It’s the basics of fielding a ground a ball and every kid from the first year players to the All-Stars took 10 minutes setting up in the correct position, tapping their glove on the ground and reaching out in front of them. First with no ball and then with a grounder rolled slowly from about 15 feet. Before each ball… setup, tap, tap, hinge, hinge. It was interesting to me that my best players were the also those who took it most seriously. No talking, no silly throws. We also spent time hitting wiffle balls off a tee.

The purpose of such drills is to practice the basics. Get the form programmed and then slowly increase the speed of the drill.

We do the same thing in the gym. Light squats practicing form and reaching for full depth. It may seem like an easy drill that you have done a million times before but the value of isn’t in the weight, it’s in the focus. Feeling depth, feeling a solid base, seeing your platform partners move and asking them questions.

I hope you took full advantage of our “clinic week” and really focused on the lifts we discussed and practiced. I saw some epiphanies. I hope you learned something too.

Derek with a nice set of 3 on the Deadlift.

This week we are going to have a focus week. After a quick warm up we are going to jump right into a 30 minute “clinic” focused on improving our form in some of the basic lifts. Clinic time will be spent lifting lighter loads and aiming for perfection in the details. If you are new to the lifts this would be a good week to be in the gym all five days during the week. When we work at maximal loads or 5×5 sets we expect that form will break down. Watching the past couple of weeks of lifts I have often thought that a form correction here or there would add weight, sometimes significant weight, to someone’s lift. This week we find that added performance.

The clinics this week:
Monday: The Clean
Tuesday: Pressing (Shoulder/Bench)
Wednesday: Deadlift
Thursday: Squats
Friday: The Snatch

Really?

Agricultural societies have always fed waste products to livestock. But as agriculture industrialized, the waste products that farmers serve to farm animals have industrialized, too.

But with the rise of industrial chicken production, farms produced way too much litter to be absorbed by nearby land. So what was once a resource has become a waste problem — and one solution has been to feed chicken litter to cows. Cows consume between 1 million and 2 million tons of chicken waste per year.

Poultry litter consists primarily of manure, feathers, spilled feed and bedding material that accumulate on the floors of the buildings that house chickens and turkeys. It can contain disease-causing bacteria, antibiotics, toxic heavy metals, restricted feed ingredients including meat and bone meal from dead cattle, and even foreign objects such as dead rodents, rocks, nails and glass.

HT: Mercola.com
Source: Grist.org (Article)

This cow didn’t eat any waste products before I ate him…

We also got some work on the new bars. Let’s work the shine off of them.

As most of you know one of my major passions is ice hockey. This year I again have been given the opportunity to play on a hockey team in the Ronald McDonald Hockey Challenge on February 27th at ShoWare Arena in Kent, WA. Last year I joined a new team within the Entertainment and Devices division (for those of you outside Microsoft, think Xbox, Phones, Games and other cool stuff!). It was a smashing success; we won our game 6-0 and more importantly raised over $20,000 for the Ronald McDonald House of Western Washington. For those of you that don’t know about the Ronald McDonald House, they are an awesome charity that provides a “home away from home” for families of seriously ill children receiving treatment at nearby hospitals.

This will be my 7th year participating in the challenge. Like years past, it is always tough to ask for fundraising support from my friends and family but I continue to be amazed at your generosity. I never expect anything and appreciate everything, no matter how small. This year I am targeting $1500 as my personal fundraising goal. Any donations can be made directly on the RMHC site (select hockey challenge in program area and reference E&D Team and my name in the comments area) or checks can be sent to me at 15852 NE Leary Way Redmond, WA 98052 Any checks should be written to “RMHC”. No amount is too small.

Let me know if you have any questions. As always, thanks for all the support.

Thanks!

Derek

I really don’t like gloves on the pull-up bar. I know some people do but I discourage it because of my belief that slippery nylon, worn leather or really any material that comes between your hands and the bar, barbell, kettlebell… makes for a less secure grip.

