Should you be taking fish oil? Short anwer: Yes. Why? As avid exercisers, we put a lot of stress on the body. When the body is stressed, it produces stress hormones like cortisol which induces an inflammatory response. When the inflammatory response is high, healing and recovery of the muscles and other connective tissue can’t initiate. Shouldn’t my body be able to take care of this on its own? To an extent, yes. Fish oil contains Omega-3, a fatty acid found in foods such as eggs, meats, fish, fruits and vegetables. This is a good fat and one that we struggle to get enough of. Grain fed meats, caged hen eggs, farm raised fish, and conventionally grown vegetables make it nearly impossible to get the recommended amount of Omega-3 per day. Eating hyper glycemic foods such as grains and sugars also puts you at an imbalance and induces the same inflammatory response. You are already at a disadvantage with just the food you are ingesting. Add in the stresses of everyday life and exercising and you realize that that inflammatory response could be higher than previously thought. Fish oil has been coined the name “nature’s advil” because of its healing and preventative capabilities. Taking 1-3 grams of fish oil each day is a good way to restore the fatty acid balance in our cells, promote good heart health, provide essential fatty acids for our brains, improve protein synthesis after workouts, and counteract some of the downfalls of modern life.

Read more on fish oil here: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/fish-oil-health-benefits/#ixzz2AEBLbqB5

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Upcoming Events:

Ladies Night! This Thursday, October 25th, you are welcome to come hang out at Times Ten Cellars (a local wine bar). The reservation is set for 7:30-10pm. Put this one in your calendars because it should be a good one. Come dressed or come sweaty.. Just come! If you have any questions, please email Elizabeth at [email protected].

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Help Us Paint! This Saturday, October 27th, after the 10am free workout, we encourage you all to come and help us paint our new gym. That’s right, we are moving, but only about 100 ft away into the old JJ’s convenient store space on Gaston Ave. Food and adult beverages will be provided. Please wear clothes that you don’t mind getting paint on. Please RSVP to this event by emailing me back at [email protected]. Painting starts at 12 noon and will continue until whenever we finish.

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Grand Opening Party. Come help us celebrate the opening of our new gym!  This event will take place on Saturday, December 1st in accordance with…

Barbells & Handlebars. Get your mustaches ready in support of Movember. On Saturday, December 1st, East Dallas CrossFit will be hosting our first annual Barbells & Handlebars event benefitting prostate and testicular cancer initiatives such as the Prostate Cancer Foundation and LIVESTRONG Foundation. BB&HB will be an open event meaning anyone is welcome to participate. Details are still being arranged and a separate BB&HB website is in the works and will be launched soon. The workout will be a “Fight Gone Bad” style workout with different movements. Each week on Friday a different movement will be released. Prizes will be awarded to both male and female athletes as well as best mustache! This is not a closed competition but there will be a limit on number of participants. More info on this soon.

As we near the end of our high bar back squat cycle, I would like to talk about why we do what we do. A big part of CrossFit is being prepared for the unknown and unknowable. In this regard, many gyms follow a more randomized way of programming. So why do we, at EDCF, stick to programmed strength cycles? I have found that randomization is okay to a certain degree, but a cycle based off scheduled periodization is key to seeing sizable gains. The concept of periodization is pretty simple. You basically start of with more reps at lower weight and build up to less reps at higher weight. A new one-rep max is then found after which you rest the movement for a couple of weeks to recover then start again going off your new and heavier max.

If you have followed the programming over the last few months, there is no doubt that you know that every Monday is usually back squat day. We have switched from low bar to high bar in the recent months to trigger different areas. We focused on low bar first to strengthen the posterior chain (glutes, low back, and hamstrings) without putting much emphasis on the deadlift. At the same time, we focused on the Olympic lifts (snatch and clean & jerk) and breaking them down to their basic components. Now that there is more competency in the Oly lifts, we have switched to high bar back squats.

High bar targets more of the anterior chain of muscles better known as the four muscles that make up the quadriceps. Focus should be placed on pushing out the knees, keeping the torso vertical, and bringing the hips forward at the bottom of the squat. High bar transfers better to Oly lifting, something that we do a lot here at EDCF. Now that technique in the Oly lifts is better than before, applying more strength out of the bottom of the squat is necessary to make gains in the snatch and clean and jerk.