Marcus Filly

So I was wondering if you could share with the group your philosophy when it comes to mobility?  I know I could spend more time working on my mobility and flexibility and could definitely used some guidance.  A few weeks back I was taking a class from Yago and we were doing a lot of mobility work.  He mentioned there was a website that had daily mobility WODs, and suggested everyone check it out and do some mobility work on our days off.  Well, I totally forgot the guys name and couldn’t find it on google (or atleast I didn’t find what I thought I was looking for ? )  I could easily ask him, but I wanted to see what your take on this was.  Do you have certain mobility exercises that you could recommend to everyone?  or Do you have general suggestions for before and after workout stretching, certain things we should be doing daily, etc? – BY

This is a fantastic topic for the 5th week of our journey towards better health. The topic for this week is going to be tissue health. That’s right, I didn’t say mobility, but rather the health of your tissues. We are all getting into the gym a few times a week and moving our bodies well. But what steps are you taking to ensure that you optimize the healing process of your bodies? Are there things you can do on your own time to maximize the workouts you have in the gym? The answer is a simple YES. In particular we will talk in this post about mobility and what it means to mobilize your bodies.

First I will direct you all to a website that I have found extremely useful in framing my thinking about movement and tissue health. Kelly Starrett of San Francisco CrossFit has been leading the charge on mobility for years now. Trained as a Physical Therapist (PT) and one of the first 50 CrossFit gym owners ever, Kelly has blended traditional PT knowledge with CrossFit to improve athletes performance more than anyone else in the community. Whether your goal is to get a faster time on a workout, improve your technique and position in functional movements, or reduce pain you have in your body, Kelly helps us all get there. Visit his Mobility Project at http://mobilitywod.blogspot.com/

The reason Kelly can accomplish so much through his daily mobility workouts is because all the above mentioned goals come back to one foundational principle. That principle is that our bodies were designed to move in a particular way. We can expand that principle and apply it to functional movements (the exercises we do in CrossFit). The body is designed to perform functional movements in a particular way. Hence the notion that there is correct technique and incorrect technique. If you cannot perform functional movements correctly then there is something standing in the way of you getting a better time on your workout, improving your technique, or experiencing less pain in your daily life. An example could be that you have a very hard time getting into the ideal position at the bottom of your deadlift. The structures that stand in your way may be any one of the many muscles, tendons, ligaments, or fascial planes on the back of your body. As a result you have to slow down on your deadlift workouts, you cannot lift as much weight as the person next to you, or even worse you experience general back discomfort or pain on most days of your life. By doing the necessary mobility drills you can improve your deadlift positioning, create some slack on the back of your body to allow for better technique, and in the process possibly alleviate your back pain once and for all.

So what does a session of mobility look like? Well it often times involves some uncomfortable stuff. You are going to have to put your body into the positions that are challenging and then spend a minimum of 2 minutes there to actually improve the quality of the tissues that are impeding good positioning. I love Kelly’s daily blog because it constantly moves around the body and shows you different position that are often times restricted in CrossFit movements. The guiding principle is always the movement. This is different than focusing on body parts. Kelly will not tell you to stretch your piriformis (small muscle under your butt cheek), but rather he will put you in a position that mobilizes the entire back of your hip and it will be a position that has direct relevance to CrossFit.

There is not one or two single mobility drills that I think are best for everyone. The reason behind this is that we all have different lives, different movement patterns, and have unique bodies. At this stage of our lives we have all acquired different limitations. This could be due to injuries we have sustained over the years, the demands of our job (sitting all day), or some of our long time physical activities (runner for years). Because we are all unique we each have our own individual mobility needs. Experimenting with several of Kelly Starrett’s mobility WOD’s will help you uncover very quickly some of the areas of your body that are in the worst shape of all. So you get to be an investigator for a couple days. Happy hunting.

Start way back at week number 1 of the mobility WOD project. Go to the first week of posts on Kelly’s website. Once you find 1 or 2 of the mobility drills that really seem to target your problems sites (you know this when you find a couple that really HURT), my advice is to start performing these daily for the next week. Choose the ones that are particularly challenging for you and cause you the most discomfort. Check in after a week and if you don’t feel or see a change then bag it or come and ask me if you are doing it right. But with a little dedication you can see phenomenal improvements.

