Blog Archive

Audrey Tannant Business Development Manager Crossfit Vancouver / Madlab School of Fitness

Sent with grammatical, autocorrect, and spelling mistakes from my iPhone

In mid-December the results of a new study looking at world wide comparative risk for different diseases / risk factors and the effect of each on disease / injury affected years of life and attributable deaths came out.  You can read the 2010 Global Burden of Design Study HERE on The Lancet.  The results are compared with a similar study completed in 1990 and focuses on the shifting burden of disease in regions around the world.

In all 21 regions studied worldwide between 1990 and 2010 a shift occurred from risk factors for childhood communicable disease in 1990 being the world’s leading problem, to non-communicable disease in adults in 2010.

It’s really stats heavy, but there are some amazing results that jump out at you if you take the time to work through it.  Here is the top 15 risk factors affecting life length/quality expectancy in North America in the 2010 study.

• Tobacco smoking
• High body mass index
• Alcohol use
• High blood pressure
• High fasting plasma glucose
• Physical inactivity
• Diet low in fruits
• Diet low in nuts and seeds
• High total cholestorol
• Drug use
• Diet high in sodium
• Diet high in processed meat
• Diet low in vegetables
• Ambient particulate matter
• Diet high in trans fats

It’s pretty easy to see the trend here.  No surprise that tobacco and alcohol are high on the list, but the rest of them are a who’s who of shitty food and lifestyle choices.  I was very surprised that diet’s low in fruit/nuts beat out vegetables as a risk factor, but perhaps that’s because they are more expensive and pop culture flags these as “bad” foods.

Another interesting takeaway not present in the big risk factors listed above was that “a diet high in red meat” had several orders of magnitude less affect on disease burden than the above listed risk factors!  It was almost a non-competitor.

Finally, another interesting takeaway from the article was that though studies often suggest that saturated fat intake is a significant risk factor for heart disease, observational studies considered in the GBD2010 indicate that there might be no benefits if saturated fat reduction is associated with an increase in carbohydrates!  They note that the traditional heath messages need to be expanded greatly to include several other key components of diet, including consumption of healthy foods presently missing from most diets.

-Afghan

Today’s Skill Stregth Element:

4 Rounds, not for time –

2 Heavy Shoulder Press + AMRAP Push Press

6 Glute-Ham Raises

Today’s Workout:

4 Dip/Ring Dip (Strict)

8 Pull Up  (Strict)

16 KBS (1/1.5 pood)

12 min AMRAP

A

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle

The New year is here, and many are looking to adopt shinny new healthy habits, knowing full well its going to be an uphill battle. Check out The Habit Change Cheatsheet- 29 Ways to Successfully Ingrain a Behavior, it may just help tilt the war in your favour.

Today’s Skill/Strength Element:

Heavy  Squat Clean Thruster  5, 3, 2, 1, 1.

If the athlete chooses to drop the bar after each rep, sets 1, 2, and 3, they must be prepared to grab it and go again as soon as the bar settles.

Today’s Workout:

20 Squat Clean and Thruster (135/95)
50 Burpees

A

Exercise Orgasm for Women.  No Joke.  Article says:

Today’s Skill/Str Element:

Warm up the Snatch

then

EMOM for 7 min perform  1 Hang Power Snatch + 1 Power Snatch + 1 Squat Snatch (approx 70% of 1RM)

Today’s Workout:

EMOM for 5 min perform 1 Squat Snatch – increasing weight each minute (approach 90-102%)

Today’s Finisher:

Reverse Tabata Mash Up

L Sit Hold + V Snaps

A

Ever feel as if you’d like to throw one of these at work?

Don’t you wish you could sometimes?

I’d bet after Christmas, every one of us feels like kicking and screaming a little more often than normal.  This kid had 6 cubes of sugar… take a look at how a few common beverages stack up ( you might want to rethink that Vitamin Water!).

So…maybe this awful post-Christmas hatred of work isn’t you…it’s your sugar intake.

Robb Wolf recently wrote an article discussing Sugar as a Drug

Artificial sweeteners are no better. Again, Robb Wolf to the rescue: Artificial is not Intelligent.

You’ve made it though Christmas.  You’ve handled Mom’s cookies and eating what’s on your plate like a good kid.  Heck, if you’ve been visiting family, you might have felt like the food was a physical display of love (how do you say no to love at Christmas?).

Fact is, it is a New Year.  2013 has begun, and luckily the world is still here. 

So take a serious look at your post-holiday consumption.  You probably have some minor addictions that need to be beaten back.

Don’t be the kid in the video. Get off the sugar, get off the fake sugar, and get back to yourself.

– Aud Squad

Today’s Skill/Strength Element:

A. Dialling the kick to handstand –

4 lengths of the gym. 2 lengths with the straddle variation (keep the trailing leg as close to the ground as possible), and 2 with the tucked variation (try to stay tucked), looking to find a brief moment of balance in each rep.

B. Wall Runs –

Hands 4 – 6″ from the wall. Front to wall (or back to wall if that sketches you out).
Try to touch your shoulders, unweighting one support then the next, for 30 seconds.
2 Rounds

C. Play with some handstand walking

Today’s Workout:

Mary

5 Hand Stand Push Ups

10 One Legged Squats

15 PullUps

AMRAP in 20 Min

A

I came across this article a couple weeks ago while I was preparing this week programming.  In it, Ed McNeely suggests that above a certain level of rowing competency, the amount power an athlete can produce in a few quick strokes on the erg (10seconds) is largely predictive of how he or she will fare in a 2Km trial.

Of course this is probably only true at the elite levels, where everyone’s aerobic fitness is maxed right out, but I like this test for a number of reasons:

1.  It reminds me of Louie Simmons‘ approach to training athletes. For Louie, absolute strength trumps everything.  He’s had a lot of success with athletes whose disciplines require other than limit strength, even marathoners.  His thinking is that if he can drive their max lifts up, then they would find working at sub maximal loads, whatever the duration, much easier.  Again, this is probably true to a certain extent for everyone, but more so for the elite levels.

2. I like comparative data.  $10 bucks says Sheppy can’t hit the elite highschool girl range.

3.  Short duration tests, like 10 seconds, are kind of a hole in most Crossfit programming. I’d like to fix that.

Today’s Warm Up:

Three athletes to a rower.  Trade off rounds of the following:

300m/300m/300m at 70%

250m/250m/250m at 75%

200m/200m/200m at 80%

150m/150m/150m at 85%

100m/100m/100m at 90%

Today’s Workout:

10 Seconds on the Rower for max Wattage.   Record the highest power you see for any pull. Full strokes only, no race starts.

Divide your max Wattage by your bodyweight (kg) and 1. compare to the above chart to see how you stack up with actual rowers, and 2. enter your score into the Leaderboard.

3 attempts.

Don’t fall out of the boat.

Today’s Skill/Str Element:

11/4 Squats 5, 5, 5, 5.  Hold 15 – 30 seconds in the support position, on the rings between each set.

Stretch/Roll out your legs after class – this will be a heavy leg week…pistols tomorrow, squat clean thrusters later in the week.

A