August 22 - Maryland and Potomac Valley Weightlifting Championships
September 12/13 - USA Weightlifting Club Coach Certification (kind of)
October 3/4 - Pan-American Games (BJJ)
November 8 - Worlds (BJJ)
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Beginning of August
Working: 80 hours/week
Sleep: average 5 hours/night
Diet: less than 1500
Injuries: knee (both), ankle (right), foot (both) pain is not abating. No opportunities to ice, and these are likely overuse injuries from the increased hours.
Training Saturday, August 1st: Heavy snatch and clean and jerks, followed by a round of Dimel deadlifts (185lb) and explosive shoulder press (95lb). 80% of snatch attempts were missed, and jerks (right-foot split) were sloppy. Most likely a combination of lack of recovery, fatigue, and lack of practice. Strength is there, but form and coordination is not. Will be working straight doubles except for wednesday morning until the meet, so recovery and practice are limited. Upcoming meet will be a huge question mark, but hope springs eternal.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Week ending July
Currently working: 80 hours/week
Eating: Roughly Paleo, approx. 2200 calories, ad lib and throughout all waking hours. Periodic alcohol, caffeine, sugar and dairy consumption.
Energy levels: generally weak; getting on the bike for the commute is sluggish, and 4 hours of sleep per night is grinding down
Upcoming competitions: O-lifting meet Aug 9, Aug 22nd, then USAWeightlifting Coach Cert in September
Training: heavy singles with both of the lifts - only getting 4 non-working shifts per week means that I have to go big every time.
Eating: Roughly Paleo, approx. 2200 calories, ad lib and throughout all waking hours. Periodic alcohol, caffeine, sugar and dairy consumption.
Energy levels: generally weak; getting on the bike for the commute is sluggish, and 4 hours of sleep per night is grinding down
Upcoming competitions: O-lifting meet Aug 9, Aug 22nd, then USAWeightlifting Coach Cert in September
Training: heavy singles with both of the lifts - only getting 4 non-working shifts per week means that I have to go big every time.
July 28 - Heavy Snatch, followed by jerk practice loaded at 40kg. Tried out both squat jerks and right-food splits. Snatches went up to 75kg - form deteriorated because of early hip rise due to wrong mental state - "I have to get up and under fast." Need to stay calm in the 1st pull so that I can be sure to set myself up correctly for the second. Afraid that too much cautiousness will lead to an extremely slow 1st pull, leaving me doing hang snatches instead of full ones.
July 29 - Heavy C&J - worked up to 95kg, had a scary dump on the jerk. Still debatable as to whether I will be using a right-foot split or squat jerk for the meet. 95kg put me in the hole and I had to struggle to get out. 100kg might actually be limited by strength rather than technique.
July 29 - Heavy C&J - worked up to 95kg, had a scary dump on the jerk. Still debatable as to whether I will be using a right-foot split or squat jerk for the meet. 95kg put me in the hole and I had to struggle to get out. 100kg might actually be limited by strength rather than technique.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The End of an Era...
It's been an incredible three years watching Crossfit grow throughout the UVA and Charlottesville community. I for one know that it's been a thrill to watch as our ranks have grown, and it's been a fulfilling journey for everyone who's been involved to share, teach, and inspire each other. As was inevitable, a fully-fledged box has finally opened up in Charlottesville, and it's time for Crossfit in Charlottesville to take the next step.
Things will be getting much quieter here. Looking for some workout company/instruction/inspiration? Head over to Crossfit Charlottesville for all your exercise/health/life needs....
In the meanwhile, a few of my fondest moments:
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The Boa...an interesting tool for training, but will people come back to it?
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Another tool of the trade, retrieved at great effort, but to little use...
One of the earliest group workouts...crowded and
under-equipped, but ingenuity and creativity meant that
all involved were pushed as far as they could go.
An experiment in true randomization - with an unknown workout,
an unknown location, and an unknown time of day, how would one fare?
The result: three hungover individuals at 5am Saturday morning,
lugging a 120lb sack, doing burpees, and answering questions.
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A first muscle-up. One among many records set and
broken at our last location, a facility that treated
us better than we could have expected or hoped.
Thank you to everyone who's been there along the way. It's been a privilege to train with each and every one of you.
- Bin Lu
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Friends don't let friends train with LSD.
We all have "that" friend. The runner, swimmer, cyclist, or triathlete who seems like he/she is always training. Whether they're doing an "easy ten" or a four hour Sunday long run, they're not training efficiently. Oxidative stress, overuse injuries, decreased all-around fitness, and less time with family and friends is the price most endurance athletes pay for their addictions to going long and slow.
