Finding Yourself, Cressey on the Deadlift, and getting OPT'd

It's actually both.

Be forewarned, faithful reader: cathartic dumping of thought ahead; the exact point and focus may not be concise and clear.  It's also 7AM, and I've been up all night at work.  You've been forewarned. :)

   Sometimes the hardest thing in life is finding yourself---your passion, your career, your focus, your purpose.  As far as athletics is concerned, finding what you are genetically "good" at is usually a crapshoot of trial and error.

That's why I love Crossfit.  You become very, VERY aware of what you completely suck at well before you find out what you are genetically gifted towards.  And for those of you saying "Trust me, I'm NOT genetically gifted towards anything", I say you're wrong---everyone is, to some degree, towards something  You just need to find out at what.

What I'm digging at here is the individual genetic makeup of muscle fibers each person has; a very simple breakdown of muscle fiber types:

Type I: slow oxidative, aerobic, uses triglycerides (fat) as main fuel source.  Think marathon.

Type IIa(IIx): fast oxidative, long-duration anaerobic, glycogen is main fuel source.  Think "Cindy", kinda.

Type IIb: fast glycolytic, short duration anaerobic, creatine phosphate main fuel source.  Think Clean & Jerk.

For the most part, everyone is, as a HAY-OOGE generalization, split 50/50 between Type I and Type II (let's just say fast twitch and slow twitch).   Specific muscle groups, like the lower leg (gastrocnemius and soleus) and the rectus abdominis (abs, yo) are mainly slow twitch, due to their constant firing and stabilizing actions.  Muscle groups like the biceps and latissimus are mainly fast twitch.

As far as everyone's genetic muscle fiber  makeup, well, this is determined from birth, thanks to Ma and Pa.  If your Dad was a football player, and your Mom ran track, well, you may just be a bit of an explosive athlete.  If your Dad ran marathons and your Mom went to Jazzercise, you may gravitate towards slow twitch stuff.  If your parents were potatoes...you've got some self-exploration to do, son.

Somatotypes, or "physique", for lack of a better term, can give a hint as to the type of muscle fiber.  Ectomorphs, or skinny-folk, tend to be slow twitch.  Endomorphs tend to be predominately fast twitch.  Mesomorphs?  You guessed it, a combo.

So Have You Found Yourself?  If so, congrats.  Do you tend to gravitate towards activities that favor your muscle fiber type?  Chances are you do, because this is obviously more enjoyable than fighting nature.

BUT:  Can you change your muscle fiber type?

The short answer is yes, and no.  Exercise physiologist are renowned for having in-your-face, spit-flinging, profanity throwing discussions on this.  For the most part, it's agreed that you CAN'T change the number or ratio of fiber types, but you can change the cross-section or efficiency.  If you are predominately slow twitch and kick-ass at marathons, working diligently on your front squat in the 3RM range and clean and jerk WILL make you more explosive and a helluva lot stronger.  Will you ever win Oly comps?  Maybe not.  But you won't suck at picking up heavy shit, either.  And you'll still be able to run fast. 

Finding yourself is hard, but creating yourself can be even harder---but more rewarding, in the end.

Cressey on the Deadlift

Eric Cressey is a strength & conditioning coach from Boston; he's mostly known for his solid coaching at Cressey Performance of MLB players and being a "shoulder specialist".  His video, Magnificient Mobility, is a true gem.  What he may not be as well known for is his previous life as a competitive powerlifter, and at 165lbs has lifted over 600.  When this guy talks deadlift, I listen.

  Type in the password "deadlift", and you can listen, too.

Teaching the Deadlift from Eric M. Cressey on Vimeo.

Solid stuff, especially since we've started up Wendler's 5/3/1 at CFLA, with Friday being our deadlift day. 

This weekend I'm heading up to Calgary to take part in Jame's Fitzgerald's Optimum Performance Training Coaching Certification in Nutrition.  I've been stoked about this since the announcement back in December, and had my name on the list and the calender cleared long ago.  From what I've seen from the Functional Assessment and Program Design Certs, I expect the nutrition to be mind-blowing.  What makes this even better is that Mat Lalonde is co-presenting---and anyone that listens to Robb Wolf's Paleolithic Solution knows that Mat is Robb's go-to guy when HE doesn't have the answers.  I fully expect my head to explode prior to the weekend being over.

