A question that comes up often in training is “What do I eat after my workout?”. The answer depends entirely on how you’ve been training and more specifically what you did that day.
There are two main macronutrients you’ll want to consume both pre and post workout. Carbs and Protein.
]]>There are two main macronutrients you’ll want to consume both pre and post workout. Carbs and Protein.
You can get your carbs from dense vegetables like sweet potatoes or other forms like Pasta if you’re not on a gluten free diet.
Protein comes from meat and fish. A very common source of protein in the fitness world is chicken. For some reason people never get tired of chicken.
You do not want to consume Fat after a workout and most people do not benefit from fat before a workout. There are a couple reasons for that and I’ll go through them.
The first being, most people do not run off of Fat as an energy source. Many diets and nutritional lifestyles focus on changing the energy source from Carbs to Fat. It’s still safe to assume though that most people operate on carbs. So - if you are one of those people who run on Fat (congrats) - you can totally eat Fat pre workout. If you’re not - it will only slow your metabolism, increase your digestion and pull away from your energy during your workout.
The other reason you wouldn’t want to eat fat before a workout is pretty obvious. You’re probably going to want to burn fat during your workout and your body will do a better job of that while it’s not digesting fat.
In general you want to eat a minimum of 2 hours before a workout but it is possible to get used to eating much sooner than that, depending on the food. I prefer to fast and train on an empty stomach.
When I refer to eating - let me be clear - we're not snackers here. Eating means a nutritionally sound meal. It almost always contains Protein, Carbohydrates and Fat. If its a pre workout meal we'll skip the fat but other than that eating needs to be associated with complete nutrition - otherwise you're making everything more difficult for your body - as the macros work together.
Now, after a workout - you should never eat fat because it slows down your metabolism and counteracts the insulin spike you’ll get from the carbs you’ll be eating. This will slow the intake of nutrients to your body at the pivotal point where it needs it the most, post workout.
So how much Carbs and Protein should you eat after your workout?
For a more Strength focused workout or a shorter Power based conditioning workout - you’ll want to have a higher ratio of Protein to carbs. This is because you’re breaking down muscle tissue and protein will be needed to rebuild this.
If your workout was higher volume, long in duration (over 20 minutes conditioning) you’ll want a larger ratio of Carbohydrates. For example if you play 6 full court basketball games, you’re going to need the carbs to recover and replenish the body.
Your body turns carbohydrates into sugars that provide energy to your muscles among other uses. Your central nervous system also benefits from carbohydrates during recovery. So sometimes fatigue from training too much can be offset by resting and eating more than usual on the carbohydrate side.
One strategy for improving your performance with nutrition before a workout is to load up on carbohydrates the night before if you know you are going to have a longer training session the next day or an endurance event. The body will convert them to sugars and if the timing is right - you’ll have much more energy for a workout.
Some people do this by accident with beer and pizza the night before. You’d be surprised how many people have a ton of energy the next day and can’t explain why until a coach ask them what they ate the night before. (Not encouraging this but it shows the point of high carb pre workout.)
The exact quantity of Protein and Carbohydrates will depend on your size and what your usual daily intake is.
For example - I’m 6’2”, 220lbs and I am active 5 days a week or more. I have a fast metabolism and I run off of fat as an energy source. This means I'm more sensitive to high carb diets and I can run leaner than most because I use fat as an energy source.
On any given day I try to get at least 180g of protein. My carbohydrates are somewhere between 60-75 and my fat intake is similar to my carbs.
Another important factor I should mention is that I fast daily, so I really only start eating until after my workout, much later in the day, around 5pm forward.
So my post workout shake has two scoops of protein in it which amount to around 50g of Protein. This is just over a quarter of my protein intake for the day.
Ultimately you’ll have to figure what works for you but the fundamental rules will help with recovery and growth. The rules are as follows.
I’ll touch more on fasting in a future post.
Stand Apart
]]>Recently I discovered I had been in a strength routine that blinded me from my own progress and again reinforced the need to measure Volume.
I’ve been in a gym training consistently for 12 years. Like anyone, I’ve built my warmup sets around certain weight jumps based on what I feel is appropriate for the goals of the day and my maxes on that lift.
]]>Add onto the fire training communities that encourage this like Hiit, Boot Camps, CrossFit and the fuel of daily beautifully edited Influencer videos on Instagram showing nothing but training for hours on end.
The perception of a good workout has changed entirely by the masses - even with a shortage of experience and as a result, fitness businesses are giving people what they want - knowing well it’s not what leads to true Fitness and results.
Volume is a tool that has to be kept in check for a number of reasons. Too much volume can lead to adrenal fatigue, it can force the body to break down the muscle you’ve built for fuel, it can lead to an increase in cortisol levels and it can completely neglect metabolic pathways that are essential to being a well rounded fit individual.
There are other considerations that need to be taken into account - especially when it comes to strength.
Recently I discovered I had been in a strength routine that blinded me from my own progress and again reinforced the need to measure Volume.
I’ve been in a gym training consistently for 12 years. Like anyone, I’ve built my warmup sets around certain weight jumps based on what I feel is appropriate for the goals of the day and my maxes on that lift.
Take a Back Squat day for example. Let’s say I’m working up to a heavy set of three or I’m finding a heavy set of 5 and then staying there for 5 sets.
Well - my usual warm up consists of these weights.
Barbell - 135lbs - 225lbs - 275lbs - 315lbs - 345lbs
By that point I know where I’m at for the day and can plan accordingly.
The issue here is that I became so used to these jumps that over the years as I got stronger - I ignored the fact that each jump comes with a significant increase in overall Volume. (or total weight lifted).
As I started to become more busy in my days and not have the time to do my usual 2 hour plus sessions in the gym - I started to modify these sets to speed things up.
135 - 225 - 315 - 365 - 405
To my surprise 405 was not nearly as hard as it was in the past with my usual build up to the same weight.
So I started to push it in little ways. I used a 55lb barbell instead and went 145 - 235 - 325 - 415.
And again - 415 felt good, even for sets of 3.
I was surprised and realized that I had been downplaying the significance of the overall Volume in my warmup sets.
The addition of smaller jumps increased the total amount of weight moved in the session, even at low repetitions to a point that it made the heavier weights that much harder by the time I got there.
Even if I was only doing sets of 3-5 on the way up - it was clearly taxing on my central nervous system and body before I even reached my work sets or max because some of the top sets I’ve listed here were a struggle on a regular basis.
I tried this with my Bench Press as well, and Deadlift. There were significant differences in these lifts - probably more as a result of my warmups but I noticed similar results. I was able to hit heavier sets with ease.
After all these years - I hadn’t thought to jump quicker to heavier weight and test the waters to see where my Strength was at. It turns out I was a lot stronger than I thought and my routine was holding me back - mentally and physically.
Embarrassing as it was to realize this - I quickly discussed it with a friend. We both laughed at the irony of a coach who always talks shit about high Volume training, ignoring his own high volume tendencies in Strength.
This isn’t to say that you should add a lot more weight and reach your working sets faster. It’s just to say - challenge your routine, test the waters and be aware that more isn’t always better and sometimes it’s downright stupid.
]]>There’s two ways to approach it. You can get back in the gym and alter your training or you can find activities to do outside of the gym to warm up the body and reboot things.
]]>If you’ve been training for many years it’ll be easy for you to step back through the door and start where you left off, but that comes with very real risks. You see, your body remembers how to do all the movements and your mind is more than willing to push through the discomfort. The problem lies in your deconditioning.
There are a couple places people tend to get injured the most while training. One of them is coming back after a long break. Inevitably, you’ve lost strength, muscle mass and even the connectivity that helps everything work together in the body to perform.