Post your questions to comments. Remember that if a mobility WOD requires a piece of equipment like a band or lacrosse ball, we have them in the gym to use while you are there or to purchase and take home with you.

Happy Mobilizing!

This post is aimed at sharing different ideas about how you prepare your veggies for you breakfast/lunch/dinner. Remember, every meal of the day is just another chance to feed your body great wholesome paleo foods. Don’t make the mistake thinking there are breakfast foods vs. dinner foods. That is just something we have been made to believe through the thousands of commercials and print adds we have seen that say we should eat ______ at ________. For example, I’ll be dining on some leftover cauliflower mash for breakfast this morning. Three fried scrambled eggs over a bed of cauliflower mash and several slices of avocado.

Please post your recipes to comments. Here are a couple recipes that have been brought to you by your fellow 8-weekers. Week 3 starts tomorrow (or if you consider Sunday day 1 of the new week it starts today). Lets have an amazing week and see who can be the most creative with their veggie recipes.

Butternut Squash Soup (Bridget Yates)

Ooohhhh cravings… We have all had them and not a single person is exempt from the powers that are cravings. They come and go. To some they are frequent and to others they are infrequent. Hopefully I can offer you a different perspective on these things we call cravings.

Rather than give you a list of foods you can eat when you have cravings I would like to take this opportunity to fill you in on what cravings mean. Perhaps an understanding of what is going on with you brain and body will help us avoid cravings and furthermore not fear them. Having good alternatives to a bag of chips or candy is essential because that craving may be just around the corner and you want to have options that are healthy. For that I encourage you all to post to comments what you do when you have a craving that helps keep you focused and on track.

The transition from a diet that is high in sugar (modern western diet) to a diet that filled with paleolithic carbohydrates will likely carry with it some episodes of sugar cravings. Why is this? Well, in case you haven’t already figured this out, sugar is addictive. Seriously, sugar comes complete with withdrawl symptoms and effects on our serotonin levels. Changing your diet away from these foods will yield cravings because you body is used to and addicted to a particular feeling from the sugar.

The good news is that over time our brain will reset, our taste preferences do come back to normal. But on that note, the more frequently you feed your body those sweet things, the harder it is and the more drawn out the process of resetting your brain becomes. This is an important time to bring up artificial sweeteners and natural sweeteners too. I know they are Zero Calorie, but the fact is that they keep us addicted to sweet. They keep our brain from resetting to the point where it enjoys and craves healthy options. This doesn’t even touch the fact that evidence is out in the research world that artificial sweeteners, while calorie free, have an impact on blood hormone levels such as insulin. The bottom line is real or artificial, sweet things keep us addicted to sweet and will make the transition to healthy real food long and challenging.

Cravings can also serve as an indicator that you are not feeding yourself in the right way. I’ll expand the definition of feeding yourself beyond food. Here I’m talking about Sleep, Stress, Exercise, Hydration, and Nutrition. Any one of these things can be off and you can start to crave things. So before you go blaming your diet for your sugar cravings, take a close look at how much you slept last night. Sleep and hydration are the two primary pieces that lead to my cravings. When I’m sleep deprived I crave fruit in quantities I know my body doesn’t need or I crave extra fat that goes beyond what my body needs. For you it may be that you had a very stressful day and now the chocolate bar is looking very appealing. Use cravings as a valuable tool for you to understand your body, understand what it needs daily, and help to resolve what you are not feeding it correctly.

If you are giving your body what it needs it will not crave things. With that said there is a lag period after having a radical change to your lifestyle. When you are changing your exercise, nutrition, sleep, or stress management program there is a lag period between what you used to do and the point when your body is in harmony with the stuff you are feeding it. Keep this in mind when you wade through the first couple weeks of a dramatic shift to your diet or fitness. This will normalize over time, give it a chance.

For some more info and another perspective please read what Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple has written on this popular topic. Follow the link below.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/sugar-cravings/

MF – My question is about post-workout nutrition. Anything you recommend we eat after a workout? Anything we should avoid? Also, do you eat the same “recovery” food after a heavy lifting workout as you do after a good metcon? I have no where to go but up. My current post workout nutrition is whatever coffee is left in the to
-go in the car and maybe a few nuts.

What you eat post workout matters a ton. It could mean be the difference between having lots of soreness or moderate soreness. It could influence your adaptation to that workout. Post workout nutrition has been very well studied and is absolutely important. Pre workout nutrition is less well understood and in my opinion depends greatly on the person and the type of workout you are going to do and when.

