CrossFit SoCal Member Forum

We Are SoCal [video of 2010 Sectionals/Regionals]

par — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:32:04 GMT

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=411522026563&oid=8670385438

http://vimeo.com/13351852

Turn up the music. The first audio track came out lower than I intended. All music used by permission of the artists.
All footage filmed by Crossfit Journal (http://journal.crossfit.com/) or Tim Chan (http://vimeo.com/user1215846) or Adam Stevenson (http://vimeo.com/user701757). Professional photography by Alicia Anthony (http://www.aliciaphotos.com/).

Forum: CrossFit SoCal Community

@ Steve Sarian re: Blood, Blisters, Sexism and Pull-ups.

par — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:35:09 GMT

http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?drafts&id=624896563#!/note.php?note_id=389284961511

CROSSFIT JOURNAL Article Submission

Title: Blood, Blisters, Sexism and Pull-ups.

Excerpt:
There's no need to rip your hands up when doing PU's or KB swings in everyday training, unless you really want to. Do pull-ups hanging (mostly) from your fingers and take the hit to your ego while your forearms/fingers get strong enough to support you.

Do No Harm
- First rule of medicine.

I don't mind calluses. No-one particularly cares what my hands look like. I personally don't care who does more pull-ups faster than I in a generic WOD at CrossFit SoCal as long as I'm having fun and getting a good workout consistent with my goals. I do however care if I'm doing a pull-up test for work or a competition - and I really mind if my hands are bleeding or there's pieces of them missing. Blood makes a mess that eventually has to be cleaned up - and call me a sissy, but pain hurts.

Thirteen years of doing pull-ups, rock-climbing and being tested on max consecutive pull-ups for navy special programs taught me how to avoid busting up my hands with a minimum of effort and no fancy gear, gloves or tape. I don't want to go off on a rant here, but judging by the number of CrossFit athletes I see with bloody hands and ripped blisters there's plenty of people who can learn from my mistakes, and this might be something worth watching for if you're in a trainer position.

People who don't have a history of upper-body strength training or rock-climbing are at comparatively greater risk for palm injuries when they start getting into CrossFit more seriously, get excited about newfound strength and skills - and their consecutive and cumulative pull-up numbers per day or week increase dramatically. Part of this is due to a sexist society at large that discourages young girls in particular and regular people/cubicle-dwellers in general from climbing trees, rockclimbing or developing upper-body strength. Anorexic-looking teenage role models also contribute to young girls in general not wanting to be strong or be able to do basic fitness exercises. Some of those same people later discover CrossFit and the fun of being able to do pull-ups, go hog wild on the WODs and rip their hands to pieces.

TRAINING

For training purposes when doing pull-ups, keep your metacarpals in line with your proximal phalanges, i.e. your hand bones and the first bones in your fingers. This sucks because it's harder to do pullups with your center of gravity an inch lower and it takes more finger/forearm strength. The first week or two or five you might have to go back to using a band sometimes. Or do jumping pullups on a box instead, or use an easier band. I understand this might hurt your pride, your ego and your self-esteem like it did mine, but as long as I get the workout I need I see no need to care much if I beat my friends in an every-day training environment. At least compared to how much I care when my job or future career in the military is on the line. Plus I don't have to worry about caring for ripped and bleeding hands.

Go rock-climbing a few times and you'll learn a ton (I did) about the ten million ways you can use a hand hold. This Training grip eliminates tons of friction on the top inside of your palm muscles and skin, which is what causes the ubiquitous blisters there. Rockclimbing bonus: Can also teach you how to get yourself and your friends out of a canyon when a thunderstorm rolls in and people start getting scared.

BUSINESS

For competition or tests (i.e., BUSINESS purposes) you rock out with a full grip, surprising all your friends and making your competition cry. This is the grip that the vast majority of people unfortunately use on a regular basis, as it puts your center of gravity as high as possible relative to the bar, gives you maximum grip strength and also regrettably leads to blisters, blood, bomb craters/gunshot wounds in your hands and a usually false sense of bada**-ness.

