Eat more food that is conducive to your goals, than food which is not….
Train in a way that is more conducive to your goals, than not.
Sure, that sounds a bit vague… hard to evaluate exercise and nutrition the same way as an expenses spreadsheet….although people do try (counting calories, reps and kilos etc)
But how do you know if it’s working? Your body composition improves. That CAN be measured.
It’s often not even necessary to measure with dedicated methods, because it’s visible.
The key is, the requirement for each persons body composition bank account is different. You can only do what works for you, not what works for someone else.
So, whether it’s the 5/2 diet, or intermittent fasting, or high carbs or low carbs, 3 square meals, or grazing all day, wine on special occasions only, one glass a night, or a binge every Saturday….. it all comes back to YOUR bank account (goal) and whether YOU are seeing the change YOU want to see.
Results from some outstanding NuSI-backed studies came out this year.
The fourth and largest one, conducted at Stanford, randomised 600 overweight-to-obese subjects into either, low-FAT or low-CARB diets for a year, and also looked at whether or not their weight loss could be explained by their metabolism or their DNA.
The study found NO differences between the two diets and NO meaningful relationship between weight loss and insulin secretion (ie blood glucose rise in response to food).
The most significant finding of all……..was that it’s hard to stick to a diet for a whole year.
So the real secret it appears, is first finding what type of diet will get you the results you want.
And then following it.
And sticking with it.
Same would apply to exercise.
Yes there are important principles that should be followed – functional movement, strength elements, mobility, sustainable aerobic work. But apply that in a way that works for you – yoga, swimming, hiking, tennis, surfing, gym, soccer. Generally a combination of at least two is needed to tick enough boxes.
Then you have to stick with it.
Sticking with it is the hardest thing.
But if you can find elements such as accountability and support, challenge and reward, mindfulness, fun and of course results, you’ll get there.
It feels great to celebrate the victories we attain in the gym .
PB that deadlift…
Get a gold star for max. pushups…
Increase your 50 cal. airbike test by 30 seconds…
Get that first kick up to handstand!
However, think about all the other PB’s (personal best) you have to achieve that contribute to you achieving those gold stars.
I’m talking about the things that have a significant impact on how we perform throughout the day.
Sleep…nutrition…mindset…etc.
On those days where you normally average 6 hours of sleep but manage to get 7 … That’s a PB!
On those weeks where you normally buy your lunch, but this week the choice was made to set some time aside to make yourself a stir fry loaded with veggies and meat……that’s a PB!
What’s your mindset like? The hardest part is usually following through the process needed to reach our goal. Once we get into the groove (form a habit) we find the rest of the journey much easier.
What’s that?.. you stayed dedicated to coming into the gym 4x this week?…That’s a PB! You worked on your mobility every day for the last 3 weeks?!? … Wow, that’s a PB!
It’s all about the little things we do consistently. But we all gotta start somewhere right?!? Let’s start by acknowledging (followed by celebrating) the ‘personal best’s’ we achieve throughout the day, throughout the week, each month etc.
Be willing to acknowledge the victories regardless of how big or small you perceive them to be.
We encourage you to be aware of the positive shifts that contribute to your improved performance and pop them up on our PB board.
Because it all adds up.
Not sure if it qualifies as a PB? Ask any of the coaches. We’re really good at recognising virtuosity in its many forms. Plus we want to celebrate with you!
Miss a day, and you’re put up against the wall and shot……?
How do you ensure that the important things in your day get done?
Most of us tend to write ourselves notes, set alarms in our phones and make appointments.
Although we don’t require booking into class ahead of time, it’s a great idea to imagine we do……
Make your workouts appointments instead of intentions.
Just like the doctor or dentist.
Take it up a notch even, and make a rule with yourself that if you can’t make an ‘appointment’ you have let your coach know. Just FYI, we’d love to hear from you, and we’d love to help you ‘reschedule’….)
Consistency is by far the number one factor in your success in fitness, health and longevity.
You could even perform a less than optimal program and still see positive results if you did it regularly (lucky you don’t have that problem with us 😉
“In all forms of strategy, it is necessary to maintain the combat stance in everyday life and to make your everyday stance your combat stance.”
-Miyamoto Mushashi
Hopefully you are not encountering too much actual combat in your every day life, but no doubt there are other forms of, while not life-threatening, still fairly stressful situations dealt with on a regular basis.
