Dutch Lowy

We will be announcing our newest program on Monday!  It will be a focused program with hands on coaching and community interaction.  Interested?

Stay tuned, we will post details on Monday!

Dutch

So i have had the time to sort through the responses to the questions posted in the survey.   I was thrilled to have 97 people complete the survey so far.  if you haven’t done so yet, i still want to hear from you so get with the program!

The first short answer question was:

• What are two(2) specific goals you want to accomplish in the next 3 months?

Best Answer:

It seems that overwhelmingly people want to get stronger.  There was a lot of coupling getting stronger in some capacity with either leaning out of dropping some weight.  I find this mildly interesting because as much as we want to believe that all people care about is performance, we are wrong.  People care how they look.  I get that and can’t blame you for it.  I have a vain side too.

Some of these goals were specific (back Squat 360 lbs and press 180lbs) which is a great way to set goals.  There is a very clear line.  You wither did it or didn’t.  I gave a 3 month window so there was a definite end date to the goal.

Some of you simply said get stronger and lean out.  How will you know if you accomplished this in the next three months?  What defines stronger?  How do you measure “leaning out?”  Next time you set goals try to think of numerical values.  it will be much easier to measure and keep you much more accountable to your goals.

I was surprised to see that there was not much talk of CF specific workouts.  Kinda makes ya wonder…

• How can I help you achieve these goals?

Best Answer: “By coming the New York and punching me in the Face.”  I think i know who this was but thought ya’ll would find it as entertaining as i did.

Majority answer here was keep writing your blog.  I think i have a distinct view on Fitness and health and can use this view to develop what I see as optimal fitness and health.  I think i will put a post together with more of my personal views but thank you all for the support.  It warms my heart to know that ya’ll actually enjoy what i write…;-)

I have to admit i was looking for a different answer here.  I thought the previous questions about goals would get you motivated to find a coach.  Yes, i have a coaching service but more than that it is important to be accountable for your goals.  As you will see in an upcoming post, i am personally failing at that.

This is a great time to mention an upcoming program that will address the goals of most of you.  It will be a coached program (results posted and feedback given on workouts, lifts etc.).  It will also cover a defined time period with overall program goals and more individual contact.  It will limit participants in order to assure quality.  It will also have the group feel so you will not only be accountable to me but you will have the added peer pressure which always makes things more fun!!

• I would like to hear more about these specific topics:

Best Answer: “Whatever you like to talk about – it’s your blog!”

TRUTH.

Again there was an overwhelming theme here.  Lifting and different thoughts on Programming.

I have to admit it is entertaining to me how obsessed people are with programming.  Everyone wants the magic bullet of programming.  Unfortunately there isn’t one.  many programs work, some better, some not so good but if you put max effort into one program, they will all work for a little while.  From what i can tell non of us are professional athletes so our lively hood doesn’t depend on performance therefore we can take this while fitness thing and make it a journey.  Try different things.  Keep what works, discard what doesn’t.  Luckily i have the luxury of using my clients as guinea pigs (i’m pretty sure they like it…) so i can test a couple programs at once.  If one specific program gives you better results, maybe its a good idea to stick with that one a little longer and vice versa  with programs that aren’t as effective.

I will however work on getting a list together of reading material i am currently working on.

Thank ya’ll again for getting involved and for your feedback.  Its really helpful to know there are people out there and they actually read what i write.  I will keep it up!!

New program coming soon!!  After getting a better feel for who you are, i think i have a better idea of how to help you out.  Stick around for the announcement of a new program coming this week!!

I got a question the other day that i posted below. It is good timing because i have been thinking about the same topic recently. I actually even made notes in my training log.
Thanks to Ben for giving me the needed push to get it out and on paper.

How strong can someone get without gaining a ton of body weight. I noticed in all of your oly lifting videos you remain under 155 pounds. If you gained 10 pounds, maybe you could snatch 15-20 more pounds. What is your method for putting weight on the bar without adding body weight (i.e. staying lean and being strong)?

First of all a bit of history: I have ranged between 145lbs (as a highs school senior, haven’t been there since graduating) and 160 lbs. Most recently i have been between 70 (154lbs) and 72 kg (158 lbs). Sorry, i have been a weightlifter for the last six months so kilos are easier for me.
I start with late high school because that is when i first got into serious training. I have never been too concerned with bodyweight, until i started weightlifting and chose the 69 kg (151 lbs) class. For the record, making weight has been among the most miserable things i have ever done. I would recommend anyone interested in their first meet to compete in a weight class that they are already in, instead of cutting weight.

It is commonly known in the weight training community that when you get bigger, while training, you get stronger. I have had personal experiences with coaches tell me that i should lift as a 77kg lifter. Their logic made sense as soon as i stepped on the platform at the American open 2009. I was almost a head taller than everyone else in my weightclass. If you think about this, the guys i competed against weighed the same but were a couple inches shorter. You see the advantage here? (they move the weight a shorter distance…).