Don't use this grip unless it really really (REALLY) matters that day how many consecutive pull-ups you do. As in:

* during a competition
* for various military/fire-rescue/polic

e physical tests
* when you're running from the mob/cops/mafia/werewolves/someone's angry husband/your ex-wife and you just need to clear a few high backyard fences quickly.
* I want to impress someone

In those cases, do what you have to do and when the blisters rip, well - ...suck it up, buttercup.

Counter-Arguments

"EASY FOR YOU TO SAY! YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO PULLUPS HANGING FROM YOUR FINGERS YOU CONDESCENDING JACK***."

- But I didn't always. I sucked at it for years, then started climbing and figured it out. Just trying to help.

TRAIN LIKE YOU FIGHT FIGHT LIKE YOU TRAIN! HOO-YAH! OOH-RAH!

- Feel free to always use live ammo in training. Feel free to beat me in the WOD every day. Feel free to always go 100% in training so you're tired and all beat to hell when they bang on the door at 0200 and tell you to get in your wet wetsuit in the middle of winter to get guys out from underneath our own frickin' submarine in ten-foot seas. Feel free go for that one-rep max every day at the gym, especially the week before the Games or before the big job interview/vacation/deployment. While you're doing that I'll be the old guy in the corner with an emphasis on having fun, safety and constant mission readiness.

I HEARD ABOUT THIS ONE GUY WHO DOES THIS THING AND NEVER RIPS HIS HANDS

- I heard the moon is made of cheese.

But for Chest-to-bar Pull-ups I'm not gonna be able to hang from my fingers. - CrossFit SoCal athlete.

- You might not be able to, or do as many as you're used to - right NOW, but you can work up to it. Once you've done that you no longer have to worry about bleeding palms or putting on gloves, and have much better grip strength plus the option to make your pull-ups marginally easier on tests or in competitions whenever you feel like it.

Pull-ups

PU's are by far the biggest culprit when it comes to ripping people's hands in a CrossFit environment. Your ego is guaranteed to take a bit of a hit while learning how to save your palms from blisters and blood, and your workout partners may make fun of you for not being able to do as many as you usually do or having to use a band or do jumping pull-ups from a box while your grip and forearm strength gradually adapts to the increased workload in your regular everyday WODs.

Kettle-Bell Swings

KB Swings can occasionally cause blister issues and palm injuries. Same principles as for the PU grip apply, with the added concern that you absolutely cannot allow that load to slip away from you in mid-swing (or overhead!) if there's people or kids running around. You want the fingers to do the maximum of the gripping, with the top 'meaty' part of your palm doing as little rolling/rubbing/moving as possible. This involves your fingers making contact with the handle first, then sliding down toward the KB so that your palm is just barely touching the handle and the meaty part is rolled against your palm instead of against your fingers.

Olympic lifts + Deadlifts

These have their own grip requirements beyond the scope of this article (see http://journal.crossfit.com/2006/12/learning-the-olympic-lifts-the.tpl or the book ?tarting Strengthby Mark Rippetoe, or any of his or Coach Burgener's seminars/certifications), and few of us have the kind of grip strength to allow us to deadlift normal WOD loads with our fingers only. You can still pay attention to how that top meaty part in your palm is contributing to your overall grip, though. As long as it's not being doubled over by the force of the bar pressing into your palm and then sliding toward the fingers your palm should be allright even doing fast, medium-heavy lifts for time.

Gripping the bar correctly, well down into the hook of the fingers, will reduce the amount of callus development. Gripping the bar too high in the hand will allow the bar to slide down into the fingers, folding the palm skin as it goes. This folding along the area between the distal palmar crease and the palmar digital crease causes the majority of the callus formation. If they become excessively thick, calluses can tear off during heavy lifts and ruin the rest of your day.
- Rippetoe and Kilgore, ?tarting Strength2nd ed., p 110.

