Chucks

One of the most common questions asked during our Fundamentals series is “What’s up with everyone wearing Chuck Taylor All-Stars?” or “Do shoes matter?” So, I decided to take a few moments to explain, “why” shoes matter and “why Chucks” for CrossFitting.

CrossFitters choose their shoes for numerous reasons such as comfort, style, cost, and performance. Comfort is a no-brainer. No one wants to magnify the pain of a high intensity “Fran” by lacing on a pair of uncomfortable shoes of any size, shape, or style.

Style on the other hand is like an opinion, everyone has one and it differs from one person to the next. Although style may not be the most important factor when selecting a shoe for CrossFitting, you’d be fooling yourself if you said style had zero influence in the decision tree. If a particular brand or type of shoe just doesn’t mesh with your personal style, then you are not likely to run out to grab a pair just because you saw someone at CrossFit Impulse sporting them.

We all want the best product at the lowest cost. That doesn’t change when shopping for a pair of kicks to wear during your next WOD. Snoop Dogg may wear $1500 Gators while driving his $65,000 Snoop Deville, but he’s not going to scuff them on a plyo-box during Filthy Fifty. Finding a shoe that fits your budget can be as important as comfort and style.

CrossFitters are constantly seeking ways to shave seconds off their metcon times or set a PR on Olympic lifts. As you may have anticipated, shoes can be a significant performance variable when CrossFitting. Some features that affect performance are sole thickness, sole density, heel thickness or angle, and flexibility of the shoe. Let’s examine a 1RM (one rep max) deadlift attempt wearing a pair of Asics GT-2150s running shoes designed with a thick, cushy sole to absorb those infamous heel strikes. To perform a proper deadlift, we must pull the loaded barbell from the ground, maintaining core stabilization, by driving our heels against the floor. When wearing a traditional running shoe like the GT-2150s, that thick, shock absorbing sole will do exactly what it’s designed to do: absorb force. What do I mean? The cushiony sole has to be compressed before any force is applied to the barbell. Imagine deadlifting while standing on a mattress. Sound ridiculous? It is! So why do it by wearing high heeled running shoes?

Additionally, the thick heel automatically puts you at a disadvantage for driving through the heels. The heel is usually much thicker and higher than the forefoot of the shoe, shifting you unnaturally to your toes. We all know the shame of being on our toes while performing lifts. Double-unders, running, and box jumps are a few incidents when being on your toes (or forefoot) is desired and accepted. However, the majority of the time we want to drive through our heels to transfer the most force to the ground. I haven’t even mentioned the lateral or side-to-side instability that is absorbed by the comfy cushioned sole shoes, but it’s time to move on. Whether you are deadlifting, cleaning, or squatting you want a thin, flat, hard soled, minimalist shoe to transfer the maximum amount of force to the ground through the heels. This means moving heavy loads more efficiently.

Now is a good time to talk about why I, and many other CrossFitters, prefer Chuck Taylor All-Stars. To no surprise, Chucks have a thin, flat, hard sole. During a lift, minimum sole compression takes place before force is transferred to the ground to move the load. A completely flat sole allows you to start, and remain, on your heels throughout the movement. This makes Chucks ideal for any type of lift. I initially bought my first pair of Chucks for lifting but I quickly found that they are very versatile. Unlike specialty shoes, I can wear my Chucks during any and all workouts. I can lift, run, wall-ball, row, tire flip, box jump–you name it. I even bought a pair to wear outside of the gym. The only workouts when I don’t prefer my Chucks are long distance runs of five kilometers (5K) or more. If done with proper POSE form, running is not bad in Chucks. I have run up to a 5K in mine with no issues, but sometimes I would like to have a little more sole, like a Nike Free.

What about the comfort, style, and cost of Chucks? They are not the lightest shoe available, but I find Chucks to be comfortable, offering little to no restrictions. Numerous styles and colors are available for as little as $45. You can build your own custom Chucks on the Converse website, including printing personalized text on the shoe for approximately $60. Jeff Barnett, CrossFit Impulse co-owner and trainer, took advantage of the customization with his bright orange “Snatchtastic” high-top All-stars. It took a lot of ingenuity to get the word “snatch” past Converse’s word filter, but he pulled it off.

Are Chucks the only shoe to achieve the versatility CrossFitters need? Of course not. They are just my choice. Many other options are available that offer a flat, minimalist sole shoe for CrossFitting.

Vibram FiveFingers are popular among many CrossFitters. FiveFingers are probably the most minimalist shoe on the market. They are about as close to barefoot as you can get, which makes them truly functional. We were not meant to have miniature mattresses on our feet, such as the GT-2150s mentioned earlier. FiveFingers are extremely light and flexible with a thin, dense rubber sole. I have never worn a pair for any substantial length of time, but I know many CrossFitters that swear by them. They say “it’s like wearing an extra thick sock that fits between your toes”. The “fits between your toes” is what I don’t like. I have to agree with Chuck Carswell, a CrossFit HQ trainer, “Thongs between more than two toes sketches me out a little.” FiveFingers are also not the most visually appealing footwear either. Not that we are concerned with appearance, right? Although they are a minimalist shoe, they are not sold at a minimalist price. A pair will set you back $80-$100. I am considering giving FiveFingers another chance because I do like their raw functionality. Who knows, maybe I can adapt to the “thongs between more than one toe.”