So what happens? You start training, you feel great, you push a little, add some weight, you hit a good conditioning workout and boom - you pull something, tweak a muscle, strain your back or you just wake up the next day feeling like a useless sack of bricks. And there was no warning that this was coming….except for this blog post.
There’s a method to avoid injury and the risks associated with coming back to training. Within our circle we call this Breaking the Seal.
There’s two ways to approach it. You can get back in the gym and alter your training or you can find activities to do outside of the gym to warm up the body and reboot things.
In the gym - You absolutely want to do mobility work and warm up properly. Break a sweat and then move on to working on the range of motion you’ve been missing while you’ve been on the sidelines. Hip, ankles, spine, neck, shoulders - all of it needs to be mobilized properly so that you can move right as you get back to training.
We highly recommend doing a search for KARS routines on Youtube and using this to mobilize pre-workout. A good KARS routine can take as little as 15 minutes and you’re ready to do pretty much anything.
For Strength - ideally what you want to do is start off with lower weight strength sets, at volume, with a heavy focus on timing, engagement and form.
As opposed to building up to a heavy set of 3, you’re really going to want to hit the foundational set schemes of 5 x 5 or others that total a decent amount of repetitions when it’s said and done.
You’re going to feel like you can lift more but you’ll want to stay light for at least a couple weeks - we’re talking 60% of your previous max or less.
For some of us who can only get in the gym 3 - 4 days a week we have a habit of hitting multiple lifts in supersets or during extended training sessions. Even though you’ll feel great to be back at it, avoid hitting too many movements and lifts in the same day or session - or you’ll pay the price the next day.
When it comes to conditioning you’ll want to do something sustained for a longer period of time that is less intensive on the body. Bodyweight workouts with an emphasis on cardiovascular conditioning over an extended period of time are perfect as long as you scale the movements properly.
Something as simple as a pullup in a long workout can do damage when you haven’t trained for a while. You can also use a rowing machine to do interval distances or one row for a longer duration. The main rule for conditioning when coming back is to do something that doesn’t spike your heart rate as high. Let your central nervous system get used to the stimulus again.
The other approach to Breaking the Seal is to engage in athletic activities outside of the gym that are low impact on the body and also cardiovascular focused.
Even though you’ll be outside of the gym - you’ll still need to warm up properly beforehand and really do the work on the mobility side to make sure you can move right. If you skip this step, your risks of injury will go through the roof, regardless of how low impact the activity is.
One of my personal favorite activities to do outside of the gym is to swim. Swimming is low stress on the body but is an extremely good cardiovascular workout. You can do it for an extended period of time, regardless of how well conditioned or fit you are and you will not do damage to your body. This may be something as casual as going to the beach and swimming through some waves for an hour or doing laps in a pool. You’ll be surprised how much of a workout you can get from swimming. The other upside to swimming is that if you learn to perform without oxygen - everything else is a piece of cake.
If you have a sport you love, you can also jump back into that on a casual level. A couple hours of full court basketball will definitely Break the Seal. Just remember, you need to be able to move well to avoid injury so I can’t say it enough - warm up and mobilize!
A day hike on a challenging trail will work just fine too. I’m not talking about a paved mountain with overlooking views for influencer photographs. I’m talking about a real trail with some kind of rating and elevation climb that will challenge you a bit in a tolerable and enjoyable way. Don’t be afraid to venture out - sometimes solitude is needed, especially in today’s world.
The goal of Breaking the Seal outside of the gym is to distract yourself from the uncomfortable feeling of being out of shape with an activity you enjoy so much you’re not paying attention to being out of breath and the other side effects of reconditioning the body.
Make sure whatever you choose to do follows the guidelines of longer duration and sustained heart rate. You do not want something that is going to spike your heart rate and put your body in shock after it’s been away from training.
Once you learn how to do this, coming back to training after an extended break isn’t so much of an issue and you’ll have another skill in your pocket to make you a better performing human.
Get after it - time is flying by and it’s never too late to Break the Seal.
]]>When I was 5 I used to walk down to the corner with my mother in NYC and take the bus to her job at the World Trade Center.
I never realized how important those buildings were to me until over a decade later I was watching people jump out of them, while they were covered in flames and smoke, from my parent’s 60” box TV.
]]>I never realized how important those buildings were to me until over a decade later I was watching people jump out of them, while they were covered in flames and smoke, from my parent’s 60” box TV.
Photo by David Surowiecki
I’d been sent home from high school. I don’t remember how I got home but I remember walking down the hall at school and watching everyone crying, hurrying and in a state of panic. I can’t forget the look on all the teachers' faces. Like they knew they had to hold it together but they couldn’t and they were terrified.
We lived in a commuter town to NYC, which meant most of the kids around me had parents who worked in the city, including my own father, who was in Manhattan on that day.
I remember shaking on the inside as I stood there watching it all unfold on our big box living room TV. I can feel that feeling now. Not very far off from the feeling I get when the Pledge of Allegiance is being sung or when a scene in a movie has my adrenaline pumping but different - more dark.
There were so many memories that all of sudden carried a different type of weight.
Going to daycare on the first floor - watching a play of the Boy who cried Wolf. I remember leaning against the glass wall by my mom’s office, paralyzed in fear, from the sheer height of the building and the view of the city at my nose. For some reason I still did it every time I was there, as if I couldn’t turn away from something that scared me so much.
Everyone in my family either worked at the Trade Center at one time or another or knew someone who did and there were plenty we knew who were there that day. There were so many businesses in those towers - to be a New Yorker meant you were tied to it - like it or not.
Photo by Patrick Witty
After that day, car trips on the way to my grandparents or rides home from the airport came with a reminder of the missing buildings in the Skyline I had grown so connected to.
There was no going back. The world changed, almost instantly.
The War on Terror. The Taliban. An extremist group that had plagued their own country and the world for a decade, at least.
Friends went off to war. Deployments went from 6 months to 14 months. Many came back never to be the same. Some never came back, including those who chose for themselves.
Generations were raised in War.
Families suffered.
America suffered.
It’s now been 20 years and that day haunts us more than ever as we look at how we’ve handled our exit from Afghanistan, this year.
Our President has “evacuated” our troops from Afghanistan and abandoned 15,000+ Americans and Allies to the mercy of the Taliban. His administration has left behind military resources such as weapons, equipment, aircraft and vehicles worth Billions to the Taliban.
A nightmare ending to a 20 year long war and a complete disrespect to American values.
But we’ve got to remember what we were reminded of on this day in 2001. Americans will come together to do whatever it takes in the name of their brothers and sisters when evil strikes.
There are countless stories of New York Police Officers and Firemen who went into those buildings knowing well they may not come out and they never did. There were many civilians who did the same. We’ve all been told them and some of us knew them.
The heroes, sacrifices and bravery that were shown on 9/11 are just one example of many times Americans have put themselves into danger and sacrificed everything for what is right.
As we face the challenges of 2021 and beyond we have to remember our history, our values and principles. It is, after all, what makes us American.
Freedom, Liberty and Justice for All.
]]>Being in lockdown from COVID-19, hitting home workouts and missing the gym has taught us much about the way we view each other but one thing will always be true.
It’s not about what Strength discipline you are currently specializing in - it’s about what you can learn from all of the different disciplines and how you can use the pieces to reach your long term goals.
]]>When you’ve trained for as long as we have - as either an athlete, a weightlifter, or a fitness enthusiast - you most likely have begun to see a divide emerge between the different disciplines. Those disciplines each have their own purpose, whether it be normal day-to-day fitness, strength training, or training for a sport specific purpose.