Caveat: WODs that include ?eadlifts for time or similar moves at a significant percentage of your maximum load capacity will jar your grip and can then easily rip blisters. You should pay attention to all things equally, but this is one of those things you should pay attention to more equally than others if you have pre-existing blisters/calluses and don't feel like dealing with bleeding hands that day.

Weighted Pull-ups

Weighted pull-ups are generally the bane of blistered hands, witness Amy H. of CrossFit Salem who did Murph with a 40# weight vest at a globo-gym. ...The globo-gym people freaked out when they saw the blood.

'Dyno' pull-ups count as stupid crossfit tricks and are PU's where the athlete lets go completely of the bar and either reconnects with the same or another bar, either above or below, with the same or a new grip style (Swedish Special - do a normal palms-forward PU, let go completely at top and catch in a reverse 'chin-up' grip before you hit the ground or anything else, then repeat and switch - NOT recommended for people with elbow/shoulder/wrist-issues or who aren't already VERY bored with regular PU's). For these types of exercises, muscle-ups and weighted pull-ups you're generally S.O.L. as far as saving your palms go. Even thinking about doing something like this should tell you to watch out and be careful, no matter how B.A. everyone in the gym thinks you are. Caveat athlete.

Gloves, leather grips etc.

http://www.Newgrip.com, http://www.american-gymnast.com and http://www.ragefitness.com sell some excellent solutions for those days when you want to really max out on PU's ...and save your palms at the same time. Your gym-mates might giggle a bit, call you Sally and tell you to put the handbag down, but if you're ripping out a set of 20 weight-vested PU's on the morning of your wedding then you're ok in my book. For more details on purpose-made gear, how to tape your hands if needed and also on how to deal with hand wounds once you do have them, see gymnastics and CrossFit coach Phil Savage's excellent CFJ 68 article from 2008, http://journal.crossfit.com/2008/04/hand-rips-causes-treatments-an.tpl

Other grip techniques

There exists a middle ground between the Training and Business grips, with the distal thumb phalange supporting your fingers on top of bar, which might require you to slightly cup your hand so that your middle knuckle is actually raised off the bar.

This grip WILL give you calluses and/or blisters if you use it as your normal training grip, is a bit harder to achieve, gives you a more secure grip that puts your center of gravity almost as high as the Business grip - while still somewhat lowering the risk of injury to your palms. Experimentation in a safe environment is highly recommended, just make sure that the top, meaty part of your palm isn't rolled against your fingers but pushed down towards your palm as much as possible. Don't experiment on the side of a cliff unless you're roped up, please. Also don't do PU's hanging off the outside of a merchant marine vessel underway in the Persian Gulf (long story).

Calluses

Calluses aren't necessarily a bad thing. You can file them down with a small file or a pumice stone, which may very well be a good idea if you happen to have significant calluses developed and have a big competition or test coming up where you know you'll be placing an unusual and disproportionate demand on your palms. Less blood stains on your clothes and other people's equipment is generally a good thing - and leads to people NOT thinking that you're a crazy cult member/endorphin addict.

So where's the Sexism part? - That was the part about a sexist society at large not encouraging young girls growing up to do anything that develops upper-body strength, or climbing trees, rocks or buildings. Not to mention the idiotic prevailing stick-thin-and-weak female beauty ideal/role model. Or you could accuse me of sexism when I say the vast majority of ripped hands I see in CrossFit gyms belong to otherwise smart women who just got carried away when they got good at pull-ups and discovered it's fun and cool to be strong. Plus it let me put the word Sex in the title to grab your attention.

Murph happens.

Accidents happen - and can become funny Facebook profile pictures that your normal friends are guaranteed to Oooh and Aaah over. But there's no real need to rip your hands apart in a training environment. Of course, that's just my opinion - I could be wrong.

