brian.potomaccrossfit.com

Going through Kelly Starrett’s material on the Crossfit Journal (of San Francisco Crossfit) has been huge for me. His videos on Midline Stabilization have helped me personally as an athlete and professionally as a trainer.

His latest video on Hamstring Assessment was really a big piece of what’s missing from me as a trainer. I hate stretching, not because I don’t like flexibility, I think flexibility is great. But simply because stretching never works!

I’ve never seen anybody get flexible by stretching. I’ve seen people that are flexible stretch, but I’ve never seen anyone go from Point A (inflexible) to Point B (flexible) by stretching.

Now along comes K-Star and he explains why. So dig up Hamstrung and his Midline Videos on the Crossfit Journal and read what you can on PNF stretching. That or just come to my classes, because we’re going to be doing a lot of this in the near term and I’m going to work on getting K-Star out to PCF ASAP.

Food was a little better today, but note the BW at 213 today – Goddamn Key Lime Pie!

GW
Took this one from CF Omaha
Power Clean 75% x 3 x 4
Overhead squat 9 x 3
Weakness (was originally going to do handstand pishups, but class started and there was no room so did L-sits)

Power Clean
Warmup
3 x 75
3 x 115
3 x 135

Wod
4 x 3 x 155

Notes: I don’t even know what my power clean 1 RM is, so based this off an assumed 1 RM of 195.

Overhead Squats
3 x 135 (failed on 4)
9 x 135
9 x 135
2 x 135 (failed on 3)

Notes: wrists were really the limiting factor here.

The embedding isn’t working, but here’s my vid from the WOD:

20090217 Power Clean and Overhead Squat from Brian Wilson on Vimeo.

L-sits
6 x 10 seconds

Quote of the Day:

The essential problem of all varieties of universalistic, collectivistic, and holistic social philosophy is: By what mark do I recognize the true law, the authentic apostle of God’s word, and the legitimate authority…as logical argumentation cannot decide between various dissenting creeds, there is no means left for the settlement of such disputes other than armed conflict. The nonrationalist, nonutilitarian, and nonliberal social doctrines must beget wars and civil wars until one of the adversaries is annihilated or subdued. The history of the world’s great religions is a record of battles and wars, as is the history of the present day counterfeit religions, socialism, statolatry, and nationalism.

-Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, VIII.2

Let’s not discuss in detail what the cheat meal at Ray’s consisted of, but in brief I can assure you there was wine, steak, garlic mashed potatoes, blue cheese, and KEY LIME PIE!!!  Beware my bodyweight tomorrow!

G
“Cindy”
Max Rds in 20 min
5 pullups
10 pushups
15 squats
Rounds: 19

Compare to 081201: 17 (+5 pullups +10 pushups)
Compare to 081103: 16

Cindy is a weird one for me. My PR is still 21 from June 07.

Two things I’ve done lately that’s helped me improve:

1) Obviously Zone, that’s been crucial
2) Filming my thruster and realizing both it and my squat were jacked up. Watching K-Star’s Midline Stabilization vids on the Crossfit Journal were a big part of this too. I realized that I was sliding my hips forward on my thruster, hence losing posterior chain tension. I also realized I was hinging my back during my air squat, causing the same effect.

So today my squats were much much faster. When I did this in Nov and Dec, I was really disappointed in just how slow my squats were, i just couldn’t crank them out. Now with adjusting my hip and torso position on the squat, my frequency is way up.

Goes to show that after 2.5 years of Crossfitting you can still improve your air squat.

Food situation was a little crazy today, but overall I’m happy with this.  I had a bad carb hangover on Saturday that jacked me up, so while I was way over on fat blocks today, at least I adjusted nicely when I realized I had over-carbbed at brunch, and settled in for the rest of the day with some good chow.

Plus seems like Zone/Paleo is continuing to gain steam at PCF.  Had several folks talk to me today after the WOD classes and three folks from Foundations Class 1 stick around and discuss as well.  I hope they jump into it ASAP!

