The FitWorks Promise:

After  a  nice  pre-workout   

protein  drink,

and  a  little  warmup,

how  about  some  core work?

And  some  interval  runs?

  

Be sure to hydrate,

and  always,

  no matter  the  sport,

    please  be  careful

and  plan  ahead.

Get  in  your  recovery  time

And this could be you!!!

Be excellent.  


Here: CrossFit Burbank


FW
CrossFit Burbank

Live the Difference

Just a little instant info on male/female brain differences. A fascinating subject.

Male brains have a smaller hippocampus, which forms initial memories. Men, per their brains, don't sweat the small stuff. They hardly notice it. Some piece of jewelry, her eye-color ... um, what? It's not personal. An area in the limbic cortex, involved with emotional responses, is also smaller in men, and the region of the temporal lobe that processes language has a smaller density of neurons. So not only do they feel less, but they can't talk about it. Uh, yeah.

The male cortex -- the outer layer of the brain -- is thinner in many places, affecting comprehension and the processing of language cues. Specifically, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has almost 25% less volume in men, and there's 13% less volume in the superior temporal cortex. Females seem to devote these thicker cortex areas to noticing and calculating the meaning of clueless behavior in males -- what does it mean, his failure to remember that this is the 15th-week anniversary of when we bought the sofa?!

Females prioritize memories according to emotional strength, relying on the left side of the amygdala, which determines affective responses to events. Men organize memories using the right-brain amygdala, which focuses on the central action and meaning of an event, rather than its finer details. This makes it sound like men might be less emotional. But the ratio between the amygdala and the, ahem, orbitofrontal cortex is much larger in women. The orbitofrontal cortex modulates the emotions the amygdala creates. So women may be more emotional to events, but they control those emotions better, in terms of determinative responses. They are calmer in the face of barroom boorishness.

On the up side, male brains produce over 50% more serotonin, a mood-influencing neurotransmitter, enabling men to deal more calmly with stress -- on average. And the preoptic region of the hypothalmus is larger by all measures in men than women. Twice as large. This is the part of the brain, one of them, that deals with mating behaviour. Yeah! It hooks up -- yeah! -- to the pituitary, which releases sex hormones. Yeah! Go, that long preop hypo word! Yeah!!!

So that's one of the major male/female differences. The brain. Another is the body. Bodybuilding, that sad, sad phenomenon, is doing what it can to blur the differences. Who knows, maybe that's a good thing? Thus, the TLC documentary called Supersize She. Female bodybuilders. Focus, very closely, on a female bodybuilder named ... well, who noticed. Joanna something. A figure not entirely mannish. Yet. Bosoms not completely gone. Steroidal face and voice. Skin like desert leather, beetle-brown body over a creped face pale as disease. Star of a sport identical in spirit to competitive eating. Excess and perversion. It would not exist without Big Pharma.

Then there's the bodybuilder woman from Napoleon Dynamite. The sensi's wife or whatever. Turns out she really was a woman. Who knew. Surprising.

We probably may all pretty much agree that, over all, it's a good thing that there are gender differences. But whether or not it's a good thing, it's a real thing. There are anomalies and overlappings of bell-shaped curves, but generally things fall within certain well-established parameters.

Not health nor fitness is about size. Neither is excellence. Maturity gauges itself by what is reasonable, and understands that there are natural biological limits that really ought not to be overcome by either drugs or fanatical effort. Most men really don't want to look like Arnold -- they want to be strong and skillful. Most women want to be thought lovely and to feel healthy. It's about being physically competent. That's excellence. Freakshows are politically incorrect, nowadays, and rightly so. Except in the gym.