It has always been in good fun, but the truth is it has created a myriad of stereotypes. It has evolved into segmenting athletes into strict categories that have held back their potential for generations.
Here we are, in the midst of 2020 (AKA total chaos), and our country is being divided - aggressively. Political parties, constitutional rights, gender identities, safety and health concerns, law enforcement, race - you name it. We’re the least united we’ve ever been, it is almost as if that is the goal of the powers that be.
However, as athletes we know better, we know that the moment we enter the arena all bets are off. It is the best part of sports, no matter who you are - the same rules apply - we are all equal inside the arena. Perform better and earn your victory! Your teammates, side by side with you, in the trenches of war, throughout the battle and united in victory. No matter where they come from, what language they speak, or the color of their skin - they are athletes just like you, committed to the same goals, path, and with a resounding love for the game.
If you look at the Strength or Fitness sports, you have three or four main categories: Olympic Weightlifting & Powerlifting, Bodybuilding, Strongman, and CrossFit.
Powerlifters are the big overweight athletes who train 3 lifts and will do anything to shorten their range of motion for the sake of competition. Yes, I recognize this is a stereotype in and of itself, so please understand this is a generalized view of the competitive structure only. They’re associated with heavy steroid use and negative attitudes about everything non-Powerlifting (techniques and form).
Olympic Weightlifters are the elitist. They believe everything they do is better, more perfect and more impressive than everyone else’s work. They are the samurai of the barbell and they’ll build a house out of their workout journals of barbell complexes and endless hours of “practice”. I often liken their sport to a form of art. The way they move the barbell is their own, like the brush strokes of a master painter creating his masterpiece.
Bodybuilders are in it for one reason - to look bigger and more shredded than everyone else. They come with a myriad of eating disorders and insecurities and they have a strange love for everything mechanical and inflamed. The more machines they can use in a workout the better. The more swollen the better. They will never be big enough and their bodies will never be good enough.
Strongman athletes are your “freak of nature” types, that would rather turn back the clock of time to the Viking era where they can lift their stones, throw their logs and drink out of the skulls of their enemies. They will literally break themselves to lift heavy objects and in their eyes - everyone else is small, weak, and useless. They are the superior forces of power and no one can challenge them.
CrossFitters find themselves in the center of a cult like universe. They believe the longer they workout, the more they suffer, the more indestructible they are. They care more about going fast than doing things right and feel the need to tell the world how much better they are while they brag about their endless injuries and failures.
Then there’s everyone else.
Runners who wither away but have an addiction for a chemical response that only occurs in human deer hybrids. They care more about distance and their gadgets than the actual body of work itself. To them, anything that can make their boring/monotonous sport feel more extreme or intense, will be highly sought after. It reminds me of the annual craze over the latest iPhone... (Blame running shoe industry.)
Yogis who wear the stench of their armpits as a badge, hold a disdain for anyone with muscles and love to do nothing more than sweat in awkward positions as they talk about their feelings.
The Strength world has many similarities to the world of Martial Arts. They both require years of training, mental toughness, and a level of discipline few ever reach or truly understand. Those who do reach it tend to become very successful, and known around the world. As an athlete yourself though, you will never reach your own full potential unless you open your mind and accept that there is something to be learned from every discipline. More importantly, that there are many ways to achieve greatness, the path someone else took to get there will most likely not be the same that will get you there.
Now let's give this discussion a reality check, this is how we should view each other as ambassadors of our sport.
Strongest foundational strength discipline. The Back Squat, Deadlift and Benchpress are movements that will provide the human body a strong framework like structure that can be maintained and built on for the duration of one's life. Learn how to properly perform these movements, then excel at them. Once you’ve accomplished that, let the gains begin!
Completely built around moving the most amount of weight in the most efficient manner possible. This is accomplished by generating power through levers and mastering control of the body at every point throughout a series of extremely complex barbell movements.. This is the Bushido of Barbell. There are two movements, Clean and Jerk and Snatch. But every champion Weightlifter has never lifted exactly the same. This sport is just as much about mastering your body and leveraging it’s advantages through training than it is lifting heavy weights. Learn how to generate power with Weightlifting and how to use your body type to its own advantage and it will transfer to every other physical activity you do.
No one has mastered the art of muscle fatigue, supplementation, volume and muscular anatomy as Bodybuilders have. They have pushed their bodies to the absolute limits of human ability, especially when it comes to generating muscle mass in the fastest way possible. They know how to control and mitigate the chemical responses the body has to deal with from such high amounts of tissue damage and scarring as a result of rebuilding. They learn how to build mass quickly in specifically targeted areas for desired aesthetic results. This skill should not to be taken lightly, but respected for what it truly is.
These are the strongest, most functional human beings on the planet - period. You need no experience in Strength or Fitness to witness a certifiable Giant lifting massive boulders over their own head. Once you see it, you know without a doubt, that these people are a different kind of STRONG. They consistently lift the heaviest amount of weight in training and process the highest amount of volume at the same time. They are the masters of handling odd objects, moving massive loads over great distances. They are the mad scientists, managing the central nervous system as it responds vigorously to their types of heavy training. In order for them to handle the stress of this training and the loads that come with it they oftentimes need to gain mass to sustain. They also have to be able to recover from this type of stimulus which would cripple most other athletes. You will be hard pressed to find any athlete who has more experience performing while suffering. If you can learn how to move massive weight with speed like these athletes, then maybe one day, you yourself will unlock the power only written about in comic books and ancient tales of the gods.
(Look we’ll talk about what it used to be because that’s what we know.) This “Sport” was literally created to make people more fit so they could enjoy their lives outside of the gym more. They have perfected the art of work capacity. Being able to move weight over a distance repeatedly for time. There is no other discipline that creates as well rounded an athlete as CrossFit. Why is that? Because they pulled key aspects of every other strength/training discipline and they learned the recovery techniques that compliment them (mobility, nutrition, supplementation). They even included Gymnastics. So what are they best at? Nothing. That is their strength - they are pretty good at everything without being the best at anything. OK - well maybe they are the best at box jumps and being vertically challenged (AKA short). All jokes aside - you can learn that your level of fitness has never reached its true potential, CrossFit will teach you how much you really do suck, at a myriad of things. It is your job to try and suck less. Fitness goals tend to be reached in the shortest amount of time under the CrossFit methodology, personally though, I feel this has more to do with the competitive nature of the individuals who find their passion training this way. Their greatest strength is having a level of efficiency in every aspect of fitness, not just a single modality. You’ll learn how to train in a more complete functional manner that will translate effectively to every sport or athletic endeavor you so choose to participate in.
Let’s also include Cyclist, Swimmers and all the other Endurance Sports here, basically anything monostructural. They are the world's greatest pioneers at regulating their heart rate and at training their bodies to be as efficient as possible. A true endurance athlete has the ability to spike their heart rate and lower it to bismal numbers in a very short period of time. They recover fast and are the kings & queens of continuous movement. Don’t understand what we’re talking about? Look at an Ultra Marathon.100 Miles of running. No this isn’t an NWA song - it’s doing the same thing for what seems like an eternity. There is only one way to accomplish this - efficiency. The human body is capable of amazing feats, these athletes exemplify that ability. They can turn down their heart rate, which allows for longer training days and even a more efficient use of their caloric intake. In other words, their bodies are finely tuned machines that can ramp up the MPG’s at will.