What's the alternative? CrossFit Endurance!! Learn your sport's technique so you don't get hurt, and then train CrossFit supplemented with sport-specific interval and stamina workouts. This is the future of endurance training; amateur and elite athletes across the country and around the world are starting to get on board. I was lucky to be part of a CrossFit Running and Endurance certification this past weekend at CrossFit BWI. Under the excellent instruction of CFE mastermind Brian Mackenzie and assistant trainers Ben Kelly and Shana Alverson, the cert participants spent two days improving our run technique and learning the ins and outs of programming for the endurance athlete from a CrossFit perspective. It was an awesome weekend, and I highly recommend this certification to anyone who wants to be a better, faster runner and more knowledgable trainer.
Below please find the answers to some of the questions you all sent to me prior to the cert...
Q: Is there/are there physical sensations that can tell you whether or not you are POSE running properly, without someone else watching you?
A: Sort of... solid POSE probably does have a feeling: ease and flow of movement. (I'm not even close to perfect running and have yet to truly feel this, though I can feel when I'm improving.) When doing it properly, you're working with the forces of nature and using your body in the most efficient way possible. But I realize that's pretty vague. Run technique is something you can almost always improve on; even B-mack still uses digital coaching and does drills for his own technique. With perhaps the exception of certain gifted athletes and indigenous tribes that barefoot run often and from an early age, pretty much everyone can and would benefit from digital coaching or someone else watching/critiquing your running. And of course, injuries or pain (not hard workout, holy shit my heart is beating really fast pain; rather ouch what's that stabbing feeling in my knee/foot/hip/etc pain) are a dead give-away for bad technique.
Q: What about endurance training's effect on strength? At a certain volume of endurance training will you see a decrease in your strength and power i.e. your ability to move explosively?
A: Poor endurance programming - read too much training in the oxidative pathway i.e. LSD - will certainly have a negative impact on your strength and power... and muscle mass, flexibility, and a variety of other components of fitness. But endurance approached from Brian's CrossFit perspective is all about strength, power, speed, and indeed all ten dimensions of fitness. If you aren't doing CrossFit, your aren't doing CrossFit endurance - simple as that. B Mac wants his athletes to gradually progress towards CrossFit 4-6x/week and endurance work 2x/week per sport. If you don't see progression in both your endurance workouts AND your CrossFit workouts, you're doing too much or not programming properly. Done right, CFE athletes should see their times for endurance workouts and events improving and their benchmark WOD's and max effort lifts improving. That said, would a world-class powerlifter or weightlifter likely see a decrease in, for example, their max back squat if they started doing CFE interval workouts? Probably... but that would beg the question of why such an athlete is doing endurance work to begin with. The endurance training is done to address a sport specific need. If your sport or job (triathlete or soldier for example) requires going long on the road, in the pool, or in the field, you need to train for that. If your goal is general fitness, you're probably better off with plain old CrossFit (but don't skip those 5K and 10K days - cardiorespiratory endurance is one of the 10 general physical skills after all!). But I think pretty much everyone can benefit from working on their running technique, even if you aren't planning on doing much interval or stamina training.
Q: And how about nutrition? Should you stick to the CF nutrition programming (meat and veggies, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar; ideally in zone ratios) leading up to and during an endurance race?
A: Hell yes!!! The endurance community is hurting their performance and long-term health/wellness with high carb diets and particularly with the over-hyped pre-event "carb load." Your body is primarily a fat-burning, not a sugar/carb burning machine; fuel it that way. B-mack and his athletes have found the most success with paleo-zone, usually at anywhere from 2x-5x fat to sustain their training loads. Endurance competitors should condition their bodies to consume whole, paleo-zone foods during events. Throw out the high carb bars and gels.
If anyone has other questions, feel free to email or call me or make yourself heard in the comments section. And understand the above is my take on the weekend's lectures and information. Though I hope I've done their excellent training and instruction justice, I in no way am speaking for Brian and his staff.
Gonna be working through a lot of POSE drills and running technique training for the next few weeks, so let me know if you'd like to join in. I'll try to have a little UVAXfit run workshop sometime this summer. Keep training hard everyone!!
Your moment of [inspirational] Zen...
Brian Mackenzie, the man, the myth, the legend,
halfway thru a killer 100m. interval workout.
What's the alternative? CrossFit Endurance!! Learn your sport's technique so you don't get hurt, and then train CrossFit supplemented with sport-specific interval and stamina workouts. This is the future of endurance training; amateur and elite athletes across the country and around the world are starting to get on board. I was lucky to be part of a CrossFit Running and Endurance certification this past weekend at CrossFit BWI. Under the excellent instruction of CFE mastermind Brian Mackenzie and assistant trainers Ben Kelly and Shana Alverson, the cert participants spent two days improving our run technique and learning the ins and outs of programming for the endurance athlete from a CrossFit perspective. It was an awesome weekend, and I highly recommend this certification to anyone who wants to be a better, faster runner and more knowledgable trainer.
Below please find the answers to some of the questions you all sent to me prior to the cert...