After a workout I like to get a source of protein and carbohydrate in my body pretty quickly. Since I stick to paleo foods I will grab some apples and chicken, or salmon and berries. I’ve never had success myself but some people who tolerate their carbs well can have sweet potatos and protein after a workout and feel great. Bottom line is that protein after a workout is important for delivery of amino acids to the tissues that just worked hard. The carbs are important for two reasons. One they will help you replenish any glycogen stores (storage form of carbohydrate in the muscle) that you may have depleted in the workout. The other thing carbs do is create a hormonal environment in the body that promotes the delivery of nutrients to the worked muscles. Double BONUS!

Other post workout options (eggs, egg whites, banana, protein shake with some fruit).

Let me be clear that when I say “post workout”, I’m talking about the window of time 0-20 minutes after you finish exercise. That is a crucial time window. You don’t need much to take advantage of this metabolically active time. 3oz of Salmon and 1/2 cup of applesauce does the trick. Fat doesn’t really serve a purpose in this recovery window. But your next meal after this which could be anywhere from 1-3 hours later should be balanced and have a good mix of protein, fat, and carbohydrate.

During this post workout window the body is able to handle carbohydrates better than any other time during the day. For this reason I try to save most of my fruit for this window and stick with veggies the rest of the day.

When it comes to tinkering with this post workout stuff you have to ask yourself these questions. How was my recovery from that workout? Did my post workout meal change my appetite for the rest of the day in a positive or negative way? Did I choose foods or shake options that were palatable right after working out? Is this a sustainable practice.

As far as getting into the detail of changing my post workout prescription based upon the type of workout, I think I’ll stay clear of that one. It can get pretty complex and to be honest I’m not sure if I’ve ever noticed a very significant different from changing my ratios of protein and carbs post workout. There are coaches out their that will prescribe different percentages protein and carb based upon the type of training you did that day (metcon, endurance, strength). But with out varied approach you just need to find something that works.

Post your post-WOD meal, how long you waited after your workout, and comments.

Marcus

“Of those four (Sleep/Stress/Nutrition/Movement), I can tell you that today I am missing the movement piece.  It wasn’t my day off but I didn’t go today.  Just not feeling 100%.  Curious if you could give us a quick 1-2 lines about working out when you are sick?  Should you do it?”

Training when sick? Should you do it or should you lay off? The answer is yes or no. I’ll give some of the pro’s and con’s for training while sick and then allow you to make your own decisions.

Pro #1 – Training will help you get over your illness quicker. Depending on the severity of your illness, a training session that is appropriately scaled in intensity can help to send blood and vital nutrients around the body. This can aid in your recovery process by helping to rid the body of toxins.

Pro #2 – Psychologically, illness most often leaves people feeling like a victim and powerless to do anything. We all know how empowering exercise can be. Getting into the gym to move can help shift the thought cycle you get into when you are sick. Too often I see people letting the illness take over their minds. Their physical symptoms set off a chain reaction that takes over the brain. Change that, step outside, or into the gym, and do some functional movement. Scale the intensity if you need to but prove to yourself that you are not a victim.

Pro #3 – At TJ’s you are going to get a healthy dose of community at the same time as you get a healthy dose of fitness. Being sick often equates to more time alone in isolation. There is a time and place for quiet when you are trying to recover from illness. However, being around other people can boost the spirits and aid in recovery.

Pro #4 – An appropriate dose of exercise will help to keep your sleep cycle normal in the healing process. Getting more sleep as a result of being tired from your workout will pay off huge in getting over your illness.

Con – If you are feeling very sick and you train TOO intensely, you may stress the body out TOO much. Was that a vague enough sentence for you all? What I mean here is that high intensity exercise is a stressful event, just like a bacterial or viral infection is a stressful event in the body. If you pile too much stress on top of each other you could set your body back even further. I’ve seen it happen. People have a really hard workout, one of the hardest ever, and they end up sick the next day. Their body was able to handle fighting off a potential infection right up until they slammed themselves with too much intensity. Be careful to moderate your intensity. Use the above the neck/below the neck rule. If you have head cold, sniffles, runny nose, symptoms like that then I say you are good to train. If it gets systemic and you are running a fever then you might want to wait until that calms down before easing back in to training.

Hope these help Meg – add your own thoughts to comments.

MF