Happy New Year!!

Here it to everyone having a happy, healthy and successful 2010!

If it works for an operational SEAL, why not you too?

Great post from: http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2009/12/25/panu-eating-and-high-intensity-training.html

As you know, we are starting a Paleo / Zone challenge for 60 days at the beginning of 2010. Here is some more, excellent anecdotal evidence of how well this can work for you.

I have copies of my blood work from last year and this year and it shows almost identical trends - higher HDL, lower fasting blood sugar levels, lower triglycerides, lower VLDL. As I get older, my blood work improves - why? Because Paleo eating is the way to go for both performance and functional longevity.


PaNu Eating and High Intensity Training
Friday, December 25, 2009 at 9:36PM

My brother-in law by marriage, Jason, is a Master Chief in the United States Navy and has been a SEAL for the last 19 years. He is 39 years old, has been with the teams for about 20 years now, and is currently deployed to Iraq on his second tour in that theater.

Jason has been an avid cross-fitter for about 3 years and eats a PaNu style lacto-paleo diet with about 10% of calories form carbohydrate.

In his own words:

Kurt,

Here is a synopsis of my evolution with diet and CrossFit. My athletic background since childhood was swimming. I swam competitively for 12 years. Throughout that time, I also played numerous other sports. In addition, I became very interested in nutrition. This was in part due to my mother taking a nutrition class in college when I was young and also because it seemed to go hand-in-hand with athletic performance. Finally, about 19 years ago, I started a successful shot at SEAL Training.

For most of the last 19 years, I have been very physically active. It is part of the job. The workouts have changed over time. When I was a new guy it was a combo of running, swimming, and chest / triceps on Mon / Wed, back and biceps on Tues / Thurs (or whatever routine Muscle and Fitness suggested). As time went on, that changed to more lifting and surfing, and less running. I was eating what most doctors would consider a healthy diet: Lots of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and low-fat everything. I would supplement with some sort of protein shake and soy milk. My weight remained steady at 185 for about a decade.

Late in 2001, I had a cholesterol test. Total cholesterol was 197. My triglycerides were 148 and my HDL was 30. I can’t remember what my LDL was, but it was low as well. The docs were happy with the under 200 number, but concerned with my low HDL. They asked how my diet was, and after I explained it, they said it “couldn’t be due to diet”. I remember asking how to raise my HDL. The response was that I was eating healthy, so the “low HDL was genetic and would require a supplement of Niacin”. I took Niacin for about 2 weeks then threw the bottle away. It made me flushed and generally was annoying. I’d take my chances with the low HDL.

In 2005, I was introduced to CrossFit by some colleagues. When I saw them knocking out muscle-ups, cleans, or whatever, followed by the writhing-on-the-ground post workout ritual, I was sold. I slowly, but surely, started hitting either Crossfit or the Gym Jones workouts, although initially, I still held on to abs, chest, triceps, etc… The results with the CF spoke for themselves, and by the end of 2006, that was all I was doing.

The good thing about CrossFit-style training is that it is truly measurable. For example, my first Fran time was 10:23. The next time it was in the seven-minute range. Then by the summer of 2007, I got stuck at 4:15 on Fran. Every other benchmark: From 400M to 5K, and 1 rep max lifts to the various met-con workouts, I had plateaued. It was incredibly frustrating.

About that same time, I had the good fortune of attending some CF Level 1 certs we held at work. The second one I attended had my full attention. The biggest take away for me was on the topic of nutrition. Greg Glassman gave an incredible lecture on the importance of nutrition to health and performance. He gave examples of the top athletes’ dedication to their diets. He recommended a paleo-centric version of the Zone Diet. The Zone was something I was familiar with. I remember Vicki (Kurt’s wife, the dentist) dabbling in the zone some years back. In fact, I had half-heartedly tried to make my meals zone-ish since that time. I decided to follow the Zone strictly for a while and see where that led me.

Shortly after starting the Zone, I noticed an improvement in all my CF Benchmarks. I was strictly following 20 blocks a day. I had to increase my fat more and more as I went on due to ravenous hunger. Eventually I was at 20 blocks with 3-4 x the fat recommended by Zone. I was still eating grains. That was when you sent me the copy of Good Calories, Bad Calories. The timing could not have been more perfect. I was already experiencing better health and athletic performance on a lower carb diet (Zone). I read the book twice, picked your brain a bit, and started on a true low-carb diet.

My diet most resembled Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint. I only ate veggies and some fruit to the tune of 70-90 grams of Carbs a day, lots of saturated and monounsaturated fat, and clean meat sources. On that regimen, performance skyrocketed. All my CF benchmarks improved dramatically:

Fran under 3:00 (From 4:15 on standard Zone!)

Deadlift at 2.5 times bodyweight, etc…

There is an athletic standard floating around the CF community that contains a myriad of skill sets. The skills include one-rep max on different lifts, max pull-ups, 5k run, 400m run, 6k row. It is a full spectrum of athletic endeavors. Since switching my diet (to VLC PaNu), I have achieved advanced or elite on all the various skills.

There are lots of athletes out there who are at or way beyond that level. What is impressive is that I am 39 years old, beaten up from 19 years in the Teams, and have only been seriously Cross-Fitting for three years. That degree of improvement at my age could only be due to diet.

Since then, I have been continually adjusting and monitoring carb levels and type, as well as doing intermittent fasting. I have meticulously documented my diet and workouts for the past year. Here are my conclusions:

1. Carbs are way overrated for performance. I have the same results at 40g per day as 100g per day.

2. My absolute peak performance occurs about 12 hours after my last meal. That continues until 17 hours. After a 17+ hour fast, longer duration, high intensity workouts suffer. Suffer is a relative term however. Compared to 95% of the population, it is more than adequate.

3. On the 50-70 grams of carbs a day, with a daily 13-15 hour fast broken post workout with all of my daily intake of carbs, I have noticed the following: Body fat dropped like a rock, muscle mass grew, performance improved. To top that off, my hair, which was receding rapidly, has stopped falling out

4. Allergies have dramatically improved.

5. I couldn’t tell you the last time I was sick and I have kids in public school.

6. My recommendation for a housewife, kid, SEAL, or anyone is as follows:

a. Keep carbohydrate intake under 90 grams per day, striving for 50 grams.

b. Carbs should be berries, sweet potato, green leafy veg / broccoli-cabbage.

c. Eat clean meats: Grass fed beef / lamb, eggs, wild caught fish, sardines, and wild game.

d. Fats: I eat a ton of grass-fed tallow (beef fat) and coconut oil / milk. I recently, after a visit to PaNu Headquarters (Dr. Harris’ home), have begun using grass-fed butter and cream for the family and me.

e. Intermittent Fasting daily (I call this a narrow eating window and I usually do the same). I try to do a daily fast of 12-15 hours on days I work out. On non-workout days, I will fast 15-24 hours.



Thanks, Jason!

Your elite level training experience totally supports my own experience with training at more of a middle-aged maintenance level - 5 k runs and Doug McGuff-biased lifting workouts.

August 2009 labs for Jason on a high sat-fat VLC diet show his HDL-C (sans Niacin) has more than doubled from 30 to 75, and triglycerides have fallen from 148 to 80. Of course, LDL-C has risen to 226 Friedewald (probably lower if direct) and Total-C is now 317. Jason is able to resist harassment to take statins as he knows that his LDL is all “big and fluffy” and not atherogenic. I would estimate his LDL-P (particle number) or ApoB is around 120 based on my own labs and those of others. His fasting insulin is a superb 3.65 microunits/ml.

Jason is approached by younger Seals all the time about the secret to his physique and performance. He tells them it is 80% diet – the rest is sleep and physical training. My own experience supports Jason’s impression.

Feel free to post comments and questions. Jason reads the blog but is “in country” so may take a while to respond. You can ask me questions as well, of course.

Wednesday's WOD

5 rounds for time of:

500 meter Row
50 Squats
30 Back extensions

The World's Healthiest 75-Year-Old Man

WOD:

Front Squat 1-10-1-20-1-30 reps

Post total load (add up all six barbell loads) to comments


Do you want to live forever? I only want to live as long as I am fully functional. CrossFit and proper nutrition builds the required capacity to be healthy and functional well past your retirement age.

Think not? Read below and then ask yourself what your excuses are for not training or eating right. Join us in our Paleo / Zone challenge and see hom much proper nutrition can change your life!

The World's Healthiest 75-Year-Old Man
Don Wildman can run like a Marine, snowboard like an Olympian, and bike like a Tour de France champion. Not bad for a 75-year-old.

