My Crossfit Log and some rambling.

I’ve decided to keep a livejournal crossfit log of all my workouts. I’ve tagged each workout so every time I go to do a new session, I can easily search by tags to get results from any same or similar workout. I’m doing this so I can go to the gym with old times and weights in hand and ensure I have the best chance to smash them!

Finding it very motivating to record everything on my journal. It doesn’t take long to clock up  heaps of sessions and you feel a real sense of pride and achievement scanning back over all the old workouts. It’s great to see in such a short time how much I am improving.

My training goals before Christmas 2009

• To be able to complete one full muscle up
• Increased confidence and weight on olympic lifts
• To run 5km without hating it or stopping (yes, I’m a trainer and I hate running!)
• To  perform Glute-Ham Situps as prescribed in a workout (not as easy as it looks!)

I have some specific training goals that I’ve shared here today. Purpose being, that I wanted to demonstrate the Constant and Never Ending Improvement concept from my perspective. I’ve achieved a lot of goals and do not want to lose weight or tone up anywhere. What I DO want is more strength and to be more capable with a lot of the crossfit workouts and exercises. I see a lot of people give up on training because they can’t cope with getting to a certain fitness level/weight/strength, then being told they need to take it up another notch. They regard it as failing because more is being asked of them. It is quite the opposite! It is SO important, right from the very start of your transformation that you are aware that the expectations must always rise and there is no finish point. Embrace this! It is a positive thing and it will be something you cherish as time goes by. The majority of people get addicted to the improvements and are happy to seek them out infinitely.

So, don’t lose heart if your trainer ups your push ups, or makes you run faster all the time, it just means your body has adapted to the training, and it is no longer training or improving your health if you don’t ask that little bit more. If you don’t have a trainer or coach, be that little voice inside your own head and keep looking for ways to do a harder progression, run a bit faster, lift a bit more weight. Learn to love that aspect of your exercise because it will lead you to a body that is capable of so much more. I hope with a lot of the people I have helped that they one day may feel confident enough that they can then go on and teach others.

Obesity and my fears for YOUR health!

I have a real fear that here in Australia (and also the U.S) that obesity will become the norm. I drove past the local high school last week, and I honestly could only spot 2 girls out of over 80 that were not overweight or obese. Everywhere I go I see people who I regard as obese. It really concerns me, not only because being overweight ruins your self esteem – it ruins your life. Your health risks increase dramatically (diabetes, heart disease, joint problems are just a few), you are more likely to have trouble conceiving children, and your life is shortened. It is all avoidable and it frustrates me so much to see how acceptable it is to be overweight now. I will no doubt offend some people with this post but perhaps it is time we all took a real good look at ourselves and our children and did something about it. We have become so lazy and so spoilt by technology that exercise is not a part of every day life for a lot of people anymore. I honestly don’t give a crap about what people look like, I’m not expecting everyone to look like an elite athlete – it is about what is going on inside that worries me!

If you know someone that doesn’t exercise or play sport – why not offer to go walking with them as a starting point. You can use the walks as a time to suggest meeting up for little circuit workouts or going to a class at the gym together. Get off your butt now and go save a life! You can make time no matter your circumstances. I’m yet to coach a client who I could not help with a slightly re-arranged schedule, kids, shift work or otherwise!

Information you NEED for your health!

For the last two weeks my husband and I have dedicated all of our spare time to educating ourselves on health and wellbeing. This short post is to direct you, my readers to some documentaries and topics so that I regard as essential for your education and self improvement.

I encourage you to watch the following documentaries as urgently as possible. Stick it out and watch them to the end, it is well worth the effort. I’ve learned some mind blowing things that have fuelled my desire to seek out more information. I will gradually include notes here on everything I refer you to as I know everyone doesn’t have time to do what I am doing.

“The Beautiful Truth”

“Healing Cancer from Inside Out” (just as important to watch even if you are not affected by cancer)

“Raw Food for Life – The Ultimate Encyclopedia of the Raw Food Lifestyle

I am concentrating my research on raw food at the moment. Becoming vegan or even just vegetarian was not something I have ever strongly considered until I watched these documentaries. My husband and I are both converting to a vegetarian and eventually vegan diet of predominanately raw food. We feel strongly enough about what we have learnt recently that it is necessary for our current and long term health. Some of my knowledge on nutritional requirements – especially protein intake has been spun around.

If you think about it, it is 2009 and we have spent billions of dollars on health research, drugs, treatments, “health food”, supplements and the like, yet the rates of cancer, heart disease, obesity and other major concerns are rising out of control! People still die after enduring the horrible side effects of treatments and surgeries. These documentaries outline why going back to our natural diet of raw, organic fresh vegetables and fruits is the only effective way of ensuring health and wellbeing. Consider that we are a society that treats symptoms not causes. Diet is THE number one reason why people develop cancer, heart disease, diabetes and become obese. Poisoning our bodies with chemotherapy has not proven to stop cancer in it’s tracks – in fact it often causes patients to have a severe recurrance that takes their life. The treatment and surgeries often leave them a sick, crippled mess, in pain and susceptible to any bug going around. Some of these documentaries show people who have overcome terminal cancer easily via converting to raw food vegan diets and a stack of evidence from studies supporting what they are saying. It is possible to eliminate diabetes simply via diet and people are doing it every day.