Another cool aspect is that there's a wickedly hard test AND practical client assessments---30 of them.  I'll be a busy guy over the next few months!

Various Training
Aug 13th, CFLA, 1PM
OHP/PP/PJ 45#x10x10x10
PP/PJ 95#x10x10
PP 115#x5
SJ 135#x5
OHP 95#x5.  Just getting overhead volume in; trying to be consistent with this weekly, so I'm not weakly. :)

21-15-9
Row for Cal
95# Front Squat, cleaned from floor
Toes-to-Bar
8:34.

Aug 16th, Firehall#1, 10:30AM
5 Rounds of:
50ft Farmer's Walk, 65lb DB x2
20 Side-to-side medicine ball Pushups
10 40lb DB squat cleans
10 20lb medball situps
40 Double-Unders
10 Strict Pullups
Time unknown as I didn't start my watch, and we had a staggered start. Everyone was waxed from this, DB squat cleans were sneaky tough.

Aug 17th, Firehall#1, 11AM
Kickboxing, 3min rounds x5
Did some pad work with KH, throwing various combos.

Aug 18th, CFLA, 1PM
High Bar Back Squat
225# x5
245# x5
245# x5
245# x3
225# X5. Legs felt weak today, adductors especially; expected higher numbers. Probably gassed from the past two days.

"Elizabeth"
21-15-9
power cleans(135#)
ring dips
7:58. I need either 20lbs of lean muscle or Chris Spealler's mitochondria to break the 6 minute mark.
 
Aug 19th, CFLA, 1PM
Over Head Press
45#x10, 65#x10, 95#x5, 95#x5, 115#x3 (oops, ha!), 105#x5, 110#x5, 95#x8
Push Jerk, 95#x15, Unbroken x2.  115x15x1
Kipping pullups, 25x2

Science FAIL, Rhythmic Exercise and Depression, & Nate Quarry: Failure or Regret?

I had a great week spent in Couer d'Alene, Idaho biking, hiking, and kayaking. Fantastic little resort town. But now, back to work (fire department), work (Crossfit), and work (this blog)...none of which are really work!

First off, a headline I just caught this morning; I was going to do a piece on human marbling, or the increase in intramuscular fat via high carbohydrate intake, like conventionally raised cattle---but it's actually a helluva lot more complicated than that, since both a high fat diet and athletes in general HAVE high levels of IMTG (intramuscular triglycerides). Anyhoo, onto the massive science fail:

I bet these next researchers aren't much smarter...

Free Statins With Fast Food Could Neutralize Heart Risk

"Statins don't cut out all of the unhealthy effects of burgers and fries. It's better to avoid fatty food altogether. But we've worked out that in terms of your likelihood of having a heart attack, taking a statin can reduce your risk to more or less the same degree as a fast food meal increases it."

Holy shit I think I just vomited a little in my mouth; headlines like this can't even be made up, and that's the scary part.  The inefficiency and potentially incredibly harmful effects of statins is well known; what is also known is that pharmaceutical companies make insanely huge profits from the sale of statins---we are talking billions of dollars.  They want to give them to kids, they want to put them in the water, and they want to put it in fast food.  Sound like a wacked-out conspiracy theory?  All of the three latter points are true; read and weep:
Statin Fortified Drinking Water (scary.)
AHA Recommends Statins For Kids (even scarier, if possible)

This makes me want to scream more than the new USDA food guidelines, which is a mindblowing level of ignorance all on it's on.  Statins?  Proven ineffectiveness and harmful, yet pitched every which-way to make a buck.  If you don't e-travel in the circles I do, then maybe you haven't come across the plethora of well-written literature on statins; the cream of the crop would be Chris Kresser's The Hidden Truth About Statins (extremely comprehensive, especially the study breakdown) and Dr. Kurt Harris's recent Statins and the Cholesterol Hypothesis - Part 1. Dr Harris makes an excellent case for dietary changes vs pill popping for treatment of CVD.


