If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone tell me ‘Yeah, I know how to eat healthy, the problem is just doing it,’ I could retire at the ripe age of 31 years old.  I would have to agree that implementing a good food profile tends to be the more difficult part (or at least it takes a more consistent effort to be worthwhile), but I also am going to have to call BS on a lot of people’s grasp on what it means to actually fuel your body appropriately.  And if you’re thinking ‘yeah, he’s right, MOST people don’t know…but I do,’ there’s still about a 95% chance I’m still talking about you…

 

First of all, let me concede some points here—for years, people have been taught bad and outright wrong/outdated information.  Sometimes it seems like there is so much more bad information out there than there is useful and accurate information when it comes to food, it’s scary and downright disheartening to someone who is wanting to begin that journey of understanding how to eat in order to reach your goals.  The information is not always readily available, easy to find, and without any controversy.  But, there are some principles that are of no surprise to anyone, and that’s what I’d like to address here.

 

Let me paint a scenario that has happened in front of me literally hundreds of times in my young adult life:

 

A family is sitting at the breakfast table in a restaurant.  Mom and dad are drinking a soda and eating whatever carb-dense, nutrient-devoid, protein-deficient breakfast that is the standard to a vast majority of people.  Kids are eating pancakes (sugar) with syrup (sugar) and drinking an OJ (don’t fool yourself…this is sugar water).  The kid is restless, squirming around in his seat.  Dad tells him to settle down, knock it off, and finish his breakfast (keep eating and drinking your sugar and stop being so hyper!).  The circus continues until the family eventually finishes, pays, and leaves.

 

There are only a few possible explanations that I can come up with:

 

1. It’s Sunday, and the family eats really well 95% of the time, but this was an exception to the regular standard.

2. They eat like this pretty much all the time.

 

Now I’m willing to bet most of the time, scenario #1 is not as likely.  So assuming that it’s all about scenario #2, there are a few sub-possibilities here:

 

2a.  They have no idea that drinking soda and having pancakes for breakfast is bad for      you.

2b.  They have at least an inkling of an idea that soda and pancakes are bad for you, but      they feed it to their kids anyway.

 

I refuse to believe that someone would be surprised with the information that soda and pancakes are bad for you.  So what does that leave us?  People KNOWINGLY are doing this, not only to themselves, but to their families—particularly children who, because the parents are leading by this poor example, don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of setting themselves up for success metabolically.  These daily choices (that aren’t even CHOICES to the kids—they don’t know any better from such a young age!) are not only affecting the population’s health, well-being, quality of life, longevity, and function, but they also adversely affect our infrastructure fiscally when the population continues to get less healthy and more sick.

 

Now before I get berated about how I don’t have a right to complain about this, I am in no way suggesting that everyone is a bad parent.  Of course I know everyone cares about their families and their children, and I’m definitely not trying to get political or controversial.  I just care about people’s well-being and setting people up for success, and the jury ISN’T still out on whether or not feeding your kids a bunch of garbage all day is bad for them or not.  A little education and awareness here can go a long way in changing lives for the better.  What do you do to make a difference?

 

RLTW <1>

 

—Coach Phil

 

A quick update on the upcoming holiday schedule:

 

Nov 25 (Wednesday):  No 5:30 or 6:30pm class

Nov 26 (Thursday):  Closed

Nov 27 (Friday):  9:30am class ONLY

 

Pre/Intra Workout Supplementation

I’ll do my best to keep things concise; if you have specific questions or want to understand more of the ‘whys,’ go ahead and shoot me an email!

 

Let’s define some terms to get started:

 

 

Without breaking down the specific instances here, including but not limited to what what energy system you’re focusing on, the volume of your training session, your work to rest ratios, duration of your training period, etc….typically, CrossFit (1 hour sessions, typically at a moderate to high-ish intensity) doesn’t have a need for intra-workout fueling.  Your fueling is dependent on a few things (basically everything you’ve put in your body since your previous workout’s post-workout).  If you’re in the middle of a rough 21-15-9 or doing things that cause a lot of stress to the body (i.e.:  CrossFit), your gut is not in a state to be able to process any sort of fueling you’re putting into it.  You’re very likely just drinking something that is probably not even palatable and it’s sloshing around in your gut until your body calms down enough to realize it’s not going to die and digestion can resume.