GW
PCF WOD 090203
“Eliziane”
21-15-9
Deadlift, 225 lbs
Ring Dips
Time: 5:33

Notes: Pretty happy with this, the deadlift was much slower than I would have thought going in. Ring dips were faster than I thought as the kip was really working well for me.

Today got off to a good start, but then went down hill.  Wouldn’t it be nice if I had will power.

This is a perfect example of what happens when you eat too much of the same thing – the body needs variety, if you feed it the same thing (Chili, eggs) all the time, it’s going to breakdown in a big way and pig out.

Robb Wolf, me, and Eva T. at FilFest 09.

MG
4 Rounds Tabata Sprint
40 seconds rest
4 Rounds Tabata Sprint
3 min rest
5 Rounds
25 Hip Extension (done at ONI, diagonal hip ext device)
25 Situps
Time: 8:18

Notes: This wasn’t supposed to be 2 seperate rounds of Tabata, but I cranked the incline and speed WAAAYYYY to high on the treadmill at work, so the last 20 seconds before I took a break I was coming perilously close to getting thrown off the back of the thing and passing out, so decided to take a little break in between and back off the speed.

I frakking hate globo/mil-gyms, but I won’t go into details, you all know why and hate them too.

GW
PCF WOD 090211
“Fran”
For Time:
21-15-9
Thrusters, 95/65 lbs
Pull-ups

Time: 4:20 PR

20090211 Brian v Fran from Brian Wilson on Vimeo.

For whatever reason, I can’t do the embed thing. I don’t know if it’s my theme on WordPress or what. Never seems to be a problem on potomaccrossfit.com. Any help from the tech guru readers?

Compare to 081218: 4:47 video
Compare to 080824: 4:58

Notes: Felt pretty good about this. I had to take lots of breaks during the thrusters, but I never put the bar down, rested in the front rack. The pullups have really clicked over the last two days, so while I busted my chin on the bar on the last rep in the 2nd round, I was cranking them pretty fast with just a quick hip drive instead of my previous longer leg kick. Movie in the works…

Trying to get into the groove again, eyeballing a lot. I feel I’m pretty close though.

The Reader, Henner

Trying to keep better track of what I’m reading/what I’ve read, so put a basic html widget in the sidebar. Will try to update it and review the books that are any good.

I’m half way through the Paleo Diet, and I’m bored to tears. I’ve picked up most of this stuff form The Performance Menu Journal, RobbWolf.com, and Cordain’s published papers. It seems that Cordain (or his editors) tried to dumb this book down as much as possible and make it as “Diet Book”-like as they could, which makes most of it a waste of time. I’m hoping Paleo Diet for Athletes will be more informative.

The commen sense test doesn’t hold up with Paleo Diet either. A great review from Sally Fallon of the Weston Price Foundation goes over some of the same hangups I have. When the Paleo Diet is done exactly as Cordain prescribes, the hunter-gatherer throws out a significant amount of food when he makes a kill – and to my mind, throws out the best tasting parts: Chuck Roast – gone, T-bone – gone, Porterhouse – gone. He’s after that succulant Top Round or Liver – yummmm…..

Same with chicken: Legs and Thighs with the skin on? Forget about it, I’ll take the breast please, and lose the skin.

This is part of the reason why I eat fatty meats and just count the fat blocks. First, fatty meats taste freaking great! Second, lean meats taste crappy. Who can argue with that thorough grounding in the Scientific Method?!?!

This is also why we describe Paleo at Potomac Crossfit as simply: Meat and Vegetables, Seeds and Nuts, some Fruit, little Starch, no SUGAR!!  We don’t specify what kind of meat.  If people take on The Zone Diet, then we tell them to do the math on fatty pieces of meat (each additional 1.5 g of fat = 1 fat block).

Lard, or as it's known in some circles "OHMYFUCKINGGODTHAT'SGOOD"

I also stay as far away from Canola Oil and the like as much as I can. High amounts of ALA consitently show correlation with symptoms of depression in humans (ref 1, ref 2). Whereas I’m happy just thinking about putting a big tablespoon of lard in a pan

See Modern Forager’s Top 10 Cooking Oils.

Post retort or accusations of pedantic pretentiousness to comments.