Dutch Lowy

So, like many of you, i spend way too much time watching videos of movement and training. I stumbled across this one the other day and had to share it. It is rare that you find slow motion videos of world class lifters. I know Iron Maiden has alot but to be honest, Americans just aren’t world class yet… So here is the video and as an added benefit these guys are in my weight class so that give me a bit of motivation.

Oh yea, you think these guys have coaches, and do you think they would be decent competitive Crossfiters??

I also want to highlight this post for those of you with weak hamstrings/posterior chains.
http://www.defrancostraining.com/index.php

Don’t forget to get signed up for the Black Box Summit. April 24-25 at Catalyst Athletcis in Sunnyvale CA.

I had the pleasure of having a video conference call with a couple hard chargers focused on the CF games this year which got me thinking about a couple topics. (which was super fucking cool by the way). One of which is Hard work. A bit of our discussion focused around things i would consider minutia. Not unimportant but certainly not things that will swing their training to a new level. Things such as supplements, and micromanaging diet. Their argument was that if they can dial in all these little things they will add up to bigger gains in the long runs. This may be true but essentially we can cancel out most of these gains by missing a night of sleep or slipping up at a meal somewhere down the road. Then you are back to the drawing board.

My advice to them and to anyone wanting to improve their fitness specifically but quite honestly this applies to just about everything you can think of was to just work HARDER! Not work More or differently (provided you have decent programming) but harder. Put more weight on the barbell, rest less in a conditioning workout and keep your mind focused.
This can actually go past just the workouts and creep into recovery. I know many of you (you know who you are) show up at the gym on your “rest” day and end up working on “skills” and wonder why the next couple workouts are shitty, i mean after all you took a rest day right?
Rest means more than not starting a clock. It means sleeping, eating and not doing anything. Maybe a little bit of stretching and soft tissue work but with some of you, allowing even that will end up being pretty stressful. So, work harder at resting as well. Be smart and focus on your effort not the balance of saturated vs unsaturated fat in your diet…

Don’t forget to get signed up for the Black Box Summit. April 24-25 at Catalyst Athletcis in Sunnyvale CA.

Note:
It is important to understand that all bodies are different and all injuries are different. My reason for these posts is to possibly open you eyes to alternative ideas for therapy. It is NOT to diagnose YOUR injuries. If you have similar pains, you should talk to a professional to verify that there is not further damage and you will not be causing permanent injury by treating it in some way.
Crossfit has a huge potential for injury, as it does for amazing results. Be smart with your training and you will last longer as an athlete and a human.

The problem:

I have not had any issues personally but just like the other injuries i have seen this come up over and over.  I have seen it mainly come up from massive amounts of pullups.  I think it is a factor of the constant downward jolt you get from doing butterfly (not a good idea unless competing) and the same jolt that a newbie gets when learning he kipping pullup.  I think this ends up being a purely tendonitis (overuse) issue.

The fix:

Along with ice and ice massage which i forgot to mention in the knee post.  Ice massage is helpful for just about any injury you can think of so don’t forget about it.  I think take a couple weeks off pullups can heal this.  Also try massage and trigger point work.  After 2 weeks off be smart about reintegrating pullups into your program.  Sorry for the lack of details here but i think it is a pretty simple injury to fix so don’t over think it.

Advances in technology are amazing recently. Want to have a face to face conversation with people in different parts of the country? Want to discuss topics important to you as a crossfitter/fitness enthusiast/business owner?
Check out what a friend of mine has put together. http://www.athletesforum.net/facetoface/
It is very cool technology, and really is kinda fun.

Sunday is the second shot at it and you are lucky to have Brian of Potomac Crossfit to discuss how he got over 300 clients and 14 coaches involved in his affiliate in just over 1 year. Well worth the investment in my opinion.

