossfit certification weekend

I spent the weekend in Atlanta where I attended a Crossfit Level 1 Certification.

 I learned that locals refer to Atlanta as "The A.T.L."I haven’t written too much about Crossfit on here up until now, despite the fact that, aside from parkour, it is my main source of movement.  I find Crossfit’s approach to fitness to be fascinating because it seems to fly in the face of the long cherished SAID principle (Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands) which has been the bedrock of exercise science for decades.

For the uninitiated, Crossfit is constantly varied functional movement performed at high intensity for the purpose of maximizing work capacity across broad time and modal domains.  Yikes – so what does that mean?  Crossfit seeks to maximize power output. Remember your highschool physics…  Power = (Force * Distance)/Time.  The theory here is that while sport specific athletes may need very specific skills, other people, specifically military, law enforcement, firefighters, and the average person cannot predict what life will throw at them and are therefore best served by being consummate generalists.  An elite Crossfit athlete will never be able to out-squat a powerlifter or out-endure a marathoner, but will outperform both at every other task.

As for the certification program, perhaps my most important takeaway is that the Honey Badger is far more awesome than any of us could ever hope to be.  Check this out if you don’t believe me…

He's tougher than you or I will ever be.

I was very impressed with the way the certification process was run.  All of the coaches – Chuck, Bobbi, Mike G., Miranda, Justin, Joe, and the others who I can’t think of right now – were extremely professional and engaging.  There was a great balance of serious work and levity throughout the weekend.

The heart of the material on the first day was the 9 basic movements of Crossfit, which are:  Air squat, Front squat, Overhead squat, Shoulder Press, Push Press, Jerk, Deadlift, Sumo deadlift highpull, and Medball clean.  All of these moves build on each other and I liked how the coaches handled the practical coaching instruction.  We all had many opportunities to practice our coaching which I found to be extremely educational and certainly helped me refine my own technique further.

The second day brought a very interesting lecture on food and nutrition – in short, they recommend the same things I do but they take a much more systematic dialed-in approach with their Zones and Blocks.  We then pushed the previously learned 9 movements out to their logical extreme – the Snatch.  If you have never experienced Olympic weight lifting, I strongly suggest you learn how to do it – they are potent developers of strength, coordination, power, and accuracy.  I consider myself to be in pretty decent shape, and I am terrible at the snatch – something I hope to be changing as time goes on.

Of course, throughout the weekend we did WODs (workout-of-the-day).  I regret to inform all of you that I did not have a particularly good showing – my school schedule for the past month has prevented me from training as much as I should and it became apparent halfway through doing Fran that I should have shown up with a little more gas in my tank.  If you decide to attend a Crossfit cert, I strongly recommend not taking the previous month off and getting more than 2 hours of sleep the night before.  Ouch.

Fran. It kicked my ass and kept on kicking.

Overall, I had a great time and was very happy to have attended.  I think Crossfit is a great system and I strongly encourage all of you to explore it.  I do take issue with a few aspects of it.  I worry that as Crossfit moves more towards the whole “sport of fitness” concept that it will fall into movement specialization.  While there is a great variety of movement within the Crossfit workouts, they are mostly single plane and fixed.  Crossfit will make your body strong and coordinated, but other activities, like parkour, martial arts, and Exuberant Animal drills do a better job at making your body “smart.”  My other issue is that Crossfit is all about exacting documentation of performance.  Tracking fitness progress is fine, and probably necessary to some degree, but I strongly believe that most of the time you will be better served to toss the journal and the spreadsheet, get outside, and move joyfully just for the sake of movement.

If I had to highlight just one strength of Crossfit, it would be the community.  I know I harp on this point a lot, but I see community as a critical component of fitness and health, and Crossfit has done a wonderful job of building a very strong and tight-knit following.  I am grateful to be a small part of it and to have had the opportunity to be with everyone down in Atlanta.  It was a great weekend.

The ATL cert crew. Thanks guys.