WOW we completely forgot about Christmas in July. Luckily L. H, called, emailed, texted, tweeted, facebook noted, IM'd and sent us a homing pigeon to remind us...
So..
Workout
For time:
1 – Burpees
2 - 95 lbs PP
3 - 95 lbs FS
4 - 95 lbs PCLS
5 - 95 lbs DL
6 - Box Jumps
7 - Pull-ups
8 - Push-ups
9 - Ab Mat sit-ups
10 - Air Squats
11 - 53 lbs KB Swings
12 - A 500M Row
So the workout is:
1 Burpee
then 2 Push Press and 1 Burpee
then 3 Front Squats, 2 Push Press and 1 Burpee etc...
Compare to:
TITANFIT: Wednesday 081217
Monday 090713
Sunday 090712
Rest!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/07/10/attitudes.overweight/index.html
As nation gains, 'overweight' is relative
By Elizabeth Landau
CNN
(CNN) -- The little number on the tag on a pair of pants that indicates size can mean a lot to a person, and retailers know it.
That's why, in recent years, as the American population has become generally more overweight, brands from the luxury names to the mass retail chains have scaled down the size labels on their clothing.
"You may actually be a size 14 and, according to whatever particular store you're in, you come out a size 10," said Natalie Nixon, associate professor of fashion industry management at Philadelphia University. "It's definitely to make the consumer feel good."
Research shows that, when it comes to self-perception, the concept of "overweight" may be relative.
A working paper from a group led by Mary Burke, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Massachusetts, suggested that people's perceptions of overweight have shifted, and "normal" is now heavier than it used to be.
Researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, nationally representative surveys run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first group was surveyed in 1988-1994, and the second was surveyed in 1999-2004. Because there were different people in each survey, it is not possible to tell if the perceptions of individuals shifted over time, the authors said. Watch CNN's Elizabeth Landau talk more about the study »
Participants were asked whether they consider themselves "underweight," "about right," or "overweight," and reported their body mass index, a measure of the health risks associated with weight. Calculate your BMI »
Are people more complacent, or better educated?
Although the BMI of the general population increased from the earlier survey period to the later one, the probability of people describing themselves as overweight decreased in the later survey, researchers found.
They found that weight misperception tended to decrease among women -- meaning women with normal BMI who were surveyed in 1999-2004 were less likely to say that they're "overweight" than women with normal BMI in 1988-1994, especially among 17 to 19-year-olds. For men, it was about the same.
"For women, this was good news," Burke said. "Women seem to get a more realistic perception of themselves."
Although the study authors said this trend may reflect healthy body image campaigns, physician nutrition specialist Dr. Melina Jampolis, who was not involved in this research, said she doubts that positive messages had this much influence.
Rather, it is the relative increase in weight of the general population that makes people with normal BMI feel more normal, she said.
On the flip side, feeling normal but being overweight may decrease a person's motivation to lose weight, Burke said.
Still, while the BMI scale reflects disease risks associated with being overweight, it does not reflect the whole story of a person's health, experts said.
There have been reports that being somewhat overweight, but not obese, is associated with decreased mortality, such as a 2005 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that looked at deaths from a variety of causes.
Innovations such as treatments for high cholesterol have lowered the death risks for overweight people, Burke said. Especially for older adults, being slightly overweight may increase bone density, cushioning bones against falls, she said.
But the JAMA paper shows associations, not causes. People should not take this information as an excuse to gain weight, Jampolis said.
There are, however, other reasons that BMI isn't the whole story -- for instance, it does not reflect the distribution of a person's weight, Jampolis said.
"You could have really skinny arms and legs and just carry your weight in the middle, and it could be only 10 pounds, but belly fat, the visceral adiposity, it could very significantly increase your risk of disease," she said.
A brief history of body size perceptions
Experts noted that plumpness has been in style during some historical periods, especially as an indicator of prosperity when food was scarce. But the ideal of controlling one's food isn't new either. The book "Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West" by historian Peter Stearns points out that fasting was a religious virtue seen throughout the Middle Ages, and continuing into the Puritan version of Protestantism. Christianity also espoused the idea of restricting food to fight sin.
