ATOMIC CROSSFIT

"Stricken Chicken"

Front Squat

3 - 3 - 3 - 3 - 3

Then

In 10 Minutes:

Row 2000m and complete as many Double-Unders as possible.  Your score is the number of Double-Unders completed.

Post results to comments.

Epigenetics is the study of how lifestyle and environment affect the expression of genes (phenotype vs genotype).  (courtesy of CF Mainsite).

Bravo with a 265 lb Front Squat for 3 reps.

"Atom Bomb"

5 Rounds For Time

(Each round add 10lbs to the bar for Rx, starting at 95# (M) and 65#(W)

5 "Atomic Bear Complex" (95#)(65#)

•     Power Clean
•     Front Squat
•     Push Press
•     Back Squat
•     OHS

400m Run

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Firebreather – Fie-r-bre’-th-er: (n) 1. One who faces the trials and tribulations of great physical opposition with an indomitable spirit. 2. An optimistic energy associated with the heart of an athlete.

Everyone has an "inner" firebreather.  You have to dig deep to tap into it.  You gotta' want it bad!

Here's an excerpt taken from CrossFit Alexandria's Firebreather Manifesto.

"When the 95lb bar is sitting on top of your chest, cutting off your ability to upload oxygen, & you make the decision to keep doing Thrusters - even though you almost passed out 10 seconds ago - you are a Firebreather.

When you jump on the pullup bar - without taking a “recovery drink” - after running 400m & doing 21 KB swings, even though your heart feels like it’s going to explode, your knees are shaking, & you’ve lost your peripheral vision - you are a Firebreather.

When it’s 99 degrees outside, & you sprint through the door after a set of burpees - because you may have a shot at beating your own PR by 10 seconds - you are a Firebreather.

There is no difference between normal humans, & Firebreathers. They don’t have extra-large lungs, or more “Type 1” muscle fibers than the next person. They may not be very athletic, & they may not have  played any sports while growing up. Hell, a lot of them haven’t even run a marathon or competed in a “Ironman”. But they do have something - something that any normal person can have, but most don’t want.

Firebreathers have the ability to step across that mysterious line, & never look back. They know what’s coming & how much its gonna hurt, but they run head first into it - “no matter what”. When (or if) you get there, you’ll know what I’m talking about."

CrossFit - The Art of Specializing in "Not Specializing"

(video courtesy of CrossFit Los Gatos)

The body is asymmetrical.  We are not balanced but the body is highly adaptive and self organizing.  The longer an athlete participates in a particular sport, especially if one side is dominant, the higher the likelihood of adaptive postural response present on that person.  Some responses become postural dysfunctions and distinct muscular imbalances over time.  This is quite evident with the hypertrophy in the forearm of a professional tennis player.

CrossFit makes the athlete specialize in "not specializing".  We work towards the adherence of "core-to-extremity" recruitment in our movements.  We demand working both sides of our body in equal loads and distance.  Our workouts are very hard, highly intense, and require mental and physical fortitude but our program includes exercise progressions.  Our newbies are scaled until we see that they have clearly adapted to our type of training and are generally consistent with the movements, as functional as they are.  We believe that a well rounded training program emphasizes training the whole kinetic chain.  This will allow the body to achieve it's optimum performance level under repetitive stress, considering that the athlete has ample rest, recovery and proper nutrition.  - G

Posing with one of CrossFit's Pioneer Rockstars, Nicole Carroll (seated), at the annual Affiliate Gathering (FilFest 2010) in South Miami Beach, Florida, this month.

(video courtesy of CrossFit Los Gatos)

The body is asymmetrical.  We are not balanced but the body is highly adaptive and self organizing.  The longer an athlete participates in a particular sport, especially if one side is dominant, the higher the likelihood of adaptive postural response present on that person.  Some responses become postural dysfunctions and distinct muscular imbalances over time.  This is quite evident with the hypertrophy in the forearm of a professional tennis player.

CrossFit makes the athlete specialize in "not specializing".  We work towards the adherence of "core-to-extremity" recruitment in our movements.  We demand working both sides of our body in equal loads and distance.  Our workouts are very hard, highly intense, and require mental and physical fortitude but our program includes exercise progressions.  Our newbies are scaled until we see that they have clearly adapted to our type of training and are generally consistent with the movements, as functional as they are.  We believe that a well rounded training program emphasizes training the whole kinetic chain.  This will allow the body to achieve it's optimum performance level under repetitive stress, considering that the athlete has ample rest, recovery and proper nutrition.  - G

Posing with one of CrossFit's Pioneer Rockstars, Nicole Carroll (seated), at the annual Affiliate Gathering (FilFest 2010) in South Miami Beach, Florida, this month.

