Saturday, April 20, 2013

Some issues I'm having

I think my feet are getting smaller. But actually. Recently I have noticed that when I'm rowing on an erg, especially at a high stroke rate, that my feet start to slide a little bit out of my Vibram FiveFingers (yea, I'm one of those guys that wears toe shoes). Then today, I was squatting and when I was getting close to max effort weights, I was sliding in my shoes again on my way up, making it a lot more difficult to squat. I have never heard of people's feet shrinking, at least this early in life. One of my friends suggested it might be from the fact that I'm exercising more than I used to, but that doesn't make sense to me. I mean I would run at least 30 miles a week last year, so I was still being incredibly active, I just wasn't weight training. Plus, I have high arches and since I'm in minimalist footwear, my arch should compress and lower thus lengthening my feet. I really have no idea what the cause of this is, but it is starting to freak me out. Plus, I really don't want to have to go and buy another pair of shoes while I have a perfectly good pair that I've had for a while now.

IF ANYONE KNOWS WHY MY FEET ARE SHRINKING, PLEASE INFORM ME!!!


Another thing that has been happening is that I've recently been stalling out a little bit on my squat, and to a certain extent, my deadlift as well. I am still increasing my capacity at submaximal loads, but I seem to be stalling out and not being able to increase or sometimes even maintain near maximal loads. For example, I recently did a squat workout of 6x2 at 95% of my 1RM, and I could only get through 3 sets before having to drop to 90%, and then even then, that was still quite tough, tougher than I thought it should have, especially because the 1RM is over a month old. I understand that the body needs to be stressed in order to adapt, and adaptation is the key when exercising, but I am starting to feel that I can't even stress my body as much as it needs to in order to adapt.
I'm not having as much trouble with my deadlift as with my squat, I really just have days where I'm feeling really good and can pull a lot, and then there are days where I can barely pull any weight (relatively) at all. For example, the other day, I set a new rep record at 82% of my 1RM, but I had trouble pulling at 86%, it's been really weird for me,

This has been incredibly frustrating for me because my focus is on gaining strength, and in 2/4 exercises that I focus on in strength, I'm barely able to see any gains. Even more frustrating is that on the overhead press and close grip bench press, I am seeing gains at a similar rate to when I first started lifting. That shouldn't be happening at all; when someone just starts lifting, there is so much inexperience that a person can make gains at every workout just because they are so behind where their body can be, but with me, I shouldn't be making gains like this, I mean I'm setting either a rep record or weight record every single workout. Yes, it is quite the confidence booster to keep me going, but I am almost in shock at the gains I'm making there, and then complete lack of gains in my squat and deadlift.

If anyone has any advice for how I can continue to increase my strength numbers since it seems I'm stalling out a little, that'd be great. I know that I don't have too much time left this semester (and then I'll be at camp, so I'm not exactly sure what I'll be able to do while I'm there) and then when I get back to school in the fall I'm going to commit to Wendler, but until then, the only thing I can think of is just increasing my capacity at submaximal loads and hope that can translate.