The Nike Free is another shoe that seems to get good reviews from the CrossFit community. It “attempts to simulate barefoot running while wearing a shoe,” making it another good option for those looking for a minimalist shoe for CrossFitting. Nike grades the shoe on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 offering the most support and 0 being closest to barefoot. For example, the Nike Free 5.0 would be like running 50 % barefoot. I have not worn a pair of Nike Free(s) other than trying them on in the store. It seems they are extremely light and flexible, offering little support, but they do have a soft sole. This is another shoe on my list to try, specifically for running. A pair of Frees will cost you $90-$100.

I have directed much attention to minimalist shoes. However, some CrossFitters prefer to go the ultra-minimalist route and workout barefoot. Barefoot is by far the most primitive and functional way to go. There is nothing between your foot and the ground, so no force is lost to compressing a shoe sole. This is especially beneficial and most common when executing a 1RM power lift such as deadlift or back squat. However, faster movements like snatches and cleans may roll your pinky toe in ways nature didn’t intend, so perform shoeless Olympic lifts at your own risk. I have not seen many people go barefoot when things like running or box jumps are involved. Barefoot running or running in minimalist shoes is a hot topic in the fitness and running communities. Research has shown that many running related injuries are actually caused by our advances in the technology of running shoes. They allow us to run improperly, causing injury over time. Barefoot is an option at CrossFit Impulse, and it doesn’t cost anything.

Hosts of other options abound on the market. The shoes I have mentioned are simply my picks. Mix it up and find what works best for you. You may find that you like Chucks for general metcons, running shoes for workouts that involve running, and weight lifting shoes for strength days. I am certainly not suggesting you wear any particular brand, make or style of shoe. The intent is to give you my opinion for you to use in finding what shoes work best for you as an individual. CrossFit is about improving your fitness. Find the shoe or shoes that will help you meet your fitness goals. If you want to wear $1500 Gators during Fight Gone Bad, by all means, go for it!

• Classes are Friday @ 4:00 PM, Saturday at 10:30 AM, and Sunday at 1:30 PM.
• Slots are limited. Submitting the application, waiver, and payment secures your spot.
• Arrive on time. We start class on time to respect everyone’s schedule. Furthermore, we cover information in the first few minutes of class that you will need for the rest of the weekend. If you arrive late then we will not be able to integrate you into class and we will have to reschedule you for the next class in 2-4 weeks. Traffic is usually heavy on Friday afternoons. Plan accordingly and arrive early to discuss your fitness goals with us!
• Contact us at crossfitimpulse@gmail.com or 256.361.9348 if you have any questions.

When: Sunday July 25^th at 3:00PM

Where: CrossFit Impulse. 115 B Castle Dr, Madison, AL 35758

Workout: 8 minute AMRAP (As Many Rounds as Possible) of 5 pullups (elastic band assistance available for all ability levels) 10 pushups (scaled as needed) and 15 situps. This workout will take the place of the main site workout of the day.

Why: Many of you all have asked if you could bring a friend or family member to workout. This is your chance to bring friends and family to not only see what you do, but participate as well. Explaining CrossFit to family and friends is often difficult. We want to open our doors to them and allow you the opportunity to show them what you guys do every day at CFI!

Just for Fun: If you have a friend or family member sign-up for Fundamentals on Friend & Family Day you will receive a free CrossFit Impulse t-shirt. The next fundamentals series starts on July 30^th and ends on August 1^st.

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Conventional wisdom about “muscle tone” doesn’t reflect the reality of achieving it. Here’s the conventional wisdom as I understand it: “If you use light to moderate weight at moderate to high reps then you will tone your muscles. This results in a trim, lean body that’s not too bulky and has good muscle definition.” Please keep in mind that the preceding quote was a load of crap. Bringing myself to type it was exceedingly difficult, so I hope you appreciate it.

Here’s the first half of the truth: Muscles are fixed at all ends by tendons and bone. They do not magically assume different shapes in response to different rep schemes. Sets of 2-3 reps do not produce the shape of a teapot while 10-12 reps produce the shape of a lampshade. Muscles just don’t have that much artistic license. However, muscles do change shape: they grow in response to exercise. That’s the first half of the equation in achieving what most people want when they refer to muscle tone: larger muscles. That doesn’t have to mean “Conan the Barbarian large,” but if you’ll honestly analyze what you’re thinking about when the fallacy of muscle tone comes to mind, you’ll find that growing your muscles larger than their present state is certainly a part of it. The good news is that conventional wisdom on toning has a tiny element of truth to it: High rep schemes with low weight do stimulate muscle growth. However, low rep schemes with heavier weight stimulate it much more. I’m not advocating one rep scheme at the expense of the other. My advice is a balanced program like CrossFit. But if you want larger muscles (part of the elusive muscle tone) then you can’t be hesitant to lift heavy. Conventional wisdom says lifting heavy is not part of “toning.” That’s probably because lifting heavy is tough and requires some motivation and determination.