On any given day, in a private gym above Malibu's Paradise Cove, a handful of men show up to attempt a workout known as the Circuit, more than three thousand repetitions of weight lifting and balancing and abdominal exercises. If you're thinking that three thousand is a huge number of times to lift or pull or curl some heavy object, you are right. Which is why the Circuit has developed a reputation for causing some of these men to -- there's really no subtle way to put it -- projectile vomit. Its twenty multipart exercises are cycled through six times in a complicated sequence, but the Circuit's ground rules are simple: Once you start, you don't stop until it's done. There are no water breaks, no substituting easier moves when the going gets tough, and obviously no whining.

"We're starting with thirty reps!"

A deep growl booms out from the center of the room, where Don Wildman, the Circuit's master practitioner, wearing faded jeans and a Sonic Youth T-shirt, stands barefoot, holding a pair of fifty-pound weights. Muscular, lean, six-two, with a trim beard, he looks like Sean Connery, if Connery had borrowed the body of a U.S. marine. This gym, filled with cutting-edge equipment, occupies a wing of his home. I've heard about the Circuit, I've heard about Wildman, and I've come to see for myself what, exactly, is going on in here.

Behind Wildman, Jason Winn stands at the squat rack. Winn, twenty-six, played quarterback for Texas Tech and now races mountain bikes. And next to Winn, sitting at the neck machine, is Tim Commerford, forty, the bassist for Rage Against the Machine. Sixty-five percent of his body is covered in black tribal tattoos. This makes for a lot of ink, as Commerford is six-two and looks as if he could rip a phone book in half.

Wildman himself is a world-class athlete in several sports. In recent years, he has competed in the Ironman Triathlon nine times, the three-thousand-mile Race Across America bike race, the Aspen downhill ski race, and the New York and L.A. marathons. In the sailing world, Wildman made history by winning all three of the Chicago Yacht Club's famed Mackinac races in one season. He snowboards the Alaskan backcountry with Olympic downhill champion Tommy Moe. Two years ago, he paddled through the entire chain of Hawaiian islands on a surfboard.

That outing was proposed by Wildman's friend and training partner Laird Hamilton to raise money for autism research. Hamilton, at forty-four a surfing legend who's been called the Chuck Yeager of his sport, is famous for his off-the-charts training program, featuring workouts that prepare a person to launch himself onto the face of an eighty-foot wave. His body needs to withstand three g's of force, pressure that would incapacitate most people. If he falls, he must survive thousands of tons of angry water slamming down on his head. It's an extreme kind of extreme, which is why, in person, the six-foot-three-inch, 215-pound Hamilton comes across like an action figure sprung to life. In the scope of Wildman's exploits, it makes perfect sense that he'd be training with the likes of Hamilton, someone equally unfamiliar with the concept of moderation.

Except that it doesn't make sense. Because Don Wildman is seventy-five years old.

In the gym, Wildman clicks his iPod into the stereo and we begin lifting to the howls of Marilyn Manson. In case you've never tried it, thirty reps of anything is about fifteen more reps than your body would prefer to do. And because there's no resting between exercises, Wildman explains, "you'll go into oxygen debt, so you're getting a cardio workout along with a weight workout. Your body doesn't know where to pump the blood first. That's why people puke." As if these things were not daunting enough, each exercise also contains a twist or two intended to add difficulty. Upright rows, for instance, are performed while balancing on an inverted -- and highly unstable -- Bosu ball (picture a giant Super Ball sliced in half). Chest presses are done sitting upright, with legs outstretched to work the core and hip flexors.

Thirty minutes in, I'm getting the message: The Circuit challenges everything, especially the psyche. The duration of the thing is overwhelming. Commerford, moving to biceps curls, wipes sweat from his shoulders. "I cannot keep up with the Wild Man today," he says. "Haven't been in here enough lately."
"Gotta get you back in the church!" Wildman yells from across the room. Then he turns to me: "You missed abs on that last one." I backtrack, do the missing forty crunches. By this point, the windows have steamed up. Weights clank, accompanied by audible breathing and occasional grunting. The only one who has enough energy to talk, it seems, is Wildman.

"People come here and say, 'This is madness! What the hell are you doing this for?' " he says, working his way through a set of shoulder presses. And it does seem fair to ask whether, maybe, two thousand repetitions might be enough to do the trick (especially since most people his age consider lawn bowling a fine workout). That kind of thinking is alien to Wildman, just as it is to the hardcore group of regulars who adhere to the same philosophy: When it comes to endorphin production, more is more. Along with Hamilton, Commerford, and Winn, the group includes John McEnroe, Detroit Red Wings defenseman Chris Chelios, and another dozen ultrafit men. In Wildman's crew there are stuntmen and ski racers and motocross riders. There's a sheriff, a restaurateur, and an ultimate fighter. There is the occasional celebrity (Sean Penn, John Cusack, John C. McGinley) or rock star (Kid Rock, Eddie Vedder). And one time, there was NBA star Reggie Miller.

"Ohhh, Reggie got torn up by this workout," Commerford says. "I saw him the next day, and man."

"Well, that's because Laird tried to kill him," Wildman says, shaking his head. "We definitely did all six rounds that day."

Thing is, for Wildman and his crew, this kind of behavior isn't abusive at all -- it's fun, heavily laced with lactic acid. "It's just that our play is harder than 99 percent of other people's work," he explains.

The immediate question regarding Wildman is, of course: How? How is it that while other seventy-five-year-olds are complaining about their hip pain, Wildman is saying things like "I prefer heli-snowboarding because you can get more air off the cornices"? How can a septuagenarian be someone about whom John McEnroe, forty-nine, winner of seventeen grand-slam titles, says, "He reminds me of myself in a way, but he's on a whole different level"? How, in other words, has Wildman managed to buck the basic rules of human physical existence, in which years lived do seem to have some correlation to whether a senior citizen will opt out of, say, paragliding from the top of Aspen Mountain?

You want to know the answer, because despite the promises of stem-cell therapy and genetic manipulation, the offerings of the $70 billion antiaging industry have so far proved deeply unappealing, involving such things as starvation diets and cryogenically freezing your head. While it's true that one of Wildman's adages is "When you stop moving, it's all over," and that his diet is low on meat, fat, junk food, and alcohol, and that he takes about fourteen different supplements a day, basic high-quality stuff such as calcium, vitamin C, B complex, CoQ-10, and hyaluronic acid, and that he swears by glucosamine for his knees, Thai massage for recovery, and a little-known technique called "prolotherapy" to shore up his ligaments -- while all of this is true and helps him avoid unnecessary deterioration, none of it really explains how, at the three-quarter-century mark, Wildman is keeping pace with pro athletes decades younger than he is, guys like Hamilton, or Chelios, one of the toughest players in the NHL.

"On to the next activity!"

Finished with the gym, Wildman strides out into the late-morning sunshine. Commerford, who's about to go on tour in Australia and Japan, has rehearsal. Winn is busy with Bonk Breaker, his energy-bar company. That leaves me to continue on to Wildman's "next activity," mountain biking in the hills that rise sharply from the section of the Pacific Coast Highway behind his house. There are other things I'd rather do, all of which involve lying down, but Wildman appears to have more energy now than when the Circuit began. I follow him into the kitchen, where he pours us both a triple espresso. He's explaining why he won't be taking a water bottle on the ride. "It's an extra two pounds to carry," he says. "Believe me, two pounds can make a difference." No water? "I'll look over at Don's mouth when we're riding and there'll be white coming out of the corners," McEnroe says. Wildman shrugs, "It freaks people out, but I got used to it. We never take water." His eyes are a piercing light blue, and often they're roving, noting everything and running it through a very serious filter, but at certain times, like now, as he's explaining how his body can go without liquids, they take on an uncommon intensity seventy-five years in the making.

Wildman grew up in Los Angeles in the thirties, the only son of a fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal preacher. Listening to promises of eternal damnation for the unfaithful, he concluded early that religion was a process of "scaring the bejesus out of people." At fifteen, he found his calling on the football field instead. But the same aggression that worked in the stadium got him into trouble outside of it.
Fistfights led to an appearance in juvenile court. There was an unfortunate incident involving the torching of a decrepit set of bleachers. Probation and curfew ensued; Wildman chafed at the restrictions. When one of his buddies suggested that the best way to regain full autonomy would be to join the Army, he thought, That doesn't sound like a bad idea.

It was a bad idea. The year was 1950. "The next thing I know, I'm headed for Korea," he says. A combat medic, Wildman was shipped directly to the front line. The first sight that greeted him was a freshly decapitated corpse. "I was seventeen years old," he recalls. "I'm seeing this stuff and I'm thinking, I want to get out of here now." That night, while he was shuttling the wounded to a field hospital, the position was ambushed and most of his company killed. Wildman escaped by running down a frozen riverbed. "And that was the first day."