Mastering your body's movement

The Fundamentals – Bracing (courtesy of CrossFit Invictus)

Written by Mike Hom

This rather simple concept is easily forgotten by many people but holds some astonishing long-term repercussions. Let’s quickly discuss why bracing is important in a nice, simple flowchart:

So how do you do it? To begin, imagine your entire torso and butt in 360 degrees. You want that entire column of your body to be just that: a strong, immovable column that does not bend, does not shift, does nothing but keep your spine neutral and wedded to your hips. This happy marriage is often overlooked in the chase for extreme lumbar extension. While we initially want people who have problems with lumbar flexion to learn how to obtain a lumbar curve, we also want them to think about their entire body, and in particular their spine and hips, as one happily married piece. In order to make this happen, do the following:

• Pull your shoulder blades down and back to stand as tall and proud as possible.
• Inhale and pretend like someone is about to deliver a life-threatening punch to your gut and you need to brace yourself for this. What you will do is contract your abs, obliques and a whole slew of muscles that make up your 360 degree torso as hard as possible. You are doing this because you are trying to protect your internal organs and your spine from any irreparable damage caused by this potential trauma. (To tighten your brace, exhale and squeeze even harder, maintain that tension and inhale again.)
• You should still be standing tall and proud – locking down your midline stabilizers should not cause your posture to change.
• Squeeze your glutes (your butt) as hard as possible. This helps to keep your spine and hips wedded together.
• Push your knees out to the sides and “spread the ground” by trying to kick your heels away from you as if you were trying to tear a piece of paper under your feet.

By this time, you should notice your whole body is about as tight as it can possibly get and you should feel like you’re working hard just to do this. This is the most extreme, dare I say ideal, bracing you can do. Aim to go through these steps in order to provide yourself minimum risk and maximum return while training. But beware, mastering the breathing takes some practice – so PRACTICE! Do it while you are warming up, going through basic movements, etc…. Just to provide yourself some individual feedback, try to do one air squat as you normally would. Now perform one air squat with the bracing process described above. You should feel more “integrated,” as if your entire body’s individual body parts are truly working in concert with each other.Hopefully, everybody who reads this blog will learn to move their body with proper bracing and allow me to take the quotation marks off the word “integrated” in the future.

As always, big thanks to K-Star of San Francisco CrosSFit for the inspiration and knowledge to use the aforementioned verbiage!

The Many Phases of CrossFitting

I have gone through many phases as CrossFitter.  Here are few…..

• Scared Sh*tless stage.  How many pull-ups in EVA after how many 70# KB swings?
• OMG, this is the most awesome workout ever stage.  “I wish I would have found CrossFit when I was 4 years old!!!” 
• Competition is KING stage.  “I beat you by 3 seconds!  You must have had pasta last night!” 
• I hate losing any workout stage.  “What do you mean my ROM on squats isn’t deep enough?  How do you expect me to win if I can’t make the movement more “efficient?”
  
• I have to eat “what?” stage.   “Paleo or ZONE or PALEO ZONE if you really want to be superman.”
  

• Finally, Reality of a lifetime pursuit of fitness and feeling good stage.  I like this stage the best.  It involves a bit of friendly competition and usually some butterflies in my stomach before a workout.  It lets me eat sensibly and enjoy the sweets and not-so-healthy indulgences that make me feel pretty good.  I maintain a healthy weight and hang out with people that enjoy hard work in the gym and other areas of life.  It keeps me interested in taking care of myself.   If you find yourself obsessing about any part of CrossFit a bit too much……just remember the motivation of competition, excellence, elite fitness, superior health are all important parts of CrossFit, but in very rare cases are they solely defining you as an individual.  In my opinion, these should be components of a single goal. ----“Lifetime pursuit of health, fitness and feeling good about yourself”

         - BB2

Sunday Reading

Beast and Jen M. at the 9th mile on their first Half Marathon.  Congrats Jeremy, Jen M., C-Note, Katie, Jolecelle and Lyvia!  We are so proud of you!

We found this article from CrossFit Irvine

Tissue Healing
Kelly Starrett is CrossFit’s Mobility and Recovery facilitator: Here are some key notes from his Tissue healing talk:

Tissue healing: times and stages
- Example of a tissue injury: 4-6 weeks for a bad sprang ankle.
- We can not outrace our bodies healing times and physiology
- All tissues have a threshold above which they fail
- Every tissue fails absolutely
- An ideal ready state will bring that tissue tolerance to a maximal level
- After injury muscular/skeletal tissues never return to normal
- You may be “healed” but that tissue is not the same tissue
- Strength and conditioning will only normalize tissues
- “You can’t outrace your physiology, you can’t erase whats been done” -Kstar

Factors that impede healing
1. Age
2. Nutrition
3. Sleep
4. Stress: increased cortisol and lepton
5. Doing nothing “bed rest and immobilization is death” -kstar
6. Diabetic
7. Anti-coagulants
8. Cortico steroids “Asthma”
9. Non Steroidal anti inflammatory NSAIDS “ibuprofen”

How do we manage inflammation? ICE!