Don't mess yourself up worse than you were before you started.
- First rule of working out with Pr

Pr Larsson is a Level 1 CF Trainer and recovering Ironman triathlete who has been Ironman-free for almost two years with the loving support of his friends. He's afraid of deep dark water and became a Navy Deepsea Diver/2,000-ft Atmospheric Dive Suit pilot. He's also afraid of heights so naturally became a rockclimber. He's currently addicted to cookies and drives past five other CrossFit gyms every day to get to CrossFit SoCal.

REFERENCES:

http://journal.crossfit.com/2008/04/hand-rips-causes-treatments-an.tpl

http://startingstrength.com/

http://journal.crossfit.com/2006/12/learning-the-olympic-lifts-the.tpl

Forum: Health and Fitness

Kellie's WOD Log

Calkel14 — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:23:39 GMT

7/7: Deadlift - 115 lbs., Squats 3x50, DB Thrusters 21-15-9 @ 25 lbs., Rope mod: lying to stand-up 5-3-1 (1 w/feet)
Time: ?

7/9: Back Squat - 65 lbs., GHD: 12-6, Pull-up w/ band 10-4
Time: ?

Forum: WOD LOGS

Why your shoes should fit (warning kinda icky gross toe pic)

Steph — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 07:00:25 GMT

I ran a fun race back in April, the Warrior Dash, and yes it was fun... well kinda...

I had bought a pair of shoes before the race that were a bit small but I wasn't worried about it because they'd be donated at the end of the short race for charity. My feet and really my toes hurt pretty bad by the end of the short race.

The result: fun at the race, donated shoes, and I'll now be losing my toenail and taking 12 months to heal or so they told me. I'm lucky according to the Dr. since they didn't have to drill into the nail. It hurt right after the race and now again as it grows off :/

Lesson: ALWAYS WEAR SHOES THAT FIT
Benefit: I get to wear flip flops at work until then. Of course I'm covering up the toe

Here's my toe

Forum: Health and Fitness

6 Week Weight Loss Challenge

Bahador — Thur, 06 May 2010 17:26:14 GMT

I saw this up on the CrossFit Coronado site and I think it sounds pretty cool. What would it take to do this at SoCal?

http://crossfitcoronado.typepad.com/snatch/2010/05/6-week-weight-loss-challange.html

6 Week Weight Loss Challenge

In preparation for summer, we will be holding a competition for the greatest % of fat loss over the next 6 weeks. We will divide into teams and each team will have a trainer as the team leader and mentor. There will be prizes for both the individual with the greatest loss as well as the team with the greatest overall loss. If you are interested in participating please sign up at the gym. We will select teams on Wednesday and post the teams and team leaders on Thursday. Summer is right around the corner, now is the time to ramp up your commitment.

Forum: CrossFit SoCal Community

Paleo Cooking Class?

par — Sun, 02 May 2010 21:38:32 GMT

15+ years of pizza, beer, ice cream, sweets, fruit, yoghurt, bacardi, pasta, bread, Red Bull and "eh, it'll burn off if I workout 2-3 times per day".

Maybe I should learn something.

Forum: Nutrition and Fuel

Spicy Peppers = Fat Loss?

Jesco — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:33:26 GMT

An article in the LA Times links to a study of how capsaicin, the chemical in peppers that makes them spicy can raise you internal body temperature and cause you to burn fat. Interesting.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/04/capsaicin-hot-peppers-weight-loss.html

Forum: Nutrition and Fuel

Linda is next

markbeaumont — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:23:46 GMT

http://vimeo.com/11247395

This is a quick video of me on my way to a sub 90 La Jolla Half. 1:29:43 to be exact and 55th place overall. I live on 25th and my fiancee, friends, and neighbors were out cheering me on.

I also got some cheers from other SoCal'rs on the course. I was rocking the new SoCal shorts that Tom hooked me up with so that was easy to spot.

I achieved the first part of my goal. The next part is to do Linda again and see if I can get a PR. Sub 25 min would be awesome. 29.45 is what I got the first time.