In the Strength world we all know at least one athlete who has left our planet and landed in the Yoga community. With that departure they left behind daily pain, a pattern of injuries and an overall disdain for aging. What we mean by this is Yogis are the best in the world at training flexibility, mobility and mastery of body weight with fluid movement. They also have a strong focus in myofascial release, which increases the elasticity of the body allowing for easier movement and a better all around existence. You see what we do in the Strength world is tighten and break everything down so it can regrow stronger and rebound to generate power. The downside of this is as we age we have put such stress and tension on the body that sooner or later things don’t feel that great or worse break. Yoga can undo much of this damage - through suffering again (seeing a pattern here?) and bring you back to moving as well as you did when you were a child. You know - when you could do just about anything and be OK. Learning how to move to extreme ranges will not only make you healthier and pain free but it will also help you recover from Strength training - making you stronger faster!
So there you have it. Just one perspective of some of the skills and lessons that can be learned from different disciplines of training and strength.
The message is clear - athletes are United and Committed to human performance.
Being in lockdown from COVID-19, hitting home workouts and missing the gym has taught us much about the way we view each other but one thing will always be true.
It’s not about what Strength discipline you are currently specializing in - it’s about what you can learn from all of the different disciplines and how you can use the pieces to reach your long term goals.
In the world of Strength there are many ways to train and specialize to achieve different goals but one thing stays the same - the human body. Whether you are Training simply for health or weight loss reasons, or if you are interested in more competitive arena’s such as Bodybuilding, CrossFit, Weightlifting, Strongman or Powerlifting, there is one piece of gear you should be using to get the most out of your training and your body - Wrist Wraps.
]]>In the world of Strength there are many ways to train and specialize to achieve different goals but one thing stays the same - the human body. Whether you are Training simply for health or weight loss reasons, or if you are interested in more competitive arena’s such as Bodybuilding, CrossFit, Weightlifting, Strongman or Powerlifting, there is one piece of gear you should be using to get the most out of your training and your body - Wrist Wraps.
Wrist Wraps have been used since ancient times to stabilize the wrists. Even the strongest Warriors learned very quickly how fragile their Wrists were and immediately created ways to support them so they could push their bodies to the limits and achieve greatness. Today you will see every top Competitive Athlete using Wrist Wraps from the Olympics to Strongest Man in the World.
In Training we spend hours, days, months and years in the Gym. We push through discomfort, we apply pressure and stress willingly and we optimize our nutrition and recovery to make sure we can grow as quickly and efficiently as possible. It’s a life commitment.
With anything like this there are always certain tools, techniques and secrets that get passed down and learned over time. Wrist Wraps are one of these and we’ll explain why you need to have a pair in your Training bag.
Your Wrists are connected to your hand and your hand...well is connected to whatever you are lifting. When you stabilize and support the wrist joint you are able to transfer energy through your wrists in a more efficient manner and in some movements this even allows you to get into a better position. This means more power during your lifts and heavier weight is now possible because your body is better connected and more efficient at using that power.
It’s not uncommon for our customers to come back to us and tell us that they set a new personal record their first time using our Wrist Wraps. This leads up to the next reason why you should use Wrist Wraps.
If you can Lift More Weight, you’ll now be able to rep out more reps with more weight and that is the name of the game in Strength. You can get more volume than usual at higher weights stimulating the muscles to adapt faster and in turn grow stronger.
If every day you go to the gym, you’re now lifting more weight and repping more reps - you’re going to progress much faster than before. Part of this is about wasting less energy and becoming more efficient. Imbalances occur in training all the time, usually when the body has to compensate for weakness.
Well, that’s what your Wrist Joint is in the Strength world - a weakness. Eliminate the weakness and grow stronger faster.
The Wrists are weak - it’s a simple fact of life - welcome to being a human. They’re absolutely awesome for fine motor movements and they allow us to do almost everything on a daily basis. However, they were not made for the gym. You can break or injure your wrists more ways than you can count a grain of rice in that giant bag we all love so much. But that’s not the worst part. Because we use our wrists so much when they do get tweaked, injured or god forbid broken - it takes them forever to heal.
The tendons in the wrists are very sensitive and the structure needs to function a certain way or everything pretty much sucks for you. This is where Wrist Wraps come in. If you’ve been experiencing wrist pain during training (or in general) or if you’ve injured your wrist recently - stabilizing the wrist joint will decrease the pain if not eliminate it and allow you to keep training while the wrist heals.
We all know the worst thing in the world is being in pain during training. It kills your motivation, makes training a bad experience and more than that - it holds you back from reaching your full potential. That frustration is something we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy. Just kidding, yes we would.
It’s not a coincidence that the founder of MANIMAL broke both his wrists when he was in high school and ten years later was experiencing pain daily while training himself and his athletes as a full time CrossFit coach. After developing Wrist Wraps he learned that it wasn’t just a problem for him but many athletes suffered from wrist pain during and after training.
Immediately the feedback received confirmed that every Strength Athlete had experienced some sort of wrist pain during training. Outside of training - we’ve had customers that wear our Wrist Wraps during work, playing sports and other outdoor activities to eliminate wrist pain and injury. We’ve learned a lot about the wrists in the last ten years to say the least...So - if you have wrist pain or have an injured wrist - quality Wrist Wraps are a must!
If you’ve read this far you learned how the wrist tendons and bone structure are sensitive. If you’ve ever worked a job where you’re on the computer all day you’ve probably experienced some form of Carpal Tunnel - aching and throbbing pain that seems to be a curse from hell. Well - it turns out overuse can wear out the wrist tendons, cause inflammation and also make it easier for you to have a “lazy” wrist position while training.
Many of us like to hit training sessions that involve a large amount of repetitions, whether it’s in a workout or just part of a Bodybuilding routine. Some of you “special” people like to actually do sets where you go to fatigue. We’ve all got our ways of training but it’s no surprise that a big trend recently has been lots of high volume training. As a result of all the repetitions and fatigue these types of training sessions put a large amount of strain on the wrists and lead to diminishing returns, if you’re lucky and if you’re unlucky lead to wrist injuries or tweaks.
We’ve already identified how supporting the wrists makes you more efficient and how wearing wrist wraps prevents injury. Well - high repetition training opens you up for wrist problems as your form fatigues, your wrists take a beating and your performance suffers.
Wearing a good pair of comfortable Wrist Wraps that you don’t have to repeatedly adjust with the right balance of support and mobility of the wrist will make your high volume training more safe, efficient and effective. Easy as that.
This one's for you fire breathers and power athletes. The ones that like to taste blood in their lungs, feel the burn of lactic acid and die in a pool of sweat and chalk after the workout. Good old strength and conditioning - always ends with conditioning. The name of the game is Power. How do you get Power? With SPEED. What is the enemy of Speed? Fatigue. What’s the best friend of Speed? Efficiency.
Waste less energy, get more shit done faster, generate more Power. That’s what being Fit is all about. Alright - I’m getting amped writing this and I already worked out today so..back to the point.
If you’re trying to speed up your conditioning workouts, hit personal records, be a CrossFit monster, destroy your friends at the gym or just feel the motherfucking burn - wearing Wrist Wraps will help - a lot. How, you might ask?
There’s a couple things that slow you down but we’ll talk about the big one when it comes to high speed conditioning workouts - fatigue. Fatigue is when your muscles, central nervous system, lungs etc etc hit a point where they can no longer function at the pace you’re trying to push them to. It’s when you’re dizzy, shaking, or failing reps that you could do in your sleep. When you’ve gone from being that icon of masculinity to the guy who everyone feels bad for. That’s fatigue - it’s for the old and the weak - mostly the weak.
Wrist Wraps allow you to transfer energy better resulting in more efficient movement, proper muscle activation so that as you switch between your movements in your Metcon, WOD, Conditioning workout - you will be recovering faster. Inefficient movement patterns make everything harder and that’s what leads to fatigue.