Balance. Common sense. Not wasting time on half-baked theories that, even if they worked, would take you where you don't really want to be. Where should we put our effort? Where it will do some good.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

T

Part of the trouble with contemporary gym training is that it thinks it's a lot more scientific than it is. It's like a scene from Modern Times, the Chaplin movie, where he's strapped into an automatic feeding machine. The very last word in efficiency, don't you know. All figured out. What could possibly go wrong? Or the 50s idea about how to care for babies in hospitals. Have them all laid out in ranks and files of cribs, with meticulously timed feedings and changings. Exactly 1.32 minutes per hour allotted for cuddling and cooing. Cuz the babies will conform, y'see. We're all cut to a pattern, just an assemblage of organs or a complex but manageable interaction of chemicals.

Uh huh.

As for the gym, the standard model is to have arm day and leg day and ab day and back day and uh shoulder day and er neck day and huh kneebone day that's connected to the hipbone day. How very scientifical. Cuz y'see that way you give duh udder parts uv yer body a chanst tuh rest!

Alas, what's been forgotten in that otherwise very-brilliant-indeed theory is that the actual purpose of being in the gym isn't to move weights around, not to spend a lot of time making painful faces and emitting grunts and other impressive hard-working sounds, not to show off your latest choice in skin-tight gym fashion. All of these things are very beneficial and productive, it must be admitted. But the actual theoretically intended purpose of a gym, with the attendant work presumed, is to stimulate the release of hormones.

You can move as much weight around as is humanly possible, and if there's no hormonal response all you've done is tear muscle down and deplete your biochemicals. On the other hand, if you could generate a tide of hormones, you wouldn't have to do much work at all, and you'd gain lots of muscle. That's what steroids are about. A cheat. We don't cheat, now do we.

So what is it that stimulates the release of hormones? Loud groans and tight shirts? Well, uh, yes, sometimes.  Say no more, say no more.  But in the gym? The thing that tells your brain that it had better send out the signal to get the hormones flowing is engaging major muscle mass during the workout. That is the key. It's all about hormones, and not very much about weight. Except that the thing that provokes the brain, frightens it into reacting powerfully, is the weight.

So you have to move a lot of weight. Otherwise the hormonal signal is proportionally small. So arm day? Well, the biceps are small muscles. Doesn't really matter how much you work them, they are still going to require only a small hormonal response. Add some other body part into the workout and you'll get a little bit more of a response. And if that's what you want, a little response, keep doing arm day. Cuz that's so scientifical and stuff.

Or you could engage the whole body, every workout. Take something like kettlebell swings. Move the weight from knee level to overhead, in a straight-arm arc. Now, what part of the body does that work? The legs? -- back? -- shoulders? Is it an arm day? No, it's body day. Swings work everything, athletically. Major muscle mass is involved, so the signal to the brain is very clear: Need help, send hormones. This is why heavy squats are so productive. Two-thirds of the the body's muscle mass is below the waist. Lots of muscle doing hard work, therefore major hormonal response and significant strength gains. Easy. Why, it's almost like ... like science!

Case in point: deadlift static holds. This is not something to do without proper training. But the protocol is simply to lift a lot of weight at waist level, moving it only about an inch, off a rack. Hands hanging down, holding the bar, and just a little lift at the knees. Hold the weight for a count of ten. Then you're done. How much weight? Well you work up, only once about every week or so, adding weight every workout, 5 or 20 or 40 pounds or 5% or 10% -- doesn't really matter -- it's not a race -- just being safe and consistent. How much weight can you hold?  Grip strength is a limiting factor, but lifting straps or hooks take care of that. You can lift hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds. You don't believe it. But it's true.

Why do this? Because there is a major, massive hormonal signal, that comes from lifting that much weight under those conditions. It's a Gatorade-dump of testosterone. Testosterone and human growth hormone. It's perhaps the single most productive thing you can do. But don't do just one thing. In any case, there's so much more T coursing through your veins that your muscles can't use it all. So there can be a significant increase in libido. Highly significant. Whether or not this is a good thing is a personal consideration. But it happens. The upshot here is that it is direct and undeniable confirmation that there is a significant hormonal response, which is the point of the weightroom and of all those tight sexy gym clothes.