The second half of the truth: body fat is all that really determines how well your muscles can be seen. Grab a competitive bodybuilder, an elite CrossFitter, and an Abercrombie and Fitch model. They have vastly different exercise routines and physical capabilities, but chances are they’re all ripped. They all have low body fat percentages. While some form of physical exercise will undoubtedly make you leaner, the unfortunate truth is that diet is the dominant factor controlling your body fat. Abs are made in the kitchen—not on an Abmat, a GHD machine, and certainly not on some contraption with cables. Yeah, that kind of sucks, but it’s true.

So how do you achieve the traditional notion of “muscle tone?” Simple: strength training and proper nutrition. I recommend a fitness program like CrossFit that will include a mix of heavy lifting and lighter, high-rep exercises, mostly in functional movements. Maneuvering your body weight in various ways is also going to build great strength in both primary movers and stabilizing muscles, as well as connective tissue. All of that translates to larger muscles. For proper nutrition I recommend some flavor of low-carb eating coupled with high-quality foods that are minimally processed. Using the proportions of the Zone Diet with an emphasis on food quality from the Paleo Diet is an excellent place to start.

The things we learn from blowhards in the gym and Saturday afternoon infomercials are often incorrect. Such is the case with muscle tone. But the idea that most people are visualizing when they think “muscle tone” isn’t elusive at all. However, unlike conventional wisdom would indicate, hard work and dedication are required to achieve it. If you really want muscle tone then toss conventional wisdom aside, put down the cupcakes in the office break room, and pick up a barbell.

In many of our days gone by at the Globo-Gym, gloves were as integral to the experience as bench press on Mondays and the yes/no machine for inner and outer thigh work. We work with barbells and pullup bars in CrossFit, and we want to grip them as best we can, so it makes sense to wear gloves, right? Not exactly.

The problem is two-fold. First, unless you wear gloves throughout your daily life, at some point you will have to rely on the pure, unadulterated gripping power of your bare-skinned hands to perform work. This requirement is best trained in the gym before you are faced with it in the outside world. Many gloves or glove-like systems also transfer some of your weight more directly onto your wrists rather than through the skin of your palm and fingers. While these tools are not without their uses, I recommend developing that capability into your own hands as much as possible. Unfortunately, the only way to develop hard hands from soft hands is to work them to the point of breaking…over and over again. Much like CrossFit and the rest of life, there are no easy results. Sorry.

Building tough hands is difficult and requires pain and sacrifice.

The second problem is that anything between your hands and the object you are gripping reduces your proprioception—your ability to know where the object is in space relative to your body. For a slow movement like back squat this isn’t a big deal. For a fast, coordinated movement like a clean it becomes a much bigger deal. Admittedly, this isn’t going to cause drastic differences in your abilities. However, if you are trying to refine your technique or achieve your absolute 1RM, then you need every advantage on your side…and you definitely don’t want the disadvantage of gloves.

My opinion on using tape is similar, but in practice tape is often used in a slightly better way. Most athletes use tape to cover a portion of their hands that is already torn or will likely be torn by the upcoming workout. Not always a bad idea.

We could also glue your hands to the bar with epoxy and assign a personal workout gnome to stand underneath you and push you over the pullup bar. Would that advance your fitness?

Finally, when should you wear gloves or tape?

Gloves: almost never. Only wear gloves if you would be completely unwilling or incapable of performing the workout otherwise. If your hands are so trashed from a previous WOD that you need full gloves to workout today, then by all means, put on the gloves and let’s keep going. If your hands are not torn then gloves are not warranted—sorry. You can absolutely still wear them if you wish, but I think your long-term fitness would be best served by removing them, and I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t tell you that. Oh, and don’t even think about wearing gloves while climbing a rope. Your grip will just plain suck. If you don’t believe me, try it.

Tape: wear it to protect an existing wound from becoming worse. It’s difficult to keep training and advancing our fitness when our hands are shredded. Use tape to cover specific wounds that would be made worse from your upcoming workout. You want a continuous cycle of adaptation: microinjury followed by repair and supercompensation. Continuously damaging without pausing for repair is counterproductive, so if your mind and muscles are ready to train but your hands are not then use some tape to protect them. However, creating a virtual glove out of tape is no different than wearing gloves, so be judicious.

In conclusion, you want your hands to experience stress when you exercise. The skin on your hand can benefit from adaptation just like your muscular, skeletal, and nervous systems. Your hands can’t experience stress and adaptation if you don’t expose them to harsh conditions. So take off the gloves and tape and start getting your hands dirty.

