CrossFit Portland

Lactate testing can provide information to allow a more accurate prescription of conditioning work. The balance point test is one of many tests we can do with the lactate tester.

The balance point test allows us to find the exact pace at which an athlete’s blood lactate is being cleared as fast as it’s being produced.

This data allows us to optimally guide individual programming of aerobic and anaerobic work. Future tests allow us to see concrete evidence of improved performance!

This test is useful for both competitive CrossFit athletes and serious endurance athletes.

If you are interested in scheduling a test or for more information on how this may benefit you, email me at scott@crossfitportland.com

This upcoming Saturday is the first ever Prowler 500. As the name suggests, it is a lot of prowler pushing.

Inspired by NASCAR, we’ll need big teams, ideally 3 guys – 3 girls, to get through this. Sign up for Saturday classes, especially 8 am! Don’t regret missing it – sign up and join the fun!!

We’ll have a team signup taped to the chalkboard throughout class this week. Make a team of 6 or just sign up, you can participate either way.

Warm Up

1) Powell raise: 3 x 5/arm
2) Squat Seq #2 x 4
3) Short shoulder Seq

Mobility

5/5 Spinal Rocks to Shinbox Twists

WOD

A1. Back Squat: 5 x 1, rest 2 min (work over 5 sets to a heavy single)
A2. Pull Progression –OR– Weighted Chin-Up: 5 x 1, rest 2 min (up to heavy single)
+
2-4-6-8-10-8-6-4-2 rep rounds:
Back Squat @70% of today’s max
Kipping Pullups (or Bar Rows)

Games 2012 Regional Workouts have arrived! Check it out…the bar has been raised.

Hey Crossfit Portland, in some philanthropic efforts, I’m looking to help raise some money. It’s a Dodge Ball tournament fundraiser for Special Olympics on May 19th.

I have had a few past posts for other Special Olympic fundraising events, like the Polar Plunge and the Law Enforcement Torch Run.

This year I’m looking for a few CFPDX athletes that might want to join my team (named ORS 163.175, or Assault II), or I’d invite you start your own team. If you’d like to join my team, please email me at brad@crossfitportland.com.

If you’d like to start your own team, please read through the announcement below. Each team pays $250 to register, and all proceeds go to Oregon Special Olympics. Teams must consist of a minimum of six players with a maximum of ten.

Lastly, if you’d simply like to donate on my team’s behalf, remember team name ORS 163.175, it’d be greatly appreciated. The Portland Police Bureau, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, the Troutdale Police Department, and of course my own Fairview Police Department are sponsoring this event.

The Inaugural Dodgeball Tournament
In Support of Special Olympics Oregon
Saturday May 19, 2012 @ Roosevelt High School

Oregon Law Enforcement Officers in association with Special Olympics Oregon and Roosevelt High School (RHS, Portland Public Schools) are hosting its inaugural dodgeball tournament in a fundraising effort to support Special Olympics Oregon Athletes. The tournament will take place on Saturday May 19th, 2012 in the Roosevelt High School gymnasium. With this one day event, there will be a maximum of 32 teams competing for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place trophies. Trophies will also be awarded to the teams that raise the most money in support of our SO athletes.

Team Captains can register your team and begin your fundraising efforts at: http://www.firstgiving.com/SOOR/dodgeball There is a registration fee of $250 per team, which must be paid when you register online. Move fast…only 32 teams can compete in this year’s event! Get your spot early so you don’t miss out!

Check-in begins at 8:00 am with pool play starting at 9:00 am. The winners of each pool will then move on to the champion’s bracket and compete for the Championship trophy.

Teams will consist of a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 10 members. Individuals can only play on one team’s roster. Game start times, team brackets and complete tournament rules will be emailed to team captains by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 16.

Madoc is hosting a POSE running clinic and also 6 week POSE Intensive workshop. Starts My 5th, sign up online.

In part one of this article series I brought up the ideas of addressing weaknesses and coming up with a training plan for an endurance event.

Find a coach to help you identify and address your weak points. It may be surprising, but this is the first part of the plan.

If you recall from the first article, our hypothetical endurance athlete has decided on the Portland Marathon as their “A” race for the season. She has also discovered that she needs to work on her running form.

It is now April, and our runner’s “A” race is the first Sunday of October. This gives her half a year to get ready. Believe it or not, she needs to start preparing now.

Having identified that she needs to improve and modify her running gait, this is where she starts. She will sign up for a 6-week POSE running workshop that starts at the end of this month. Step one of the overall plan has been put into motion.