A part of working out with barbells is calluses. I would get used to that idea and learn what to do (and not to do) in order to have healthy hands. I don’t rip and stop my workouts, or change them on the fly, if I feel tears starting. It’s a rare workout that is worth the hassle of a tear. I would rather stop early and train strong for the next week than have to work around a hand injury. You should too. I will exempt Andy because he really wants to experience a hand tear. Please pray for Andy.

Continue reading after the break…

TAPE
Using a thin strip of athletic tape around your thumb or on your fingers can keep you from getting blisters from high rep or heavy barbell movements. There are also a couple tape jobs we can use to guard your hands that I am happy to help you with before you do pull-ups or kettlebells. There is a HUGE don’t with tape. Never, and I mean NEVER, put tape on a barbell or on the pull-up bar.

CHALK
Chalk is intended to dry sweaty hands and helps keep your hands from turning around the bar you are grasping. That’s not always a good thing. You want your hands to freely move, not get hung up by the added friction that chalk adds. If your hands are covered in chalk you are overusing. If you leave large chalky hand prints on the floor you are excessively overusing. And please don’t pound on the chalk ball, that just annoys me.

LOOSEN YOUR GRIP
Especially on the pull-ups bar, but also with kettlebells, rowers and rings, learn to let up on your grip at the point of the movement that requires your hands to go around the bar. If you put a death grip on the bar at the top of your pull-up and kip aggressively you are putting lots of unneeded pressure on your hands. Let it slide a little!

STOP
Stopping a workout or changing exercises on the fly to avoid tearing a callus that is about to go doesn’t mean you are a wimp. I would rather have you switch to push-ups, ring dips, presses, up right rows (possibly even bicep curls) than finish a workout with bloody hands. Further tearing only means more missed training. No, don’t do bicep curls.

MAINTAIN YOUR CALLUSES
You can use pretty much anything you like as long as you can control the rate at which your skin is removed. Emory boards, sand paper, cheese graters, belt sanders, jointer or machete are all options. Some of them are bad options. A PedEgg (available at a retailer near you) is a great option and the one I most often recommend. Use it when your hands are dry. After a shower it is pretty easy to take off more than you really want. Another good option is a rotary tool like a Dremel. It’s quick painless and leaves a nice shiny surface.

USE GLOVES
Yeah I don’t like them, but it’s a small concession to keep you training. I prefer taping but gloves can be an effective way to keep your skin on. If your job requires hands free of a callus gloves can help a little. If you are protecting against a tear, or guarding an old tear this can be effective. I’m less concerned about barbells than I am with you slipping on a pull-up or KB swing. If you wear gloves take an extra second to look at what is behind you and what is in front of you. Face your KB swing away from other people (good advice for everyone) and if you feel your grip slipping stop.

DON’T TEAR
Bottom line is don’t push it until you tear. I will NEVER put a picture of your callus tears on the website and they frankly make me feel like I failed to do my job as a coach. I’d rather you learn from our past adventures in skin loss than learn it on your own. I will also NEVER complain if you change up to protect your hands. Coaches who push athletes after a tear suck. Learn how to deal with shredded hands in competition but don’t shred your hands in practice.

We start by listing a few of the more popular phrases and define the terms… CONTINUE READING AFTER THE BREAK


Lauren obviously thinks Chuck is pretty great

“CrossFit is constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity”

Functional movement – Simply stated these describe exercises that are natural to the human body in its natural environment. You can also describe them as the most efficient movement based on the human machine’s natural mechanics. Think of the basics like squatting, pushing, pulling, lifting, throwing… There is a natural, proper way for them to be performed. We do functional movements because they are the basic movements required of every human being.