Monday, April 15, 2013

Finding a new and informed plan

After a great experience at CrossFit Haven and seeing how they programmed as well as the community, there were a few things I wanted to do when I got back to school. I wanted to try and work  out as much with the club at school as possible to emulate that community feel, and I wanted to get stronger. My desire for strength was a different desire than before. Before, I just wanted to get stronger for the sake of being stronger as well as some aesthetic desire. Now, it is completely different. I wanted to get stronger because that was the main limiting factor in my MetCons, I wasn't strong enough to do workouts as prescribed, and when I could, I didn't have the muscular strength and endurance to maintain a high intensity throughout; rarely was it that I was gassed in workouts, it was more that my muscles were gassed.
Now I began a journey of focusing even more on strength, although I didn't really know how to. When you want to get strong, who do you turn to? The Powerlifters! I searched the internet tirelessly for different powerlifting programs or strength programs trying to find one that was both simple and effective. I eventually found Jim Wendler's 5-3-1 program which has you work off of percentages of your 1 rep max. Unfortunately, I found this at a terrible timing. One cycle is a month, but I found it 2 weeks before spring break where I would be going to Panama City and wouldn't be able to lift at all for the week, so I wouldn't be able to start the cycle then. When I got back, there was a little less than 2 months left of school, and that isn't enough to see enough gains; based on everything I read, you want to do at least 3 cycles to start seeing real gains. So now I couldn't do Wendler's 5-3-1, so I didn't know what to do.
Another issue I came upon was the issue of weight and body composition. Like the majority of people, I'm not completely satisfied with my body composition, even though I'm fine with my weight. However, also from everything I read, in order to gain strength, it helps a lot to add on weight. The problem I was facing with that was that I had been trying to eat cleaner and with that, my weight was slowly dropping, but I now theoretically needed to gain weight. Do I sacrifice my diet to gain weight and gain strength or do I maintain my cleaner eating and hope that my programming that I was using would be enough to maintain strength gains? I'm not sure if I made the correct decision long term, but I decided to dirty up my eating a little bit, in hopes to maybe gain some weight and increase my strength. I haven't weighed myself since I have been at school, so I don't know if my weight has gone up, but I have been getting stronger.
For my programming, I decided to change it up a little bit. I am now squatting Mondays, strict press Tuesdays, deadlifts Wednesdays, close grip bench press (due to it translating better to the overhead press) Thursday, pull ups for strength followed by a heavy MetCon Friday, Saturday has either another heavy MetCon or a benchmark/hero wod, and then recovery swimming Sundays (Monday-Thursday also include MetCons after the strength). I have also adopted a little bit of Wendler in that I am now generally going at slightly lower weights and higher reps while also maxing out for reps on the last set of each workout. For the most part, it has been working.

Here I am now, with a slightly dirtier diet and caring a little less about what I eat (I like to think I'm still not eating crap, I'm just not being as strict), and trying my own modification based on the time restraints I have to do all I can to get strong without completely ignoring my conditioning. But hey, at least I know basically what it is I want to do now, so at least I have a plan.
And when I get back to school in the fall, I'm going to do Wendler 5-3-1 the entire school year. I'm pretty sure I'll still need to get stronger, and hopefully that will help.

Gotta love having a desired plan, realizing all of the logistical issues, and then creating a whole new plan that may or may not work out.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

What winter break taught that will last forever

Normally when people are on breaks from school, they just use it as a mental break to relax and do whatever it is that they want to do. I didn't do anything like that. Yes, I did go home; Yes, I did see friends and enjoy myself, but winter break wasn't truly a mental break. I was taking a class online which took up more time than I thought it would, but I still did have time for myself.

My winter break consisted of doing work for my class, studying for my personal trainer certification exam, hanging out, and trying something completely knew, going to an actual CrossFit box (for those who don't know, for some reason CrossFit gyms are called boxes instead of gyms) (shout out to CrossFit Haven in Glenview IL, it's a great place to work out and learn, great people, great time).

My class was Motor Control and Learning, just a class that I'm required to take.
For my certification, maybe it was because when I'm bored I look up things about fitness and working out, or the fact that I'm a Kinesiology major, but the exam didn't seem to be too hard for me, then again I would have felt quite embarrassed had I not passed, so I probably ended up spending too much time studying for it. In the end, I did pass though which was good.

What I really learned though during this break, was about CrossFit (I don't mean for this blog to be only about CrossFit, it just happens to be what I do, however there are certainly merits to a lot of other strength and conditioning programs, it really just all depends on your goals and desires). There is so much you can learn online, but then actually being a part of a box is completely different. Ask most crossfitters that work out at a box what their favorite part of crossfit is, and I guarantee one of the top 3 things is the community; the community is something you really can't learn about online or understand if you're working out in your garage or at a globo gym, it's something that has to be experienced. The community is working out with like-minded people, working out with people who have similar goals to yours, it's something that can't really be put into words no matter how hard people try to do so. However, for me, after experiencing this, if even for only a month, it helped solidify for me why I want to keep CrossFit in my life for the all of the foreseeable future, both hoping to join a box full time after college, but also doing CrossFit on my own.
More of a side note, but I also learned different ways of programming and ideas of combining exercises for different time domains. I couldn't imagine some of the workouts that we ended up doing.

In the end though, I ended up learning how I now know what I want to keep in my life for the rest of my life, and I learned something about CrossFit that I couldn't really imagine until experiencing it. I'm glad I was home during the winter, and I'm glad I have something checked off for things I want to do for the rest of my life.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Why I want to do what I want to do

A lot of my friends don't really know what they want to do with their lives, a lot don't even have their majors decided, but that makes a lot of sense...I mean it's my first year in college, there is no need for them to have it all figured out. But then that creates the question, how do I know what I want to do is what I want to do, and why do I know so early?