On Saturday, June 19th, from 8 AM to 12 PM, Jay Schug will conduct a clinic at CrossFit Impulse on restoring mobility through a postural restoration approach. Jay will begin by educating you on the concept of postural restoration and returning the body to a neutral position. He will cover basic anatomy, common problems, and solutions. Additionally, each student will get some 1-on-1 time with Jay. He will evaluate your ranges of motion, deduce problems, and prescribe specific corrective exercises. If you’re interested in applying force over a larger range of motion and remedying chronic soreness and trouble-spots, then this clinic is for you. Check out the video below to get an idea of how Jay can diagnose and correct postural problems.

Jay has been a licensed physical therapist assistant for 12 years, working for the past 8 years at the Spine and Neuro Center for physical therapy. For the past 2 years he has been continuing his education through the Postural Restoration Institute, which he describes as “the missing link in his clinical experiences and practice as a physical therapist assistant.” Jay is also a level 1 certified CrossFit trainer. These qualifications give him a unique perspective to understand the demands we place upon our bodies, predict common problems, and apply corrective techniques.This information from the Postural Restoration Institute can help you understand the postural restoration approach.

The human body is not symmetrical.  The neurological, respiratory, circulatory, muscular and vision systems are not the same on the left side of the body as they are on the right, and vice versa.  They have different responsibilities, function, position and demands on them. When these normal imbalances are not regulated by reciprocal function during walking, breathing or turning, a strong pattern emerges creating structural weaknesses, instabilities, and musculo-skeletal pain syndromes.  Balancing muscle activity around the sacrum (pelvis), the sternum (thorax) and the sphenoid (middle of the head) through a PRI approach best positions multiple systems of the human body for appropriate integrated asymmetrical function.

The cost of the clinic is $50 per student. Clinic is open to anyone and everyone, not just CrossFit Impulse athletes. Age and physical condition are irrelevant. Anyone can benefit from increased mobility. Attendance is limited to the first 15 students to register. Register by clicking the below button and paying via PayPal. If and when the clinic sells out we will remove the “Buy Now” button below, so if the button is still below, then you can still register! We look forward to seeing you there.

Our health and fitness philosophy self-selects and attracts real people. Real people value other real people and can spot fakes a mile away. Real people are flawed and imperfect. They have both weaknesses and strengths. They are not always at the top of their game. They also accomplish great feats on occasion, and when they do they prize most the recognition they receive from other real people. Real people are OK with having their performance measured. They know you cannot hide your performance, and they don’t try. Real people are usually the most humble, because they know exactly where their performance falls, and they’re OK with that. They don’t feel the need to jockey for social position. They’re real, flaws and all, and they’re content being that way.

Because of its unique qualities, CrossFit attracts real people. Once you’ve met real people, the fakes start to make you throw up in your mouth. That’s not to say you have to be a CrossFitter to be real. No, no, no. But CrossFitters are inevitably drawn from society’s pool of real people. Shared suffering in the pursuit of a goal also creates strong social bonds. This happens in many situations of prolonged physical training, and CrossFit is no exception. CrossFitters share suffering each day in their pursuit of excellence during the WOD.  These factors create a culture that values camaraderie and transparency. We know that any experiences we share with our fellow CrossFitters are genuinely real, and this is something to be highly prized. Our world is filled with fakes of every manner, because being fake is easy and supports an ego. Being real is difficult, and necessarily keeps ego in check.

I’m continually stoked about all the real people I get to interact with every day at CrossFit Impulse, and I look forward to more shared suffering.

CrossFit’s definition of fitness is as measurable, observable, and repeatable as any you will find. Eschewing the typical vagaries and silly bullshit of the fitness industry, CrossFit does not seek to hide behind words that have little meaning. Rather, CrossFit rigidly defines and captures the concepts that matter most to the science of improving human performance. That’s what we are interested in: an effective means of creating and sustaining fitness in the human body. No nonsense, no words like infrastructure and synergy that can mean anything, no “muscle confusion,” just science that advances human performance, expressed in scientific terms.

However, most scientific theories can also be expressed in ways that are simple, understandable, and accessible to the non-scientific populace. Einstein’s exposition of relativity by using the analogy of moving trains is but one great example. In this article I intend to present an analogy of CrossFit’s definition of fitness. In no way do I intend to redefine or even supplement CrossFit’s model of fitness, work capacity, and general physical preparedness. Thinking of an existing idea in a non-typical way often forces us to reconsider assumptions. This advances our depth of understanding, provides a forum for debate, and equips us to present the idea to others.

Overview

Think of your body as a physical tank of fuel. The tank is cylindrical, defined by a radius and a height. The fuel inside the tank is adenosine triphosphate (ATP). While the word is long and scary, let’s just call it ATP and think of it as the fuel that powers your muscles. You spend your fuel through physical activity—exercise. You replace the fuel you spend through the three metabolic pathways: phosphagen, glycolytic, and oxidative. This creates a basic system that’s very intuitive: a holding tank of energy with inflows and outflows.

Figure 1. Tank Model Overview

Now, what are the relevant metrics of this system and what do they mean?

