Dutch Lowy

Last week I had the unique pleasure of seeing and standing at the finish line of the Boston marathon. I was so inspired that I decided to qualify for next years Boston marathon. Wish me luck!

So the last two days I have spent traveling a bit and got the chance to check out a couple drastically different situations.  Here they are let me know what you think and what you can do to spread the word.

First situation is a very well equipped crossfit gym.  Unfortunately you are not always allowed to do box jumps or drop weights due the the performances going on downstairs. Is it still crossfit?  Fuck yea work with what you got.

Situation number 2: take a very well equipped traditional gym add 3 platforms bumpers and mirrors on 3 sides and Linda and what do you have? Is that crossfit? Fuck yea at least the early morning crew, and I mean early!  Add in a bunch of motivated hard chargers and you certainly have crossfit.

Situation 3: out yourself in the middle of a globo gym and try to do Nicole…dodge the bicep curls, crunches, flys and trampoline class.  Seriously! And what do you have ? Crossfit!

I will probably have more to say about each of these locations later this week.  If you know where I am talking about in each situation post it here.

My heart goes out to you renegade crossfitters.  Keep up the good fight. It will pay off.

Hey everyone!

Let me know what you think of the new blog.  I am forever greatful to Ryan for all his hard work on this.  Thank you Ryan!

Let me know what ya’ll think about it and what you want to hear about next.

This is the final segment from my chat with Max. Enjoy and feel free to direct any more questions this way. I may just have to talk to John about CF Football soon…

Can you give us some insight into Crossfit Football?
It takes the idea of Crossfit and takes it to a heavier domain. It is a different modality and can work for many more things. Like i was saying about the energy systems and working strength etc. It is kind of specific but there is definitely going to be spill over to other disciplines,
It takes Crossfit into the multi planer dimension, i like turning and twisting. John(Welbourn) likes the change of directions. We will not have different workouts for different positions. Its like the CF games in that i need to do the same stuff as you but then i have my strengths.
It will be periodized for the year with pre and post season stuff.
Rip is helping out with the starting strength.

The certification will have alot of programming and alot of hard work. We have some good criteria for coaching as well. I see it opening the door for the old school programs. We pulled it into Cal St Fullerton and it worked.
Alot of coaches are scared of rhabdo but its like complaining about your sciatica. Nobody really even knows what it is or if they have it.

If it doesn’t have a clean, its not a workout.

Reading List
Journals:
Crosfit Journal
Milo (number one strength journal in the world)
NSCA scientific research. It is like the sunday funnies but they have some cool shit sometimes. power etc…
Diet:
Zone
Good Calories Bad Calories
The Makers Diet
Mediteranean Diet
Paleo diet

Training:
Russian, Bulgarian manuals translated
High Power Plyometrics (any books on plyo)
Training for Speed Agility and Quickness. Dr. Brown
Weightlifting Encyclopedia
Prescription for Natural Cures BalchMD

The more you can read the better, especially the stuff you disagree with so you can argue it better.

Holy Crap! There is some amazing information in this section. If any of this breeds new questions please post them here and i will either get back in touch with Max or he might answer them right here. Pass this along to your friends, its like gold for trainers!

Ok, enough about Max the man, tell me about Max the genius… What goes through your head when you are programming?

There is a periodization depending on specificity for the o-lifting and CFgames wod. Depending on the season. Right now the o-lifters are training for collegiate nationals.

For the games there is a bit of tapering and you have to treat it like a fighter. They still spar going into competition to keep their face tough. Crossfitters need the same exposure.
I like training the energy pathways. short for explosive, medium squatting, deadlifting and then some kind of metcon.

I like heavy loading and the overload principle.
You see it from the people that walked the wagon trail. I imagine the first 30-90 days were terrible then something happened and they adapted. Then the mountains came up and they were able to continue to travel. Something happened to allow them to adapt.
You have to understand there is trouble when you run the car in red all the time.
Like a pullup program where you build the volume weekly. The overload principle works.
It helps when programming to determine an overall goal but it can change as time progresses.
I come from the old school of crossfit where we did 3 on 1 off where you use one named wod per section then something highly skilled followed by some o-lifting. That way you have alot of named wods and constant evaluation. We like using 5×3’s before hand then doing a name brand wod.
I like 0-lifting 2-3 times a week. You can still get conditioning with the lifts.
Using 8×2 on the minute is awesome.
I like random intervals like 100 as fast as possible as well as sprint intervals.
When i look at programs i try to explain that it has to come down to the overall agenda and you have to understand that. There has to be a quantitative value to work towards.
Everyday you leave CF with a stamp, you accomplished something. Thats what i really like about crossfit and the community it breeds.

What WOD do you do?
I do the olifting wod as well as some other stupid stuff. I like to watch what is missing and see what needs to be supplemented. I try to go for some kind of year long overview.

Give me a little more about the warm ups you prescribe.
I like gymnastics warm up combined with the bar warm up.
I have an agenda going into the warm up.
For example nobody could do double unders so we stole from buddy lee and sure as shit 3 months later people were doing double unders.
Nothing is better than seeing a grown person get mad at the jump rope and look like they want to cry. Throwing the rope and cursing.
The warm up is a good way to stay focused on your skills.
I am going to bring back active warms for our CF wods. I like movement and using different things in the warm up.

