Feral CrossFit
Hey folks,
For those of you non-members who are on the fence or know someone who is, we have an upcoming deal with living social. From May 30th to June 1st, Living Social will offer Elements + 1 month of unlimited classes for 25 bucks!
Only the Strong Survive: Lift to Live Longer
The Sport of Fitness
Mike working on his Ring HSPU
The Worst Idea I EVER Had
Maternal Gluten Sensitivity Linked to Schizophrenia in Children see Emily Deans, MD. for more on the relationship between diet (especially gluten) and mental illness.
Here’s Lindsay doing some farmer’s carry’s
We’re changing our weekend hours. The weekend classes will now be reduced to one class at 10AM. Yoga will now be at 11AM.
Why the Campaign to Stop America’s Obesity Crisis Keeps Failing
Excess Weight in Pregnant Women Can Have Negative Health Implications for Offspring in Adulthood
More words of wisdom from our friend, Ido Portal…
Squat. The Squat. Squatting. SQ.
A lot has been said about the squat, I will try not to be repetitive…
The Squat is a basic human position. Its not a question of if you need to squat or are you designed for it or other shit you hear. *
Sneeze *
Do you need oxygen?? you need to squat.
We Homo Sapiens Squat.
We stand, we walk, we run, we lie down, we sit and… we squat. Its essential.
Every baby squats perfectly, unless born with a dysfunction. But, at the age of… 30, 16 or even nowadays as early as 6-8 - some of us lose the ability to squat. (Flat footed, with ease and with the ability to both support substantial weight in the position and maintain the bodyweight squat for long durations)
Why do we lose it? Lack of use. You dont use? You lose. The process includes calcification, adhesion formation and motor amnesia among other things.
I believe so much in the need to squat - I’ve placed a lot of emphasize over the years on this position, improving my own squatting position tremendously as well as that of thousands of my students.
The tools I use are my LPS method (Loaded Progressive Stretching) as well as various auxiliary drills for hip rotation, hamstrings mobility and specific squatting drills.
A good place to start is my Squat Clinic video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPwG2hqnOx0
Another piece of advice I give people is to incorporate 10-30 minutes of squatting a day. Yes, you’ve heard me right. Out of every 24 hours - spend at least 10 minutes in a full depth, flat foot squat.
To achieve that I would play some games with myself:
1. Answering the phone? Whenever you talk - you squat. This will make your phone bill much smaller as well as improve your squat. Some of you easily talk more than 30 min a day!
2. Answering emails? Every 5 replies - take the computer down to the floor and answer the next 2 down in a squat.
3. Waiting for public transport? From the moment you arrive at the station - you squat until the train/bus/tram arrives. This can get interesting…
I hope you are taking your squatting seriously. How serious? in my book if you cant squat - you are handicapped. Yes, thats the perspective we need here, as squatting is a basic human function you should maintain to the day you die.
Squat away!
Eric and John on the dumbbell hang power snatch
We’re making some programming changes. Wednesday will be dedicated to mobilization, skill development, and structural/postural alignment/stability. More importantly, Wednesday will prioritize making up either of the two previous max efforts if they were missed. You must be self-responsible as an athlete and ensure that you are performing 2 max effort lifts per week. If you are missing Monday or Tuesday’s max effort, Wednesday will allow you to make it up.
Sugar: UCSF’s Lustig on why we Love it, and how it’s killing us
This is Your Brain on Sugar: Study in Rats Shows High-Fructose Diet Sabotages Learning, Memory
Sara swinging the 24kg bell
Caveman Strong Fundamentals
The Creative Brain on Exercise
Though I would always encourage our readers/subscribers/followers/clients/athletes to read all the articles we post (they wouldn’t be posted if they weren’t of value), I STRONGLY recommend reading the above post on “Caveman Strong Fundamentals”, as this coach’s experience closely mirrors our own and the thought process behind our programming/method.
The following quotation is of Ido Portal, movement virtuoso. He is dead on here. Training is about eliciting the optimal/maximal adaptation stimulus for the targeted dimension of performance, which is not necessarily the heaviest weight, though often times it may be. Please, read on…
“Go heavier or go home!”
This mantra has been part of my basic philosophy for many years but now days I see its shortcomings not only its great benefits.
The basic premise is that few things are linear in nature - lines, shapes, processes, organisms.
Mostly you see organic, round shapes and of course waves and spirals, which keep re-appearing across the micro and the macro. (nowdays try to find me a movement/mind/body method that does not contain at least SOME wave and spiral principles… Good luck!)
So, improving linearly is an assured short term thing. It wont persist for long. Stagnation and adaptation is around the corner.
Over the longer haul, one must develop a better approach.
Often I explain to people the stupidity and out dated thinking behind some guros advice about linear progression or even worse - block linear progression. (anything STEADY)
We know better now a days, we have some good science to support superior thinking.
Having said this, lets get back to discussing this mantra: ‘Go heavier or go home’.
The plus is - emphasizing the need for progressive overload. This may sound basic and obvious, but you’d be surprised. Not everyone now days share the same mind set as Milo of Croton.
The minus is - this mantra makes one think that every step up is good but a step back is always a bad step in the wrong direction.
This may be true if it was a Mathematical model, but we are talking BIO-mechanics here, folks.
As we’ve said, in nature - few things happen linearly. Evolution is a good example - it works and works great, (it has made us!) but it did not go about this process through a linear progression.
Many fall into the trap of the ‘go heavier’ mantra and when fail to make gains get confused, stop training or try to change courses. When others, more realistic and respectful for nature’s course of action, will treat this as ‘a step back in order to make two forward’, will stay on course and soon push through the plateau. (not just by standing still at the same point, there will be modifications needed - one of which is my own method which I call ‘The Bridge’, taught in my new programming course)
To sum it up:
1. Know the place of progressive development.
2. Linear progression only works in pure geometry, (even there not always) but not necessarily in Bio-mechanics.
3. Go heavier or go home - yes, but stay on course and know how to attack stagnation points by waving intensity and volume. Sometimes the way up is a way down - YES.