By working on changing her running gait this early in the process, she has 6 months worth of practice time. She will begin adapt to her new running gait within 6 weeks, and with consistent practice and coaching, the new movement pattern will begin to become her default movement pattern.

Consistent practice is needed for our runner to really adapt to running. For those of you firmly inculcated with the Crossfit idea of constantly varied exercise, this may seem counter-intuitive.

If our runner runs more, won’t she adapt and benefit less on a metabolic and neurological level? Yes, and that is exactly the point.

We want our runner to be able to run their “A” race as if it was simply another training session. We also want to get her to the point where the simple act of running at her chosen race pace is truly simple.

We must take into account the runner’s skill level and conditioning as part of our training plan. The training plan will need to continually build and challenge our runner.

Knowing this, we’ll break her training schedule into phases. For ease of description, we’ll break the following 6 months into 2-month blocks. At the end of each week we’ll evaluate our runner’s progress and make adjustments as necessary.

Training block one will be dedicated to reworking our runner’s movement patterns and building her ability to move.

In training block one we will assess where our runner stands in regard to maximal voluntary strength, strength stamina, mobility, aerobic capacity, and a host of other performance related details.

Block one is all about finding the baseline. What do we have to work with? If our runner needs to learn new skills in addition to running, this is where it will happen.

As a skill development phase, block one is going to be relatively low volume. Our goal is to build our runner’s skill. As her skills improve, she will be able to increase the intensity of her training. For the strength work, this means weight. For her running, this means speed.

Our runner will be doing three skill (running) specific sessions a week during this block. In addition to the skill work, she will be doing three strength and conditioning WODs during the week.

The skill sessions will be entirely separate from the WODs. This will enable our runner to devote energy to both without interfering with either.

Ideally, we can include at least one race in block one. This will be a shorter distance “C” race. We’ll use the “C” race to help dial in her running form, as well as give her an opportunity to experience a race day.

Our runner isn’t going to try and win this race. Instead, this is an advanced training session, where she will test out her running form and learn what it’s like to cross a start and finish line.

Since training block one will take us to June, we can program in a couple of 5k races. The Cinco de Mayo race would fall in the middle of the block, and the Starlight Run would fall towards the end of the training block.

Training block two is going to be about “base building.” Whereas block one was about developing skill, block two is going to be about taking those skills and demanding more of them.

Now that our runner is more skilled, our expectations will be higher. The weights that she will move will be heavier, the speeds at which she runs will be faster, and we may even start to sneak in some higher volume work as part of the skill-specific sessions.

Part of the increase in volume will be the introduction of longer time domains with some of the training runs. The other part will be challenging the runner by overlapping their training schedule. That means increasing the number of Crossfit WODs, as well as having double days.

We’ll retest several of the benchmarks we recorded in block one, and the running skill-specific sessions will shift from honing skill to challenging the runner’s skill-set.

By the second half of this training block our runner should be in good enough condition that, if we asked her to run a marathon, she could.

We won’t, of course, but block two will include a “B” race or two. These will be at least 10k races, and the training goals of these races will be to dial in consistent pacing, hydration and electrolyte management.

As our runner is going to hit the end of training block two in August, we’ll have her run the Haulin’ Aspen Half Marathon in Bend. This is a technical trail run that’s 13.1 miles in length. Our runner can probably test out her in-race nutrition on this run.

Block three is actually the simplest, and will take us through to the “A” race. The training layout will mirror block two, with increasing emphasis on challenging our runner’s technical ability. The skill specific sessions will have fully developed into running-specific WODs.

If our runner can tolerate the workload, we may increase her training to 6 Crossfit workouts a week in addition to the 3 running-specific WODs.

Block three will also provide us with the opportunity to further refine our runner’s in-race hydration and electrolyte management and nutrition.

Block three takes us to the “A” race, and just past it, and so we’ll include recovery work for two weeks after the race.

At the end of this training evolution, after the race has been run, we’ll review the entire plan, and chart where our runner will go next.

After knee surgery in December of 2011, I was a bit lost, not sure about my goals. Jason Stein, owner of Portland Ashtanga Yoga, dropped the idea that I try for a one arm chin-up, aka “OAC”.

At first, I thought it was crazy and was not at all interested. I’m 205+ lbs, long levers, and didn’t do my first chin-up until I graduated high school. Although my legs are fairly strong, pulling and pushing have never been my strong suits.

Looking back, those are the exact reasons why I didn’t want to pursue it – I wasn’t good at it in the first place and who wants to be reminded that they are weak everyday?!