Tell me a little about what is going on down there at Balboa.
In the newport area you get alot of people that like the one on one but i think the group works better.
Nobody is competitive till you’re losing. (that should be on a t-shirt)
Especially the high level athletes like the one on one attention but i also noticed that a group environment makes you work harder.
We are doing 2 weeks where we are doing just skill stuff.
They don’t realize all i have for them is 9 (Actually 21) exercises and i give them to you all the time but in different ways.
All of my clients are my kids and i don’t like to leave them. I like to be a part of everything they do. It bums me out when they get stuff and i wasn’t there to see it.

I think the industry misses the point that in the gym it is alot freer environment where you have to be there for the individuals.
I think a true gym is like a resort where we cater to your needs and I think people need individual attention.
I see us having 150-200 clients in our new space. I won’t allow classes to get over 8 people or i will have 2 or three coaches depending on the numbers in class. Its like babysitting. These people need the care i have for them.
I know more about my clients than they know about me. You have to remember you are asking someone to change their life.

I have started doing more assessment stuff in the beginning to build value. I like having baseline assessment over a broad range ex (jackie, max deadlift). This way at least they have a way of testing in the future.

We are building this type of assessment for CF football. maybe a 2 week assessment.
I think everyone should have an estimated goal as the beginning of the program…

I am going to break this section here and give you the last part about CF Football tomorrow as well as Max’s suggested reading list.

Interested in talking about any or this stuff? Come to Crossfit South Brooklyn for my trainer development seminar.

Max is one of the few people that i would trust to coach me. I think he gets it. He is also an amazing person and constantly in pursuit of knowledge. I feel obligated to introduce him to you so you know a little bit more about him and why he got into fitness. This is Part one of a two part series. Part two is juicy so you won’t want to miss it.

What is your Fitness Background?
My fitness life started at 8 years old. I was strong for a little kid. My brother was 8 years older and did body weight functional stuff as well as some of the body building stuff in the garage. My Brother wanted to see how strong i was so I benched 75 pounds and got a hernia. I always played sports but soccer was my main sport.

In college i had a coach that made us do dumbbell thrusters, db cleans, manmakers etc.
If you weren’t working hard enough on the field you got pulled back to the weights.

After college i ran into some trouble so i came home and left it behind.
I started waiting tables and slipped and fell and tore my miniscus. They didn’t want to do surgery so i got a new doctor in LA.
It took 8 months to get the surgery and i became fat and out of shape ( i never had an issue with being fit). That is where i got into fitness. I got into it while i was rehabbing.
I was coaching soccer and was disgusted with being fat.
I wanted to be large so i started body building. I started to like the weights and really did high rep non functional movements but i really liked lifting heavy.
I started doing photo shoots and semi pro stuff.

I wanted to coach the kids the way i was coached.
I remember one day i was helping a buddy move. We were moving a couch andI had to put it down and decided i was out of shape. Even though i was doing two workouts a day, and 45 minutes of cardio.

I started talking to Skip a trainer at my gym and he said the olympic lifts will make you athletic.
I got into kettlebells and a little o lifting.
The first time i talked to coach b i was having trouble with my wrists, he told me to lose my 20 inch arms so i quit doing curls, and high rep pullups.

Between 2001-2002 i really got into crossfit.
The first workout i did at Santa Cruz. It was Frellen 8 rounds 800m run 15 thrusters, 15 pullups. Josh Everett and Keisha both did it with me. They finished well before me, although i kept up for the first couple rounds. I guess i took too long cause they started the seminar while i was still working out.
Keisha did pretty well. I have noticed 800 meterist adapt pretty well to crossfit once the muscle endurance catches up.

What pulled you towards the olympic lifts?
I really like the lifts and the athletics required for it.
We talked about the fight or Flight and the panic that sets in before cindy or murph. With workouts like this the clock doesn’t stop and the workout will be completed at some point.
With weights it either moves or it doesn’t. I like the fear that goes along with it.
Olympic lifting is more prestige and thats what got me. They are a group of Ronins. They are the outcasts and a dying breed. The idea of o-lifting is transfer of force. Everything we do is transfer of force. There is nothing more primal than throwing weight over head.

Tell us about your lifting career.
I qualified for nationals right out of the gate and finished 13 out of 13. The next year i was 8, then 5th.
For Bejing 2008 they changed the qualifications. One year out you have to get into the drug testing program. In every other sport they enroll you. In weightlifting they don’t enroll you. Nobody knew about the requirements. I was a little pissed cause i worked pretty hard. I felt bad for myself but then i think about Casey Burgener and what he went through was hard.
The focus needs to be shifted to the younger generations and we need to develop lifters younger. High school and middle school programs need to be developed like they do in the eastern block and China.

Why did you really get into training others?
As a coach i have been looking at the requirements of specific sports and geared training for that.
I coached at fullerton and irvine where i coached the golf team.
The real reason i trained was because i needed something to do between my own training.

What do you do and what do you recommend for warming up?
I used to do all the dynamic stuff and have bounced around quite a bit.
Now i do a bar warm up then get straight into 60-70%.
I like putting it on the athlete for warm up.

Ok, here is the deal… I talked to max last night for almost 2 hours and have some really cool stuff. The only downside is that as i was looking at it this morning, i found that it is a mess. Lots of short hand that i need to sort through. I am also going to break it into sections so i don’t have an epic 3 page post. Please be patient and i will try to get part one up today.
Thanks.
Dutch