Tank Size

First, tank capacity just screams for definition. The volume of a right circular cylinder (V) is simply given by

What’s the practical meaning of radius, height, and the resulting volume of the tank? I propose that the tank’s radius represents general physical preparedness (GPP) and its height the skill specific capability currently in use, which I shall hereafter refer to simply as “skill.” In this context, GPP represents capacity across all ten general physical skills. Skill is an athlete’s capability at any given tested skill. Volume, the resulting product of the two, is overall work capacity in any given task. This will be explored in detail later. But for now, note three important nuances of this model:

• Radius is squared and contributes to overall work capacity far more than height.
• Radius is constant across all skills.
• pi is just a constant that is the same for everyone, so it can be ignored.

ATP Inflow

ATP inflow is provided by the three metabolic pathways: phosphagen, glycolytic, and oxidative. Think of each pathway as a faucet that provides ATP to your tank. The oxidative pathway is the only pathway that creates ATP in the presence of oxygen (aerobically). It is constantly operational, even as you sit at a desk and read this. However, it provides relatively little ATP compared to its siblings. Therefore, the oxidative pathway is illustrated as a faucet providing a constant, but low volume flow of ATP. The glycolytic pathway is next, providing larger bursts of energy, but not at a constant rate like the oxidative pathway. The glycolytic pathway provides a mediocre amount of energy in prolonged bursts lasting from 30 seconds to a few minutes, but it cannot sustain this flow indefinitely and eventually exhausts its volume, forcing a rest before rebuilding enough ATP to begin flowing again. Therefore, the glycolytic pathway is illustrated by a medium volume, medium duration flow. The phosphagen pathway is last, providing very large but short bursts of power. It lasts less than ten seconds before quickly running out of ATP, and must rest before providing more energy. Therefore, the phosphagen pathway is illustrated with a very large volume and very short duration flow.

Figure 2. Metabolic Pathways of ATP Production. Illustration by James Pratt

ATP Outflow

ATP outflow comes in the form of any physical activity. To contract your muscles you must spend ATP. We are interested in the ATP outflow of exercise.

Implications

The analogy of tank volume to work capacity and the definitions of height and radius require some examination. First, is it reasonable that GPP across all ten general physical skills plays an exponential role in determining work capacity while skill specific capacity plays only a linear role? I contend that GPP trumps skill in the type of movement most important to humans and CrossFit alike: functional movement. This is an important caveat, because the analogy does not hold for very specific tasks. Regardless of Tiger Woods’ work capacity, a top CrossFitter is unlikely to best him at the assignment of imparting energy to a golf ball with a golf club—performing work in a very specific way that greatly emphasizes one or two physical skills almost to the point of completely excluding the others in comparison. However, the functional movement of shoveling is a supporting example. In a race to dig a hole, I contend that a well-trained shoveler with little GPP will be easily beaten by a CrossFitter with a high work capacity that has never held a shovel. Therefore, I contend the analogy holds for functional movement: safe, natural, human movement characterized by its ability to move large loads, long distances, quickly.

Figure 3. Tangible Definitions of Tank Size

Next, is it reasonable to have a single measure of GPP, symbolized by the radius of the tank? Yes. Can GPP really be summarized into a single measure? No. Theories are only useful because they aren’t completely accurate. They allow us to understand immensely complex ideas within an understandable framework that we can grasp and work with. Of course GPP can’t be summarized as one variable, constant across all physical systems of any given human at any given time. However, using it in this context is quite instructive, and that’s reason enough to forge ahead.

Application

What does all this mean to advancing human performance? Let’s examine how we can “improve” our system. We can improve our system, i.e. create greater work capacity, via three basic methods

• Enlarge our tank
• Fill our tank faster
• Drain our tank slower

Enlarge Our Tank

We enlarge our tanks through the perpetual cycle of shock and adaptation that Selye described more than 70 years ago as the General Adaptation Syndrome. More simply, we enlarge our tank through exercise and rest—CrossFit programming. We can enlarge our tank used for any given task by either expanding its radius, our GPP, or its height, our skill at that task. Expanding GPP is more difficult and time-consuming than improving skill at a task, but yields a greater return in work capacity. Expanding the height of our tank is less demanding, but increases our work capacity only linearly and only in a single skill. An increase in tank radius affects all skills. Coincidentally, were you to try expanding a real, metal tank, you would find it much easier to connect an extension to the top of the tank to expand its height rather than cutting the tank open to expand its radius. The analogy is only coincidental, but true.

Figure 4. Unbalanced Athlete Favoring GPP

Also note that a tank woefully unbalanced in either direction is quite odd.  Figures 4 and 5 show contrasting examples. Figure 4 is an example of high GPP and low skill, such as an elite CrossFitter with one crippling weakness.

Figure 5 is an example of low GPP and high skill, such as an elite endurance runner with little capacity elsewhere. A real tank like the one depicted in Figure 5 would be quite unstable compared to Figure 4. A significant force applied to the top of the tank could cause it to rupture and crash. While somewhat coincidental, this analogy illustrates that GPP is more important than skill to overall work capacity in functional movement.