Both mental and physical labour at work
Postural demands – either acute or chronic (sitting or standing for long periods)
Running for the bus/train, or across the street
Playing with your kids
Gardening and other home maintenance
Carrying all the groceries in one trip……
In The Gift Of Injury by Stuart McGill, world renowned spine expert, dealt with a world champion powerlifter, who had all but given up hope of rehabbing a devastating back injury.
Dr McGills advice? In a nutshell, fix your crappy posture and lift things properly…..
The exercises and habits that helped the subject of the book fight his way back to the podium, were in large part the simple dead bugs, bird dogs and planks that we perform here daily., along with the unyielding adherence to efficient and safe movement.
Despite writing The Book Of Five Rings nearly 400 years ago, Mushashi was spot on about posture.
Make good posture your normal posture, and then that normal posture will help you lift heavy things as though they are normal…. (not quite as eloquent, but more to the point….:)
“The point”, Bredon said grandly, “is to play a beautiful game……why would I want to win anything other than a beautiful game?” – The Wiseman’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
We train to be better.
To lift more.
To move faster.
To achieve endlessly more difficult feats.
Setting goals and reaching them is incredibly motivating and rewarding.
However, there is also incredible fulfilment in the doing.
The simple act of turning up.
Doing the work that matters, the learning, the practice, the failing, the persisting.
Always striving to move BETTER.
The act of moving well AND of striving to always do so, are a beautiful game, and it’s a game you can participate in forever.
Many coaches will tell you that hard work in the gym/on the sports field, teaches you life lessons and makes you a better person.
I concur.
As long as you aren’t learning how to:
avoid things you don’t like
use effort as a substitute for understanding
avoid failure in front of your peers
chase objective measures and ignore subjective ones.
create the appearance of working hard
Hard work should teach you:
discipline
deep practice
empathy
positive self talk
mental and physical flow
a beginners mind
humility
One of my favourite quotes is ‘how you do anything, is how you do everything’. Picture how you deal with roadblocks, difficulties, frustrations and failure in your life, then think about those same situations in the gym or sport practice.
The history of the gym goes all the way back to ancient Rome if you wanted to be pedantic. The ancient Olympic sports of running, discus, javelin and wrestling were practised at the ‘gymnos’ (which is actually Latin for nude, and is actually how the training was performed!) and were an important social institution.
By the middle of the 19th century, the gym as a commercial venture also began to emerge. Vaudeville-strongman-turned-fitness-entrepreneur Hippolyte Triat, is credited with being the first to open commercial gyms, in Brussels, and Paris in the early 1800s. We have a cool image of Ropers Gym in Philadelphia from 1831. You might even recognise some of the exercises!
Pullups, rope climbs, dips, and plenty of space…looks just like our gym….
From YMCA community centres, to the Golds Gym heyday with Arnold Schwarzenegger, gyms have continued to grow in popularity.
But it wasn’t till the 1970’s thatArthur Jones’ company Nautilus almost single handedly changed the face of commercial gyms from large open areas that utilised a lot of bodyweight movement and free weights, to corporate style operations crammed with machines that required almost no knowledge (and thus no coaching expertise) to use them.
They also didn’t create very much fitness…..
And thus we’re starting to see many of the massive commercial gym chains starting to shut down too. Many Golds locations in the US and Fitness First in Australia are closing, big USA chain Bally went into bankruptcy in 2007.
The micro-gym style business is not immune though. Plenty of CrossFit affiliates and similar micro-gym operations have been closing in recent years. We were the 540th CrossFit affiliate in the world in 2008, and now in 2019, we are 193rd on the list……
What’ s been interesting to observe about these unsuccessful micro-gyms however, is that generally, despite having so much more agility and potential as a smaller operation, it was squandered because the owners foolishly tried to run it the same as the big conglomerates.
If you are seeing;
one month free
half price
21 days for $21
six week challenge
join now and pay nothing until….
..and similar language, you might be in a facility that is thinking more about growth over retention, service and quality. And just like so many of the gyms that have come before them, they’ll discover why repeating the mistakes of others is……….well, a mistake…
With an average membership of 100 clients, any kind of deal or discount has a huge impact on the bottom line of a micro-gym. And that impact trickles down to the staff, the owner, and affects facility improvements and maintenance. Eventually, the rise in expenses and demands on time, outstrip revenue and passion, and then that’s the end of it.