Take the time to check these both out; they are just the tip of the iceberg.  Others, including cardiologist Dr. Bill Davis of the Heart Scan Blog and Dr. BG of Animal Pharm have also written on the topic of statins.  Yet headlines in the mass media (and mass science?) still paint statins in a glorious light.  Maddening.

Rhythmic, Cyclic Aerobic Exercise...ahhh, the stress is leaving...

Psychiatr Pol. 2004 Jul-Aug;38(4):611-20.

[Effects of exercise on anxiety, depression and mood]

Abstract

This article reviews the studies on the effects of physical activity on the emotional states--anxiety, depression and mood. The meta-analyses of correlational and experimental studies reveal positive effects of exercise, in healthy people and in clinical populations (also in patients with emotional disorders) regardless of gender and age. The benefits are significant especially in subjects with an elevated level of anxiety and depression because of more room for possible change. The most improvements are caused by rhythmic, aerobic exercises, using of large muscle groups (jogging, swimming, cycling, walking), of moderate and low intensity. They should be conducted for 15 to 30 minutes and performed a minimum of three times a week in programs of 10-weeks or longer. The results confirm the acute effect of exercise i.e. the reductions in anxiety and depression after single sessions of exercise. The changes in anxiety, depression and mood states after exercise are explained most frequently by the endorphin and monoamine hypotheses. Exercise may also increase body temperature, blood circulation in the brain and impact on hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and physiological reactivity to stress. The possible psychological mechanisms include improvement of self-efficacy, distraction and cognitive dissonance.

My Thoughts: Lately, I've been interested in the theory and mechanism of how rhythmic/cyclic exercise treats depression; it's been mentioned a couple of times in various conversations I've had, and it's piqued my amateur interest.  Some of the interesting points I've come across, in relation to treating depression/anxiety:

• Low intensity exercise is more effective than high intensity,
• Steady-state (LSD, or long, steady distance) versus Interva l(HIIT, or high intensity interval training) is more effective,
• Aerobic exercise is more effective than resistance training.
• Cortisol secretion is actually REDUCED with low intensity, steady state aerobic work

There's more than a number of variables at play here; as the study abstract states, the most likely and largest mechanism would be neurotransmitter secretion (think brain drugs). These neurotransmitters being endorphins---the "painkillers" (they actually work on opioid receptor sites, like the narcotic morphine) and monoamines like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine.

  As far as the "rhythmic", "cyclic", or repetitive aspect, I haven't come across anything pertaining to the actual physiology; anecdotally, the repetitive motion of say either yoga, swimming, or running is supposed to soothe us the same way rocking soothes an agitated baby.

Stressed?  Get your LSD on. :)

For those of you who follow MMA, Nate Quarry will be a familiar face; all but the die-hard fans probably don't know his complete story, though.  TED is a wickedly cool website dedicated to posting video of speakers from their various conferences. While the audio is kind of crappy at times, I found myself leaning into my monitor even when it was good. It's 18 minutes, but trust me, you'll want to listen.



Failure or Regret? Consistency and work ethic. A super powerful message that I think anyone can apply to themselves in everyday life.

"Fortitudine Vincimus" ---By Endurance We Conquer.

Various Training

Monday, August 2nd, CFLA
No class this day, but I NEEDED a workout.  Some days are like this.

5 Rounds For Time

90# sled drag, 25m
10 Sledgehammer swings per arm, 12lb hammer
90# backwards sled drag, 25m
5 Powercleans, 135#
10 Ring Pushups
16:30.  A wonderful grinder that left me waxed.

Tuesday, August 3rd, CFLA

Bench Press

45#x10, 95#x10, 135#x5
165# x5x5.  Hoping for 225# for a 1RM by years end, as long as the shoulder doesn't flare, which biking seems to have agitated again.  Boo.

21-15-9
Overhead Squat, 95#
Pullups
Pushups w/ feet in rings
7:38.  Left wrist super-jacked up from OHS.  Gotta see Dr. Chelsea about that.