So, the next time you’re busting out some Handstand Pushups or doing some Tire Flips put on a pair of Wrist Wraps and watch how you get more work done in a shorter period of time.
Since we’re a fan of passing on secrets - we recently learned from a couple of Strongman Champions we know that Wrist Wraps will allow you to have a tighter grip for Farmers Carries - that’s a little golden nugget right there. Because putting down the weight to rest is admitting defeat - even if it is just your grip.
The wrists are the weakest connection point in your body when it comes to weight training. Stabilize and support them with Wrist Wraps, eliminate the weak point and you’ll instantly become more efficient and powerful. Simply put - Yes, you’ll be able to lift more weight and gain muscle faster as a result.
That depends on your definition of weak. If by weak you mean like the world’s strongest athletes who compete in Powerlifting, Strongman, CrossFit, Bodybuilding, Weightlifting and Gymnastics - then yes. All jokes aside - no Wrist Wraps will not make your Wrists weak. We’ve tested this myth vigorously over the last 10 years of working with athletes and our customer base. We even have a biomechanics doc who studied our wrist wraps and the effect they had on the wrists to better understand how performance interacts with the anatomy of the wrists. The wrists are controlled by the many forearm muscles and gain their strength from proper position and support. Wrist Wraps do not impede on the ability for your forearms to work and your wrists will get plenty of activation and use from grip intensive training and fine motor movements out of the gym.
Wrist Wraps and Lifting Straps serve completely different purposes. Wrist Wraps are placed around the wrists to support the joint with compression and stabilization for use during a wide variety of movements over an extended period of time. They use velcro to fasten as they wrap continuously around your wrists. Lifting Straps are straps most commonly used for Deadlifts or pulling movements, that loop around your wrists and a barbell at the same time - significantly reducing the grip strength needed to move the weight so that you can train your body without the limitation of grip strength. You will commonly see the term Wrist Straps but what they are really referring to is Lifting Straps. In Summary - one is for grip bypass (Lifting Strap), the other is for overall performance (Wrist Wrap).
There’s something almost all Advanced Lifters have in common - injuries. They’ve all been there and they’ve all learned the hard way over years of training. So Wrist Wraps are less about how you compare to other athletes and more importantly about supporting a joint in your body to get the most out of your training and progress. Many of us would change the tools and methods we used if we could go back in time, only to magically appear stronger, here and now. Now with this said - Wrist Wraps are not a replacement for mobility and flexibility. There are cases where you need to be able to put your body in the right position in order to perform better. Wrist Wraps can help support your position with certain lifts - like a Back Squat but they are not a solution for poor mobility. Wear Wrist Wraps but always work to keep and improve your range of motion.
The truth is simple. MANIMAL Wrist Wraps are better because they were made by a real strength coach who broke both his wrists and needed a solution so he could continue training pain free. In 2009 he started buying every wrist wrap he could find and none of them held up in the gym or got rid of his wrist pain. So he decided to make his own. After a year of research and development he created what we have today. A Wrist Wrap that eliminates pain, allows you to lift more weight so you can grow muscle faster, doesn’t need to be adjusted during long workouts due to quality velcro, is quick to put on and take off with an elastic thumb loop, has 4 band compression built into the wrap so it doesn't need to be as long to perform better and last 3 years of daily use before they need to be replaced. It surprised everyone who used them. But once we explained that we didn’t create Wrist Wraps for business and that we had pain every day from training they understood why they were so much better. Since then we’ve had customers who wear our wraps outside of the gym for work, bring them on military deployments, wear them during sports or for recovery from wrist injuries on a daily basis. We’ve also had customers in every Strength Sport who have broken records, earned medals and proven our design to perform at the highest levels. At the end of the day we thought we were creating a solution for ourselves but it turned out every athlete can benefit from our Wrist Wraps. Sometimes the universe aligns - even when your wrists don’t.
Look - you know we aren’t into bullshit. This is one of the biggest misconceptions with Wrist Wraps we have seen. The performance of a Wrist Wrap is not defined by the length. It is determined by the design and quality of the materials in the Wrist Wrap. Many companies will try to sell you different length Wrist Wraps but that’s just their way of marketing more products to you in an attempt to make more money. MANIMAL Wrist Wraps are made with higher quality materials that provide a superior level of compression and stretch so they do not need as much length to perform. We tested different lengths during the development phase of our Wrist Wraps until we found the perfect level of performance, ease of use and comfort. The result is a shorter Wrist Wrap that performs better and is quicker to put on and take off. Now - with this said - there is one reason you would want a longer wrist wrap, which is why we make 31.5 inch Power and Mutant Wrist Wraps. In Powerlifting athletes will “Cast” their Wrists so there is no mobility or movement of the Wrist Joint, essentially removing the Wrists entirely from the equation. It cuts off blood flow as well and is really only ideal for max lifts or heavy sets of low volume where you need no mobility of the wrists. (think a Bench Press max) The extra length here is needed to wrap around the palm of the hand, down over the Wrist bones and back with many wraps before it’s finished. For the majority of the other 99% of Strength Athletes this is not functional, practical or optimal for performance. In conclusion - there is no best Length for a Wrist Wrap. Not all Wrist Wraps were created equal - so don’t judge them by their length. (Unless you only Bench Press and want to Cast your Wrists.)
]]>There are generally two ways to wrap your wrists. One is what the vast majority of athletes should be doing and the other is what Powerlifters are screaming all over the internet at other people about.
If you watch Youtube videos on How to Wrap Wrist Wraps you will see what we refer to here as the Powerlifting method. This involves wrapping the wrist wraps around the bottom of the palm of your hands so there is NO movement or mobility in the wrists.
This means restricted blood flow and the complete bypass of the wrist joint entirely. That works great for a one rep max bench press or a short set of maximal output in a movement where you don’t need mobility of the wrist.
This method is also commonly called “Casting” the Wrists. Sometimes you will see a coach wrapping his athlete’s wrist like this during a competition before their turn on the platform.
The other 99% of us should be wrapping our Wrist Wraps right below the palm, making sure the wraps cover past the Ulna and Radius bones (the bulging bones on either side of the wrists). The compression of the joint in these spots is what’s going to provide the most support and allow you to participate in the vast amount of movements where you want mobility of the wrist and blood flow. However if you wrap your wrists too low, especially below the Ulna and Radius bones you will lose a large amount of the support and stability gained from Wrist Wraps.
Ever have your hands or fingers go numb during your training? There’s more to wrapping your wrists than the position of the wraps. One of the biggest mistakes athletes make is wrapping their wrists without flexion of the wrist and forearm.
The wrist is controlled by the muscles in the forearm, believe it or not, so blood flow is an important part of the performance of this equation. When you wrap Wrist Wraps you should crank your wrist backwards, creating flexion at the wrist and you should squeeze a tight fist to flex all the muscles in the forearm and rest of the lower arm.
This must be maintained while putting your Wrist Wraps on. When you’re done wrapping your Wrist Wraps you should be able to relax your hand and still have blood flow. You can tell this by the color of your hand. If it is pale, it’s not a good wrap and it won’t be comfortable to wear them for long. If you’re “Casting” your wrists this isn’t a problem and to be expected but in general you always want blood flow so you can feel your hands and perform your best.
Let’s be clear here - Thumb Loops Are Awesome...but they’re not meant to be worn while you train. The point of thumb loops is to allow you to get a good angle on your wrap, put the wraps on with one hand and do it all quickly.