Q: Is there/are there physical sensations that can tell you whether or not you are POSE running properly, without someone else watching you?
A: Sort of... solid POSE probably does have a feeling: ease and flow of movement. (I'm not even close to perfect running and have yet to truly feel this, though I can feel when I'm improving.) When doing it properly, you're working with the forces of nature and using your body in the most efficient way possible. But I realize that's pretty vague. Run technique is something you can almost always improve on; even B-mack still uses digital coaching and does drills for his own technique. With perhaps the exception of certain gifted athletes and indigenous tribes that barefoot run often and from an early age, pretty much everyone can and would benefit from digital coaching or someone else watching/critiquing your running. And of course, injuries or pain (not hard workout, holy shit my heart is beating really fast pain; rather ouch what's that stabbing feeling in my knee/foot/hip/etc pain) are a dead give-away for bad technique.
Q: What about endurance training's effect on strength? At a certain volume of endurance training will you see a decrease in your strength and power i.e. your ability to move explosively?
A: Poor endurance programming - read too much training in the oxidative pathway i.e. LSD - will certainly have a negative impact on your strength and power... and muscle mass, flexibility, and a variety of other components of fitness. But endurance approached from Brian's CrossFit perspective is all about strength, power, speed, and indeed all ten dimensions of fitness. If you aren't doing CrossFit, your aren't doing CrossFit endurance - simple as that. B Mac wants his athletes to gradually progress towards CrossFit 4-6x/week and endurance work 2x/week per sport. If you don't see progression in both your endurance workouts AND your CrossFit workouts, you're doing too much or not programming properly. Done right, CFE athletes should see their times for endurance workouts and events improving and their benchmark WOD's and max effort lifts improving. That said, would a world-class powerlifter or weightlifter likely see a decrease in, for example, their max back squat if they started doing CFE interval workouts? Probably... but that would beg the question of why such an athlete is doing endurance work to begin with. The endurance training is done to address a sport specific need. If your sport or job (triathlete or soldier for example) requires going long on the road, in the pool, or in the field, you need to train for that. If your goal is general fitness, you're probably better off with plain old CrossFit (but don't skip those 5K and 10K days - cardiorespiratory endurance is one of the 10 general physical skills after all!). But I think pretty much everyone can benefit from working on their running technique, even if you aren't planning on doing much interval or stamina training.
Q: And how about nutrition? Should you stick to the CF nutrition programming (meat and veggies, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar; ideally in zone ratios) leading up to and during an endurance race?
A: Hell yes!!! The endurance community is hurting their performance and long-term health/wellness with high carb diets and particularly with the over-hyped pre-event "carb load." Your body is primarily a fat-burning, not a sugar/carb burning machine; fuel it that way. B-mack and his athletes have found the most success with paleo-zone, usually at anywhere from 2x-5x fat to sustain their training loads. Endurance competitors should condition their bodies to consume whole, paleo-zone foods during events. Throw out the high carb bars and gels.
If anyone has other questions, feel free to email or call me or make yourself heard in the comments section. And understand the above is my take on the weekend's lectures and information. Though I hope I've done their excellent training and instruction justice, I in no way am speaking for Brian and his staff.
Gonna be working through a lot of POSE drills and running technique training for the next few weeks, so let me know if you'd like to join in. I'll try to have a little UVAXfit run workshop sometime this summer. Keep training hard everyone!!
Your moment of [inspirational] Zen...
Brian Mackenzie, the man, the myth, the legend,halfway thru a killer 100m. interval workout.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Way to get strong #1:
Pick something heavy up off the ground!
This past Friday, a group of us got together at Rocky Top for a heavy deadlift session. We warmed up and then started ramping up the weight, topping out at 167kg (367.4#). Courtney worked some push jerks (gotta love the sound of a heavy bar dropping from overhead), and then she and Bin stormed through a short, sweet metcon:
30, 20, 10 rep rounds for time:
Push-ups
Hang Power Cleans (95#/45#)
Check out some pictures from the workout below...
Lock out!
(exhale on the way up? bullshit; intra-thoracic pressure rules!)
And your moment of Zen...
Damnit guys, no smiling while you lift!
This past Friday, a group of us got together at Rocky Top for a heavy deadlift session. We warmed up and then started ramping up the weight, topping out at 167kg (367.4#). Courtney worked some push jerks (gotta love the sound of a heavy bar dropping from overhead), and then she and Bin stormed through a short, sweet metcon:
30, 20, 10 rep rounds for time:
Push-ups
Hang Power Cleans (95#/45#)
Check out some pictures from the workout below...
The pull from the floor.
Fight for it! (yelling is a must)
Lock out!(exhale on the way up? bullshit; intra-thoracic pressure rules!)
And your moment of Zen...
Damnit guys, no smiling while you lift!
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