The artistic and literary movement known as Romanticism, beginning in the late 18th century, stressed "slender, ethereal" ideals, Stearns wrote. The 1830s brought a prominent New York fashion style of a "willowy" look for young women, and there were many reports of anorexia nervosa during this time, the book said. But for older women, plumpness remained fashionable, and women on stage were expected to be voluptuous.
The meaning of the word "diet" came to include the goal of weight loss as early as 1910, Stearns wrote. "Middle-class America began its ongoing battle against body fat" between 1890 and 1910, Stearns wrote. The main factors that contributed to this shift were the advent of fat-control devices, the rise of public conversation about fat, and changes in fashion for both men and women, he wrote.
The culture of beauty that shaped up around the turn of the last century, promoting slimness as beautiful and fatness as ugly, has intensified since then, Stearns wrote.
Despite the widespread notion of dieting, obesity has risen dramatically over the last 20 years in America, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A recent survey by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America's Health found that the percentage of adults classified as obese went up in 23 states in the last year. View a map of obesity in America »
As clothing size numbers scale down in an era when bodies are getting more overweight, portion sizes have been increasing, Jampolis said. Photographs of fast food hamburgers from 50 years ago reveal that the serving size back then would seem like a "joke portion," now, she said.
"The same thing has happened with our body sizes. We're perceiving them as totally normal," she said.
As far as vanity sizing, Nixon called it a "temporary fix" that reflects a larger problem of people looking for quick solutions for losing weight, she said.
"It doesn't really deal with the root of the problem," she said. "It's really a lifestyle issue. It's not about a temporary diet, it's not about being pleasantly surprised because you're a size 12 instead of a size 16," she said.
Saturday 090711
Congrats to Kelin's 1021 CFT! Breaking the old record by 194 lbs!
Workout
Team (come in it is a secret!)
Friday 090710
From the good folks of Catalyst Athletics...http://www.performancemenu.com/index.php
Workout
Front squat - 65% x5; 70% x4; 75% x3; 80% x2; 85% x2 (4 box jumps immediately after each set)
Snatch - 65% x2 x6
Push Press - 70% of Clean and Jerk x5 x5
Thursday 090709
Let's hope it does not rain!
Workout (if no rain)
AMRAP in 20:00 of:
400M Run
Max Reps of Pull-ups
400M Run
Max Reps of Push-ups
Workout (if rain)
AMRAP in 20:00 of:
7 - Burpees
7 - WallBall Shots
Wednesday 070809
Workout
OHS - find your 1RM
THEN
"Mini" MetCon
3x
15 Ring Dips
25 - Double Unders*
Can't do Double Unders? Sub Tuck Jumps of Lateral Hops
Compare to:
TITANFIT: Tuesday 081028
From "The Mighty Mix"...one of my favorite reads.
http://mightymix.blogspot.com/2009/06/six-tips-for-overhead-squat.html
Six tips for the overhead squat
The Overhead Squat (OHS) sits at the royal round table of the most efficient and rewarding weightlifting exercises. It works the entire body, increases strength, power, flexibility, coordination, and develops postural lean mass, which should be a priority for any intelligent bipedal.
The OHS appears deceptively simple; yet learning it can be very challenging. Even though it is designed, as all the Olympic-style weightlifting exercises are, to put the entire body through its most ergonomically engineered paces, it is nevertheless an unnatural movement. This article is both for the novice and the lifter already performing the lift who seeks some nitty-gritty details on form and technique, to give the thinking lifter some explanation and keys to executing this successfully.
1. Stick your butt out. It goes against everything you've striven for in general decency, but it's going to go out - way out. Focus on moving your backside backwards, away from your mid-line, and then focus on curling your lumbar up into extension, like a scorpion raising its tail. What this does is set your center of gravity, so you don't end up tipping forward or backward. Do it sideways in a mirror and try to keep your knees in line with/in the same plane with your toes; don't allow them to move in front of them.