There’s nothing out there that works as well as a thumb loop, which is why all good wrist wraps have Thumb Loops but there’s absolutely no benefit to leaving your thumb loop on during your workouts. In fact - it’s the opposite. If you keep your thumb loops on it will pull your wraps out of position, sometimes affecting the overlay of the wraps and support. It will also stretch them out over time. This is one of the biggest misconceptions with Wrist Wraps - so much so - one company we know has been falsely advertising how inconvenient thumb loops are and encouraging people to think thumb loops should be worn during workouts - just to make sales.
This type of stuff hurts our souls. Don’t fall for gimmicks - take off your thumb loops after you’re done wrapping your wrist wraps. You can leave them to hang or do what we do - tuck them in between the wraps nice and snug for a clean finish.
Yeah, we said it. Depending on the movement you may want to be able to move your wrist more or less. For example in a Weightlifting Clean - you’ll receive the bar in a rack position that requires you to have flexion of your wrists.
If your Wrist Wraps are as tight as they can possibly go it will inhibit your ability to receive the bar in a good position or get your arms in the best position and result in making the lift harder.
Much like we mentioned earlier - too tight of a wrap will also mean less blood flow even if you flex your wrists during the setup. Understand that the tightness of the wrap should depend on what you plan to do with your wrist and body following the wrap.
For a conditioning workout where you wear the Wrist Wraps for a longer period of time, you will want a less tight wrap than a strength session. It’s also important to note here that a good pair of wrist wraps will provide enough comfort to still be worn tight for extended periods of time.
When we created MANIMAL Wrist Wraps we specifically designed them to be worn for hours, while still providing ample support and comfort.
]]>Wrist Wraps are all around one of the best pieces of gear to have in your gym bag for daily use but there are certain movements that will clearly benefit from Wrist Wraps and then there are others that with experience - you’ll learn make a world of a difference.
Whenever you have weight overhead, there’s going to be a ton of stress on the wrists. The body has built in stabilization methods and tricks that we use as athletes, such as activating our shoulders to lock in our midline and tightening our core to support our back but there is not much you can do to really lock in your wrist with the exception of forming a tight grip and using the forearm muscles to activate the tendons of the wrists. This is where Wrist Wraps come into play. Essentially turning your whole arm into a solid structure bypassing the weak joint of the wrists so that you can keep in a good position, manage the weight overhead and drive through those movements as you knock out reps or receive the weight overhead in a more dynamic movement.
The most obvious of this group of movements is the Benchpress and Strict Press. During both these movements it is imperative to keep the wrists in a neutral position so that you can maintain control of the weight and transfer power. Any sign of instability and that weight is going to feel heavier immediately, with loss of proper muscle activation and pressing power. You would be hard pressed (yeap I put that lame pun in there) to find a competitive Powerlifter who does not use Wrist Wraps.
In the CrossFit and Weightlifting world a Snatch or Overhead Squat are two overhead movements that put a ton of stress on the Wrists. Sure, your typical Eastern European coach will tell you not to use gear and prefer you train in a cave for 10 years without sunlight but in today’s world we recognize that focusing on gaining strength and maintaining a good position with the use of proper tools is not only smart but necessary for longevity and performance. This is why all of the world record holding Weightlifters who perform at the Olympic level are almost always wearing Wrist Wraps.
More traditional Bodybuilding routines will involve movements that do not use a barbell. With a Dumbbell Press all of the same benefits of Wrist Wraps will apply, if not more than a Barbell Press. This is because unilateral movements require even more stability and balance since you are using one limb at a time and the weight is on one side of the body as a result - challenging your natural structure.
Now would be a good time to point out this is why you always want to wear Wrist Wraps on both Wrists to avoid imbalances. Supporting one wrists more than the other will lead to uneven movement patterns as one wrist is supported more than the other. This may not be noticeable at first but over time it will create problems - avoid it.
Someone once said the only weight you needed to master was your own. There is no question that gymnastics athletes are some of the strongest and most impressive human performance specimens on the planet. If you take a look at their wrists - they’re always wrapped - often taped. We tried taping our wrists back in 2010 and it was not sustainable or effective but nonetheless - the point here is that a sport that depends on joint strength arguably more than many others recognizes the need for wrist support.
Movements like Handstands, Muscle Ups on the rings or barbell, Planks and even the hated CrossFit Burpee all put a lot of strain on the wrists because you’re sustaining your bodyweight on that oh so fragile joint. One small movement at the wrong time and you’ve tweaked your wrists and began the long journey of wrist injury recovery.
Often when we meet someone for the first time and speak to them about Wrist Wraps we’ll ask them to do a pushup - then hand them a pair, show them how to put the Wrist Wraps on and have them do a Pushup again. Every single time we get a surprised look on their face. The Pushup is one of the most universally known movements and also one of the most effective movements at demonstrating the effectiveness of proper Wrist Support.
You may be asking yourself - what is a Complex Movement? In our world this means a movement that consists of multiple movements combined - often in a dynamic matter where an explosive amount of force is helpful in execution. These movements require range of motion or in other words flexibility and mobility as we like to call it today.
An example of this would be a Thruster. Notoriously hated even more so than a Burpee in CrossFit. A movement that uses a barbell starting on the floor and finishes with it overhead. Thrusters combine a Weightlifting Clean to bring the bar to your rack position while landing in a squat, a Front Squat to stand up with the bar out that Squat and then finishes after you press the bar - essentially making the final part of the movement a Overhead Press.
In this movement - there are a number of points where the Wrists are under pressure and stress. Proper stability and support will increase performance and avoid injury.
Other examples of complex movements would be both of the lifts in the sport of Weightlifting. (Notice we did not say Olympic Weightlifting, because Weightlifting is Weightlifting whether or not you are in the Olympics.) A Clean and Jerk and a Snatch. These movements are complex because there are a number of different steps, positions and transitions between them to accomplish the lift.
Regarding your Wrists these movements all have one thing in common. The Wrist will be put under loaded stress and strain in different positions while in movement. In other movements your wrists will generally stay in the same position for the course of the lift. Not in these - there will be plenty of position changes and your Wrists will need support during every one.
]]>“Oh my God, I’m dying!” “I’m so sore, you’re killing me. I’m 50 remember??!”
These are the kinds of emotional responses to physical stress I hear when I train a successful client of mine. She’s an influential southern California business person whom I enjoy taking the opportunity to train whenever our schedules align.
She has another full-time trainer that she trains with at least four times a week, so it always puzzles me when she complains about how tough I am being on her. It makes me wonder what exactly is taking place normally during her weekly training that makes our time together so difficult.
I don’t use any training tools with her that are complicated or out of the ordinary. We focus on the basics: bodyweight calisthenics, lightweight dumbbells, and using my favorite tool, the TRX straps.
Additionally, when she and I train together, I intentionally make it a point to keep the number of repetitions very reasonable, because we aren’t able to train together regularly. I can’t (and won’t) push the intensity of the workout to unreachable levels as if we were meeting on a multi-session weekly basis. When I am able to work with her, I challenge her to achieve a level of motivational thinking and fitness that she’d not normally pursue or achieve on her own.
So then why is my training pushing her to the point of “killing” her?
One of my foundational philosophies for how to push yourself is “anyone can do five of anything.” Now, this, of course, depends on the exercise and the level of effort and motivational thinking needed to perform it, but trust me, everything that I do with this aforementioned client, I make sure they’re exercises that she is wholly capable of doing.