After deciding against shooting himself in the foot as an exit strategy, Wildman set about figuring out how to survive. He took comfort in the discovery that everyone else he met was as terrified as he was, figuring, If they can take it, I can take it. He became a platoon leader and then a sergeant. Also, he became stronger, lifting weights and packing seventy pounds of muscle onto his naturally thin frame. In the manner of a pragmatic convict, Wildman searched for bright corners in a dark situation. Even now, he can't quite believe that he made it out alive. "I had so many close calls -- I'd felt sure I was going to be killed. And the thing was, most of the guys who thought they were going to get killed did get killed. When I got off the boat back in the U.S., I kissed the ground."

Humans waste a lot of energy worrying about things. Might get cancer, might go bankrupt. Might marry the wrong person or screw up at the office. Emerging from war, Wildman no longer had these kinds of concerns. At twenty, he'd crawled out of the darkest of pits, and in comparison, 1950s America looked like one big, golden party. Anything was possible. And no matter what went wrong now, it wasn't likely to result in death. "My father gave me a piece of advice once," Wildman says. "He said, 'Never walk. Always run.'"

Wildman ran. In the year after he left the service, he got married, saw the first of his three sons born, and took on as many jobs as he could. He plastered walls during the day, sold life insurance at night. Weekends he worked at Burbank's Vic Tanny gym. Back in the fifties, going to the gym wasn't a popular pastime. Men worried that exercise would lead to dangerous enlargement of the heart; women feared the prospect of developing bulky muscles. And it didn't help that the gyms themselves had a kind of fly-by-night aura, with people buying memberships only to return the following week and find that the club had closed down.

It was a sketchy, unformed business and Wildman thrived in it. For one thing, he believed deeply in what he was selling -- the transformative power of exercise -- and, in turn, people believed him. Leaving the other jobs behind, he rose to the top of Vic Tanny's network of a hundred clubs, and then branched off to start his own company. "I wanted to be the largest health-club operator in the world," he says. To do that, Wildman created clubs that people saw as desirable places to be, as opposed to vaguely disreputable sweatshops filled with snorting bodybuilders. He updated the equipment and the ambience, the message and the image, to make exercise appeal to the mainstream.

Eventually, Wildman's company, Health and Tennis Corporation of America, owned two hundred health clubs. In 1983, he sold the enterprise to Bally Entertainment Corp., and it became Bally Total Fitness, which today has about four million members. Wildman officially retired in 1994, at age sixty-one, not because he'd lost his passion for the business but because having a job -- even one in the fitness industry -- made it difficult to snowboard a hundred days a year.

"The ride takes about an hour," Wildman says, fastening his helmet and clicking into the pedals of his $5,000 carbon-fiber Cannondale Scalpel. "This is the easy trail." Thank you, God. I've heard the stories, and apparently the first rule of going mountain biking with Wildman is: Don't.

The trail is called Winding Way, a name that evokes the image of gentle and meandering curves. This is a cruel misrepresentation. It begins on a 15 percent grade and heads directly, indefinitely, uphill. While I fumble with my gears trying to find one big enough to ride in, Wildman shoots off ahead.

Along with Winding Way, his other favorite trail is called Three Amigos, and by all accounts it's a vicious three-hour ordeal. "After that ride, I couldn't walk," says the six-foot, 190-pound Chelios, describing his first time up it with Wildman. "I fell twenty-five, thirty times. I was bleeding, my legs were cut from branches."

Most people would be happy simply to survive such a course; Wildman prefers to race it. Though Hamilton cannot be beaten, even when handicapped with a fifty-pound weight on his bike, and Winn is a bit of a ringer, Wildman can sometimes take Commerford, McEnroe, and a few of the others, and the rivalries are intense. "As you can imagine, I'm not a guy who takes losing very easily," McEnroe says. "But Don -- it's like he has an extra gear."

Though Wildman claims he doesn't mind losing because it makes him want to try harder, it's clear that he brings competition to everything he does -- even parenthood. "I grew up training like a madman," says John Wildman, forty-nine, Don's youngest son. "Don had me doing this push-up regimen where he would pay me five dollars every time I could do five more push-ups than the last time. Before I was ten, I could do several hundred in a row."

One of the most consuming chapters in Wildman's competitive life began in 1982, when he caught the first televised Hawaiian Ironman triathlon. The race, composed of a 2.4-mile ocean swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a marathon, was touted as the ultimate physical challenge. As if to illustrate this, the women's leader, twenty-three-year-old Julie Moss, collapsed two hundred yards from the finish and for ten minutes attempted to drag herself to the line, staggering and crawling. When she touched the finish line, she collapsed in a puddle of urine and her eyes rolled back in her head. It was one of the most horrifying moments ever documented in sports. Watching it, Wildman was impressed. "I told my wife, 'Hey, there's this new sport I want to try.'"

"Don dragged me and all my buddies into training for the thing. And then he beat us all," John Wildman says. "I did not do subsequent Ironmans." His father did. After being told he'd won his age group, Wildman was dismayed to learn that he'd actually come in second to a Canadian named Les McDonald. The following year, Wildman returned, seeking to claim the gold, only to lose to McDonald again. Ditto the third year. Over seven years, a pattern emerged: Wildman would lose to his rival, a superior runner, but he'd narrow the gap. The eighth year, Wildman won.

After forty-five minutes of climbing, I can't see the summit -- or Wildman, until he doubles back to warn that a Doberman named Baby might charge me a little farther up the road. On recent rides the dog had bitten him, lunged at McEnroe, and knocked Commerford off his bike. I look at Wildman hard. I've fallen three times where the grade became so steep that I couldn't turn my pedals, and I'm already bleeding from the knee, hip, and elbow. I don't need a set of teeth sunk into my leg. "I thought you said this was an easy, hour-long ride!" I say, my voice cracking.

"Yeah, Laird holds the record," he says, with a hint of a smirk. In other words, it is just a quick spin -- if you're Laird Hamilton.

I'm beginning to see why Hamilton and Wildman found one another. They both believe nothing is so hard that it can't be pushed just a little bit harder. Nothing is so new or radical that it can't be tried. Wildman describes their meeting, in 1996 at a heli-skiing lodge in British Columbia, as "two-part epoxy." Hamilton admired Wildman's snowboarding skills; Wildman admired the thickness of Hamilton's neck. They didn't spend much time together on the trip, but two years later they crossed paths in Malibu and discovered that they lived less than a mile apart. "We started banging iron, and I fell into his routines," Hamilton says. "I wasn't really a biker until I met Don."

And Wildman wasn't really a surfer. But when Hamilton invited him to come to Kauai and then asked if he wanted to try tow surfing on a twenty-foot swell, Wildman actually did it. He slid his feet into the straps on Hamilton's six-foot board, picked up the water-ski rope, and let Hamilton, on a Jet Ski, fling him onto waves the size of two-story buildings. He got walloped by two before making the third. "The power, it felt like a Mack truck hit me," he says. "I went, 'Whoa! This is pretty good.'"

When most of us do something that could potentially result in severe injury, resistance intervenes in the form of terror. Like Hamilton, Wildman appears to be missing that gene. To them, getting hurt is simply an inconvenient by-product of doing what they love, nothing to get emotional about. Both men have had multiple broken bones, dislocated joints, and torn ligaments, and as for stitches, Hamilton "stopped counting at a thousand." In addition to an expansive pain threshold, the two men share the same orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Neal Elattrache, one of the athletic world's most sought-after specialists. In 2005, Elattrache reattached Wildman's right shoulder to his body when he tore all four tendons of his rotator cuff jumping out of a helicopter in Argentina. After painstakingly installing many screws and plates, Elattrache was dismayed to hear reports that Wildman had been seen shortly after the operation, riding his mountain bike. Then, six months later, Wildman had to have his knee pieced back together after he fell while racing an eighteen-year-old kid on a snowboard, sending his femur crashing into his tibia. When I asked Elattrache about all this, he sighed. "Some people's bodies can go through more than others," he said. "Don is an extreme case of that."

Winding Way is becoming steeper, and I tip over again. Wildman gets off his bike and helps me up, nodding his approval: "I always say, It's not a ride unless you get some blood."

That's it. "I've had enough," I say. I'm about to become one of the cautionary tales.

"Another two minutes and we're there," he says. "You can't turn around now."

The damn thing is, he's right. I can't. And in that moment, I understand how Wildman inspires people to fire on all cylinders: If you spend time with him, you find yourself wanting to be more like him -- and he isn't turning back before the summit. And so even though it's more like another ten minutes before we crest the diabolical peak and head down the long, hypothermia-inducing descent, when I tell Wildman later that I'm glad we went on the ride, I mean it.