 

However, I am an supporter and a user of pre-workout supplementation.  Again, without getting into the specifics of it, there are a handful of things that work really well in that 20-30 min window PRIOR to you working out, where, if you consume it then and give your body time to process it, can benefit you in your upcoming workout.

 

Takeaways:

 

1.  If you want to take a pre-workout supplement, finish it before class starts (hence the term PRE-workout).  Bonus points for actually having some knowledge behind what’s in your drink and why you’re having it, besides the possibility that it tastes like candy and the label looks cool.  Believe it or not, but there’s actually a lot of garbage supplements out there, and fancy labels and a lot of money for a marketing campaign don’t make things high quality (or, as I like to say, you can’t polish a turd).

 

2.  Drinking anything, including water, during intensive pieces is not going to do much at all, if anything, to rehydrate you besides the psychological effects of not having a dry mouth.  Your body is under too much stress at the moment to re-direct any energy expenditure to your gut and process whatever you just drank.

 

3.  The times for INTRA-workout fueling would be in between breaks on low-intensity CP sessions, between long breaks of more intensive pieces, or during long, low-intensity aerobic pieces.  Think of the weightlifter sipping BCAA’s between sets during a long weightlifting session, football players sipping on gatorade (sugar) when on the bench, or marathon runners having gel packs at appropriately times intervals in the race.

 

4.  If you’re sipping on a pre-workout drink that you just hadn’t finished yet while you’re doing a CrossFit workout, or putting some artificially sweetened flavoring in your water because water is icky and you don’t like the taste of it, I’ll know you didn’t read any of this post and you’re not fueling to maximize your potential!

 

Fuel smart(er)!

 

RLTW <1>

 

—Coach Phil

Powerful Vs Enduring

 

In the last handful of weeks, we brought some run/row progressions to an end and then tested a variety of row distances, from 500m all the way out to 5k.  I wanted to tie all the loose ends together and give you guys something more concrete to do with that data (those of you who collected data for all of those tests).

 

The following article is exceptional and has a really quantitative way of measuring the ‘essence’ of an athlete, as well as providing some generalities that tend to ring true with each ‘type’ of athlete.  The author is an incredibly knowledgable strength and conditioning coach that I’ve learned a lot from simply reading what he has put out.

 

Check out the article here, and let me know your thoughts!

 

A huge thanks goes out to Evan from High Performance Athlete for the article!

 

Keep up the great work, CFD!

RLTW <1>

–Coach Phil

In this blog, I’d like to broach the subject of body dysmorphia.  I am definitely no expert, though I am of the opinion that nearly everyone suffers from this on some degree.  I experience it personally and I see people battle with it constantly.  It affects us all daily and directs a lot of our decision-making, many times in a negative way.

 

I used to be a skinny guy.  We’re talking used-to-get-made-fun-of, awkwardly skinny in middle school and high school.  I hated it, and I so badly wanted to be bigger and strong.  I always used to ask bigger, stronger people how to get bigger, and I got all kinds of advice, but it typically revolved around the idea of ‘you gotta eat more!’  I forced myself to eat more and workout, and over the course of YEARS of hard work and eating more, I am now considered by most people to be a relatively bigger, strong guy.  But I STILL have that inner skinny kid that sits on my shoulders that tells me ‘dude, you gotta eat all of that, and then you gotta get more!  Everyone thinks you’re skinny, so EAT!’  The rational part of me knows I’m not a little guy anymore, but I will always view myself as not being a big guy.  It’s my own weird, inaccurate perception of myself.

 

This works the other way around as well.  Consider a person who has lost a lot of body fat: someone used to be overweight, and now they have a healthy body composition.  It’s common for that person’s ‘inner fat kid’ to sit on their shoulder and whisper into their ear ‘put the fork down!  You don’t want to be FAT again, do you???’ and regularly cause that person to UNDEReat!  It happens all the time.

 

Don’t trust your inner fat kid, or your inner skinny kid.  Trust things that are quantifiable and measurable.  Use the data that we can see, and trust in the numbers you collect as means to drive your behavior.  Your emotions tied with food paired with our own unique body dysmorphia can skew our perception of who we are, what we’re doing, and where we need to be and anchor us into a prison in our own minds if we allow it to.