Where the cart comes off of the rails is when I tell her the number of repetitions I need her to do; even if the number is minimal, she can have the tendency to immediately revert to a self-defeating mode of telling herself that she won’t be able to “do it.” Even though I have 100% belief in her ability to get the work done, she doubts herself. This lack of motivational thinking alone will defeat how anyone pushes themselves. For her, it is often the source of her being defeated by the task.
So when she says, “I’m 50 remember??!,” I immediately wonder what she is truly trying to say. What does anyone’s age have to do with getting a workout finished and in the books?
I’m a lifelong martial artist. I’ve traveled the globe and trained all over the world with many sensei. I’ve lived the life story of 10 men, gained a wealth of life experience, and after all of this, I decided to join the military and become a member of the special operations community.
Sixteen years later and having recently completed a milestone as a team leader, I still work on how I push myself. I train and mentor younger team members on an almost weekly rotation, especially in martial arts as it applies to our field. My core styles over my lifetime have been Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai, but when I work on close quarter combative concepts, I employ an anything goes, anytime/anyplace mindset and applicability. In our career field, it’s a must to spend as much quality time as humanly possible preparing for that “anytime/anyplace” situation.
What I failed to mention in any of this was my age. Almost all of my coworkers are young enough to be my children. When I applied to the Special Forces program, I had to have an age waiver signed because I was already four years past the maximum age. Some of my peers, whom I respect wholeheartedly, at times say or act like they’re broken and feeble because of their age. If obsessing over being old means that I have to slow down or change how I push myself, then I don’t want anything to do with that.
Every day I live by three motivational thinking tenets that help challenge how I push myself and keep me motivated no matter the circumstances:
A mentor long ago planted the seed of belief in me that true consistency is where you find solid results. As we are creatures of habit, setting a solid pattern, supported by positive motivational thinking, and following through, no matter your schedule, is the best way to accomplish any sort of success. It’s always better for you to do something than to do nothing at all.
My father used to say this to me, and it’s now something I live by. Your thoughts will have as much traction as you allow them, so knowing how to have influence over them will allow you to overcome most, if not all, obstacles.
This third and final tenet for how I push myself, I’ve recently adopted from my special operations community. I find it genius and have observed many of our members try to make happen daily. One example of my daily efforts for a home run would be this:
Rinse and repeat. Simple.
These evolutions can be placed in any order and sometimes you may not be realistically able to have a “Home Run” every day. Having this template for how to push yourself, however, helps you keep in mind a minimum goal and baseline of achievement to set the tone for each day, and it honestly makes me feel so much better on a daily basis.
I consider myself an extremely fortunate and driven individual who truly loves being alive. I know that not everyone has the same motivations or motivational thinking as I do; but, if I’ve learned anything, it’s that we are all in control of making minor changes to our lives that work for us and enhance our living experiences. You are always in control and capable of standing apart from the status quo of complacency.
I challenge you to do whatever you can, each and every day, to fill your cup to the brim and drink. Figure out how to push yourself and then do it.
Oh, and by the way, I turn 50 this year. Whatever that means.
Almost 2 years have passed since I came close to dying from what would have been the most embarrassing legacy in the history of my family: CrossFit.
October of 2012. At the time I was training 6-7 days a week. Lifting heavy almost every day, consuming pounds of the best grass fed beef the North West had to offer, working from home as a contractor and pretty much living a great lifestyle for performance and what everyone these days is calling “gains.”
I felt stronger than I had ever been and was confident in everything I was doing at the time.
My personal life, on the other hand, was quite a mess. But hey, we’ve always been told people perform better with some stress over none. Who am I kidding, I swim in stress and it’s made me Darth Vader strong.
Hurricane Sandy was on its way to the East Coast and I was booked for a trip back to the Tri-State area (CT, NJ, NY) for Halloween and some family time. Needless to say Holloween didn’t happen, not in the festive way at least..The storm hit, cities lost power, were flooded, boats ended up in streets miles away from the coast, it was a dark fucking time.
I commonly refer back to these days when liberals start talking about how bad guns are. There were looters. Really just people who were cold, without heat, power and gas looking for a way to survive, legal or not. People will get ugly when they have to survive, especially when there aren’t police or authority around to keep them in check. I watched as good neighborhoods turned into opportunities for criminals and Anti-Gun Americans all of a sudden remembered why their parents were gun friendly.
Anyway, my Uncle owns a Marina in Staten Island. You wouldn’t believe the damage that was done. People came from all over to see it. Freelance photographers were snapping photos left and right. They even made books filled with pictures. It looked like a scene from an apocalyptic water world except there was no water, just boats and docks where they didn’t belong. Walking through what you could was like walking through a labyrinth of giant thorns covered in gasoline and smelling like filthy water, except the thorns were boats stacked on top of each other. I’ve never seen anything like it to this day.
A couple days after the storm, I had rented a car and driven into Staten Island to help out. I can tell you with confidence I was the only person driving into the city. My uncle took me to the marina and I spent the day working with a bunch of neighborhood guys and friends who had come to help clean up the Marina. It was a lot of work, moving things, trying to just clear shit out of the way so everything could be rebuilt. By the time I was done my gas smelling jeans were being thrown in a garbage bag and I felt like I had just been through many Hero WODs in one day. Props to you manual labor guys, the long haul is tough. Coming from a sub 10 minute power biased CrossFitter.
(Photo by Neal Dub taken from Flickr)
The next day I was on my way back to Connecticut and I stepped into a local box to get a workout in with some of my buddies at CrossFit Norwalk. We did a main page WOD that involved GHD Situps and Muscle Ups.
The workout was: (Comment #9 is the best...)
25 GHD Situps
1 Muscle Up
20 GHD Situps
2 Muscle Ups
15 GHD Situps
3 Muscle Ups
10 GHD Situps
4 Muscle Ups
5 GHD Situps
5 Muscle Ups
It was a deceiving combination.
Since I had been doing mostly CrossFit Football I hadn't touched Muscle Ups in a while and the box I was training at did not have a GHD machine. However I was 4 plus years into CrossFit and well experienced with these movements.
I pushed through the workout and felt fine after. It was a challenging workout mostly because the positions in the bottom of the GHD Situps and the bottom of a Kipping Muscle Up were very similar. Both taxing on the lower abdomen. It was a great way to forget about the previous days and always a pleasure to workout with my bud Mike Sabato.
Two days later of a swollen stomach, serious pain in the hip flexors, lower abdomen and Coca Cola colored piss, I stood in the bathroom shaking my head at how much of an amateur I was. I called a friend, Paul Amato, who owns CrossFit Reality and asked him about one of his recent coaches, Chris Amenta, who now owns CrossFit Extracted. Chris had gotten Rhabdo a couple months earlier.
In case you’re not following, Coca Cola colored piss is the biggest sign of Rhabdomyolysis. This is when damaged skeletal muscle tissue breaks down and releases proteins in the blood which are filtered through the kidneys. When the levels are high enough your kidneys start having issues filtering it and your piss turns reddish brown.
That day I was in the bathroom getting ready to leave for JFK to hop on a plane back to Portland, OR. A 6 hour flight. Paul convinced me to go to the hospital for a simple blood test to make sure I’d be OK.
Thanks Paul. We may have our disagreements and you can be a total douche and you WILL forever hold this over my head but, you probably saved my life.
Fast forward 5 days later and I’m in a hospital bed in CT, with 300ml of saline being pumped through me an hour, with a bloated penis, no sign of masculinity through superior physique, groups of doctors coming in to ask me how fast I was running to get Rhabdo, pissing 40 times a day and night, staring out a window envisioning myself escaping like a scene out of 007, asking the nurses for pain killers because who doesn't like good pain killers.
(A couple weeks before Rhabdo)
(If I never see myself like this again it will be too soon...)