Thats it. What do you look for in a coach?

www.blackboxsummit.net

i don’t think you have softened mentally. i think your focus has changed and you have developed a new set of mental skills. kind of the way that the development of strength and metcon compete with each other in the physical domain, the challenge of remaining calm and focused in the face of a potentially crushing situation (o-lifting) and pushing yourself past the pain (cf) compete with each other in the mental domain.  they are two different sets of mental skills.

most sports can be broken into one of two categories: skill or effort.  performance in gymnastics is almost entirely reliant on skill. performance in running/powerlifting is mainly effort–who wants it more on a given day. a few sports blend the two–o-lifting, wrestling come to mind.  cf is also a blend but once you have the stable of basic skills under your belt (of which o-lifting is probably the most complex), it is basically who can and will suck it up and deal with the most pain.  that was especially noticable at the games this past year.

personally, i think there is enough stuff in life that we just have to “deal with” and “get through” and a workout/situation that mimics that does not build mental toughness, it is just a beat down (my opinion).  sometimes you might need to do it just to prove to yourself that you can, but generally…not so much.  on the other hand i see real value in establishing the mental qualities of consistency, equanimity, relaxed focused and skillful conduct in the face of huge odds and intimidating tasks that oly’s and other skill related endeavor’s require.  the question becomes not “can you try harder?”, but ”can you behave well/perform complex tasks under intense pressure?”  so bottom line is, i don’t see your issue as a lack of toughness, i see it as a change of focus and an enhanced set of mental skills in a new arena.  if you have lost some “toughness”, is that really a bad thing in light of what you have gained in other areas? is that a trade off you are willing to make?

Side not:
I wrote this before my current injury but i think it still has tons of value, so enjoy and spend a bit of time reflecting on yourself and your training.

The next Black Box Summit will be April 24-25th at Catalyst Athletics.  You can find more information and details on speakers and topics at the above BBS website.

This is exciting because its real.  The event will include some of the best coaches and athletes in and around the Crossfit Community.  Among them are:

James Fitzgerald

Robb Wolf

Greg Everett

Michael Rutherford

Aimee Anaya

Nicki Violetti

Jeremy Thiel

Cary Kepler

and Me.

The event is largely driven by the Strength and Conditioning and Crossfit affiliates.  We are here to give you what you want in a format that is fun and inspiring.  There is going to a lot of interaction between attendees and presenters.  This allows attendees to dig into the subjects they are interested in.  The experts cover everything from business to coaching to training.  It is an event not to be missed!

See ya there,

Dutch

Note:
It is important to understand that all bodies are different and all injuries are different. My reason for these posts is to possibly open you eyes to alternative ideas for therapy. It is NOT to diagnose YOUR injuries. If you have similar pains, you should talk to a professional to verify that there is not further damage and you will not be causing permanent injury by treating it in some way.
Crossfit has a huge potential for injury, as it does for amazing results. Be smart with your training and you will last longer as an athlete and a human.

The problem:

As i get older i am challenged by not only motivation for training but also the challenges associated with aged cells and the fact that they are less willing to do what i want them to do.  Specifically here i am talking about my shoulder.  A very complex joint with many articulations and muscles controlling it.  As is my nature, i like to simplify things as much as possible.  My specific issue was a sharp pain in the anterior(front) portion of my shoulder just above the arm pit.  It hurt when i snatched and jerked.  It was a sharp pain and really hindering my training.

The fix

I was a little jammed up by this one for a while like the knees.  It started to make sense after a visit to a local massage therapist who decided that i had tight lats and that was contributing to the malfunction in my shoulder.  This makes sense with the huge volume of pullups in crossfit.  Your lats are your pullups muscles.  In an effort to simplify this we will consider 3 main muscles of the sholder.  First is the Deltoid, the guy that covers the shoulder joint.  The one that is superficial  (outside) to all the other shoulder muscles and joints.  The latissimus dorsi (lats) are under your arm pit and spread across your back like wings.  They attach to your arm bone just outside the shoulder joint and pull the arm down (think pullup or row).  The pectoralis is the third one i will talk about.  It also attaches to the arm just outside the shoulder joint.  It pulls the arm and shoulder forward (think push up or bench press).  Now remember this is highly simplified.