Now, why is adding bodyweight going to make you stronger. A couple reasons. The first is obvious. You gain muscle mass and you should be stronger as your muscles grow. Muscle weighs more than fat so increased muscle mass means increased bodyweight. Second and a little more complicated is that intramuscular fat cushions the muscles and allows them to recover quicker as well as bear more load. Increasing intramuscular fat (think what you see on a well marbled steak) is a good thing for weightlifters. This IMF not only cushions the muscles during daily training but also gives a good source of energy to the local muscles.

I want to cover an important point that may come up. You don’t have to gain weight to get stronger. As i mentioned above, the added IMF helps with the fueling of muscles and recovery but is not necessary to getting stronger. If we take a look at some of the strongest people in the world per body mass, Olympic weightlifters. Lets take a look at the world of weightlifting for a moment. The 2008 olympic champion (Liao Hui CHN) in the 69kg class snatched 158 (347 lbs) kg and clean and jerked 190kg (418 lbs) and a total of 348 kg (765.5lbs). He won by a 10 kg (22lbs) margin. If we take a look at those numbers in regards to my numbers as you will see below, i am a little short of being competitive on the world stage. It also tells me something very interesting and that is that i can get stronger without gaining body mass. It is physiologically possible. Another interesting fact is Liao and the second place lifter in the Olympic games 2008, Vencelas Debaya (FRA), are both 168 cm. I had to google this but they are both 5 feet 6 inches tall. I am pushing 5’4″. For me this is also good news as i have the body mass that they do without the added challenge of lifting the wt 2 more inches.

What does all this comparison mean? Well, simply that i CAN get stronger without getting bigger. Ok, ill admit that at some point these guys may have been exposed to additional growth factors but i will not get into that subject. That is a personal choice that i don’t feel necessary for my goals.

Ok, i’ll get to the point. How did i get stronger without getting bigger. First a look at a couple of my numbers:
The first number will be from right around the CF games, either before or directly after.
The second number will be my current max as of Jan1, 2010.

Snatch:  92kg     105kg
Clean and Jerk:  120 kg     130 kg
Back Squat:   150 kg   156 kg
Front Squat:   130 kg   140 kg

While i don’t know exactly what my bodyweight was at the games, i suspect it was right around 72 kg.  I just hopped off the scale at a lean 70.9 kg.

Ok ya ready for my secret? Hard work!!! I simply shifted my focus from crossfit type workouts which are tons of volume at smaller intensities (not conducive to strength training) and started doing less overall volume (anywhere from 25- 100 reps a day at varying intensities but not below 70% of 1 RM) with higher intensity (% of 1 RM). I coupled this with smart nutrition. All too often i see people feel like they want to get stronger and therefore must gain weight. I’m not saying this isn’t effective or just flat out fun but if you are a crossfitter or a competitive weightlifter in your current class this just won’t work. As you gain bodyweight, your gymnastic movements will become tougher to perform.

What do i mean by smart nutrition? I was eating paleo (real food, that could have been alive today) and lots of it. The bigger balance of macronutrients were fat and protein while a smaller portion of my intake was carbs. This is in part what made it so hard to make weight at competition. Everyone i talked to about making weight said to just clean up my diet for the 2 weeks leading up the to competition and cut carbs if my weight was too high. This didn’t help much so i ended up doing some fluid manipulation which was absolutely miserable. We can get into that later.

I think it is quite possible for someone to achieve the same gains i have while maintaining their conditioning. I would however fight the notion that one could do it as quickly as i have by not focusing on weightlifting. A broad general and inclusive approach to fitness is not going to get you the results you want on the platform quickly.
So, am i telling you to quit crossfitting and only strength train for 5 months like i did? Not at all. I am simply telling you what i did and giving you the choice of how you want to go about achieving your goals. It is my belief that an effective strength and conditioning program will give you gains in both strength and conditioning, you just have to be patient and smart about your training.

This will have to be a two part post since i have a lot of info to analyze.  I am happy that many of you chose to help me out by answering these simple questions.