2. Press into the bar. This is one of the biggest things that can improve your performance. One reason the OHS can be so counter intuitive is that the body wants to move as a unit through the dynamics of physics - in this case gravity - which means that as you descend, the muscle groups involved in keeping the bar raised tend to relax, hold, and depress. So the scapular group try to switch from elevation to depression. The upper traps try to switch from concentric contraction to bigger balance with eccentric, to brace the body to catch the overhead falling weight. Use the cue to be constantly lifting/pushing the weight, never just holding it.
Furthermore, there are far greater instances in work history that a person, if descending with an overhead object, needs to buffet it away in order to keep it from crashing onto oneself, than to catch it and return with it overhead with arms extended. So there is a certain amount of instinctive response and primal muscle memory that must be overcome.
To learn to press into the bar continually, focus on it through auxiliary overhead work - overhead presses, the Jerk Support and Recovery, etc. - whatever exercises you're doing to assist in developing overhead strength. This means focusing on fully contracting every muscle involved in keeping a load overhead, at every moment. Thought cue: be constantly lifting/pushing the weight, never just holding it. This allows more muscles to support the overhead position. It won't look like a shrug, but it will feel like you're trying to perform one.
3. Keep your chest, neck and head up, while bending over. Building on the reasoning above, it's easy to let the chest and head fall slightly forward on the way up. Actively focus on keeping these up throughout the movement, especially when hitting bottom and beginning ascent. Fix your eyes on something straight ahead or slightly higher. Be aware of what your neck is doing. In order to keep everything tight, retract and elevate the scapula.
Now, don't confuse this with trying to maintain a vertical posture. It's not like a ball squat, where you try to keep your spine ramrod straight, like a chair back. If you do that, you'll fall down. You will fold a bit on the descent, basically bending over, but at the hip joint. So allow the angle of your torso to change, just don't round your back, droop your neck, unlock your shoulders, or look down.
4. Bounce out of the hole. "When you master that bounce, you'll really take off in gains," Olympic silver medalist and coach Tom Hirtz told me. This applies in varying degrees to all squats and the snatch. It means learning where to stop on the descent and begin the ascent. Stop too soon, and you will perform only a partial squat, emphasizing upper glutes and hamstrings, and a legitimate OHS will be impossible. Stop too far down, and the squatting mechanism is completed, so major muscles will lose tension, and it's much more difficult to initiate the ascent. The goal is to stop descending when tension is still tight.
Focus on feeling it in your thighs, especially quadriceps, and think of your hip flexors as spring loaded. By shifting your focus from taking your cue from the glutes to the hip flexors, you'll get a faster cue from your nervous system and be better able to detect the "bounce" point. You'll also consciously engage your anterior muscles. This is important because most people are trained to focus on engaging their posterior muscles in learning the basic (back) squat, but the OHS is more of a front squat exercise than back, so by focusing on the glutes instead of the hip flexors, your body is more likely to follow the neuromuscular pathways you've set up for the back squat than to engage the bio mechanics necessary to maintain an overhead press while executing a squat. This means that you're likely to naturally fall into the pattern of leaning forward, which is what you do with a bar lying across your shoulders, and flex your elbows, which will lead to you tipping forward and possibly dumping the bar.
5. Use your wrists and hands. It takes every muscle involved in the OHS to maintain the proper trajectory of the bar for balance. The bar should be situated in line with a point just behind the ears. As the body moves through the vertical plane, each joint must make slight adjustments to maintain this fixed point. Be actively aware of what your wrists and hands are doing, for they are primarily responsible for holding and positioning the bar, so hold onto it! The fine-tuning points on this grip may mean adjusting throughout the movement, so that the fingers extend slightly and the bar rolls out toward the fingertips as the body becomes closer to the ground. This is the opposite of what would happen if you were buffeting or catching an object overhead when you hit the bottom.
6. Push with your feet. Your feet are your foundation. Assume your starting position by positioning your feet first. Your stance should be slightly wider than your shoulders, toes angled out. Note that if you're tall, and your stance is too narrow, you're going to have balance problems, so experiment until you find a secure width that you don't struggle in. Be sure your shoes have firm soles and allow the foot bed to fully extend. Throughout the movement, be actively aware of the load on your feet, and when you transfer into the bounce, push your feet "into the floor."