 

Clearly, appropriate nutrition plays a huge part in our progress, no matter what our goals!  Body composition and performance are all driven directly by how we fuel.  Inappropriate fueling can make the work we do in the gym fruitless.  Inappropriate fueling can make exercise actually cause more harm than good. Are you using quantifiable data to dial in your food profile, or are you letting your emotions and your own unique body dysmorphia to drive your behavior?  If you need help, don’t hesitate to reach out!  it doesn’t have to start with anything drastic; you don’t turn a ship around on a dime.  A lot of small steps can make up a long journey, and each small step is progress.  Don’t let fear drive you, and don’t delay in taking the first step.

 

RLTW <1>

 

-Coach Phil

 

PS…if you’re looking for a quality supplementation line to help you dial in your nutrition, check out the Dietetic Advantage products made right here in Dubuque!  We carry it at CFD and it can be ordered online via the link above.

Hey CFDers!

 

My intent with this blog is simply to keep everyone in the loop about where we are in the program—I’m not one for secrets and I think that if everyone has a broader understanding of where we are and what’s happening (the forest vs. the individual trees), we can all receive a more appropriate dose response from the classes.  Also, as much as I like to have these conversations in my classes, I’m not able to see all of you every day, nor would it be appropriate to fill up a bunch of class time with this kind of stuff!  As always, if there are any follow-ups or questions, please reach out to me, either publicly or privately!

 

Right now, we’re about a third of the way through an ongoing strength progression that many athletes are choosing to do alongside classes or in place of them.  The class program is also supporting that theme; developing strength.  You’ll notice that there are plenty of opportunities where I essentially ‘incentivize’ choosing a heavier, more difficult weight over something you can move more easily or in an unbroken set.  Trust me, there’s a reason for that!  I’m wanting to elicit that response so that we collectively get stronger as an adaptation.  The workouts are put together in this way purposefully, so if you’re noticing many of those types of workouts are not very cyclical by nature and you find yourself instead having to ‘re-charge’ that battery (the creatine-phosphate fuel source that you use for lifting something heavy) before you can successfully lift it again, understand that you’re likely DOING IT RIGHT!  They’re meant to be not very cyclical by nature and the sets will need to be broken up regularly.  Part of getting stronger is pushing yourself and occasionally getting buried by a barbell!

 

On the other end of that spectrum, you’re noticing a pretty linear double-modality aerobic progression from week to week (rowing and running).  These are absolutely meant to be repeatable and cyclical by nature in order to build that oh-so-slow-to-build aerobic engine.  These aren’t very sexy and are a matter of learning your body’s ability to pace and teach it to adapt to the stress little by little as the weeks go on.  This is a pretty great explanation of the aerobic engine and how to build it.

 

Meanwhile, you’ll notice touches of traditional-looking CrossFit workouts, as well as conjugate pieces to some weightlifting movements so that we can start piecing together smaller parts of a larger, more complex whole.

 

As both of these separate systems come to a head (in another 8 weeks or so), we will be able to probably hit some new maxes, both in single-modality aerobic testers as well as some absolute strength lifts.  Then, we can switch gears relative to where we are in the season and start applying our newly-peaked strength and aerobic systems to the mixed-modal, high-cycle rate, CrossFit workouts as we begin our intensification leading to the Opens.

 

It’s all part of implementing periodization principles in a program design.  You can’t do 21-15-9’s every single day and expect to continue to get better at 21-15-9’s to infinity.  As you begin to receive diminishing returns from a particular cycle, you switch gears in order to make more gains in a different area.  The great part about being a CrossFit athlete is that there are PLENTY of movements, energy systems, time domains, and combinations to choose from so that you can continue to make gains and spend time where you’ll get the most bang for your buck…you just have to be smart about how you do it!

 

….and yes, that was me trying hard to keep this blog short!

 

I hope that was helpful and everyone has a better grasp of where we are, where we’re heading, and why things looks and feel the way they do.

 

Let’s keep up this amazing momentum we’ve built this year.  CFD is stronger than it has ever been and it’s all thanks to our amazing community and solid coaching staff.  Thanks to all for being a part of it!

 

RLTW <1>

 

—Coach Phil