This is easy.  The overwhelming majority of ya’ll are Men.  As this makes it easy for me to relate to you, i was hoping for a heavier female presence.  For no reason other than things are usually more fun when women are around.  Its True…

Why would you skip this question??  It seems like the easiest one after question number 1 which you have a 50% chance of getting right.  Aside from the 1 person that skipped this question, most of ya’ll live in the US and unfortunately one 4 of you live in FW.  I look forward to meeting you and anyone else that wants to stop the DFW area.  Although i would suggest staying closer to FW.  We are just nicer over here…

This is a very interesting response field.  I was expecting a majority of ya’ll to be coaches either part time or full time.  Turns out almost 60% of you consider yourselves athletes.  Even looking at the “other” category i would consider most of you in the athlete category.  Apologies to the military/LEO community for not giving you a dedicated category.  I am glad to see that almost 20% of ya’ll are clients just interested in learning and possibly coaching someday.  These people are the best clients and i am thankful to have you stalking me…

My heart lies in the garage gym.  I remember a time when i never thought i could workout alone.  I liked the interaction with other people at the gym.  Recently (the last 5 years) i have embraced what can be achieved with a little alone time to try new things and fail.  Some people are cool with being that guy in the globo gym, its just not for me.  I also dig the small affiliate feel.  That is about as close to a family as you will get so cherish it while it is still small because it should be growing soon!

I will continue with my current writing habits.  I will also try to get some video of training up soon.  I must confess that it is a bit boring with my current physical limitations.  Here is the latest cinematic excellence…

This, above all other responses, really surprised me.  Maybe i’m just more critical than ya’ll but there are things i would change, but i guess thats up to me…  Thank you for the continued support!!  If you have any suggestions on how to go from good to excellent please let me know in the comments.

Lastly, if you have any additional comments please feel free to leave them in the comments.  I love hearing from everyone!!

I was chatting with a buddy the other day about nutrition and how far both of us have come in our journey.  He was talking about how his buddies thought he was crazy for eating the way he does (paleoish…i think i just created a new word.).  To me and many of you, that is normal so why the big surprise?

I think back even to right around the time i got deep into CF and think about my food choices back then and cringe.  At my first cert i bought a loaf of bread, peanut butter and jelly and brought it to the cert.  I didn’t understand till day 2 why people were looking at me funny at lunch time.  It was much more clear to me as i started to play with nutrient percentages and food quality that nutrition was important.  I know feel that it is 70%+ to achieving your weightloss/heath and longevity goals, but what does it do for performance?

Here is where we get a bit more confusing.  It really depends on what you want to get out of yourself.  Largely i think that you can sustain a pretty high performance while on a low carb paleo diet. I did pretty well as a weightlifter while on a low carb paleo diet.  No supplements at all.  The only challenge there was cutting weight.  Unfortunately i couldn’t simply cut carbs the last couple weeks and lose the weight but that is another story all together…

On the other hand, as a college handball player, full time gym owner, full time student and recreational exerciser (CF and biking to school) i had some pretty serious fueling issues.  I would feel fine all day and when it came time to play handball, i was flat and out of energy.  This is when post workout nutrition made its leap into my life.  I was a pretty lean guy with a high activity level and i was suffering with a loss of energy due to depletion of glycogen in the muscle.  I was able to beat that thanks to Robb Wolf and now have that as a tool to use if other s run into the same issue.

Here is why i would not be concerned with it if you are just doing CF.  My situation was extreme.  I was ON all day, moving, riding, training and playing so fueling was a huge issue.  I had to have energy to make it through the day.  Adding a PWO meal allowed my body to replenish the glycogen stores and recover quicker.  Why is this wrong for most of the CF population?  Well, its likely that you have plenty of stores in place already.  Your body is a magnificent machine and really efficient at what it does so if it has excess energy (fat)lying around it will use this in the absence of other fuel (glucose).  If, however, you are super lean AND running into fueling issues during or after workouts, or have trouble recovering after highly intense workouts you may need to look into some post workout nutrition stuff.

To make this as simple as possible, just grab a piece of fruit or a sweet potato as soon as you can after a workout.  If the workout was horrible enough, grab two pieces of fruit.  remember this is for the super lean WITH fueling issues.  If you recover fine and feel great all day without this PWO meal then don’t sweat it.  If you want details check in with Robb or Melissa.  They geek out on this stuff.  Its not really my specialty but i get questions about it all the time so i just wanted to let you know where i stand.

As Bill would say, my twitter sized summary:

If it was alive, Eat it!

So the last attempt at a survey went horribly wrong.  I have come up with an alternate and am pretty happy with it, although it would have been nice to get the embedded one to work on my site.  Please take the time to give me your feedback.  There are 9 questions of which you will only have to use your functioning brain for three (3).

Click here to take survey

Hey guys, quick update for you.

The upcoming Athletes Forum with guest Darin Deaton of CF Fort Worth and Riata Therapy will be April 29th.  Its not something you want to miss.  The topics will cover:

Hiearchy of importance of introducing a new client/athlete to CF.  To include:
Mobility screen/assessment
Mobility Program
Strength Program
Importance of Agonist vs Antagonist
Adjusted Volume/Intensity
Importance of Recovery

Don’t miss it if you enjoy a bit more of the science behind what we do and why.