August 4th-9th, R&R in Couer d'Alene, Idaho
5th: 2hr hike, Tubbs Hill
6th: 2hr hike, Qe'milin Park
7th: 3hr bike, Trail of the Couer d'Alenes
8th: 3hr kayak, Lake Couer d'Alene

August 10th & 11th, Firehall #1
11th: 
Did a 30s on/30s off circuit of 5 rounds of:
Goblet squats, 65#DB
Renegade Rows, 45#DB
Wall Ball Shots, 20lbs
Situps
Skipping/Double Unders
12th:
"Leg Cranks", via KH, a firefighter/paramedic who regularly does Muay Thai
3 Rounds:
5min skipping, 40 air squats, 20 lunges, 20 power lunges, 10 jump squats.  Legs jacked, fo' sho.

August 12th, CFLA, 1PM

Deadlift

135#x10, 135#x10, 225#x5, 285#x5, 315#x5, 345#x5, 360#x5
Happy with this, as the last time I did deadlift was in April.  360#x5 puts me at 410#1RM, where I should be.  450# for Christmas.

Chinups

15#x10, 25#x5, 40#x5, 50#x5

Almost Completely Random Shit: My Version of Quick Notes

You have to.  For life.

Often times, I come up with ideas for my blog from bits and pieces of conversation I have with friends; recently during the 24 Hours of Adrenalin race, I got talking about road biking.  Naturally, I took the negative stance regarding adopting  a single modality fitness regime for life----in this case, road biking.  Road bikers are notorious for having wickedly high VO2 max levels, but nearly shatter upon tripping over their laces and can't lift a water bottle over their head.  While focusing on ONE thing your WHOLE life makes you very, very good at it, the skills left behind, in my mind, out balance the pros.  I'll explain more in  a bit.

This convo melded into another I had with Jacob, fellow Crossfitter, mountain biker, and adventure racer, and Kent "The Prodigy" Aitchison, another Crossfitter, collegiate swimmer, and swim coach.  Briefly, we all agreed that concentrating on functional fitness had greater carry-over into ALL sports, plus the bonus of increased mobility, endurance, and functional (read: usable) strength across broad time and modal domains.  Didn't quite get that last part?  Fitness not to suck at life.  When I'm 70, I don't want osteopenia and hip flexors so tight I'm permanently bent over, shuffling with my walker from years of putting in miles and mile on a road bike.  Yes, I'm bashing road biking here, but I think you get my point.

Why?  Well, getting into the "why" of HIIT (high intensity interval training) vs traditional sustained-pace cardio is a huge piece to bite off, but I'll dabble in why you should "bank" strength, and lean muscle mass; but first, an important definition:

Sarcopenia (from the Greek meaning "poverty of flesh") is the degenerative loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength associated with aging. 0.5-1% of loss per year after the age of 25.  Sarcopenia is a vicious circle, not unlike other similar syndromes---the less muscle mass you have, the more insulin resistant you become, the less protein synthesis takes place, the more ineffective your workouts become, and therefore, the more muscle mass you lose.  And so on and so forth.

Muscular Heart Failure Patients Have Better Survival

The Role of Lean Muscle Mass and Organ Reserve in Aging 

 Skeletal Muscle Protein Anabolic Response To Resistance Training and EAA is Delayed With Aging 

Resistance Traing Reverses Aging in Human Skeletal Muscle 

Strength Training + High Intensity Functional Movements = Banking Fitness

Yes, but only the smart ones!

Yael Grauer is a freelance write who frequently writes for the Performance Menu, among other things.  She has her own blog, and recently put up a great resource post on everything from Paleo blogs to Weston A Price-like websites to how-to-find kinda sites---check it out:
                                                                Eat This: The Ultimate Food Resource Guide                                           

Betcha Haven't Heard of the

Israeli Paradox

You've probably heard of the French Paradox, and more than likely heard of the Mediterranean Diet, which has been described as a "paradox", although only to carbaholic clueless government type folk.  One, though, you haven't heard of, although it's rampant across all of North America, is the Israeli Paradox:

Yam et al (6) suggest that the Israeli Paradox—a high incidence of CAD, cancer, and other degenerative diseases in Israel—may well be related to high linoleic acid intakes.