To answer that, I have to really start, oh, probably 8th grade. I suffered my first sports related injury then. I was playing baseball in the house league and my team was in the world series. It was the second game in the best of 3 series, and we had already lost the first. It must have been either the first or second inning and I was up, and I hit a ball hard to the outfield, definitely something I could turn into a double. I slide into 2nd base feet first and make it safe easily, however I knew right away that something was wrong. My right thumb was in terrible pain. It must have come down and hit the ground too hard, a complete freak accident. I called time, had my coach come over and told him that I knew my thumb was broken. Unfortunately, 2 of our players had already left for their respective summer camps, so we only had 10 players left on the team. My coach decided that were just gonna try and get me back to the dugout asap to figure things out. I end up stealing third on a pass ball, and do the same thing going home, and I end up scoring. Next I grab an icepack and do all I can to numb my thumb. One of my teammate's parents was a nurse and did a quick check on where there was pain and how much and what not. She basically said that as long as I numb it up, and take some ibuprofen (which she happened to have) that I most likely wouldn't do more damage to it by playing (it was my throwing hand, not my glove hand). I kept playing, did well, then later found out it was actually broken pretty badly and was lucky I didn't do more damage.

Fast forward to sophomore year swimming. The day before my birthday we were doing a dryland workout, essentially just a lot of different circuit work, and during one of the sets of clapping push ups I felt a tweak in my shoulder. I sat out the rest of dryland and thought I might be better once I was in the pool. My first stroke in the pool proved me very wrong as I could barely do it. I ended up sitting out the rest of the season for some unknown and undiagnosed injury. I literally had 4 X-rays and 3 different mri's within the next 2 years since it was a pretty constant injury and nothing was ever shown to be wrong. I was in physical therapy to strengthen up my shoulder, but I was still in some level of pain really until last year where one day I just realized that I wasn't in any pain.

Sophomore year also, I hurt my knee in marching band, my doctor believes that it was a viral infection of the bursae because the symptoms aligned with bursitis, however the blood test was negative for bacterial and then one day that pain went away. My first day back in gym after that, I sprained my ankle playing basketball. Total freak accident, I jump up for a rebound and land on someone's foot and sprain it.

Then, like I mentioned earlier, last year when I was running a 10K, I suffered a stress fracture in my 3rd metatarsal of my right foot.

Basically, I have not had a good injury history. (honestly, that's just a small chunk of it all. I have had so many tweaks and bumps over the years, it's hard to remember them all. In fact, my mom nicknames the radiology department of the hospital by me after me because I was there so often).

One might ask then, "why not be a physical therapist? you've had so many injuries, you can help others rehab their own". That would make sense, except why would I want to be reactive when I could be proactive? I think a reason for a lot of injuries that people sustain are because they simply aren't strong enough, or flexible, or have the right level of conditioning. I want to train people to help them to not only be more fit, but also for those who are active, I want to help reduce their probability of sustaining an injury.
Now don't let that fool you into thinking that I don't want to help people get more fit. I am also very interested in that. I mean I have seen myself grow and it amazes me how some hard work can work so much (note: I still have a long way to go, I was just starting from nowhere), and I actually find joy in seeing people go do active for the first time. I mean everyone knows that America has health issues, and if I can even make a little dent in that, that'd be phenomenal.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

The next beginning of my journey

As you hopefully read in the last post, seeing that there was a CrossFit club beginning on campus really changed everything for me. I had heard of CrossFit and I had seen the Games which looked incredible, but I didn't really know how to apply it to myself. Then again, I didn't try too hard either to figure out how. Then, one day I decided to go to one of the workouts. Luckily, I had already done some of the exercises incorporated so that when I got to my first workout, I at least knew how to do everything, I just didn't know how hard it would be. My first workout was 5x5 of deadlifts working up to something heavy followed up by Fran. For those who don't know what Fran is, it is a deceptively terrible workout. It is 21-15-9 of thrusters at 95lbs and pull ups, oh, and you do that as fast as you can. Luckily I was spared and only did it at 45lbs, and since I couldn't do any pull ups, I did jumping pull ups. If anyone says that is easy, then go ahead and try the regular Fran.

