Just a few upcoming events to put in your calendars..
February 16th (Saturday) – Peticolas brewery tour from 1-3pm. Come to the 10am free workout then rehydrate with some awesome local beer!
February 23rd(Saturday) – FREE foam rolling clinic. Our friends at Airrosti are come to the gym at 11am (after our free WOD) to teach us the art of foam rolling. Learn how to increase flexibility, bloodflow, reduce pain, and the chance of injury.
March 2nd (Saturday) – EDCF is proud to host our first “Fran Jam”. You guessed it! Well will be doing the classic CrossFit WOD consisting of 21, 15, and 9 reps of thrusters and pull-ups. This will be open to all levels (beginners and advanced). Scaling options will be available. Food and drink to follow at a location TBD.
*All events are open to anyone interested. Have a friend outside EDCF? Bring them along!.. Well maybe not to Fran Jam unless your an evil and twisted person.
You see terms like organic, free range, all natural, and cage free… but what the heck does this all mean and which should you choose?
Free Range
This term is pretty much useless. The term “free range” sounds great and all but if you put a Ferrari sticker on a Fiat it will still be a Fiat (nothing against Fiats). By FDA standards, the free range chicken must have access to the outside at least part of the time. This means that the farmers can have a door leading outside the coop that only needs to be open a small percentage of each day. The chickens are still living in cramped conditions and eating terribly processed food. This is also a way to charge more for the same sub-standard product.
Cage Free
This term doesn’t even have clearly set guidelines by the FDA. Basically chickens aren’t living in metal cages but are packed into henhouses to the point where they can’t move. Dead chickens are cleared out from underfoot every once in a while and the chickens never go outside. These would be considered worse than free range, but not by much. They are both equally disgusting and inhumane.
All Natural
This is the most ambiguous and disingenuous term there is with eggs. There is no way that a hen can lay an egg unnaturally. This is a term used by marketers to present the image of happy, pasture-based hens when instead it it quite the opposite.
Omega-3 Fortified
Hens producing these eggs are feed straight flaxseed, linseed, or a direct supplement. There are varying degrees of the good fat found in each egg. These eggs do however tend to come from organic, cage free birds so they are usually better. Don’t rely on these as a primary source of omega-3. Stick to the fish oil.
So what should you buy?
The chicken’s digestive system is not some magically food cleansing machine. What we feed chickens and the conditions in which they are kept in trickles down to the condition of their eggs. If not for steroids, being fed corn and soy along with living in cramped environments would atrophy the chicken so that it couldn’t produce eggs. Find yourself some eggs from chickens that are actually organic, cage-free and pasture raised whose main food source is grasses and insects. This is the way nature intended it to be. Try the farmers market for the best or at least stick to organic, cage-free, pasture-raised eggs at your local gourmet grocery store. Your wallet might take a hit but it is an investment in your health for later on down the road.
CrossFit is a sport. It is the sport of fitness. Some of you got a taste of this at Barbells & Handlebars last month. Every year CrossFit headquarters puts on the CrossFit Games in order to determine who the fittest male and female in the world are. We are now entering the season leading up to the Games which will go down mid to late summer. In order for Games athletes to make it to the actual Games, they must qualify in the Open and then get through Regionals.
The Open is a series of 5 different workouts starting March 6th. Anyone can register for the Open. There will be one workout announced each week and competitors will have four days to score the highest they can on each workout. Your scores will be tallied at the end of the five weeks and compared to others in our region. The top 48 males and females in Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana will move on to regionals.
I am encouraging those who are advanced enough to sign up and compete along with me. Last year we had four from our gym, including myself, compete in the open. This year I would like to at least double that number. If you are on the fence about joining in, just do it. It will be a fun experience for everyone and you are encouraged to only do what you can do. Still don’t think this is for you? We plan to make an event out of it for our competitors and need the support of the EDCF community.
Before I introduce the Zone Diet, I would first like to highlight the importance of the quality of food that you should be putting into your body. Sticking to meats, seafood, veggies, fruits and good fats is the best way to fuel your system before, between and after workouts. After you clean up your diet, then you can put some thought into how to measure intake quantity and your macro nutrients proportions (i.e. fats, carbs, and protein). This is where the Zone Diet comes in. Balancing your portions and carb/fat/protein intake with the Zone is incredibly important for the serious CrossFit athlete or for those just looking to shed pounds.