Prior to the introduction of solvent-extracted vegetable oils and soy- rand corn-based animal husbandry over approximately the past 70 y, no population had been exposed to the current intakes of linoleic acid. We may well be experiencing the "linoleic acid paradox," in which a supposedly healthy fatty acid (ie, one that lowers total cholesterol) is associated with increasing rates of cancer and inflammatory and cardiovascular diseases during these same decades. Compounding and confounding this paradox are low intakes of alpha-linolenic acid and other n-3 (fish) oils.

Isr J Med Sci. 1996 Nov;32(11):1134-43.

Diet and disease--the Israeli paradox: possible dangers of a high omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid diet.

Yam D, Eliraz A, Berry EM.

Department of Membrane Research and Biophysics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.

Abstract

Israel has one of the highest dietary polyunsaturated/saturated fat ratios in the world; the consumption of omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) is about 8% higher than in the USA, and 10-12% higher than in most European countries. In fact, Israeli Jews may be regarded as a population-based dietary experiment of the effect of a high omega-6 PUFA diet, a diet that until recently was widely recommended. Despite such national habits, there is paradoxically a high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus and obesity-all diseases that are associated with hyperinsulinemia (HI) and insulin resistance (IR), and grouped together as the insulin resistance syndrome or syndrome X. There is also an increased cancer incidence and mortality rate, especially in women, compared with western countries. Studies suggest that high omega-6 linoleic acid consumption might aggravate HI and IR, in addition to being a substrate for lipid peroxidation and free radical formation. Thus, rather than being beneficial, high omega-6 PUFA diets may have some long-term side effects, within the cluster of hyperinsulinemia, atherosclerosis and tumorigenesis.

That is some serious shit that has been swept under the table for so long it makes me furious. If there's two things one should completely cut from their diet, it has to be anything soy related, and anything wheat related.

BEST AD.  EVER.

I had someone actually say to me the other day: "I don't want to get bulky, so I don't think I should lift heavy weights".  No, I'm not making this up.  Yes, it's a very common misconception among women, but nonetheless, I was surprised to hear it in our gym.  Unfortunately, the idiot-box (AKA "Television") tends to brainwash the sheep-like folk of society into thinking looking like Gweneth Paltrow or Kate Moss is a good thing.  Well, it ain't.  When your purse weighs more than you and get diagnosed with osteopenia after you break your leg...walking...you need to re-evaluate your worth on this planet.  And because a picture is worth 1000 words, lets look at some women who lift heavy shit:

All those women are fast, explosive, and scary strong---because they lift heavy shit.  They are also insanely sexy.  So, uh, go lift heavy shit, ladies.
 :)

Various Training

Not much of note since the race in Canmore; with traveling, work, and a major life-curveball thrown my way, time has been at a premium.  Of note:

July 24th &25th, Canmore Nordic Center

16.5km mountain bike loop x4 in 24hr, approx 1.5hr each

  I know I've ranted and raved about this enough, but I can't even begin to explain what a blast this was.  It also gave me a chance to witness some unreal feats of endurance.  As much as I bash endurance athletes from a health and longevity point of view, watching a solo rider absolutely crush the competition with an amazing 20 laps (our team did 19) in 24 hours is nothing short of amazing.  Utmost respect earned for ultra-endurance athletes, from me. 5Km runs, team sprint triathlons, and the occasional mountain bike race are about as close to "endurance" as I'll get, though..  

July 28th, CFLA, 1PM

Power Clean & Squat Clean

95#x5 PC

95#x5 SC

135#x5 PC

135#x5 SC

155#x5 PC

175#x3 PC.  Legs started to burn quick from the squat cleans, still jacked from the race.  Felt good to lift, even if the load and volume was light.

WOD

30 squats
20 burpees
10 box jumps
4 rounds. Time each round separately. Rest 2min between rounds.

Rd1 1:33
Rd2 5:19
Rd3 9:14
Rd4 13:10, -6:00 rest = 7:10 working time. Nice little interval WOD; Kent and I went head-to-head, and he set a blazing pace that I had to try and keep up to!

I'm looking forward to getting back to a strength-biased program; pretty good chance I'm going to follow a Wendler 5/3/1, but I'd like to continue working on the clean and jerk and snatch...as well as the occasional metcon.  I'll have to see what I can fit in.