Whenever Wildman wants to go stand-up paddling in the surf, which is on most days, he walks about three hundred yards from the sunny-yellow, Mediterranean-style house where he lives with his wife, Rebecca, down a tropically landscaped path marked with pink footstones, to his one-bedroom beach house. Located on the sand in Malibu's Paradise Cove, it's the ideal place to park a squadron of toys, including three dozen surfboards, kayaks, paddles, wakeboards, inflatable boats, a four-wheel-drive golf cart, and four Jet Skis. When you add this to the gym, the putting green, the aviary of exotic parrots, the garages filled with mountain bikes, road bikes, and tandem bikes, it's easy to see why Chelios, who lives next door, calls Wildman's five-acre compound "his own little amusement park."

On a clear January morning, I pull into the driveway and park next to Wildman's Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet. The $150,000 car is painted matte black, its proud Teutonic crest smeared over by an imprecise hand. "Got a guy to do it for $500," Wildman had told me. According to him and Hamilton, there are two acceptable color schemes for any vehicle: matte black or dull khaki camouflage.

Wildman answers the door. He's wearing a knit cap pulled low over his ears, baggy jeans, and a faded red T-shirt emblazoned with a skull. Anyone seeing him from a distance would take him for a skateboard punk. When Wildman wears a short-sleeved shirt, it's hard not to stare at his biceps. They're perfectly defined, as though baseballs have been sewn beneath his skin, and it's only the skin itself that gives any indication of the owner's age. Wildman predates sunscreen, and the result of his decades outdoors is a patina of tans gone by.

In the kitchen, Rebecca, a pretty, slim blond in her fifties (with an Ironman and four marathons under her belt), is making a salad. It's Sunday, and a football game is on. Wildman gestures toward the screen. "The problem with most of these coaches -- they're not inspirational," he says. "You see this guy from Seattle, Holmgren, who's supposed to be so great -- and he's got a forty-inch waist! Three chins! What the hell is that about?"

He pours water into a glass and mixes in a packet of amino acids, enzymes, and minerals called Neuro1, created by Bill Romanowski, the former linebacker and four-time Super Bowl champ, to help in the aftermath of countless concussions. Its purpose is to nourish brain tissue. "If the brain stays young, you'll stay young," Wildman says. He'd made the same point when telling me why most of his friends were decades younger than he was. "When you're around young people, they think they're gonna live forever -- and it's contagious," he'd said. "Rebecca always says I never hang out with people my own age, and I say, 'Yeah! Because they're so friggin' negative!' "

It's true that everywhere in this room, in this house, in Wildman's life, there is evidence of a curious and optimistic mind. You can see it in the pair of black-eyed toucans sitting on the giant copper ring, and in the books that line the shelves of his library. You can see it on the walls, where Picasso etchings hang next to paintings done by friends. But most of all, you can see it in the pictures. There are dozens of pictures of Wildman's family, on mountains and boats and beaches, at parties and celebrations, at the finish lines of marathons and triathlons; pictures of him with Ronald Reagan and at Arnold Schwarzenegger's wedding. There are many pictures of Wildman and Rebecca kissing. A digital frame flashes images of Wildman standing on a surfboard next to Hamilton; at a Pearl Jam concert with his grandson. Looking at them, it strikes me that for all of his physical triumphs, Wildman's real genius lies in the sport of living itself.

"Hey, have I ever showed you the Magic Twanger?" Wildman says suddenly.

"The what?"

"Come outside for a second."

Wildman walks to the three-hole putting green on his lawn. Beside it, a birdbath holds a pyramid of golf balls. He drops a handful on the ground, and then he reaches for an odd-looking club that's leaning against a lawn chair. He holds it up. "This is the Magic Twanger," a putter he invented and marketed in the nineties. It has a bulky, square face that allows a golfer to emulate Sam Snead's method of putting between his legs, rather than angled off to one side. Wildman, who has been known to play as much as ninety holes of golf a day, had admired the innovation, but golf rules forbid it because it looks ungainly. With the Twanger you can still use your body's center line, but your legs are in regulation position. To demonstrate, Wildman taps a few in. The Twanger is a superior design, he says, but it never caught on.

Listening to him, I remember something that Hamilton said: "Don's always on the cutting edge. That's why he's ageless." I mention this to Wildman, who thinks about it for a second. "Some of my contemporaries say, 'When are you gonna grow up?'" he says. "I hope I never do! I'm trying everything not to grow up." He walks toward the edge of the green. "And when I think I'm doing things that are grown-up, I go, Uh-oh. I'm slipping. I'd better get onto some new adventure." He laughs and leans over the Twanger. It's a long-shot putt, uphill and off-kilter, from an improbably far distance. The ball snaps forward, rolling wide toward the rough and away from the flag. But then at the last possible instant it hooks, as though rerouted by an invisible hand, and it drops into the hole.

Monday's WOD

Row 5K

Beginning Jan, we will have Paleo / Zone challenge for 60 days. You are encouraged to sign up and begin eating Paleo foods in Zoned quantities for the next 60 days. You will need to log your food so trainers can help you make adjustments based on your desired results (weight loss, increased performance, weight gain, etc).

If you are interested, reply in the blog and see your trainer. We will have a list of participants by 8 Jan and then will get after it!

Those of you looking to compete in this year's Sectionals in an attempt to make it to the CrossFit Games Regional Qualifiers should definitely jump on board, as nutrition will be one of your most critical variables and needs to be dialed in to ensure maximum performance and recovery.

See the link to the right to register for Sectionals - DO NOT DELAY - spots will fill up rapidly!!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all and God bless all our servicemen who are deployed and protecting us from harm.

See the article below, looks like some justice has been dealt in response to the 11/5 attacks here!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34583178/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

Yemen says 30 militants killed in raids
Radical cleric linked by U.S. to alleged Ft. Hood gunman believed killed
msnbc.com news services
updated 10:07 a.m. CT, Thurs., Dec . 24, 2009

SAN'A, Yemen - Backed by U.S. intelligence, Yemeni forces struck a series of suspected al-Qaida hideouts Thursday, including a meeting of senior leaders, killing at least 30 militants in the country's stepped-up campaign against the terror network, the government said.

A radical Muslim preacher linked by U.S. intelligence to a man accused of killing 13 people at a U.S. Army base may be among the dead, a security official told Reuters.

"Anwar al-Awlaki is suspected to be dead (in the air raid)," said the Yemeni official, who asked not to be identified.

Al-Awlaki had contacts with Maj. Nadal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist accused in the Nov. 5 massacre at Fort Hood, Texas.

The airstrikes were Yemen's second such major assault on al-Qaida in a week, at a time when the United States has dramatically hiked its aid to the government to eliminate the expanding presence of the terror group. Washington fears that al-Qaida could turn fragmented, unstable Yemen into a new Afghanistan-like safe haven in a highly strategic location on the border with oil-rich U.S.-ally Saudi Arabia.

The Pentagon recently confirmed it is has poured nearly $70 million in military aid to Yemen this year — compared to none in 2008. The U.S. military has boosted its counterterrorism training for Yemeni forces, and is providing more intelligence, which probably includes surveillance by unmanned drones, according to U.S. officials and analysts.

Yemen's deputy defense minister, Rashad al-Alaimy, told parliament that Thursday's strikes were carried out "using intelligence aid from Saudi Arabia and the United States of America in our fight against terrorism."

The strikes killed three important leadership members, al-Alaimy said, but he did not identify them.

Gathering of al-Qaida officials
Yemeni officials refused to comment on who they believed was present at Thursday's main target: a gathering of senior al-Qaida figures in Rafd, a remote mountain valley in eastern Shabwa province, a region where militants have been given refuge with tribes discontent with the San'a government.

A Rafd resident said that a midlevel figure in al-Qaida's Yemen branch, Mohammed Ahmed Saleh Omair, was among those killed. The resident, Awad al-Daghary, told The Associated Press by telephone that bearded al-Qaida fighters brought the bodies of Omair and three others killed in the strike to al-Daghary's tribe for burial. Two of the bodies were of members of the tribe who had run off to join al-Qaida, he said.

Further strikes Thursday targeted al-Qaida hideouts on the border between Shabwa and neighboring Abyan province, the Supreme Security Committee said in a statement.

It said 30 al-Qaida militants were killed in the strikes. Yemeni security officials refused to give details on any figures believed to be among the dead.

In a separate operation, 25 suspected al-Qaida members were arrested Wednesday in San'a, the Interior Ministry said. Security forces set up checkpoints in the capital to control traffic flow as part of a campaign to clamp down on terrorism.

Al-Alaimy, the deputy defense minister, said the operations were carried out after security officials received information about al-Qaida plans to carry out suicide attacks in the capital San'a against the British Embassy and foreign schools.


