Me, Myself, Versus I

Homo sapiens, like every other critter that dons this wonderful planet Earth has had a long history of competition - with themselves. Let me try to explain. We are all here - that is, we as a species are all here because somehow, some way, via some processes that are not entirely worked out, our species' ancestors did things that allowed them to 1) live and 2) most importantly, reproduce. The biologist in me calls this natural selection. I hesitate to use the term here while discussing exercise in order to not disuade individuals not privy or interested in evolutionary science from my idea. Instead I choose competition as my proxy for this discussion. Think about our ancestors: they had to survive in grasslands that housed a number of predatory types (e.g., lions and tigers and bears, don't say it don't say it, oh my!). Not only did they have to evade predation, but they also had to provide for themselves and if they were "lucky" they also had to provide for their families. (I use quotes for the word lucky purposefully. It would have been a superbly easier ancestral life if we hadn't had to go out and hunt, gather, or farm our own food. We could just sit back in our stone recliner, drink our homemade fruit brew and watch the other dufuses try to catch food for a large family of 2, 3, or 4 other humans. So lucky is not really all that lucky, except in the game of evolution reproduction is like a touchdown, a goal, a hole in one (pun intended).) That is, in the game of evolution reproduction is what makes winners. So one would be lucky to have survived to reproductive age, to acquire a consensual mate and proceed to procreate. Voila! Wham bam... enough!

This is probably the reason our species has the drive that we do. Probably the reason all species have the drives they do. However, as we all know, certain individuals lack a drive, lack the motivation to "get ahead", advance, develop themselves. In fact, some people look like our ancestral lazy boy (sans the stone recliner). So what is happening in these individuals? They are fat bastards. Actually, they are a variant in the existence of our species that chooses or is designed to not be driven. Seriously, they most likely anchor the high end of our species BMI and fat to muscle mass ratio due to low exertion to ingestion ratio. They lack the urge to compete: with themselves. They lack the drive to consider their own body an experiment and a challenge. The lack the drive to be the best they can be as a Homo sapien. They do not compete with themselves! This can come in all areas of one's life. For example, I have friends, colleagues in academia who have kicked up their heels after getting their PhD, or for some it's after they get granted tenure. For them, they've done it. They are done. Accomplished their goal. For others, it comes in the form of exertion. A very good friend on mine used to say "I walk to work, so I don't need my gym membership". OK, don't get me wrong, walking is great. In fact, walking is fucking absolutely brilliant. It's one of those cool things that makes humans, well human! But walking is far from the type of anaerobic exertion needed to produce optimal fitness, as evidenced by the fact that my friend was rather out of shape. For example, if I had asked him to run to work, he'd have laughed at me. "That's 3 miles!" I think I've made my point. So....

What does it mean to compete with yourself? Go ahead try arm wrestling yourself, it don't work does it. So that's not what I mean is it? No. In short, what I mean is work against yourself. It'd be better to work against a real opponent, but we do not all have that luxury, and thus are forced to work against ourself. Many individuals who workout do this, somewhat. You've seen them in the gym. They carry a notebook around and they record how many reps of what weight they did this and make an attempt to track their progress over time. Laudatory, no? No. Actually, in the time they spend writing down that they bench-pressed 2.5 lbs more this time than the last 10 times they could've really competed with themself. They could have run 100 m. Then do it again, and try to do it faster. See, this is more what I am talking about. We need to push ourselves to the limit. The gym, our workouts are not supposed to be leisurely activities where we read the latest Dan Brown novel while trickling on the elliptical, treadmill, or reclined bike. Rather we need to focus our cognitive energy on creating competition with ourself. We need to have fast, hard, strength and power based training regimens that tap our humanly limits. Then we need to track the global speed and effort exerted over time. I tried to explain this in words to a fella at my local Gold's Gym, but it was difficult because I am shy. Instead I said try this, it's a CrossFit workout: Clean and Jerk/Press 135 lbs 30 times as fast as you can. He responded "As fast as you can?" Yes, I said, as fast as you can. That means go buy a stopwatch ($4 at wally world, right?) Then in try to do something to increase your speed the next time. That's the essence of fitness to me. This is very much in line with the CrossFit mentality, and that's because THEY ARE DOING IT RIGHT!