And it validates the theory, that body day works, whereas arm day and glute day is for posers, poseurs, wannabes and steroid users.

But that's not you.

It's not real trendy. It's about results.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Training

It's a necessary part of fitness, training. There's no getting around it. Our daily activities will most assuredly make us fit for doing what we usually do. But fitness is bigger than that. It's a general thing, rather than the specific of your daily routine. It's a preparation for the unexpected. When we hear the term survival of the fittest, it isn't about surviving normal things. If you run a lot, to train, that's good. But sometimes life requires you to stand and fight, rather than run. Did you train that? A metaphor, of course -- we're too civilized to need to fight. But you see the point. Running will not make you suited to carry fainted damsels down firetruck ladders. Strength matters too. So does speed. These are trainable. So train them along with the running. Be fit.

We've discussed it before, the ideas of activity, and exercise, and training. Activity is just an expression of metabolism. Living things move around, most of them -- even sponges. Going here, doing this, moving that -- just a part of being alive. Then there’s exercise. It requires an accelerated heartrate. There’s no intelligence required, it’s just working at a more intense level than usual. A good thing, pretty much, but possibly rather haphazard. Then there’s training: exercise with the addition of intelligence. It requires a plan, and a goal, and measurable progress, and consistency.

Life has its randomness. But it's not random. It's predictable, in a statistical way. No guarantees, but usually it's business as usual, usually. We don't however train for the usual. We train for the extraordinary. Yes, we may have to climb stairs every day. That counts as exercise. If we plan on climbing a mountain, though, we need to do more, we need to train. A reiteration, because important things should be remembered.

An athlete can’t be better than his deficits allow him to be. They hold him back, obviously. A weakest-link thing. So training must identify and address those shortcomings. They are not something to be ignored. They are to be embraced, as it were, and sometimes made the heart, the core of a workout. It’s not about idealism. It’s a necessity, for improvement.

The reason a standard gym-bodybuilder is so much weaker than he should be is that he has never trained his shortcomings. No, it's not about calves or forearms or deltoids or rhomboids. It's about the little stabilizers that hardly anyone knows the names of, and that don't show up in the mirror except subliminally, as the difference between a guy who works a few muscles so he can pose in front of a mirror, and an athlete who's trained his body the way it was meant to be trained -- completely.

Well ... the reason he's weaker, that bodybuilder, than he should be is the lack of meaningful variety, but also the sort of training itself, the reps and sets and loads he's carrying. No need here to go into it. It has to do with effectiveness and with goals. If you want to be big and sort of puffy, the muscle mags are full of advice on that. Lots of bad advice, some okay -- hardly any really sensible. Point is, train to achieve an intelligent goal. It's not about being one of the prettyboys. Just get the job done. Prettiness comes along with that.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Second Place

Dig this! Aerobics is groovy, man. It's far out. The happenin' 70s thing, for the dude on the go! So boss! Right on! Dy-no-mite! Red rocket man! Totally out of sight! Shazbot! Kiss my grits! Let it all hang out! Jive turkey! Sit on it! Plop plop fizz fizz. I can't believe I ate the whole thing! Keep on truckin! Disco lives!

Aerobics. It's not what it used to be.

Not a bad thing, aerobics. It's just not the only thing. Not even the main thing. Unless you live in the Kalahari, in which case covering long slow distances -- LSD -- is a requirement for survival. But you don't, and it's not.

For most people, aerobics workouts plateau after about 8 weeks. After that, it's just burned calories, but at a reduced rate, because the body has become efficient at that narrow activity. Being efficient is a good thing, if the thing is an adaptive trait. Flying south for the winter, say. But that's not why people do aerobics. So do your 8 weeks, then do an occasional maintenance workout for that skill. It is, after all, a skill -- and it would be a shame to lose a skill. But otherwise it's just sucking up your time. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. If aerobics is your thing. Dude.