Alleged training camp targeted
Thursday's strikes come a week after warplanes and security forces on the ground attacked what authorities said was an al-Qaida training camp in the area of Mahsad in the southern province of Abyan — the largest assault on al-Qaida in years.

Al-Alaimy told parliament that 23 militants were killed in the strike, including Yemenis, Saudis, Egyptians and Pakistanis. Witnesses, however, put the number killed at over 60 in the heaviest strike and said the dead were mostly civilians.

The United States has been pressing Yemen for well over a year to take tougher action against al-Qaida, which has steadily been building up its presence in the country, with fighters arriving from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Yemen's government has been distracted by other internal problems. It is fighting a fierce war against Shiite rebels who rose up in the north near the border with Saudi Arabia, and Saudi forces have gotten directly involved, battling rebels who have crossed over into its territory. San'a is also struggling with a seccessionist movement in the once-independent south as well as trying to deal with rampant poverty.

The central government has little control outside the capital, and many of the tribes that control large parts of the rugged, undeveloped desert nation are angry at San'a and are willing to take in al-Qaida militants. To the frustration of U.S. officials, San'a itself has at times in the past struck deals with individual al-Qaida figures, letting them go free in return for promises not to engage in terror activity.

All those factors have made Yemen an attractive refuge for al-Qaida, and raised U.S. fears that the beleaguered nation could collapse into chaos and become another Afghanistan. Yemen not only lies next to Saudi Arabia and near the oil-rich nations of the Gulf, it overlooks vital sea routes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

The country was scene of one of al-Qaida's most dramatic pre-9/11 attacks, the 2000 suicide bombing of the destroyer USS Cole off the Aden coast that killed 17 American sailors.


© 2009 msnbc.com

Wednesday's WOD

21-15-9

Deadlifts (m - 225# / w - 155#)
400m run (between each set of deadlifts)

Tuesday's WOD

AMRAP in 12 minutes of:

10 Box Jumps (m - 24" / w - 20")
8 Burpees
6 Front Squats (m - 135# / w - 80#)

Monday's WOD

Three rounds for time of:

5 Ascents of a 15' rope (3 to 1 substitution rope climbs)
21 Ring dips
50 Squats

There will not be an organized noon class until the new year.

Those of you interested in competing in this year's CrossFit Games - please see below. The Sectionals for our area will be held in Austin.

Central and Southern Texas Sectional: March 13-14
Austin, TX
Texas (El Paso across and South), Louisiana
Regional Seeds: 30 men, 30 women

This will feed the regionals -

South Central Regional: May 29-30
GSX Athletics, 5220 West Vickery Blvd, Ft Worth, TX 76107
Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas
CrossFit Games Seeds: 4 men, 4 women

Here is the link to the 2010 CrossFit Games! http://games2010.crossfit.com/

Friday's WOD

This is the LAST noon WOD until 4 Jan 2010!!

Hoover Ball:

Rules for Playing

· The court is 66 feet by 30 feet.

· A 6-pound medicine ball and 8-foot volleyball net are used.

· Teams consist of 2-4 players. (For the national championships, 3-player teams will be used.) Each team may have one or two substitutes.

· Scoring is exactly like tennis. Teams play best-of-five or best-of-seven games.

· Points are scored when a team: fails to catch the return, fails to return the ball across the net, returns the ball out of bounds.

· The ball is served from the back line. The serve is rotated among one team until the game is won. Teams alternate serving after each game.

· The ball must be caught on the fly and immediately returned from the point it was caught. There is no running with the ball or passing to teammates.

· Each team's court is divided in half. A ball returned from the front half of your court must be returned to the back half of your opponent's court. If the ball doesn't reach the back court, the opponent is awarded the point.

· A ball that hits the out-of-bounds line is a good return.

· A player who catches the ball out-of-bounds, or is carried out-of-bounds by the force of the ball, may return in-bounds before the return.

· A ball that hits the net on its way over is a live ball. (If it was thrown from the front court, it must reach the opponent's back court to be good.)

· Teams may substitute at dead ball situations.

· Women serve from the mid-court line.

· Women may pass once before a return.

· Women may return the ball to any area of the opponent's court.

· Good sportsmanship is required. Points in dispute are played over.

Thursday's WOD

First, a HUGE thanks to CrossFit HQ and Coach for the slots to the cert; your generosity is changing the Army for the better! Also, a HUGE thank you to Chuck, Lisa, Bobbi, Lance, Mike and Russel! You guys are awesome trainers and just great professionals to be around - it's like CrossFit Heaven having you guys in the box - we could spend all night in the box learning from you guys!

Congratulations to all the newly certified Level 1 trainers!! There are so many, I cannot list them all. No excuse for anyone's form being messed up now since about half the box is Level 1 certified now!

Ok, 90% of our trainers are active duty Soldiers who volunteer their time to teach classes. Because so many are taking leave and either going to see family or having family in, this will be the last week of noon classes until 2010. We will resume noon classes on Tuesday 4 January 2010. Morning classes and our 1730 classes will continue but we will have no classes Christmas Eve or Christmas day and we won't hold any classes New Years Eve or New Years Day.

Some changes I expect to see in the new year - the gym will begin being open on weekends and we will also begin running a Foundations class on Saturday to meet the demand. Perhaps some Saturday WODs as well. If you want this, provide some feedback via the blog comments and a poll I will place on the blog.

Don't forget we are having the bowling get together Friday at 2000. - feel free to come and bowl a few frames! That's functional right???

Thursday's WOD: Time to go overhead!

Men use and 85#, ladies use 60# (remember the female bar is 30#)

Do shoulder presses until you reach muscle failure, rest for 2 minutes

do push presses until you reach muscle failure, rest 2 minutes

do push jerks until you reach muscle failure

track total number of completed reps for each exercise

Friday's WOD

WHAT?? You are posting Friday's WOD already??? That's right, I am! We are going to play Hoover Ball!! If you don't know what that is, delve into the CrossFit Journal and look it up, or just Goggle it or go here: http://hoover.archives.gov/education/hooverball.html this will be our last noon WOD before Christmas so I thought we would have some fun!

The box is closed Tuesday and Wednesday!

Due to the Level 1 cert, the box will be closed from 0800 to 1800 Tuesday and Wednesday. We will resume normal class schedule Thursday.

Monday's WOD

5 rounds for time:

20 OHS (m - 75# / w - 50#)
4 muscle ups (sub is 2:1 MU transitions on lower rings)

The box will be CLOSED for all classes this Tuesday and Wednesday due to the Level 1 cert we are hosting.

If you have med balls and don't mind us using them during the cert, please bring them in. We need all we can get as we have to have 60 for the cert.

I will be picking up 70 chairs and a table tomorrow morning about 1000; if you want to help, let me know. Tomorrow night at 1930, I will be setting all the chairs up and making sure the white boards, table and everything is squared away - if you want to help, come on out!

Christmas Party?

OK, we are thinking about having an informal get together this Friday at the bowling alley. Some beer and bowling before everyone goes there separate ways for the holidays but no gay present exchanging! I have put up poll so please let me know what you want to do.

Also, after much consideration, in light of the recent "conflict" between Robb Wolf and CrossFit HQ, I have removed the link on the blog to Robb Wolf's blog. Here is the reason:

I know Robb from the nutrition cert and respect his nutrition and training advice; I will buy his books, when they are published and those of you serious about nutrition would be wise to do the same. I know Dave Castro from military operations in combat, well before I began running an affiliate and I also know Greg Glassman pretty well after spending several days with him on a couple of occasions.

Greg and CrossFit HQ have been exceptionally generous to us. We have $20,000.00 worth of equipment thanks to them, we have two Level 1 certs; each with 45 free slots for Soldiers and Greg and numerous others worked their asses off to develop the Lumberjack Memorial Hero WOD and raise money for the fallen at Fort Hood. CrossFit HQ is also taking a team to Afghanistan to give free certs and equipment to Soldiers and is working with me to do the same during III Corp's deployment to Iraq. All of this is ON THEIR OWN DIME!

Robb's blog has descended into unprofessional name calling; a great deal directed at Greg. Greg, Dave and CrossFit HQ, on the other have maintained the high road in this. Due to this, I will no longer actively promote his blog on mine. It is unfortunate that this occurred but I cannot in good conscience continue to support someone who actively attacks those who have been so generous to me, the military and our community here at Fort Hood.

AMRAP in 20 minutes of:

5 Deadlifts
4 Hang Cleans
3 Push Jerks
2 OHSs
1 Rope Climb

Use 1/2 body weight - hang cleans are full squat catch

Check out the article in the Fort Hood Sentinel about the Lumberjack Memorial WOD!! : http://www.forthoodsentinel.com/story.php?id=2632 great picture of Leigh doing a perfect kettlebell swing! If you click the pictures, you can download the high resolution pic.