Figure 5. Unbalanced Athlete Favoring Skill

Fill Our Tank Faster

The three metabolic pathways continuously fill our tank. How can we get them to fill it faster? ATP production efficiency is a complex topic of biochemistry, but we can take a couple macro steps to aid the process: Paleo/Zone nutrition and training. Providing quality fuel is the most important step we can take to ensure our bodies produce ATP efficiently. Your body needs phosphocreatine, glycogen, and oxygen to produce ATP. We must provide two of those three fuels through our diet. We store phosphocreatine in our bodies after production in the liver from amino acids. We also intake some phosphocreatine through eating meat. Glycogen is produced from glucose that we derive from carbohydrates. A diet rich in lean meat, fruits and vegetables, and nuts and seeds is the best way to supply these nutrients. My experience is that a diet comprised of near-Zone protein/carb ratios coupled with an emphasis on Paleo ingredients provides the best results for my body. I neither religiously follow 40/30/30 carb/protein/fat proportions nor do I religiously eschew all non-Paleo foods, but I have my own mixture of both. Use those two widely-researched constructs and find what works for you. Finally, nothing will remind your body that you need to increase ATP production better than high-intensity training. Provide the stimulus of exercise and your body will provide the response of increasing ATP production.

Drain Our Tank More Slowly

How can you get more miles per gallon from your existing ATP stores? In the context of functional human movement, the best method I know is practice. Want to become more efficient at the snatch? Practice the snatch. The same can be said for any exercise or maneuver. As you forge neuro-muscular pathways between your brain and muscles, your body will become capable of performing work more efficiently. Think of the last time you learned a new skill quickly in the gym. You didn’t get stronger over the course of an hour, but you might have become more efficient at muscle-ups. But we don’t necessarily practice just for practice’s sake. Becoming more efficient at many different functional movements not only prepares us better for everyday life, but will allow us to perform more work in less time during training. This increases our power output, furthering the all-important GPP, enlarging the radius of our tank. And of course, practicing individual skills also enlarges the height of our tank for that skill.

Limitations and Conclusions

This model isn’t meant to be rigorously applied such that variables are assigned scalar values and your work capacity is calculated as the volume of the tank. This is just a framework for understanding the relationship between several important variables in fitness: general physical preparedness, skill-specific capacity, metabolic pathways of ATP production, and ATP consumption through exercise. Furthermore, this model can be viewed as a single tank that represents your entire body and applies to the range of skills in use at any one time, or you can look at your body as being comprised of many different tanks, each contributing to your performance in a specific task. Either way, this framework adds a new twist when I tell one of my clients to “not leave anything in the tank” at the end of his or her workout.

First, CrossFit is the only fitness program that has defined fitness in a way that is measurable, observable, and repeatable. That’s a big deal. What if your business was tuning and repairing cars but you couldn’t define a “car?” That sounds ludicrous, but other programs claim to chase the goal of fitness without ever clearly defining what they seek to achieve. Unacceptable! Furthermore, how can we measure our results and compare them against a standard if we do not define that standard?

Coach Glassman’s exposition of the multiple ways CrossFit defines fitness sets our standard. These multiple definitions also give us different contexts for understanding fitness, which is welcome, because fitness is a very complex topic. CrossFit’s three definitions of fitness are

1. 10 general physical skills. Strength. Stamina. Endurance. Flexibility. Power. Speed. Coordination. Agility. Balance. Accuracy. These ten words describe the predominant characteristics of almost any activity you are likely to encounter, and therefore your capability in each describes your fitness. We humans are usually pretty good in a couple, mediocre in most, and horribly deficient in a few. Improvement in some of these skills comes through training: stimulating physiological changes in your body. Others are developed through practice: developing your nervous system to accomplish tasks within your current physical capability. Finally, power and speed are developed through a combination of both training and practice.
2. Capability at random physical tasks: The hopper. Put every conceivable workout (not just CrossFit WODs–every conceivable workout) into a hopper. Spin the hopper and then pull out a workout at random. He/she who is fittest will perform the best over a large number of these random tasks. What’s the task you dread coming out of the hopper more than anything? A long run? Pullups? Single rep strength? Could anything reasonably come out of the hopper that’s completely a non-starter for you? Fixing that weakness is the single best thing you can do for your overall fitness. CrossFit has found that you can make more progress by devoting yourself to improving your deficiencies rather than continuing to improve your strengths. Furthermore, improving your deficiencies seems to have an amplifying effect on all of your non-deficient skills. This is both unexpected and very cool. We don’t understand it, but we know it happens.
3. Capacity in the three metabolic pathways: phosphocreatine, glycolytic, and oxidative. A metabolic pathway is just a method your body uses to produce ATP, the body’s currency of energy which is spent by your muscles. You are as fit as your capacity in each of these pathways. The phosphocreatine pathway is for short, explosive ATP production. The glycolytic pathway provides energy during medium-duration exercise from ~30 seconds to ~4 minutes. The oxidative pathway is your capability to produce energy aerobically (from oxygen). This pathway provides low amounts of energy for very long durations. Many people are fit in a single pathway. CrossFitters seek to be fit in all of them.