Aerobics makes you slower. ... Aerobic make you slower? ... What. Everrrrr. Muscle cells adapt to the activity they are most required to do. Spending a lot of time in low-grade calorie burning makes fast-twitch fibers (required for power and strength) function as slow twitch fibers (weak endurance). The expression of your genetics changes. One myosin protein type within the cell is selected over another. Regarding athletics, most people would rather be fast and strong, than slow. You get good at what you practice. Practice being slow, and you will be.

Aerobics generates a higher volume of free-radicals, than more strength-focused workouts. Free radicals are aging. Highly aging. The longer you run, per workout or habitually, the greater the flood of oxidative pollution in your system. This depletes your supply of antioxidants. Bad all the way around. Always at your back you hear Time's winged chariot racing near. You can run, but you can't hide. Damage equals age.

Aerobics stresses the, uh, stress hormones. Testosterone goes down, cortisol goes up. Bad combination. Testosterone adds muscle. Cortisol dissolves it. It's a bad thing. Your body doesn't know you're working out. It thinks you're fleeing a wildfire. There's a difference between controlled exercise stress, of pressure alternating with rest, and prolonged flight. The result can be adrenal fatigue, symptoms of which are: fat retention, allergies, arthritis, flus, fearfulness and anxiety, depression, lack of focus, forgetfulness, insomnia, tiredness and fatigue. This stress, added to workaday stress, is a formula for fat retention. Counterproductive, it can be.

Sprinters have less fat than marathoners. Go figure. On the other hand, it makes sense. Fat is the fuel marathoners use. Not so, with sprinters, for whom fat is unwanted ballast. Intensity burns fat. Intensity is high heartrate, not miles plowed. Jogging for an hour will burn more calories than running 10 sprints of 20 seconds -- but over the next two days, the sprinter will burn more calories. Go figure. It's the ramped up metabolism. In a 1997 study (by I. Tabata et al.), joggers improved aerobic capacity by 10%, with zero% anaerobic gains. Sprinters improved aerobic capacity by 14%, and anaerobic by 28%. Hmm. Intensity burns fat.

Jog? Sure, why not. Generally, not more than 45 minutes at a time. More than that may raise cortisol output to detrimental levels. Cortisol, a stress hormone, breaks down muscle protein for its glucose. Your body figures it's more important to escape the danger, than to keep muscle that isn't helping you run away. A live to fight another day sort of strategy. Very sensible, if you're fleeing tigers. You, alas, are trying to flee your fat behind. The wrong thing is being shrunk. And you did just see the numbers. Intense intervals increase aerobic capacity 4% more than does jogging. Less time, greater benefit.

Still, something is better than nothing. Jogging is generally better than sitting, only. And if you won't do the better thing, at least to a thing that's better than nothing. A workable compromise, eh? Sort of like the way we manage to live in the world. Perfection is not required -- just effort.

Don't waste your time.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

The Age of Aquarius

The fish have been in the news lately. And the amphibians and the reptiles. How they’re changing their sex all the time. That's so ... alternative. The Potomac is full of such transgendered vertebrates. How daring.

Transmutations of this sort are natural in certain species, as with a type of fish in which the largest female of a group where there is no male will simply become male. Certain lizards can manage the same feat. How interesting. But the Potomac fish are a different kettle of, um, fish. The females are normal. Eighty percent of the smallmouth bass males, however, produce eggs instead of sperm.

At this same time, there is a sharp rise in reported cases on college campuses all along the Potomac of impotence and a lack of sexual interest by males. The Potomac is full of feminizing chemical endocrinal disruptors.

The soft female-like boys of this latest generation, however, cluster not only along the Potomac. We find them everywhere. Throughout the continental USA, in England, in Greenland, in Japan. All over. As for our human females, many of them are enjoying an early puberty, starting around age eight.