I will be posting some articles over the next week or two outlining the main points from these doco’s and also some information I am gathering from further research and undertaking a better diet myself. I’m very grateful for the people who pointed me in the right direction. It feels like a light has gone off in my head. You will need to challenge a lot of what you see in advertising and media with regards to food and nutrition – remember that these industries are BUSINESSES, not volunteers who are educating you out of the goodness of their hearts. It is not in their best interest financially to find cures for cancers, or to teach you that you can easily grow everything you need to eat at home in a 4m x 12m run of garden beds! Keep an open mind, become a critical thinker and educate yourself NOW so you can start enjoying the fantastic enlightenment and buzz of health that changing your eating habits can provide. Don’t be one of the fools who assumes “it won’t happen to me” and cancer or some other serious health concern will never come knocking on your door. It isn’t just about prevention, it is about feeling alive, having motivation day in day out, about your moods being normal. You can make changes with what you eat that will change your skin, your weight, your strength, your sleep, your ability to get pregnant! As mentioned in Raw Food for Life, it is a “Win – Win” !

Functional Fitness – forget the machines and train properly!

When I sat down to write this article, it dawned on me that it will be challenging to put into words how much shifting to this method of training can change your life. I can only suggest you give it a go for yourself and leave all your old ideas at the door. I did! I’ve been heavily into weightlifting and fitness since the age of 14 (I am 29 at the time of writing). I’ve had decent results in strength and muscle development from traditional training utilising a mixture of machine weights, dumbells and bodyweight exercises. Recently I’ve moved into fully functional exercise following the Crossfit (http://www.crossfit.com) methodology/workouts and have comitted to never touching another machine again. The results I have achieved are nothing short of amazing. I should state I’m not affiliated with Crossfit and am not being paid to write this article. My personal improvement and success is my motivation to share this with my readers.

Crossfit training can be summed up as follows:

World-Class Fitness in 100 Words:

Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.

-CrossFit founder, Greg Glassman

While you will get results from traditional gym exercise, you can get faster, more overall results from a truly functional fitness program. Your typical gym consists of a majority cable machines, perhaps some dumbells, a squat rack, crosstrainers, treadmills, step machines, aerobics classes. A typical crossfit gym will be filled with pull up bars, plyometric boxes, sandbags, olympic bars, kettlebells, ropes, gymnastic rings and the like. Concentrate your training on moving your BODY, rather than a machine, you are doing what comes naturally. If you are jumping, lifting, climbing, throwing and running, these natural movements are compound and multi joint which ensures extensive muscle fibre recuitment overall. There are 10 domains of fitness – cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, agility, balance, coordination and accuracy. Crossfit ensures you are across all of these. The workouts change daily and can be scaled to any fitness level. The variety of training goes a long way to ensuring motivation and there is something exciting (and slightly sadistic) about checking the website each morning to see what torture has been prescribed for the day.

If it’s not working – do something different!

I have watched with interest some of the people training at my local gym over the 2 months since I started. They come in and do the same workouts, day in day out. 4 sets of 10 reps on each machine down the line while chatting to their friend on the next machine. They haven’t had any results. They don’t look like they are having fun and I know from my experience working in gyms, they will join the long list of inactive members before too long. I used to prescribe a mixture of machine and free weights with some separate cardio. Those days are over. You don’t need to do long sessions, or separate cardio and weights sessions. 20 minutes of push ups, un-weighted squats and burpees can do wonders! I’m not talking typical circuit training, it is far more intense, simple and effective than that.

I’ve personally been plagued with injuries over the years such as dodgy knees, a severe lower back problem, arthritic pain in many joints. I’ve been doing Crossfit for about 2 months and I am pain free, have put on a significant amount of lean muscle (which SHOULD be your goal even if you are female!), reduced my bodyfat level and imortantly achieved extreme improvements in cardio fitness, strength, agility and power. I was only able to complete 6 pull ups (chin ups) in a day prior to starting. Last week I did a session that lasted 20 minutes with 3 exercises. I completed 75 unassisted pull ups as part of this session! It doesn’t matter what your goal with training is – this truly is a one size fits all way of training. I have no experience with Olympic lifting, however am learning from the videos and all you need is a broomstick to start practicing. It doesn’t cost you a cent to go to the website and watch the exercise demos and view the workout of the day. If you want instruction you can attend seminars in your area, or join your local crossfit gym to train under the watchful eye of accredited Crossfit trainers. There are scaled versions of the workouts at the Crossfit BrandX forums and some very helpful people there to assist you.

The reason I wanted to share this is simply because it works. I know my body well. I know how long it takes to go up a notch on any typical gym machine, I know how much improvement I get in muscle tone week in week out using the machines. Changing to olympic lifts, bodyweight exercises and kettlebell exercises, with short, highly intense workouts that change on a daily basis has blown away all my previous notions of how much I can improve over a week or a month. Being the mother of an 18 month old toddler means I don’t have a lot of down time to get to the gym. The fact that these workouts average between 10 and 25 minutes make it appealing too. I don’t dread going to the gym, I burst through the door, power through the short workout and get home in under 30 minutes.

I apologise for the way this article promotes so strongly a commercial venture/branch. I don’t know of any other training system that is as functional and effective as this and I feel it is worth sharing. As mentioned, you can access it all for free, there is a great support network online and I am truly passionate about this method of training. The programming is done for you, you never get bored and anyone can do it. Once you Crossfit – you will never go back.