In addition to CrossFit’s three standards of fitness, the article touches on a few more important concepts:

• The continuum from sickness to wellness to fitness. It’s all a measure of the same thing. Fitness is just an advanced state of wellness, and a hedge against sickness. Sickness is the absence of fitness. This doesn’t apply as much to sniffles as it does to degenerative diseases. In essence, it’s difficult for grandma to break her hip if she’s got the bone density and connective tissue strength of Conan the Barbarian from three decades of weight training.
• A Practical Guide to Fitness in 100 Words: Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, clean and jerk, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.
• CrossFit seeks to improve work capacity across broad time and modal domains. Practically, this means improving your performance at many different physical tasks that require many different amounts of time to complete. This spans max effort lifts lasting less than five seconds to hero workouts that might require more than an hour. Graphically, this is the area under the curve on a plot of your power output in all of those time domains. Check out the graph below for a hypothetical athlete. If you assume we have data on this athlete’s capability in many different workouts at an instant in time then you can plot her time and power output for each workout.  Power is just a function of the load she used, the distance it traveled, and time required. Then we draw the blue line, which is a best-fit trendline formed by all of the plotted workout data. This is the athlete’s work capacity across broad time and modal domains–on a single given day of her life. Click on the graph to open a slightly larger version.

We achieve fitness by building the area under this curve, hopefully by shifting it upward and developing capacity in all time domains. By the way, the area under a curve of force vs. time (a similar but not identical concept) is known as impulse, which is part of the genesis of the name “CrossFit Impulse.”

Coach Glassman has also proposed an interesting theory as a corollary to the idea of work capacity across broad time and modal domains: the three dimensional model of fitness and health. Here’s how it works. Take the 2D plot of an athlete’s work capacity at a snapshot in time and extend it along a third dimension representing the duration of her life. The resulting 3D plot is “health.” Coach Glassman has proposed defining health as the integrated work capacity over a lifetime. Sure, it has some kinks and limitations, but is pretty interesting nonetheless. If we had perfect data available about someone’s performance in all time domains, and recorded this data over the course of the athlete’s life, we could construct a plot like the 2D graph above for every year of her life. The graph would shift up and down and change shape as she grew up, developed work capacity, developed strengths and weaknesses, and aged. If we connected all of those plots in three dimensions then we would get a graph like the one below. Click on it to open a slightly larger version.

This blue dotted line is just the 2D plot of Work Capacity Across Broad Time and Modal Domains we examined first, taken at the age of 40. All the 2D plots at every age of the athlete’s life comprise the 3D graph of her health. The three-dimensional model of health is still in the formative stages. It isn’t as canonical as work capacity across broad time and modal domains, but one day it might be. The above graphs have a couple limitations. First, the units of average power output are just a general order of magnitude guess and are not accurate. The graph is not meant to show the precise power output of any workout, or the relationship between power output in different workouts, so don’t use it this way. Second, it’s impossible to know an athlete’s capacity in all of these workouts on any given day, so while we assume the data is for a single point in time, it must necessarily be taken over a long period of time.

Can you find any problems with these concepts? Does a better model exist? Are these models truly scientific (measurable, observable, and repeatable)? Is work capacity over a lifetime an accurate measure of “health?” What is “health?”All of this is still up for debate, so get into the discussion below.

1.    About 1.5 years ago David had just taught himself muscle ups and was helping me look like a dumbass in the University Fitness Center weight room, under the pretense of teaching me to do muscle ups. At one point he told me to quickly snap my wrists when transitioning from the pull to the dip position—the most difficult part of the maneuver. All of a sudden, it clicked. I realized I had been maneuvering the rings too slowly through the transition. I started snapping my wrists and got my first muscle up after only 2-3 more attempts.

2.    About four months ago I finished Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore’s two epic tomes: Starting Strength and Practical Programming for Strength Training. I realized I had been back squatting with my shoulders relaxed, the bar too high, and my grip too wide (out near the edge of the bar). I forced myself to push the bar lower, pull in my grip until my shoulders cramped, and therefore greatly tighten my shoulders and create a solid shelf for the load. My back squat immediately improved by 15 pounds and then another 10 pounds a month afterward. Yes, I’m uncomfortable as hell underneath the bar, but I can move the bar much more efficiently.