After that workout, I was hooked. CrossFit was what I wanted to do, I just didn't really know how to do it. That was when I did what I do whenever I find something new and awesome. I dedicate all of my time to learning about it, from how it started, to the Games, how to program, everything. Within a week, I had an opinion on just about everything CrossFit related, and if I didn't, then I would go to my dorm, and within an hour of looking up stuff online, I could give you one.

After that first workout, all "bodybuilder" workouts went out the window for me, and I tried to only do CrossFit style workouts. I loved being able to say to myself that I was working out at a high intensity. My main problem though was that I think I was following one of the aspects of CrossFit too closely. "Constantly varied, high intensity, functional movements". I know I was doing the later 2, but the constantly varied, I was doing that too much. I would literally walk into the gym, see what was available and just throw ideas together. There were times where I ended up doing shoulder presses 3 days in a row and then would go 2 weeks without doing them at all. My fitness was definitely still increasing, but I think it was because I was coming from a relatively low place so I only had room to grow. I needed to figure out a way to create some sort of system to make sure that I was following some of the basic tenants of what CrossFit is, but I also needed a plan.

Part of the ignorant person I was thinking I could work out everyday and be fine, I adopted what seemed to make a lot of sense to me. I watched some video of Rich Froning and he said something about squatting heavy Mondays and Fridays, heavy presses Tuesday and Thursday, and heavy deadlifts on Wednesday. So I figured I'd adopt that, and then for the MetCon to follow it, I would just make sure to emphasize the main muscle group in the MetCon as well.

At this point I was definitely seeing my strength numbers going up, then again this was the first year where I really dedicated time to lifting weights. I was also slimming down, I was also getting better at "cardio" also even though I rarely actually included anything.

I am so glad I found CrossFit, but that point was just the beginning for me. It only gets better.

Monday, April 1, 2013

First post/some background

I have been putting this off for a while now. My mom has been pressing me to start a blog that I could maintain, and now that I have some time without too much homework, why not?

For those who don't know me, I'm a student at the University of Maryland, and I'm studying Kinesiology. I am also a certified personal trainer as well. I am in a fraternity and a comedy group, and outside of those two things, I'm pretty much at the gym doing one thing or another (I'm actually at the gym now writing this).

My fitness journey has been just that, a journey. I have gone through many sports, programs, ideals, beliefs, whatever; it has been a long journey for me to figure out what I think works for me, and where I hope to be.

First, I have to go back to when I was 6. I was an annoying little shit, and my dad finally told me that if I just were a normal human being that he'd take me to a Bears game when I was 7. Then I was a normal little kid and played youth league soccer, baseball, basketball, flag football; heck, I even did karate. I did everything. I actually excelled at soccer a little. I ended up playing club soccer for a few years, and that sparked my interest in soccer. What a beautiful and underrated sport. I was always a little overweight even through all of that.

Then I hit high school and I decided to try swimming and water polo. Thank god for swimming. I didn't lose any weight, but it just all redistributed and looked a lot better. I loved them both. Unfortunately I hurt my shoulder sophomore year swimming and had to sit out the season and most of the water polo season. I tried coming back junior year but it didn't work out, so I just did water polo, I liked it more anyway.

After high school, I got really into running and actually now do barefoot running (unfortunately I usually end up wearing my Vibram FiveFingers because of where it is that I'm running or working out).   I did a 5K at the end of that summer. If you are ever in Chicago at the end of a summer, do the Elvis is Alive 5K, it is so much fun.
I then spent a year in Israel before college where I ran a ton. I even did 2 10K's while there. Unfortunately, during the second one, I suffered a stress fracture in my 3rd metatarsal, and I was pretty much out of commission for 6 months because it wasn't officially diagnosed for 4 months and then I was in a boot for 2 months. After that I couldn't do anything lower body because I had to build back normal strength in my foot, so I just did basic upper body crap while I was working at my overnight camp.

Next, I come to school and I took a weightlifting class for my degree and did basic body building stuff because, quite frankly, I didn't know what else to do. Then, I came across a flier that there was a CrossFit club starting on campus, and quite frankly, my life has been changed ever since then (that wasn't supposed to be a stupid statement also, just that things actually have changed for me).