It was right after New Years that I changed my mind. Around this time, I wrote to you all about BYOSD (Bring your own sweat and discipline) and custom goals. I decided I need to put my money where my mouth is – if I’m going to motivate anyone to make their goals, I need to experience the LONG JOURNEY with you.

I set my sights on the OAC and started from the very beginning. I couldn’t perform anything that is necessary to do a OAC! You don’t believe me? See this video I made to motivate myself on 1/6/2012.

I felt like it was my first chin up, all over again. I know its not the same but for all of you working towards your first chin up, I understand how far away it can seem. There are many moments where finding that extra motivation can be tough.

1) The workout didn’t go as well as I hoped. The weights felt heavier, I barely met my goals for the day.
2) I didn’t meet my goals for the day!
3) Someone else reached my goal in just a month! That’s not fair.

With all these reasons to quit, I found it simple to keep going when I had the right mindset.

1) Any goal worth pursuing is difficult and there will be no instant gratification.
2) Think and visualize the long game. Have faith and stick to the plan.
3) How long should it take to reach this goal? As long as it takes. My schedule is no one else’s.

In the past 4 months, I have stuck to the plan and focused on my custom goals. The more focused I was, the more fun it became! A little over 3 months now and I have made progress. By no stretch of the imagination is the end in sight but I know I AM CLOSER.

While working on the OAC, a natural paired pushing movement is the Handstand Pushup (HSPU). When I started CrossFit, I could not do one for a year. I’ve always wanted to do full depth HSPU, shoulders to the platform. I’ve been working on the HSPU for the last 3 months and made a huge PR yesterday…I couldn’t quite believe it actually.

Here is a video of some recent progress.

On 1/22/2012 – 252# (BW + weight) x 5 was very hard. Hanging from the bar with one arm was tough.

Today, I’m going for 266# x 5. My warm up set is 253# and I can hang from a bar with confidence.

On 2/7/2012 – HSPU on 10# plates 7 sets of 3, 5 sets of 2.
On 4/16/2012 – HSPU on 45#+10# plates 10 sets of 3. Yesterday, a full shoulders to plates HSPU!!

I know my personal accomplishments are someone else’s warm-ups. I’m stoked about them though! If I’m only going to compare myself to others, its a lose-lose game every time.

Someone else is always faster, stronger, thinner, bigger. It’s a mental dysphoria to give a piss and let it bring you down.

I probably need a weighted chin up, total weight of 340# x 5 to do the OAC. The OAC is still far off in the distance. Taking one step at a time is the hardest thing to do but its the only way to get there. At the rate I’m going (4-5 pounds per month), it’s going to take 16-18 months, assuming no setbacks.

Our bodies were made to squat. It’s one of the most fundamental of all human movements, yet many people in our culture are unable to perform this movement properly. Properly, meaning with full range of motion without pain or discomfort.

That’s because when it comes to squat mobility, it’s pretty much use it or lose it (and boy have we lost it).

Seriously, think back to the last time you noticed a child who had difficulty squatting. Kids squat all the time, easily and without discomfort or pain. They do it naturally, and they never have to be taught how to do it safely or correctly.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the road to adulthood, we begin to gradually spend less time on the floor like the little monkeys we’re supposed to be, and more time sitting in chairs, at desks, on the sofa, behind the wheel, even on the toilet.

And where do these First World “comforts” leave us? In the land of hip disease, low back pain, immobilized hamstrings, and a whole slew of other remarkably unhealthy postural issues.

Interestingly these same problems do not manifest in other, more squatty cultures around the world, such as in developing countries and amongst aboriginal tribes.

All of that prolonged sitting may not exactly be good for us, but let’s face it, our desk-jobs, cars and furniture aren’t likely to go away any time soon, either.

So here’s your homework: turn on your television and tune in to the latest train-wreck with the mutants of Jersey Shores or Real Housewives, then slide your butt off the couch and try to accumulate some significant time in the bottom of a low squat.

What constitutes significant time? “Significant” means different things for people with different squatting abilities, but a good place to start is the 10-minute squat test from Scott W.’s man-crush Kelly Starrett. Essentially your goal is to try to accumulate 10 minutes in the bottom position of a squat, with your feet straight, rather than turned out.

I tried this myself recently, and after 10 minutes my feet started to fall asleep and my shins burned so bad I thought they would melt off (hence, the TV … having something around to distract you can be quite helpful).

Clearly this is something I need to work on more frequently, but I know I’m not the only one! So come on CFPDX, let’s get (hip)mobilized and start to make 10-minute squats a regular practice!

K.Star\'s Squat-fest