3.    Also after reading Practical Programming for Strength Training I discovered the importance of the phrase, “No Stress, no adaptation.” My previous approach to injury rehabilitation had been to rest the affected body part until it felt “ready to go” again. If a particular motion hurt, then don’t do it; choose another exercise. Then the authors enlightened me to the fact that if you don’t stress your body then it will not adapt, and returning tissue to normal after damage requires stress and adaptation. Now I understand Rippetoe’s prescription for rehab, which I think is pretty sound: Let the area rest until the pain is dull and no longer sharp. This gives the affected body part a jump start on the healing process so it is prepared for future stress to normalize it. Now, do 20 reps of exactly what hurts with very low weight (if any), full range of motion, and perfect form. Do this every day for 2 weeks. Don’t do any other heavy lifting that could steal your body’s limited healing resources for recovery. Viola—normalized tissue. [edited to add an important caveat from Rippetoe himself: "This method was specifically developed for muscle belly injuries, and does not work for tendinitis, joint capsule injuries, tendon or ligament ruptures, or infectious disease."]

4.    I attended a POSE clinic at CrossFit Huntsville last winter. I had read about POSE extensively, but never had any one on one instruction. As conversations progressed about the mechanics of POSE running vs. heel striking, flat soled shoes vs. high heel running shoes, and running injuries caused by traditional heel-striking I had a revelation similar to the weeks when I first deeply examined CrossFit. I realized that when I go to Fleet Feet and ask for shoes for an over-pronator that I’m really asking for a prescription to ease the pain of my problem, and that I’m not really trying to solve my problem. I realized that I need those big, cushy soles because I’m running in a way that no human would naturally run. I’m far from an efficient POSE runner, but at least now I realize that my problem is faulty mechanics, not finding the right equipment to dampen the effects of my faulty mechanics.

5.    About 1.5 years ago I sat in David’s office, talking about nutrition, and exclaimed that I never wanted to count my almonds (which in context meant sticking to a strict Zone Diet). Years later, I count my almonds and weigh and measure my food, and I am much healthier, stronger, and happier. What seems like an immense burden easily becomes part of your lifestyle if you make the necessary effort to change. I decided the burden was worth the results. Now my particular flavor of the Paleo Diet and Zone Diet doesn’t seem like a burden at all. I immensely enjoy eating this way, and regret whenever I must lapse for even a day at a time. It’s just the way I live, like putting on pants in the morning. What seems like someone else’s insurmountable burden may not be a burden at all. They may actually count it a blessing.

6.    A couple months ago the main site prescribed what many people are calling CrossFit Total II: One rep max attempts of overhead squat, bench press, and power clean. I sometimes have shoulder pain while bench pressing, and it has never been a strength of mine. During the bench press portion I implemented advice from Louie Simmons that I had gleaned from CrossFit Journal videos and his book, The Westside Barbell Book of Methods. I gripped the bar more narrowly than usual with my pinky fingers on the powerlifting rings (the first interior breaks in the knurling on a Rogue Bar). I also tried to bend the bar inwards (curl the ends up towards the ceiling) with my hands instead of leaving my hands and wrists essentially neutral. These two changes resulted in much less pain and no noticeable decreases in my strength.

The last four Aha! moments aren’t really Aha! moments. Yeah, I suppose that’s cheating, but I thought they might be helpful anyway. While not the product of a revelation or sudden moment of clarity, they are ideas I’ve slowly come to believe over months and years.

7.    Right after a series of Aha! moments about little things, I’ll throw out this: The little things aren’t very important. Sure, if you’re an elite athlete trying to add 5% to an already incredible PR, then small things like one centimeter differences in grip and foot placement and perfect bio-mechanics are part of the equation. But if you’re the average Joe just trying to get fitter than below-average Joe, then don’t worry so much about the details. Just eat right and work hard. Perfect technique will come. Until you get to the point where it matters, just work hard every time you’re in the gym, performing movements within the 80% solution, and you’ll see awesome results.

8.    Pursuit of fitness is not fair. Fair comes to town once a year. Some people are blessed with genes that allow them to consume sugar and fat like a Little Debbie factory yet they show no weight gain. Some people can look at a saltine cracker and put on five pounds. Some people recover from workouts in 12 hours and set PRs every week, while others struggle greatly. Know which one you are, and if it’s the latter, stop feeling sorry for yourself. That just means you have to work harder. It’s hit us all in some aspect of life, so just accept it and move forward. All we can do is work to better ourselves. We can’t change the “self” that we’ve been dealt.

9.    Change requires change. Keep doing what you’ve always done and you’ll keep getting the results you’ve always received. If you aren’t happy with your results, you must change your method or your application of your method. You can’t get drastically different results by changing minutia like adjusting your grip width on barbell curls or only eating Girl Scout cookies before 5 P.M. If you want different results then be prepared to try a different method or change your application.

10.    Yes, it’s supposed to hurt. Stressing connective tissue in ways you’ve never stressed it before hurts. It also leads to fitness. This micro-injury followed by proper recovery is the entire reason we’re in the gym. So when your wrists and elbows hurt while attempting muscle ups: yes, it’s normal. When your wrists hurt from the rack position during front squat: yes, it’s normal. Strap burns from ring dips: yes, it’s normal. Hurt and damaged hands from pull-ups: yes, it’s normal. As a general rule, if a new movement doesn’t hurt somewhere in some capacity then you’re probably not doing it to full range of motion or with enough load.

Did you find that Insightful? Worthless? Let me know what you think in the comments.