After nearly 20 years in the industry, we’re more determined than ever to continue to foster a place that allows client, staff and owner alike to thrive. We know that this can only ever be sustained on the back of great relationships, professional coaching, strong culture and realistic pricing.
It’s not uncommon to hear these words occasionally, ‘I’m not really that competitive…’
Or, ‘I don’t care about my recording my scores I just want to come in, switch off and workout… ‘
While there is no doubt that in a facility like ours, that is coach-centric and movement focused, you can probably get away with training here for YEARS, with very little awareness or understanding of the why and the how behind our training principles, yet STILL get fitter.
But on the other hand, you might find that a disconnected and disinterested attitude to the why behind your training, means you’ll hit a plateau in progress or motivation far too soon.
Human kind has sought to understand the why behind everything from biology to quantum physics to the territorial behaviours of the North East African hyena…..
You don’t have to care about that stuff, but acknowledging it’s existence and understanding how it affects you is important.
Same goes for your training.
If you care about what you’re doing, you’ll get better at it.
“Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair.” — Nelson Mandela
Sports have a huge influence on our culture. We pay top athletes millions of dollars, in order to watch them play a game. A game however, which brings people from all walks of life together to share the experiences of triumph and failure.
The power of sports and “gamification” of tasks in the gym can be a powerful tool for building better athletes, people with better quality movement and stronger communities.
Now, we’re not saying you have to constantly compete with others in the gym, nor do you have to obsess over where you rank in the gym on a day by day basis.
But you should be aware of it at it’s basest level. After all, competitiveness is one of the traits most responsible for our emergence as the dominant species.
Ultimately we really do believe that your biggest competition is with yourself.
However…….. if you can be inspired by, and enjoy some friendly rivalry with, the others in your class, this exercise gig sure sure starts to seem like fun once in a while……
You might tell me (and try to convince yourself) that you’re not competitive, but I’m sorry, it’s in your DNA.
It’s a common theme that runs through the world of fitness, of burning calories.
It’s heavily promoted from marketing, every gym, bootcamp, and fitness class promising more calories burned in less time.
And in general, we’re all guilty of feeling like that is the approach we need to take, it almost feels obvious. Of COURSE if we do more, we’ll expend more energy, and if we expend more energy we’ll burn more calories and if we burn more calories, we’ll burn more fat, and if we burn more fat…….
You can burn more calories by doing more exercise, or you can burn more calories by building more muscle. Using some very rough and unprovable math, we could speculate that adding just 2 to 3 kg of extra muscle could increase your metabolism to a point roughly equal to taking a 40 minute walk every day.
That’s free exercise!
*remember that your basal metabolic rate, is the amount of energy you burn at rest, and then metabolic expenditure is the total amount you burn going about your day. – walking, gardening, chewing, exercising etc.
Our programming is biased towards getting stronger and building muscle. Yes we also want to build some capacity for endurance and mid-range stamina type activities, but for overall health and fitness increasing your strength, increasing your muscle mass and increasing your metabolism is the way to go.
Chasing an immediate outcome such as burning a certain amount of fat/calories in a given workout, will never offer the kind of results and reward that is possible from instead aiming the focus towards building muscle, which in turn increases metabolism, which in turn increases the amount of fat/calories burned during exercise, during rest, during sleep!
We’ve spoken before about the famous marshmallow experiment, where patience and focus on a longer term outcome was better rewarded. It applies here too.
Focus on that longer term, but more rewarding outcome.
Also, if your focus every time you exercise, is tied up in how much fat you burn, you are missing a valuable opportunity to learn, to enjoy the feeling of what your body can do, to play, to have fun!!
Finally, when your metabolism is higher, not only do you burn more fat, it is harder to store it. The wins just keep on coming!
Tim Ferris led the way in finding work life balance way back in 2007. And the hosts of other authors, public speakers and life coaches that followed in his wake, shouted it louder than ever.
The multitudes of time and energy saving tools at our disposal in the 21st Century, have also allowed us to never stop working, if we so choose.
Same applies to training. It’s not uncommon to speak to people who say their main goal is to be fit and healthy, and then they schedule six class workouts per week, plus strength/accessory work, private weightlifting coaching, a gymnastics specialty class or two, then squeeze in some engine work at the track and finish every day off with an extra metcon.