Forum: CrossFit SoCal Community

Janice's WOD

dixonswoman — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:31:20 GMT

Lift: OHS 5-5-5
WOD: 2rounds, 400meter run/15OHS (95/65lbs)/15pullups

Lift: 65lbs
WOD: 15:30 (55lbs/red-green band)

Took 2wks off to be a nurse for family. It feels so good to be back in the gym and am more encouraged with every WOD. I'm going to do the 0830 classes if my little one (4month old) does well. Today WENT GREAT!

Forum: WOD LOGS

Recovery Beer

Jesco — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 23:57:08 GMT

A new study indicates beer may be a better post workout recovery drink than water alone. I've been trying to convince myself of this for years!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-491236/A-pint-beer-better-workout-water-say-scientists.html

Forum: Nutrition and Fuel

Pictures from the SDAZ Sectionals

Alicia — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 05:46:44 GMT

Here's a link to my pics so far. Right now I only have WOD 1 finished. They're broken up by heat, so hopefully it'll be easy to find whoever you're looking for And I did favor CFSC athletes ... my apologies to anyone I didn't get pictures of (you might be in one of the other workouts).

More coming soon!

http://www.aliciaphotos.com/Miscellaneous-Pictures/2010SDAZCFSectionals

Forum: CrossFit SoCal Community

Inspiration

Daxos — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:37:07 GMT

I want to thank the SoCal family for inviting my wife and me to the Sectionals. Mostly, thanks for the opportunity to help and actually be a part of what was happening. I NEVER would have thought, on Friday night, that this event would have worked. The planning, coordination, team spirit, phenomenal effort, and "Never quit" spirit made this a huge success. I am home in Tucson now (beleive it or not, I hurt just from the little stuff I did to help!!), but you all have inspired me to get off my butt and make something of myself. Congrats to all you SoCal competitors !!! I'll be horse for a few days from all the yelling !!!! You all are truly inspirations to me. TODAY is the day it starts. When I see I see you all in May, I won't have to suck my belly in quite so hard !!!! DAXOS IS BACK.

Forum: CrossFit SoCal Community

Thanks CrossfitSocal!!!

markbeaumont — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 11:18:33 GMT

Ok- I didn't make it in this week to do the WOD's because I went to Mammoth on Monday early morning. It was a last minute decision on Sunday afternoon to chase some fresh pow.

I ran 12 miles on Sunday with the fast Cardiff group. We got to Mammoth about 11:30 on Monday with 11in. of fresh and it was blue skies,no wind and empty! Skied hard for a half day and headed to happy hour.

The next morning I felt fine... not the usual got run over by a semi feeling. We rallied early and My own personal WOd was to ski Avalanche Chut #1 non stop- fast and clean. I always have to stop because the legs are burning, sucking air, etc...

This time I smoked it top to bottom.

I feel 7 months of crossfitting including the oly lifts allowed me to ski my ass off for 3 days without the usual total body soreness. The strength in my core and legs helped tremendously.

Thanks cfsocal for getting me into great 'real world' shape.

I am back on the wods next week. La jolla Half is in 8 weeks-- sub 1:30 is the goal.

Forum: CrossFit SoCal Community

For Sale - Weight Bag, Workout Bench

Alicia — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:44:22 GMT

Hi everybody -

We're cleaning out the garage and selling some things we don't use/need anymore. I'll probably put these up on craigslist this weekend, but I thought I'd see if anybody here wants any of these first.

I can bring them to CFSC if anyone's interested. You can e-mail me at aliciaanthony@cox.net.

Thanks!

-Alicia

Forum: CrossFit SoCal Community

Shoes change how we run . . .

Ayo — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:38:44 GMT

The link below is from the BBC News article (based on a findings presented in the journal Nature) on how shoes may have changed how we run. I think my favorite quote from the article was from David Lieberman of Harvard University: Striking the ground with your heel is like someone hitting your heel with a hammer with up to three times your body weight . .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8483401.stm

Forum: Health and Fitness