After the first 24 hours of saline my CK levels were at 90,000. CK is Creatine Kinase in the blood and used as a measurement for risk of heart attacks and rhabdo among other things. Let me give you an idea of what this means. Commonly triathletes check themselves into hospitals after a triathlon and it’s normal for them to show CK levels of 35-45,000. A normal CK level of an average person on the street is around 100 units per litre of blood.
Depending on your feelings about luck, and yes I’m talking to all you self righteous entrepreneurs who say luck doesn’t exist, I was very lucky. I did not sustain any kidney damage and more importantly, I did not get on that plane and suffer kidney failure how ever many thousand feet up in the air fucked to be remembered as the guy who died from Rhabdo. As much as I would have smirked at the Fuck You it would have given CrossFit HQ in the press, I’m not going out like that.
Now to the fun part. I lost all of my metabolic conditioning and I was barely capable of going up a flight of stairs without breathing like I had rowed a 500m on a Concept 2, with the wooden handles for all you fancy fuckers. I suffered quite a bit of pain in my lower abdomen and basically I spent the next 8 months lifting, focusing on body weight stability and all around being scared out of my mind, that I had lost 4 plus years of hard work in CrossFit.
I got back to where I was (thanks to hard work and some coaching from my friend Jay Tieder at Bridgetown CrossFit) BUT, I never fully healed. It’s been almost 2 years and still to this day if I do too much core intensive work my abs swell up and I have some sharp pain during the most inconvenient times like sex. That pisses me off beyond belief.
(One of the more appropriate selfies I took during my amazingly stimulating days as a human water balloon.)
Some say once you have had Rhabdo the chances of getting it again are very high. I believe that. Why? Well for starters I think the only way I sustained such high CK levels with no damage to my kidneys was because I was giving myself small doses of Rhadbo from my training. I’ve also seen with my own eyes and felt with my own body smaller levels of the same issues I had when I first had Rhabdo, commonly after high volume core intensive movements.
This brings me to PEDs. If someone had said, George I’ll prescribe you HGH to help you recover faster from the damage Rhabdo did to your body, whether back when it first happened or now, two years later I would have gladly cashed that chip in, granted I could afford it.
If you’re one of those people that is up in arms about Performance Enhancement Drugs, especially in the CrossFit world, you really need to ask yourself. How are athletes training as hard and often as they do and recovering as well as they do? Sure nutrition, sleep, supplementation and lifestyle etc is huge but do you know any serious athletes, especially in CrossFit who have not sustained some shoulder or back injuries that train doubles or triples regularly? Because in my 5 plus years in this once awesome Community, I do not know a single one.
We all get injured and if you think sitting out for 8 months of a year is an option for someone trying to really compete and make a living off their performance, then you my friend have never been a serious athlete.
Unfortunately for most of us human beings, to train that hard, that often means you’re going to do quite a bit of damage to your body and there is only so much you can do to recover. With the levels of performance we have reached now in CrossFit, from my opinion, Performance Enhancement Drugs are a necessary tool to recover and progress. By no means does this mean you can’t make progress without PED’s, I’m just saying short of being a freak you’re going to get injured and beat up and we all need an upper every once in a while.
I’ll say what most people won’t and I’ll say it openly. I fully support PED’s in the Competitive CrossFit World. Work is work and resources have always been a part of winning, PED’s are just that. People will always use them and who am I to judge someone for playing the level field?
With all of this said, I’m in a CrossFit gym daily and I made some mistakes which is how I ended up with Rhabdo and why today I’m still suffering from the side effects of it.
Despite the fact that I should have gone to the hospital I have to say something about the New York Giants game I had the pleasure of gimping through with my father. Most of the city did not have power, heat or gas. The stadium was still packed filled with New Yorkers cheering their team on. Service members including Fire, Military and Law Enforcement presented a flag across the field they held by hand and after the Star Spangled Banner the stadium roared like never before. In the midst of disaster this was one of greatest moments to be a part of and more so than ever I was damn Proud to be an American and an East Coaster. (Take that "Best Coast")
(Thanks for this Dad, it was well worth the delay and I'll never forget it.)
CrossFit is dangerous, when under the supervision of inexperienced coaches with athletes who will push themselves well past what their body can handle or athletes who have been deconditioned from a lack of physical activity or conditioning.
One of the best examples of this I know are some of my military friends that come back from deployments where they have lost a lot of muscle mass and haven’t done a CrossFit WOD in 8 months. Their body remembers how to do the movements and they are mentally tough as nails, but when they push to that point, everything breaks down and here comes injury.
Let’s face it, there are a million CrossFit boxes and a lot more “coaches” now. Most of them don’t know what they’re doing and most members in a CrossFit box don’t know any better including these coaches. The majority of them wouldn’t be there if it was all hard work and no second chance at high school social clubs.
However if you know me, you know being in a CrossFit box has been a daily part of my life for five years. I’ve even coached for 4 years. When I got Rhabdo I was in amazing shape and all it took was some GHD Situps and Muscle Ups to put me 6 feet under. Don’t be an idiot, check your ego, forget the coaches yelling at you, don’t listen to your friends pressuring you. If you haven’t done something in a long time, you better take it slow or not at all. Unless you want a legacy like death from CrossFit.
Months ago we started receiving “Cease & Desist” letters from Reebok CrossFit for using the word “CrossFit” on our website's descriptions, “About Us” pages, etc. We had never used the word “CrossFit” on any of our clothing, except for on Ts we had designed specifically for CrossFit community affiliates who had the right to use the CrossFit Trademark. Regardless of what Reebok thought, it was not our agenda to make sales off of the word “CrossFit.”
At first, we edited our website’s content and tried to make sure people understood we were not selling official CrossFit clothing. Three emails later, and it was clear that Reebok’s CrossFit Legal Team had no interest in letting us tell our story, or the history of the MANIMAL brand, as long as there was any mention of “CrossFit.”
Pissed and a little bit suspicious, we started to ask the other known apparel brands in the CrossFit Community if they were receiving the same letters as well. Turns out, they were. It became very clear, real quick, that Reebok wanted their CrossFit stores and their CrossFit stories right at the top of your search results.
But here’s the deal: our company is made up of CrossFit community members. We’re Level 1 Certified Coaches, Box Owners, and long term athletes who have been involved in CrossFit since 2009. We love what CrossFit has done for people over the years. Hell, we have personally invested years and coached hundreds of people in the sport and still do to this day.
Somewhere along the way, though, Reebok forgot who really built this CrossFit community and made it all about selling out to the masses. I mean, come on, even your grandmother competes in the Games now!
The fact of the matter is, the affiliate owners, coaches, and staff of this CrossFit community were the ones who took the risk, worked their asses off, and provided a home for all of us to learn and excel in one common goal: to become more fit and achieve more in life. Reebok did nothing.
We're tired of it.
Now Reebok CrossFit opens their corporate gyms next door to smaller affiliates and then sends threatening letters to small businesses like us who have supported CrossFit for years. Reebok is playing the community like a pawn.
Reebok’s bad practices are a joke and an embarrassment to the CrossFit community. They upload social media posts that are nothing short of embarrassing and a step back from what CrossFit Coaches have been trying to educate people away from. Reebok’s bad ideas are about "hype" and numbers, not about quality.
Bad move, Reebok.
We decided to send our own message with our Ruck Feebok shirt. With this shirt, we remind Reebok that our community is about supporting our affiliates, our local boxes -- not their sales agenda.
Stop blindly supporting a brand that could care less about where we come from and the journey it took to get here. Ruck Feebok and celebrate your CrossFit community for what it is.