Constantly varied – We don’t do the same things day after day after day. This does NOT mean we just randomly do stuff. You can vary time, reps, weight, distance or rest periods. A max rep back squat, a set of 100 air squats, 5×5 front squats and Tabata wall ball shots are different expressions of the squat. Running 3-5 miles 5-6 days a week doesn’t really count as varied. Generally speaking, the more focused your training is on one thing the better you will be at that one thing. We purposefully train a wide variety of skills in a wide variety of ways.

Intensity – The most simple way to think of intensity is doing more in less time. The more intensity in a workout the shorter it will be. Think of intensity in terms of horsepower. High intensity means you are producing more power but you will only maintain that level for short bursts. In other words. 21 thrusters followed by 21 pull-ups is fast and powerful, it is intense. Running for 5 miles is not powerful and is not intense.



“Specialization is for insects”
I have seen this on t-shirts. It is an attempt at humor so you specialists should calm down. Sports specific training is specialization; the specialist needs to focus on their sport. They say after seeing 50,000 curveballs a player starts to get an idea about how to hit one. You don’t get that experience by doing anything but seeing curveballs. At the same time, you don’t just go into the batting cage and swing at 50,000 curveballs and expect to be a top ballplayer. The cage is only a part of a workout routine aimed at being a better hitter. Our varied workout program seeks to increase speed, flexibility, strength, power, endurance, agility, stamina, coordination, etc. all of which support the end goal of hitting a baseball. It’s inaccurate to say that CrossFit will make you a better baseball player. It is accurate to say that CrossFit provides a base of performance related training that will enhance your specialization.



“Work capacity across broad time and modal domains”

Some people seem to think this statement is hard to understand or doesn’t make sense. Boiling it down it really just states that we are aiming to do many different things and do them as well as we can. This includes short heavy efforts and longer sustained efforts. This can be displayed visually by graphing power generated across time. It’s a geek thing for sure!

Work Capacity = Power = (weight x distance) / time – You know what miles per hour means. Work capacity is expressed as foot pounds. If you move a 100 pound weight 10 feet you have done 1,000 foot pounds of work. (100 pounds x 10 feet) See not hard. Say it took you 2 seconds. 1,000 ft lbs/2seconds = 500 ft lbs per second. This is your “average power output”. We will stop there.

Broad time and modal domains – That’s just a highfalutin way of saying different time spans and doing different things. Deadlift for 20 seconds, run for 3 hours, do Fran in 3:16. Sit on your butt for an entire football game. Expressed as power you would see very different amounts of work done across very different time frames.

–Class dismissed–

“Is it the Shoes? Is it the Shoes? Is it the Shoes? … Money, it’s gotta be the shoes.”
Mars Blackmon

If you don’t remember the commercial it’s probably because you are either young or didn’t watch enough TV in the late eighties.

Shoes are a funny thing. I recommended that people look into lifting shoes (way to go John!) and see if you don’t like lifting from a stable platform better than a squishy shoe filled with gel, air or other mush. Holly has been lifting sans shoes a few times but other than that… I LOVE using my lifting shoes.

(Tina, you can stop reading now,) You runners are about to start more seriously training for your summer races. Do you know why so many runners end up limping around, in PT or on the orthopedic cutting table? Running isn’t a brainless activity. Watch some runners, or take notes of your own running style. Arms moving side to side cause rotational pressures, excessive bouncing (watch their heads) results in a loping impact, and heel strikes are just a nasty habit.

More on barefoot running including a Harvard study. It’s from Harvard so it HAS to be true. Right? [Editor’s note:
You can’t bash all the Harvard grads you have worked with so I deleted
that section.]

Drills, better running form and a slight tweak in your programming can make for a successful, fun and injury free racing season. Talk to me people.

With the running season approaching it’s time to gauge interest in a race training program. If you want to train for a 5k, 10k, half marathon or even a full marathon let me know. We can put together some specific training (and special workouts) for those of you who want to train for a race. You DON’T need to run 50-60 miles a week to train for a marathon and you don’t really need to run much distance at all to train for a 5k or 10k. Save your knees!

(BTW: LSD stands for Long Slow Distance)