Don’t get me wrong, your goal may require some or all of the above. But if it doesn’t, are you being busy just for the sake of it?
Let’s be clear; if you love love LOVE this stuff, go for it I say. Doing what you love is the best thing ever. You’ll need to be mindful of the volume however, and double down on your recovery, if you want to survive such a high frequency of training. And this is where it gets counter-intuitive; why add more training, if you need to add extra recovery work, JUST to handle the increased volume?
Also, it’s important to point out that the standard ‘take a walk 3 x week’ government recommendation is woefully inadequate, you CAN and SHOULD move physically in some way EVERY DAY.
But I challenge you to be highly effective with every minute of training, and purge any wasteful sessions.
Note: Add as much extra outdoor activity, play and adventure as you want, you can’t really over do that…..
If you haven’t checked out our PLUS Accessory programming, it’s an extra 10-30mins of work, prioritising engine, strength or gymnastics, and designed to fit before, or after the group class.
I have talked a lot about how intensity should be a relative thing, ie applied to suit your current level of fitness, ability, injury status, restfulness and mental wellbeing.
Likewise though, so is moderation.
“Everything in moderation”
Right?
We’ve all heard it before. We’ve probably said it before.
But like anything relative, it’s important that you take the time to regularly audit your perceptions.
Before you know it, moderation can become much less than that.
It can also go the other way, and become the only focus.
The stories we tell ourselves to convince ourselves that we’re right can be complex and all too believable.
But if your version of moderation isn’t working then it needs adjusting.
And it’s ok to take baby steps!
Because progress is yet another relative term….. 😉
Gamification Apparently it really is a word. “the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service”
In the context of this is the act of making your workout into a game. Games make any activity much more interesting, challenging, and competitive.
AMRAP, For Time, EMOM, Max Effort, there are various structures to our daily workouts. Some are quite clearly a competition of sorts, eg a 5km run, or a classic CrossFit benchmark workout. Others, not so much; when the intent is ‘for quality’ or ‘Not for time’ etc. you might feel a little lost, if you’re used to always putting a target on someone else’s back to help you make your best effort.
Ultimately, and in the long run however, we are playing or competing against ourselves. Having the state of mind that whatever you do in the gym today, will make you better than yesterday allows you to grow. You can burn fat, build muscle and get stronger by putting in the work every day. That is winning.
It’s really easy to get caught up in the negative. Yelling at yourself because you missed that lift. Throwing your skipping rope down because your rhythm is off. Ending any workout feeling defeated because it didn’t go the way you wanted/expected. And not buying in to a workout that is by design a non-competitive effort.
But that is losing. We have to remember that the method to our madness is meant for positive reinforcement to get more fit and have fun doing it.
You can be winning in your fitness or losing. It’s up to you to make the most of your time in class. Keep it simple:
During my post graduate studies, I was fascinated by research showing that (despite what your mother told you when she caught you drinking) new brain cells CAN be made.
On a recent flight, which is always a chance to consume a bunch of TED Talks, there was a great video from the enthusiastic and contagiously happy neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki, that reminded me about this often overlooked fact in our body obsessed but psyche negligent society.
Exercise releases ‘good mood’ neurotransmitters.
So why do some people still go home unhappy? If you’re constantly worrying about how much you lift, what the others are thinking about you then you’re literally going to override those happy ‘neuro-T’s’!
Maybe it’s tough to ditch the baggage accumulated from a tough day, and you’re already too deep in the hole for any happy hormones to pull you out?
Think about that. Exercise equals happiness.
Guaranteed.
It’s simply a chemical reaction. Just show up, work out and go home happy.
EXCEPT you went and neutralised it, by getting all up in your own head……
Hey, to be fair, that’s our lot as humans, it would be nice if we could live in the present like a dog or a cheetah but we can’t, and it’s a big part of why we evolved as the dominant species.
But maybe, just maybe, we could practice not caring about how good we are, and also practice how much fun we can have, learning, interacting and exploring.
And with a little practice, maybe we can make this one hour at the gym, the best hour of our day, instead of yet another form of stress?
“Total fitness, the fitness that CrossFit promotes and develops, requires competency and training of each of three pathways or engines (ATP, Glycolytic and Oxidative). Balancing the effects of these three pathways largely determines the how and why of the metabolic conditioning or “cardio” that we do at CrossFit. Favouring one or two pathways to the exclusion of the others, is arguably one of the most common faults in fitness training.”