Think of food as a drug. Like a drug, food affects the good and bad hormone levels in your body. Your body, and all its functions, is run by hormones. With the perfect balance of carbs, fats, and protein, you will be able to control the three major hormones associated with the human diet – insulin, glucagon, and eicosanoids. Insulin is used when the body has excess energy and needs to store it as fat if it is not being burned. If insulin levels are high, glucose, instead of fat, will be converted to energy. Insulin also elevates levels of inflammation in the body. Glucagon is sort of the opposite. Glucagon mobilizes glucose (stored carbs) in an effort to normalize blood sugar levels in an effort to optimize physical and mental performance. Eicosanoids are hormones that control for inflammation among many other things. The balance of these three is very important to how your body’s performance and how it stores and uses energy.
To optimize these three hormones, it has been proven that balancing the marco nutrients is the key. The Zone Diet splits the three macros up so that you get the right quantity of each at every meal. For example, if you where to eat a one block meal, you would need one block of fat, one of carbohydrate, and one of protein. This would look like 1 ounce of roast beef, 1 cup of broccoli, and three almonds. There will be different amounts in each block depending on the caloric density of the food. Therefore, there will be much more broccoli in a block of carbs than there would be sweet potato.
My 5 block breakfast is the two plates on the right while Elizabeth’s 3 block breakfast is on the left.
The best part is, you can optimize your total intake based on your body type. Whether you are trying to put on, maintain, or loose weight, there is a total block per day ratio just for you. Below is an example of different block totals.
Here is an example of an eating schedule for an 11 block female:
7:30 am 10am 1:00pm 3:30pm 6:30pm 9pm/9:30 (bedtime)
As you can see, there are five meals spaced out throughout the day. This is best in order to keep a healthy metabolism level and energy levels up throughout the day. This also helps your body avoid the fast and gorge cycles, as I like to call it, between meals. Eating at regular intervals also helps your hormone levels stay balanced throughout the day. Feel free to experiment with the number of blocks that is right for your body. Every athlete is different.
So you come and bust your but in the gym 3-4 days a week. Lifting heavy and moving fast. You’re diet is relatively clean and your taking care of your body outside the gym by hydrating and stretching. But are you getting enough sleep? Chances are you’re not. This is actually the most important supplement to training and most times is overlooked as a part we can short change or skip out on.
Quality sleep is essential. Sleep is needed in order for the body to repair and improve. Growth hormone levels spike in the first few hours of sleep as cortisol levels drop. This is when muscle regeneration happens and neuro-pathways are reinforced (learning). Our body responds this way after million years of evolution and adaptation to the light-dark cycle of the earth. This is known as your circadian rhythm. When your sleep and wake cycles line up more closely with when the sun goes down and comes back up, hormonal secretion and physical repair are at their peak.
How do you make sure you’re getting enough good sleep? Try for 8 hours of uninterrupted snoozing each night. This may vary a little from person to person but don’t kid yourself into thinking you can survive on much less. Make sure the room is dark and cool. This will enable the secretion of melatonin, and essential rebuilding hormone. Try and reduce the use of all electronics, especially your iPhone, computer or TV before laying down for bed. These emit a blue-light spectrum making your brain think that it is still light outside. And lastly, create a ritual of dimming the lights before bed and try to get to sleep at the same time every night.
Next Monday, January 14th, Dr. Nick Ponomarenko will be at EDCF from 6-8pm. For just $30 you can receive an ART treatment, an adjustment, and get kinesio taped. Dr. Nick is one of a minority of chiropractors specializing in active release technique (ART) and is a certified kinesio tape specialist for the CrossFit athlete. His goal is to get you back to %100 in as few visits as possible.
What is ART? ART is a patented, state of the art soft tissue system/movement based massage technique that treats problems with muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia and nerves. Headaches, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, shin splints, shoulder pain, sciatica, plantar fasciitis, knee problems, and tennis elbow are just a few of the many conditions that can be resolved quickly and permanently with ART. These conditions all have one important thing in common: they are often a result of overused muscles.
What is kinesio tape? With its unique stretch and superior adhesive, kinesio tape creates a bio-mechanical lifting mechanism which delays fatigue, stabilizes joints, prevents ring and hand burn and promotes proper form. Most importantly, kinesio tape promotes improved circulation and healing post WOD. Dr. Nick is a certified RockTape specialist and understands how kinesio tape should be applied to CrossFit.
So if you have a problem areas that need extra attention and can’t break away from work to attend to them, then come see Dr. Nick next Monday evening. A sign-up for time slots will be on the right side of the whiteboard. Dr. Nick will be seeing people every 20 minutes. Plan it right and you can see him before the WOD or right after!
