The CrossFit affiliation has been approved. Now all we need to do is the paper work. The workouts wont change, but some other things might. (Like, hopefully no more leaky roof?)
The rates you start with are good for a year so get started now before the prices go up!
For those of you that don’t know, the Revival Strongman video posted by Albany CrossFit on YouTube was featured on FOX 23 News last night. This made me change my mind: NOT all publicity is good publicity!
The video is of some athletes doing a ‘Continental Clean’ using some pretty bad form. The Continental Clean is done with a thick bar and sometimes using an alternate or mixed grip (like a heavy deadlift). As a coach/trainer, as soon as I spotted the poor technique I would have stopped these young ladies and had them lower the weight. I know many of the coaches/trainers at Albany CrossFit that would have done the same.
We all know that you need to struggle just a little to reap rewards. There is definitely a risk involved in this struggle. The higher the intensity or the higher the weight the more likely your form will suffer. There is a point though where the risk is not worth the reward.
There are some lessons to learn here:
• Look for a CrossFit coach or facility where Quality of movement is more important than Quantity. There are now plenty of CrossFit coaches and affiliates in our area to choose from. (Selfish plug: CrossFit Schenectady will be opening soon!)
• Find a trainer with proper experience and education. Listen to them, ask questions and take advantage of everything they have to offer.
• Know your own body and set your own boundaries. Be ready to tell your coach NO if they push you too hard!
•Don’t try a movement or a weight just because someone else is doing it. Use the proper progression to learn new movements.
• Understand that any movement you do such as driving a car comes with some level risk. The faster your move or the more weight you move with the more risk you are incurring. However, sitting on the coach doing nothing but watching the Biggest loser while drinking wine and eating ice cream come with an entirely different type of risk. Make an informed decision about which type of risk you prefer and how much of that risk you are willing to incur.
This is NOT just for women! Men like barbells too!
The impression given by the article in the Gazette today was that only Women train here. However, about 1/3 of our members are men. In our gym Men and Women of all ages workout side by side. Everyone is treated equally according to their fitness level, not because they are men or women or because of their age. We have some grandparents that can kick some teenage butt!
It’s true that people tend to choose a trainer they can relate to. Some women feel uncomfortable with a male trainer and some men think a woman won’t make them work hard enough. I think the men that train here will disagree!
Below is a typically day diet for me on the Whole30:
Breakfast: Comination of PaleoKit (Jerky, nuts & fruit), hard boiled eggs, fruit and/or Granola. The 2nd to last ingredient in the grain free granola is honey so I guess that’s not exactly Whole30 worthy?
Lunch: Leftover meat and veggies or salad. If I have a salad I’ll use store bought salad dressing . The dressing is of course not totally Whole30 worthy either.
Snacks: Fruit or Jerky
Dinner: Salad (more dressing), Meat and Veggies. See the meat disclaimer below:
Now you all know that I don’t really cook. Ray cooks dinner for me every night so for the most part I have to eat what he makes. He’s been very good about the Whole30 thing but I know I can’t push my luck or the cook will quit! He makes meatloaf with bread crumbs in it. If he makes pork or chicken with a breadcrumb coating I’ll try to scrape it off. When he makes sauce I’ll have the meatballs (best I’ve ever had!) with the bread crumbs in them and have roasted eggplant both with sauce (I forgot and used cheese last time too). Most of the time I don’t really know all the ingredients he cooks with so I’m sure I’m getting some butter I’m not supposed to have. My basic rule is: if it looks like meat, smells like meat and tastes like meat (and doesn’t come from a package with ingredients on it) then I’ll eat it.
So, probably every other day I have a very tiny something that isn’t on the Whole30 plan. Does that mean I’m cheating? Does it mean I shouldn’t bother? Does it mean I can just go back to eating ice cream and drinking wine every day?
For me the hardest part of the Whole30 is definitely the CRAP: wine and ice cream! As soon as I’m stressed the first thing I think about is a glass of wine. Then when I think “oh…I can’t have that” then I think about ice cream. Then “Are you serious?” No wine or ice cream? Ugghhhhh!
We all have our “C. R. A. P.”. What do I mean by CRAP? Carbonation, Refined Sugar, Alcohol and Processed foods. I mean the stuff we know isn’t good for us that we love and continue to eat anyway. For the most part I’d say that it only becomes CRAP when you start to over-indulge. If you only have 1 CRAPpy item each week then you are probably doing ok. But, when you are putting over 750 calories of CRAP in your body every day you know you’re in trouble!
I started to wean myself off the CRAP about 2 weeks ago. Since then some interesting things have been happening:
1 – I have tons of energy!
2 – All my fingernails broke – I realized I cut 750 calories a day out of my diet and never replaced them!
3 – My blood sugar is starting to regulate again.
4 – I’ve hit a Press, Bench Press and Front Squat PR all in the last 2 weeks.
5 – My cardio (metcon) times still suck!
6 – Some weird hormonal changes (no details on the internet!)
7 – The weirdest: I’ve been cleaning the house, doing laundry and cooking! Maybe that’s part of the hormonal changes? Or energy level? Or perhaps I’m just filling the time I used to use sitting on the coach drinking wine.
We are officially starting the Whole30
on March 1st. However, my body needed a change and boy is it getting one. I’m hoping that my experience will help all of you who want to give it a go.
For those of you that know me you know that my 2 downfalls in my diet are Wine and Ice Cream. Other than those two items my diet is pretty clean to start with. I eat mostly meat, veggies, fruit, eggs, and nuts. For the most part processed foods are NOT included in my diet. A typical day’s diet over the past 6 months (prior to Whole30) was:
• Breakfast: Some combination of Grain free granola, hard boiled eggs, fruit and once a week yogurt and/or Turkey sausage. I used to eat a lot more yogurt but recently cut most of it out.
• Morning snack: Fruit and/or nuts
• Lunch: Salad or left-over meat and veggies.
• Afternoon snack: More fruit and/or nuts and sometimes beef jerky.
• Dinner: Salad, meat & veggies.
And …the evil stuff:
• Usually 1-3 glasses of wine (and I have a pretty big glass) each evening. This probably averaged about 450 calories a day – ugghhh! It hurts just to put that in writing!
• About 300 calories of ice cream right before I go to bed.
Ouch! I never stopped to think that that totals about 750 calories a day of crap! No wonder my WOD performance sucks! No wonder I’m not meeting my goals!
And lately, in addition to all of that I’ve found myself indulging in the occasional CRAP such as a thimble size serving of pasta about once a week, a piece of Perreca bread once a week, Cheesse and crackers with my wine on Sunday afternoon and just recently on a trip to BJs I bought a BJs size container of chocolate covered almonds! It was about ½ way through that container of almonds when I realized that I have “fallen off the wagon”.
My workout performance was terrible. I wasn’t hitting strength PRs but maybe once a month. My blood sugar has been bouncing around like a yo-yo again, and I just felt like the CRAP I was eating. I also gained about 3-4 pounds in the past few months.
So, I decided that if I needed to cleanse my diet maybe some of you do too! Even though I started early, the Whole30 challenge will officially start March 1st.