– CrossFit Journal
If we were to rank these engines, in terms of their impact on improved function, health and longevity, it would be;
1. ATP engine
2. Oxidative engine
3. Glycolytic engine
The glycolytic engine is where we see AMRAPs in the 15-30min range, hard 5km runs, heavy high rep EMOMs etc. It’s also the umbrella over the ‘fourth’ energy system, the lactate shuttle.
In other words, just the sort of workout that most people LOVE to do.
Now, I’m a fully paid up, card carrying member of the club who loves to go hard and hurt. It’s what got me and a million other people hooked on this style of training.
Much the same as being a fan of cake however, it’s fairly intuitive to understand that having cake every day is counterproductive to both good health and a normal relationship with food……
Our programming is designed to vary the emphasis on each engine throughout the week and across a training cycle to ensure you keep making progress and avoid overdoing it in any area.
To stick with the cake analogy, it will still require an element of ‘self-control’.
And even if we serve up a nice chicken salad, you could still go and dump a cup of processed dressing on it, and turn a healthy dish into a chemical s#*^ storm. By this analogy, we mean, that if the workout brief includes key words such as, quality, sustainability, steady pace, unbroken, repeatable etc, you don’t instead attempt to complete it in the fastest time or with the heaviest load.
And even during the more intense conditioning sessions, where we ARE encouraging some of that medium intensity, don’t forget, there might be others ‘eating cake’ right in front of you. After all, they just had a rest day, and are also fitter, whereas you’re on a three day streak, are brand new to the fitnessing, and are still trying to get your baby to let you sleep more than 2 hours in a row.
Just because someone else is crushing it today, doesn’t mean you need to.
Hard to eat healthy, and just enough at a buffet though right?
It does help when you have top chefs, ie coaches, to advise you, and the food, ie programming, is of the highest quality.
At the risk of being very predictable, we want you to have your cake and eat it too….
Here’s something that many people new (and unfortunately, not so new) to the functional fitness world misunderstand – the most successful athletes are not the ones that fail the most.
But, but, surely, that whole ‘I get knocked down, but I get up again’, ‘Jordan has missed more than 9000 shots in his career’, ‘persistence changes failure into victory’ etc etc is the way to go?
Heck I say it to you all the time, there is only winning and learning, no losing.
But when I say losing, I’m not talking about missing reps, and that’s the point of this post.
Of course, failing is an inevitable part of training, since we want to push our limits and discover our true potential. But the key is how you fail. Failing the practice of skills and technical movement is one thing, but failing maximal lifts is another.
We particularly encourage new members not to go anywhere near failure on strength movements for about six months of consistent training, if not longer.
Interesting fact, at Westside Gym, home of the strongest people in the world (most men who train there squat between 300-450kg), there are very few failed reps. how is that possible when dealing with such massive weights? Because they train to TECHNICAL breakdown most of the time, not to absolute failure.
Failing lifts too often is very taxing on the central nervous system – realise that these efforts are SUPRA-maximal, ie more effort than you have EVER exerted in your entire life!!!
Failure is also frustrating for athletes, not to mention creating stress, negative expectations and sub-optimal motor patterns, which is just a downwards spiral for approaching lifts in the future.
To prevent it from occurring too often and to learn how to fail well, we work testing into the beginning and end of our quarterly programming macro cycles. But every day is not a limit test and we don’t want anyone maxing out to failure with any regularity. Remember that our day to day workouts should be considered training, and an opportunity to go a little bit heavier or learn a more technical movement variation WITHOUT having to reach or worse, exceed our limits.
This not only makes PR Week more likely to go well, it keeps it exciting, fun and safe.
Practice a skill (technique is best drilled when fresh)
Mobility (we all need to do more)
Watch others move (yes, you can learn in other ways)
LAX ball and foam roll (good tissue quality = better movement)
Steady aerobic movement (good for the heart, good for the mind)
Do your movement correctives. What, you dont have your own movement corrective homework to do? So you haven’t taken advantage of Coach Fred’s physical therapy knowledge then…….. Get in to see him then ASAP.
Nothing! Just hang out and soak up the vibe. If all you were going to do at home was watch GOT while finished off work emails…..then being in a positive, motivating environment, socialising with interesting people wins hands down.