So, go have a fight with yourself all Fight Club parking lot style. No don't do that, you might get sent to the psychiatric hospital and I ain't bailing your ass out. Instead set up a few big exercises that you do for time. Say, do 100 repetitions of a 65 pound snatch. As fast as you can. Get the stop watch out. Yes! But that;s not it. You will also have to closely monitor your exercise. If you need to rest, you need to rest - this is not a recipe in suicide. But those rest periods should be as short as possible. And they should decrease over time. Another avenue to do this type of self-competitive exercise is to try and do a certain number of reps in a limited amount of time. Do as many burpees as you can in 5 minutes! Fuck me, right? And then try to do more the next time you do that workout.

Go for it!

Dead Legs

OK so this was posted as a workout on the crossfit main page and it was bloody killer so I thought I would post it again here (probably against all types of rules) as well as what else I did.

I call this Dead Legs, because it's been 3 days and my walking is slowly deteriorating!

Repeat three times, for time:

50 meters walking lunge

100 meters broad jump (some people call this a frog leap, same thing basically)

200 meter spring

I added to this some upper body that goes little something like this:

7 rounds of:

- Hold Handstand against wall for 30 seconds (but on each successive round try to increase the hold for 15 seconds so that on round two you hold for 45 seconds, round 3 = 60 seconds and so forth so that round 7 = 2 minutes and 15 seconds

- as many handstand pushups that you can do

Repeat for 7 rounds.

When you are done that do 100 repetitions of BICEP to REVERSE GRIP OVERHEAD PRESS as quickly as you can. I used 65#, but use what you think you can complete. This looks and feels strange. You curl the barbell normally so that your overhead press is reverse handed. This should fire up your anterior deltoids and biceps. This video demonstrates it nicely: http://revver.com/video/1620697/barbell-curl-and-press-hybrid-exercise-combo/

Good luck!

B-CUP

Do this workout for time starting with 21 reps for all four exercises, than in the second round decrease it to 15 reps, and then on the last round decrease to 9 reps.

======
21-15-9 reps

Burpees
95# Clean & Press or Clean & Jerk
double Unders (jumping rope where the rope goes around twice on each jump)
Pull-ups.

Sunday Workout

For time:

50 Sumo deadlift high pulls (45 lbs)
25 Pull-ups
20 Overhead squats (65 lbs)
15 Kettlebell swings (1.5 pood)
10 Burpees
Run 400 meters
10 Burpees
15 Kettlebell swings (1.5 pood)
20 Overhead squats (65 lbs)
25 Pull-ups
50 Sumo deadlift high pulls (45 lbs)

My time: 22 minutes

Good Crackers and a Great Desert

First off, this afternoon I re-tried this recipe: http://cavemanfood.blogspot.com/2009/04/grain-free-almond-crackers.html

...the Bomb! I seasoned with ground pepper, garlic salt, and cajun spice... Really nice!

Also, for desert this evening I decided to whip (literally) a banana soufle... no seriously.

Check this out.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Heat up a touch of water, pour in some honey and just a touch of pure maple syrup.

While that s heating on a very low heat and while constantly stirring (yeah you need about 8 arms to do this one) puree two really really really (i.e. brown and spotted and wonderfully ripe) bananas until they are smooth and no chunks are left.

Stir the banana mix into the honey/syrup/water mix until smooth and of all one consistency.

Remove from heat and let cool completely.

In a stainless steel mixing bowl whip using a whisk two egg whites, a little sea salt, and a touch of something sweet if you like (I used just a touch of raw sugar (I know naughty and not strict paleo, but whatever, you could also use raw honey or syrup, I think). Whisk that bad boy - took me the better part of the evening and I think I burned off the calories I ingested after cooking of the soufle was complete. Seriously, whisking by hand, it will take a while. You want this mixture to be really quite stiff. You can test this by sticking your whisk, your kitchen whisk - damn you American Pie watching fools! - and you should get little peaks. If that happens you are all set.