After my visit to the massage therapist i started with stretching of the chest and lats.  The chest stretch was the traditional “door stretch”  think about placing the forearm against the door frame and turning away from the frame.  This is coupled with rolling with a lacrosse ball or trigger point ball.  I do it against the wall rolling from my sternum to my shoulder joint (you shouldn’t really roll across joints).  I would stretch my lats by putting one hand on the pullup bar with feet still on the ground, or a box and relaxing into a stretch.  Don’t force any of this.  You can also play with contract and relax stretching to get a bit deeper.  For those of you with shoulder flexibility issues this should help with the overhead position.  My friend Darin has some good thoughts on this but i will let him explain them later.  I also rolled the lats pretty hard core by using the wall and ball again.  This time standing with my shoulder to the wall and arm by my ear like an overhead squat and the ball pressed against the lats under the armpit.  Very painful but very effective.

I coupled this with some shoulder prehab work both before and after workouts.  I did the traditional shoulder raises, flys and kick backs but with super light weight (nothing over 2 kg).  This helped get my shoulders warm and ready to move each day.  I also cut my volume of pullups since i think this was part of the malfunction.  Too much of anything can be a bad thing so be careful with massive amounts of pullups if you have super tight shoulders.

Note:
It is important to understand that all bodies are different and all injuries are different. My reason for these posts is to possibly open you eyes to alternative ideas for therapy. It is NOT to diagnose YOUR injuries. If you have similar pains, you should talk to a professional to verify that there is not further damage and you will not be causing permanent injury by treating it in some way.
Crossfit has a huge potential for injury, as it does for amazing results. Be smart with your training and you will last longer as an athlete and a human.

The problem

Over a year ago i attempted and completed 15 deadlifts at 2x bodyweight.  This is where my hate for deadlifts exploded.  About 12 deadlifts in, i felt a sharp cooling feeling splash across my back.  At the moment is wasn’t super painful (that would come later) it felt really strange.  Obviously i had to finish….  You can see the video here and i think you will be able to tell when the injury happened.  Look closely.

As you can see i was immediately on the floor.  The rest of the day was miserable with sharp pain in my low back and even shooting numbness down my leg.  We went to the circus that night with the cert crew and i was absolutely miserable!!  For the next 3 months i was wrecked.  I had trouble sitting for long periods of time without shooting pain in my back.  i also couldn’t hinge at the hips without my toes on my right foot going numb.  Deadlifts were out of the question for a good 3-5 months but surprisingly i was able to clean and snatch pretty heavy about a month out from the injury.  Well, i had to, i was spending aot oftime in socal.  You all know you can’t hang out down there without heading to Coach B’s right??

The Fix

I was actually in San Fransisco the week after the injury which was lucky because Kelly Starett lives out there and was happy to give me some tips.  He had me squatting and pressing with light weights but full depth and perfect form.  He along with Adrian Bozman had me doing reverse hypers along with the squats and presses.  I was also stretching and rolling pretty hard core on my quads.  This helped loosen the pressure on my back from the constant old man forward tilt i had.

Once i got home it was time to start training pretty hard for the Games 2009.  I was still having issues with numbness in my leg and toes so i figured it had to do with some flexibility issues.  I found a pilates instructor, because it is good shit, and i worked with her for 6 weeks on basic flexibility and a bit of core strength.  It really helped with recovery as well as got me back to a comfortable place with my back.  I would attribute much of the success i had with recovery to the fact that i didn’t go out and try to rush the recovery.  I took my time and listened to my body.  I swallowed my pride many time because i was on the road most of the time after the injury and just watched alot of workouts.

I am currently free from all pain and numbness although my back still tightens up a bit.  I am pretty sure my super tight quads were part of the reason for the injury in the first place, along with the knee issues i had around the same time.  Crazy how its all connected huh??