Thursday's WOD

Deadlift

3-3-3-3-3

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_DeadliftIntro.wmv

Awesome work today - you guys put out a great effort! Did you know you guys were getting photographed by the New York Times, whilst you were hitting your WOD - you'll all be famous now!

Wednesday's WOD

For time:

Run 400m
21, 15, 9, 15, 21 reps of:
Thrusters (m - 65# / w - 45#
Box Jumps (m - 24" / w - 20")
Kettlebell Swings (m - 1.5 pood / w - 1 pood)
Run 400m backwards

Tuesday's WOD - Strength Training!

Thrusters

1-1-1-1-1-1-1

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_BBThrusters.wmv

Monday's WOD

First a HUGE thanks to everyone for Saturday's WOD! Thanks to all the people from the box that helped set up, got food, coffee and helped clean up following the WOD; thanks to CrossFit CenTex, CrossFit Cedar Park and CrossFit Waco! It was great to meet all of you and thank you for coming out and supporting this event - your presence really made it special. We will have to get together again for some joint events. Thanks to Coach, Jimi, Tony, Casey and everyone from CrossFit HQ that worked their asses off turning this Hero WOD into a fundraiser! Most importantly, thanks to Lumberjack CrossFit for coming out in force and competing and watching. We were honored to have you there.

The pictures from the event have been uploaded and the link is on the left side of the page.

Five rounds for time of:

20 wall balls (m - 20# / w - 14#)
15 box jumps (m - 24" / w - 20")
10 knees to elbows
5 burpees

Lumberjack Memorial Hero WOD

Lumberjack 20

20 Deadlifts (m - 275# / w - 190#)
Run 400m
20 KB swings (m - 2 pood / w - 1.5 pood)
Run 400m
20 Overhead Squats (m - 115# / w - 80#)
Run 400m
20 Burpees
Run 400m
20 Pullups (Chest to Bar)
Run 400m
20 Box jumps (24")
Run 400m
20 DB Squat Cleans (m - 45lbs each / w - 30#)
Run 400m

First, I need to thank everyone that made tomorrow's WOD possible. We have a fantastic box with great people who tirelessly work to make things happen. A huge thank you to everyone for their time, effort and money in helping pull this thing off - you guys ROCK!

Tomorrow is the day we honor our fellow CrossFitters and Soldiers who were murdered by a bastard, coward, terrorist. Come out and join us for this WOD, do it with us, cheer us on but come out and show your support. Let's send a big F U to Nidal Hasan tomorrow that he can hear from his hospital bed at BAMC; let's show him that he, like all terrorists, was unsuccessful in breaking our resolve and all the cowardly act did was make our community stronger.

Friday's WOD

For time:

Row 1000 meters
Then three rounds, 21, 15, and 9 reps of:
GHD Situps
Back Extensions

If you have done a WOD for the last 4 days and are planning on doing the Lumberjack Memorial Hero WOD on Saturday, I recommend you take Friday as a rest day.

This will be the WOD on Saturday:

Lumberjack 20

20 Deadlifts (m - 275# / w - 190#)
Run 400m
20 KB swings (m - 2 pood / w - 1.5 pood)
Run 400m
20 Overhead Squats (m - 115# / w - 80#)
Run 400m
20 Burpees
Run 400m
20 Pullups (Chest to Bar)
Run 400m
20 Box jumps (24")
Run 400m
20 DB Squat Cleans (m - 45lbs each / w - 30#)
Run 400m

Don't worry, we will scale the WOD as required. We are not concerned about the weight or doing it as Rx, we want everyone who wants to, to be able to participate in the WOD. It's far more important to come out and show your support for those fallen; so if you are concerned about the difficulty, don't be. We will have athletes of all capacites participating so come out, join us, suffer with us and help us honor our fellow CrossFitters and Soldiers!

I want to thank our fellow affilaites from the surrounding community that will be joining us for the WOD; we are deeply touched by their support and it speaks to what a great community we are members of. When you see them, please introduce yourself to them and thank them for coming out and supporting this event:

CrossFit CenTex - http://www.crossfitcentex.com/
CrossFit Waco - http://www.crossfitwaco.com/
CrossFit Cedar Park - http://www.crossfitcp.com/
CrossFit Texas - http://www.thecrossfittx.com/Crossfit_Texas/Crossfit_Texas.html

We will also have CrossFit WTU Fort Hood http://crossfitwtuforthood.com/ and of course Lumberjack CrossFit http://lumberjackcrossfit.blogspot.com/ joining us.

Thursday's WOD

Sorry for the late post - trying to stay caught up with the upcoming memorial WOD and I'm also building the Centurion CrossFit Forward blog page that I will be posting on from Iraq shortly.

Thanks to Sean for covering today's noon WOD - Andy and I were stuck at RFI drawing kit for the deployment - big Army is big time slow!

The WOD:

"Linda" / AKA Three bars of Death (you can thank Andy for this!)

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_NicoleLindaWOD.wmv

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 reps of the triplet:

Deadlift: 1 1/2 body weight
Bench press: body weight
Clean: 3/4 body weight

Set up three bars and storm through for time.

Watch the blog for updates regarding Saturday's memorial WOD. I will post the WOD and women's Rx version tomorrow evening. We will also be running scaled versions. The box doors will open at 0900 on Saturday and we will kick things off about 1000.

It looks like there will be a total of 6 additional affiliates represented: CrossFit CenTex, CrossFit Cedar Park, CrossFit Waco, CrossFit Texas, CrossFit WTU Fort Hood and Lumberjack CrossFit! Lumberjack will have 77 people competing in the WOD and about another 140 spectators!

We will also have our Sadr City Chapter of Centurion CrossFit Forward doing the WOD on 5 December in Iraq!! Way to go Johnny - send us some pics!!

For those of you doing 5 on, 2 off with us, I recommend you take a rest day Friday, if you will be participating in the Lumberjack Memorial WOD on Saturday.

Finally, I still have several Fight Gone Bad 4 t-shirts that need to be picked up - come and get yours!

Wednesday's WOD

3 rds for time of:

400m Run
20 kb swings (m - 1.5 pood / w - 1 pood)
3 rope climbs (15ft)

Please post to the comments section if you are planning on being there Saturday for the Lumberjack Memorial WOD. Families and friends are welcome ,as are those just coming out to cheer people on. We are trying to get a rough head count of athletes that will be doing the WOD. We will have men's and women's rx stations as well as scaled stations.

We will have several fellow affiliates conducting the WOD with us and we are fortunate to have their support. Be sure to come out and meet some new CrossFitters!

We will kick things about 1000. CrossFit HQ is sending someone to film the WOD and we will also have Fort Hood PAO there.

Please help up make a difference in the lives of those killed and injured in last month's terrorist rampage here. Please tell your friends, family, coworkers and send them here to donate: http://www.cflumberjack.org/

Tuesday's WOD - Strength Training!

Back Squat

5-5-5-5-5

Please help up make a difference in the lives of those killed and injured in last month's terrorist rampage here. Please tell your friends, family, coworkers and send them here to donate: http://www.cflumberjack.org/

Everyone, please come out and join us this Saturday at 10:00 am at our box for the Lumberjack Memorial Hero WOD. We will have several fellow affiliates here that day so come out, meet some fellow CrossFitters and give it your all in honor of the four CrossFitters that died last month. Let's show Lumberjack CrossFit just how much the community supports them!!

One year ago, December 1st 2008, Centurion CrossFit Fort Hood had its first WOD! We have really come a long way and we could not have accomplished any of it without the support of all the awesome members of our box! Thank you all so much for coming out, suffering with us and helping us grow! This is your box and you all have done a fantastic job!!

Monday's WOD

Time to work off all that holiday eating!!

For time:

150 Burpees

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_Burpees.wmv

'No Time To Exercise' Is No Excuse

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060918142456.htm

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2006) — A new study, published in The Journal of Physiology, shows that short bursts of very intense exercise — equivalent to only a few minutes per day — can produce the same results as traditional endurance training.

"The most striking finding from our study was the remarkably similar improvements in muscle health and performance induced by two such diverse training strategies," says Martin Gibala, an associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University.

Gibala's team made headlines last year when they suggested that a few minutes of high-intensity exercise could be as effective as an hour of moderate activity. However, their previous work did not directly compare sprint versus endurance training.