Tuesday 090707
Many have started LOCKDOWN Part Deux and we have a few that have never tried the "Baseline" WOD. So let's give it a shot.
Workout
Baseline
For time:
500m Row
40 Squats
30 Sit-Ups
20 Push-Ups
10 Pull-Ups
THEN
Dead Lift
80% of 1RM x5, x4, x3, x2, x1
Monday 090706
Workout
Press
Find a NEW 1RM
Then
"Mini" MetCon
3 rounds of:
500M Row
20 - Box Jumps
Compare to:
TITANFIT: Friday 090403
Saturday 090704
Happy Birthday Sharon! Sorry we missed your actual 0702 date!
Happy and SAFE 4th of July to the TitanFit Family...
For those that are interested, we can try:
"Sharon"
Workout
For time:
5 rounds of
500M row
20 - Thrusters (M45/F33)
20 - AB Mat Sit-ups
Compare to:
TITANFIT: Tuesday 090106
Want to skip Sharon, ask Dr. Rick to prescribe some pain!
So What's It Gonna Be
Holiday Weekend Hours
Hey TitanFit. As we plan for this coming holiday weekend, we need your input for Friday. The options are:
11:00 WOD and cookout at Dr. Rick's
11:00 AM - 2:00 PM Open Gym at TitanFit.
Post your preference to comments. We will post the "winner" Friday morning.
Thursday 090702
We will save Christmas in July until next week. We want to give everyone an opportunity to enjoy the fun....
Workout
"Dave"
For time
21, 18, 15, 12, 9, 6, and 3 reps of:
Kettlebell Swing (M-53 lbs/F-35 lbs)
Ab-Mat Sit-ups
Box Jumps (20 inches)
Push-ups (want to make it a little harder?...make those Ring Push-ups!)
Compare to:
TITANFIT: Tuesday 090324
Wednesday 090701
Workout
Back Squat
find a new 1RM
THEN
"Mini" MetCon
50 - WallBall Shots
Post Squat weights and WallBall times to comments...
Tuesday 090630
Hey, it is the last day of the month. Let's get crazy,
Workout:
"Tabata" - Mash-up!
50% of 1RM DL
Burpees
Air Squats
Pull-ups
OK, it is Tabata style...:20 on, :10 off. So the WOD looks like this:
:20 of DL
:10 Rest
:20 of Burpees
:10 Rest
Repeat!
Next 4:00 is then
:20 of Air Squats
:10 Rest
:20 of Pull-ups
:10 Rest
Repeat!
for 8:00...Have FUN!
Post LOWEST number of each exercise to comments...
Monday 090629
Workout:
Snatch
90% of 1RM x1 x3
Clean and Jerk
90% of 1RM x1 x3
A interesting read...
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/can-you-get-fit-in-six-minutes-a-week/?emc=eta1
June 24, 2009, 12:26 pm
Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week?
By Gretchen Reynolds
Getty Images
A few years ago, researchers at the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Japan put rats through a series of swim tests with surprising results. They had one group of rodents paddle in a small pool for six hours, this long workout broken into two sessions of three hours each. A second group of rats were made to stroke furiously through short, intense bouts of swimming, while carrying ballast to increase their workload. After 20 seconds, the weighted rats were scooped out of the water and allowed to rest for 10 seconds, before being placed back in the pool for another 20 seconds of exertion. The scientists had the rats repeat these brief, strenuous swims 14 times, for a total of about four-and-a-half minutes of swimming. Afterward, the researchers tested each rat’s muscle fibers and found that, as expected, the rats that had gone for the six-hour swim showed preliminary molecular changes that would increase endurance. But the second rodent group, which exercised for less than five minutes also showed the same molecular changes.
The potency of interval training is nothing new. Many athletes have been straining through interval sessions once or twice a week along with their regular workout for years. But what researchers have been looking at recently is whether humans, like that second group of rats, can increase endurance with only a few minutes of strenuous exercise, instead of hours? Could it be that most of us are spending more time than we need to trying to get fit?
The answer, a growing number of these sports scientists believe, may be yes.