If your banana/honey/syrup mixture is cooled completely then using a rubber spatula fold that into your whisked and whippy egg white mixture.

Combine until mostly the same color and consistency.

Pour into ramequins and place he ramequins on a cookie sheet.
Place the cookie sheet into the oven and turn don the heat in the oven to 350-375 degrees.

Bake about 10-20 minutes depending on the size of your ramequins. The way you know they are done is by sticking a sharp knife into the middle, all the way to the bottom. It should come out dry; i.e. if it is wet put it back in the oven for a few more minutes.

Once you think it's done, serve immediately. Shortly after being removed from the oven they will, or might, start to sink. Serve with some fresh fruit, powdered sugar for your non-paleo friends, melted dark chocolate, etc.

Enjoy.

Today's Workout: 21 May 2009

So today I adopted two WOD's from the CF page. I took yesterday off for rest b/c I was dead from the previous workout (B.A.D.). That was a freaking killer!

So today...

2 round of each of the following sequences back to back for time (my time: 35:45):

75 reps of 45 lb sumo deadlift high pull (SDHP)
20 hand stand pushups (I did them in sets of as many as I could, with as little rest in between as possible)
(do the above twice, then do the following twice)

20 reps of 115 pound thrusters
20 reps of L-pullups

I followed this up by doing as many round of the following in 20 minutes as I could (I completed about 8-9 rounds, I think. I honestly lost count because people started talking to me about what I was doing)

5 pull-ups
10 push-ups
15 air squats
2 minutes of jump ropes, incorporating as many double unders as possible.

Bear Attack Defense (BAD)

Another new workout I tried today. This is a direct modification of a few CF WOD's that I adapted for my wife and I. She did what I call the "Grizzly" Bear Attack Defense, while I think mine was simply a "Koala" Bear Attack Defense; she's quite amazing though.

At any rate you should be pretty sweaty and tired after this bad boy.

Bear Attack Defense (BAD): (prerequisite: you must listen to Michael Jackson's "I'm bad" at least once while doing this workout ;-)

Do the following sequence of exercises 7 times:

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

Then Spring for 1/10th a mile (should take you about 30-40 second of flat out running as fast as you can)

Repeat the exercise sequence and run 5 times. So that's like this: Step 1: sequence-run; sequence-run; sequence-run; sequence-run; sequence-run. Step 2: rest 2 minutes. Repeat Step 1. Done. For time. That means you should do this entire sequence as quickly as you can and note the time. Noting the time allows you to try and do it faster/quicker next time this one pops into you exercise regimen. 

For the Clean/Squat/Press weight I used 95 pounds, which sounds like pansy ass weight and probably is, but I was tired & grunting (yes, I said grunting Eeck!) at round 7/8. Now my shoulders feel like they are going to cramp up, in a good way. This took me about 39 minutes, I think. My watch bugged out on me and I was helping my wife with form; actually we were helping each other out and then had to walk to a treadmill in Gold's Gym and each time the treadmill had it's panties in a bunch and would not get going... adding valuable time to our final metric... at any rate... that's the BAD. I past below a few pics of the exercises for edification purposes. 

Power Clean

Front Squat

Push Press

Back Squat

(here after the push press lower the weight behind your head to get into the back squat position)

I said above that my wife, Austen did a "Grizzly" version of this because she added extra squats. So for every rep she added about 3-5 more squats. She claims it is because her legs are stronger than her arms, but I think she is just a Grizzly eating kind of gal. I did as prescribed above with 95 pounds on the bar and as quick as I could. 

Pic refs: 

http://away.com/images/outside/200405/power_clean_lift.gif

http://www.greatweightlifting.com/Legs/images/FrontSquat/FrontSquat2.jpg