The new study was conducted on 16 college-aged students who performed six training sessions over two weeks. Eight subjects performed between four and six 30-second bursts of "all out" cycling separated by 4 minutes of recovery during each training session. The other eight subjects performed 90-120 minutes of continuous moderate-intensity cycling each day. Total training time commitment including recovery was 2.5 hours in the sprint group, whereas the endurance group performed 10.5 hours of total exercise over two weeks. Despite the marked difference in training volume, both groups showed similar improvements in exercise performance and muscle parameters associated with fatigue resistance.

"Our study demonstrates that interval-based exercise is a very time-efficient training strategy," said Gibala. “This type of training is very demanding and requires a high level of motivation. However, short bursts of intense exercise may be an effective option for individuals who cite ‘lack of time’ as a major impediment to fitness."

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Wednesday's WOD

“Every Rep Counts” (from Western Canadian Qualifier)

AMRAP in 20 minutes of:

10 Wallballs (m - 20# / w - 14#)
10 Box Jumps (20")
10 Deadlift (m - 205 / w - 145#)
10 Burpees

Great job today on the push jerks - you guys really got the feel for fully opening your hips and could see the results in putting the weight overhead!

Please register and send out emails to friends, family, coworkers and lets raise some money for those affected by the shooting. We are going to have a huge blowout at the box - Cedar Park CrossFit, CrossFit CenTex and Lumberjack CorssFit are all coming to the box for the WOD. Come out and join us as we raise money and do a hero WOD for our fallen CrossFit brothers.

There will be no classes Thursday or Friday as we observe the Thanksgiving Holiday. Enjoy your time with your family and we will see you Monday to work off all that turkey!!

Tuesday's WOD - Strength Training!

Push Jerk

1-1-1-1-1-1-1

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/cfj-nov-05/push-jerk.wmv

An excellent post from Robb Wolfe's site!! http://robbwolf.com/


For the Troops…

By Bobbi Milsaps November 11, 2009

In honor of Veteran’s Day, I wanted to do my first post from the Coach’s point of view on Nutrition for those of you serving in the Military. Let me first preface this by saying that I have been married to a Marine for over 10 years and have had interaction with the military as a spouse in social situations and as a trainer. I have so much respect for what our men and women in uniform do every day. I wanted to take the time to address some of the common issues/questions I get from military folks regarding nutrition and how to simplify it during their day.

So, to the Military guys/gals….

Kick the “energy” drinks to the curb. I get this question a lot, and it’s usually because of concern from someone that their Soldiers/Marines are fueling their day with Monsters and Red Bull. They are filled with sugar and will do you more harm than good. I know you are exhausted, and sleep can sometimes be tough to get, but focusing on dialing in the quality of the food you are eating will help alleviate a lot of that “crash and burn” feeling you get. Learn to drink coffee and tea instead (without the sugar or artificial sweeteners). These energy drinks aren’t only crappy because of the sugar content, but they are also inhibiting your ability to get sound sleep, think clearly, and cause heart burn/acid reflux, and a host of other GI issues.

Keep a food stash. I know that a ton of you are living in barracks and have teeny tiny fridges, no stove to cook on, and if you’re lucky, a microwave. You get the bulk of your food from a chow/mess hall and those operate on limited hours generally with a breakfast, lunch, and dinner being served and even more limited on the weekends. So, keeping a stash of food can come in handy. You can do really well with food that needs little to no refrigeration.

Food Stash Staple #1: Jerky – Keep a supply of jerky on hand. This can be in your barracks room, but also in your pack during the day. Try to get the brand with lower sodium/carb/sugar content.

Food Stash Staple #2: Nuts – No Soldier, Sailor, Airman, or Marine should ever be without a can of nuts. Get them as natural as you can and roll with some almonds or cashews. I know they can be a little pricey, but they are cheaper at the commissary than they are off base, so stock up on payday. Many of you are putting out a lot of energy during the day, so this fat will help fuel you.

Food Stash Staple #3: Hard-boiled eggs – Most grocery stores will sell hardboiled eggs that are already cooked and peeled in a bag. “Egglands Best” makes them and sells them in bags of 6 and 12. Once opened, they must be used within 7 days, but this shouldn’t be tough to accomplish. It works well if you didn’t have time to get to the chow hall for breakfast or if you need a snack during the day.

Food Stash Staple #4: Sweet Potatoes – These are great to use in smaller quantities for your carb source. If you have a microwave handy, all you need is a sweet potato and some plastic wrap. Bundle the tater in the plastic wrap (don’t poke any holes in the wrap) and pop it in a microwave for about 7 mins (a little longer if it’s big). I recommend cutting it in half and eating half then and half later in the day or after your workout or a period of heavy physical output.

Food Stash Staple #5: Fresh Fruit – Oranges are easy to cart around and you can usually find an orange or an apple in the chow hall or 7 Day Store/Shoppette near the cash register. Eat the fruit in moderation, but keep some on hand as a better more quality choice than chips and cookies.

Pre-Make your snacks/meals – This can save you a ton of time. Take a handful of jerky, one or two handfuls of nuts, and throw them in a Ziploc bag. Pre-make a couple of these so that you have them ready to go. Then, all you have to do is grab a bag and maybe a piece of fruit and head out the door. If you feel like dropping some dough on it, you can buy a box of Paleo Snax, or Paleo Kits.

Know your chow/mess hall. It is not tough to eat well here. There is always a source of Protein, Carbohydrate, and Fat to be found within the walls of the chow hall. Stay away from the starches like rice, potatoes, and the bread basket. Go for the meat and veggies. If you don’t have your can of nuts handy, head over to the salad bar and grab a salad with some oil and vinegar on it or a full fat salad dressing (prefer the oil and vinegar). You don’t have to leave that place feeling guilty about your food choices. If you stick to the most natural unprocessed food there, then you can still make smart choices.

Avoid the “Food Court”. If you can’t avoid the food court, you can still make “smarter” choices there too. I know for a fact (because I’ve been a dependent for over 10 years) that you will find one or more of the following on any military installation when you visit a food court: Charley’s Steakery, Robin Hood (sandwiches), Popeye’s, Subway, Pizza Hut or Anthony’s Pizza, Taco Bell, Burger King. Stay away from Taco Bell, Pizza “anything”, and Popeye’s. Stick to the places where you can do a salad with meat, or meat only with veggies.

Teach your Junior Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines to make smart choices. It is so important to lead by example here. At first, they will look at you like a weirdo for breaking out jerky, hard boiled eggs, nuts, etc… as a snack, but they will also be curious. This is your chance to affect their life in a positive way regarding their overall health and well being. It’s not about making them super athletes, but instead, keeping them from being overweight, foggy headed, and prone to sickness. Our military men and women need to know how to make smarter food choices because mentally and physically, their job depends on them being “On Point” all the time. Good nutrition can give them a mental clarity that they have never before experienced.

~Bobbi

Please Read Below the WOD!

AMAP in 20 minutes of:

25 Burpees
15 Back squats (body weight)

We are going to be hosting a memorial WOD for the shooting victims here at Fort Hood. The date will be Dec 5th. Watch the CF mainpage for details! We will need a lot of help between now and then to pull this thing off. We can make a real difference for those who lost loved ones in the attack so please, let's show them what Centurion CrossFit and the entire CrossFit community is capable of!!

Friday's WOD

Compete as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:

95 pound Thruster, 5 reps
95 pound Hang Power Clean, 7 reps
95 pound Sumo Deadlift High Pull, 10 reps
**women use 65 pounds**

Thursday's WOD

Back Squat

3-3-3-3-3

Sorry for the late post!!

Wednesday's WOD

“Party with the Girls”

Men - 95# Women - 65#
Kelly - 400 m Run - 30 Box Jumps
Angie – 20 Pullups – 20 Pushups – 20 Situps – 20 Squats
Nancy – 400m Run, 21 OHS
Helen – 400 m Run – 21 Swings (55/35) – 12 Pullups
Fran – 21 Thrusters – 21 Pullups
Diane – 21 Deadlifts 21 HSPU
Annie - 50 Double Unders - 50 Situps
Karen - 30 Wall Ball Shots

T-shirts are in!! / Tuesday's WOD

The Centurion t-shirts are in and the red looks awesome!! They are 100% cotton so if you get a particular size and it fits you well, wash it in cold water and don't put it in the dryer as they will shrink if you do!!

Snatch

5-5-5-5-5

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/cfj-nov-05/snatch.wmv

Monday's WOD

5 rounds for time of:

50 feet of walking lunges with a bar held overhead (m - 45# / w - 35#)
21 Burpees

Also, a big congratulations to Andy, Leslie, and Jose for completing the San Antonio Rock 'n' Roll Marathon!!

Well done guys!!