“There was a time when the scientific literature suggested that the only way to achieve endurance was through endurance-type activities,” such as long runs or bike rides or, perhaps, six-hour swims, says Martin Gibala, PhD, chairman of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. But ongoing research from Gibala’s lab is turning that idea on its head. In one of the group’s recent studies, Gibala and his colleagues had a group of college students, who were healthy but not athletes, ride a stationary bike at a sustainable pace for between 90 and 120 minutes. Another set of students grunted through a series of short, strenuous intervals: 20 to 30 seconds of cycling at the highest intensity the riders could stand. After resting for four minutes, the students pedaled hard again for another 20 to 30 seconds, repeating the cycle four to six times (depending on how much each person could stand), “for a total of two to three minutes of very intense exercise per training session,” Gibala says.
Each of the two groups exercised three times a week. After two weeks, both groups showed almost identical increases in their endurance (as measured in a stationary bicycle time trial), even though the one group had exercised for six to nine minutes per week, and the other about five hours. Additionally, molecular changes that signal increased fitness were evident equally in both groups. “The number and size of the mitochondria within the muscles” of the students had increased significantly, Gibala says, a change that, before this work, had been associated almost exclusively with prolonged endurance training. Since mitochondria enable muscle cells to use oxygen to create energy, “changes in the volume of the mitochondria can have a big impact on endurance performance.” In other words, six minutes or so a week of hard exercise (plus the time spent warming up, cooling down, and resting between the bouts of intense work) had proven to be as good as multiple hours of working out for achieving fitness. The short, intense workouts aided in weight loss, too, although Gibala hadn’t been studying that effect. “The rate of energy expenditure remains higher longer into recovery” after brief, high-intensity exercise than after longer, easier workouts, Gibala says. Other researchers have found that similar, intense, brief sessions of exercise improve cardiac health, even among people with heart disease.
There’s a catch, though. Those six minutes, if they’re to be effective, must hurt. “We describe it as an ‘all-out’ effort,” Gibala says. You’ll be straying “well out of your comfort zone.” That level of discomfort makes some activities better-suited to intense training than others. “We haven’t studied runners,” Gibala says. The pounding involved in repeated sprinting could lead to injuries, depending on a runner’s experience and stride mechanics. But cycling and swimming work well. “I’m a terrible swimmer,” Gibala says, “so every session for me is intense, just because my technique is so awful.”
Meanwhile, his lab is studying whether people could telescope their workouts into even less time. Could a single, two- to three-minute bout of intense exercise confer the same endurance and health benefits as those six minutes of multiple intervals? Gibala is hopeful. “I’m 41, with two young children,” he says. “I don’t have time to go out and exercise for hours.” The results should be available this fall.
The Phys Ed column will appear here in Well every Wednesday and also in print once a month, in the Sunday magazine. In it, Gretchen Reynolds, who is working on a book about the frontiers of fitness, will write about what the latest science can tell us about how to make ourselves stronger, more flexible, less prone to pain and generally fitter and healthier. We want to hear what you think, so stay tuned and offer your comments and questions.
Saturday 090627
Workout
"WOW"
Work on Weakness!
Burpees and running for the big man!
Congrats to DJ! He set a new TF record of 10:08 for "Helen"! Awesome work considering the extra 30M or so he ran per round.
Friday 090626
KM while on vacation
8 lbs of "food"
Workout:
Pull-up ladder!
Do 1 pull-up the first minute, 2, the second, 3 the third. Continue until you can not complete the required number of pull-ups for the given minute.
Example: I did 10 pull-ups during the 10th minute but could not make 11 during the 11th minute.
Upon failure, rest 3 minutes.
Then Push-up ladder. Very same concept. Doesn't that sound fun?
Compare to:
TITANFIT: Thursday 090219
Thusday 090625
Workout
For time:
5 rounds of - The Big Brown Bear
15 - 135 lbs DL
12 - 135 lbs Hang Power Clean
9 - 135 lbs Front Squat
6 - 135 lbs Push Jerk
Compare to:
TITANFIT: Sunday 080706
Wednesday 090624
Based on recovery, we are pushing the "Bear" back a day. Today we will Dead Lift and tomorrow we will poke the "Bear"
Workout
Deadlift
85% of 1RM x2 x5
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