Friday's WOD

3 Rounds for time of:

10 Deadlifts (m - 250# / w - 175#) http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_DeadliftIntro.wmv
15 Ring Dips http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_Dips.wmv
20 Wall Balls (m - 20# / w - 14#) http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_Wallball.wmv
400m run

Also, the Fight Gone Bad 4 t-shirts are in. They will be at the WOD tomorrow so come and pick yours up! The hoodies are done and will ship tomorrow! As soon as they arrive, we will bring them to the WODs and get them distributed. The last batch of t-shirts should be in soon. Again, once they arrive, we will bring them in and you can grab one!

I would like to do a WOD to raise money for the victims of last week's shooting. We will look at a date to hold it and invite fellow CrossFitters from the surrounding community to come participate. More details to follow....

Thursday's WOD

Overhead Squat

1-1-1-1-1-1-1

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_OverheadSquattingSafely.wmv

Veterans Day

Last year on Veterans Day, Centurion CrossFit Fort Hood had its first post on its blog and went active as a CrossFit affiliate. Below is that same post. It is just as relevant a year later.

I honor of Veterans Day, we will be taking the day off from training. Your WOD instead will be to find a veteran and thank them for their service to this great nation - 3, 2, 1....GO!

World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” - officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. However, fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. For that reason, November 11, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”

In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words: "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…"

The original concept for the celebration was for a day observed with parades and public meetings and a brief suspension of business beginning at 11 a.m.

The United States Congress officially recognized the end of World War I when it passed a concurrent resolution on June 4, 1926.An Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday - - a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as "Armistice Day."
Armistice Day was primarily a day set aside to honor veterans of World War I, but in 1954, after World War II had required the greatest mobilization of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen in the Nation’s history; after American forces had fought aggression in Korea, the 83rd Congress, at the urging of the veterans service organizations, amended the Act of 1938 by striking out the word "Armistice" and inserting in its place the word "Veterans." With the approval of this legislation (Public Law 380) on June 1, 1954, November 11th became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.

Later that same year, on October 8th, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the first "Veterans Day Proclamation" which stated: "In order to insure proper and widespread observance of this anniversary, all veterans, all veterans' organizations, and the entire citizenry will wish to join hands in the common purpose. Toward this end, I am designating the Administrator of Veterans' Affairs as Chairman of a Veterans Day National Committee, which shall include such other persons as the Chairman may select, and which will coordinate at the national level necessary planning for the observance. I am also requesting the heads of all departments and agencies of the Executive branch of the Government to assist the National Committee in every way possible." (Click here for the full text of the proclamation.)

On that same day, the President sent a letter to the Honorable Harvey V. Higley, Administrator of Veterans' Affairs (VA), designating him as Chairman of the Veterans Day National Committee. (Click here for the text of President Eisenhower’s letter.)

In 1958, the White House advised VA's General Counsel that the 1954 designation of the VA Administrator as Chairman of the Veterans Day National Committee applied to all subsequent VA Administrators. Since March 1989 when VA was elevated to a cabinet level department, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs has served as the committee's chairman.

The Uniforms Holiday Bill (Public Law 90-363 (82 Stat. 250)) was signed on June 28, 1968, and was intended to insure three-day weekends for Federal employees by celebrating four national holidays on Mondays: Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Columbus Day. It was thought that these extended weekends would encourage travel, recreational and cultural activities and stimulate greater industrial and commercial production. Many states did not agree with this decision and continued to celebrate the holidays on their original dates.

The first Veterans Day under the new law was observed with much confusion on October 25, 1971. It was quite apparent that the commemoration of this day was a matter of historic and patriotic significance to a great number of our citizens, and so on September 20th, 1975, President Gerald R. Ford signed Public Law 94-97 (89 Stat. 479), which returned the annual observance of Veterans Day to its original date of November 11, beginning in 1978. This action supported the desires of the overwhelming majority of state legislatures, all major veterans service organizations and the American people.

Veterans Day continues to be observed on November 11, regardless of what day of the week on which it falls. The restoration of the observance of Veterans Day to November 11 not only preserves the historical significance of the date, but helps focus attention on the important purpose of Veterans Day: A celebration to honor America's veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good.

Sorry

OK sorry about today guys but you will have to bear with us because of what has happened on Fort Hood. As you know most of us are green suiters and have other Jobs. For those who don’t know tomorrow is memorial service and POTUS will be here. Wednesday is also Memorial Day and post schedules are all hectic because of that with no school in the local area either. All of these reasons combined will cause classes to be postponed until Thursday and Friday this week. We will still be having a fundamentals class Friday. Trainers will be in and out of the gym this week and just because we are not having a scheduled class does not mean that you can’t meet and do your own WODs. Just be safe and careful. As always we thank you for your support through this tough time, and we will try and get back to a regular schedule as soon as possible. If you have any question please feel free to send me or Don and email our addresses are on the trainer page.

Dave

Monday's WOD

Five rounds for time of:

15 Hang squat cleans (m - 135# / w - 95#)
30 Push-ups

Please congratulate our newest Level I certified personnel - Leslie and Jenn - way to go ladies!!! (see if you can find them in the pic....)

OK, there is still a lot going on due to last week's incident. Please be patient as I expect class disruptions will continue to occur this week. We will be back to normal as soon as we are able.

For those that missed Foundations last Friday, we will reschedule it for this Friday 1130 - 1300; hopefully it will be a go.

Update...

Dave and I and our families are all OK, Erin, Andy, Alicia, Maria, Leslie, Alicia C., Jenn, have all checked in and are OK.

Blood is needed at Scott & White Hospital - if you can, please give blood as there are four victims in surgery.

All classes / training for tomorrow is canceled until further notice.

Our prayers are with those killed and wounded.

And to those who did it, may you burn in hell.

Thursday's WOD

Great effort today!! That was a long, brutal one...

Push Press

3-3-3-3-3


http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/cfj-nov-05/push-press.wmv

Wednesday's WOD

Awesome job on the front squats today - lots of PRs! Strength days are important, the increase in strength will drop your times on the METCONs.

For Time:

Run 400m
21 reps of Box Jumps (m - 24" / w - 20"), KB Swings (m - 1.5 pood / w - 1 pood)
Run 400m
18 reps of BJ, KB
Run 400m
15 reps of BJ, KB
Run 400m
12 reps of BJ, KB
Run 400m
9 reps of BJ, KB
Run 400m
6 reps of BJ, KB

Tuesday's WOD - Strength Training!

Front Squat

1-1-1-1-1-1-1

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_FrontSquats.wmv

Three rounds for time of:

4 Handstand Push-ups - http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_HSPUVariations.wmv
8 Pull-ups
12 Deadlifts (m - 225# / w - 135#)
16 Box Jumps (m - 24" / w - 20")

We go to noon classes Mon - Fri beginning this week so plan on checking the blog for the WODs and coming every day!

Cholesterol: We are dumb

Great post from Robb Wolfe at: http://robbwolf.com/


The basics of the diet-heart hypothesis go like this: High cholesterol leads to atherosclerotic plaques that precipitate a clot which can result in a heart attack or stroke. This whole notion grew from a disease called Familial Hypercholesterolemia and subsequent experiments that involved feeding rabbits (herbivores) oxidized cholesterol. These critters do not eat ANY cholesterol so the fact oxidized cholesterol caused problems is not surprising but also completely unhelpful when talking about people. Anyway, 50 years to failed dietary recommendations to lower cholesterol have done nothing to alleviate the CVD epidemic. In fact, the epidemic is rolling along bigger and badder than ever before. Well This Study was pretty interesting. It indicates that most people who suffer a heart attack have…low cholesterol! Now, everyone is in a fix to get folks on cholesterol lowering diets and statins to save them, but most heart attacks are in folks with…low cholesterol! Ok, doesn’t make any sense and it completely calls into question the notion that we need to reduce cholesterol levels…but why not give people statins and see how folks do on those. Well, interestingly, statins appear to decrease heart attack rates in people...with low cholesterol. The mechanism? Possibly a reduction in C-reactive protein (CRP), an indicator of systemic inflammation. Know what else reduces systemic inflammation? A paleo diet which controls insulin levels, removes gut irritating foods, balances omega-3/omega-6 fats. Add some vit-d and consistent good sleep and you have effectively turned off the type of inflammation underlying CVD, cancer and neurodegeneration.

Oh! Then there is the fact low cholesterol increases stroke rates!!

So, just to clarify:

1-Cholesterol supposedly causes CVD, But
2-Most heart attacks are actually occurring in people with low cholesterol, Yet
3-Doctors insist on cholesterol lowering protocols, including statins, Even though,
4-The benefit of statins has nothing to do with cholesterol, but rather it’s mild anti-inflammatory action, Which
5-Can be accomplished with simple dietary modifications and a few inexpensive supplements.

It would be funny if people were not dying from this stuff.