Well? Male alligators in Florida are turning up with shriveled testicles and high female-hormone counts. The phenomenon has been linked to phthalates, which are used in clear plastic drinking bottles -- water, Coke, Pepsi and so on. The specific actor is polyethylene terephthalate, PET. When the bottle gets a bit heated, as in a hot car, and the liquid has a plastic taste, that’s PET. All those plastic bottles from Disney World end up in the watershed and affect the alligators. PETs act like female hormones. Girls testing as having high PET levels tend to enter puberty early. Six times higher levels means eight-year-olds with developed breasts.

Elementary school teachers notice the phenomenon. Little boys, and a handful of ten year old girls with fully developed breasts. In olden days the boys were behind the girls by months, rather than years. By thirteen the girls where through puberty and the boys were entering. Now the lag time is three or four years. It’s not just PETs. It’s a lot of chemicals. Endosulfan, for example -- a major commercial pesticide -- was shown in 2003 to disrupt the onset of puberty in boys, by blocking the effects of testosterone and other androgens.

The actions of these industrial chemicals are overwhelmingly feminizing, hastening puberty in girls, delaying and distorting masculine development in boys. Seems like a problem. The plastic in baby bottles, for example, has been shown actually to damage male neonate animal brains, specifically in memory and motivation functions focused in the nucleus accumbens. The same damage does not occur in females. The males demonstrate less curiosity about their environments, and their activity profile strongly resembles that of control females. Strangely, females exposed to the same plastic demonstrate heightened activity, environmental curiosity, and learning ability. Again, the only relevant variable here is the plastic.

Increased ADHD in boys. Decreased testosterone and semen levels than in previous generations, lower sperm count, and endemic infertility. Genital malformations are up by three times; pregnant mothers who drink phthalates are ten times more likely to have boys with undescended testicles, or subaverage penis-size, or hypospadias (misplaced urethra terminus).

From these specifics we might derive any number of insights, environmental, political, sociological, ethnographic. We won’t bother to flesh it out. We could talk about planting the seeds of our own destruction, for all that there are fewer and fewer seeds. Why bother. Everyone talks about history, but nobody does anything about it. Is there a solution? Well, first, is there a problem? Maybe it’s a good thing? We become extinct and save the planet from our pollution and global warming? We remove our unclean presence and leave the world to the purity of the encroaching desert? What after all has freedom and free will given us? Melting icecaps and mutant fish. Yin yields to yang.

On the other hand, we might choose not to use clear plastics to drink from. We might wash our vegetables (alas, animal flesh stores such chemicals at an even higher density). It starts with being aware of the problem. After that one can choose to care, or not. If biologically generated motivation from out of a healthy nucleus accumbens is insufficient to make us care, perhaps ethics and a commitment to some intellectual ideal might do it. How are we to know what will move us to responsible action? Sociological movements are not planned.

But that’s why we should eat healthfully. Health matters for so many reasons.

Does the title here, "The Age of Aquarius," seem impenetrable to you? We did not know what the New Age would bring. The triumph of hippie values is brought about by the very thing they rebelled against. Corporate chemicals -- as opposed to hallucinogenic ones. Their feminine-leaning ethos triumphs against its masculine counterpart at the cost of infertility. The New Age is bringing not love, love, love, but sterility, deformity and extinction. What is the point of saving the planet, if we fail to save the human baby boys?

Grand theories about saving the planet are all very fine and good. How laudable it is, to be so ethereally idealistic. Yes, smoking should be banned. Just like alcohol should be banned. Oh. Wait. Um, well, let's rethink this. Smoking should be banned in our own lives. We ourselves should take responsibility for us ourselves. Before we take responsibility for anyone else, we should take responsibility for ourselves. Yes, that sounds more sensible.

We'll start with our own bodies, our own health, the composition of our own flesh, its ratio of muscle to fat. That way we won't be metaphysical theoreticians, like Marxists making predictions about how capitalism will fade away into a worker's paradise -- we'll have some credibility. Our own house will be in order. We'll start by having a sensible diet, engaging in sensible exercise, excluding the obvious poisons from our lives, and as they become apparent, the more subtle ones. That way we won't be loudmouth hypocrites or soapbox saviors. We'll be effective realists, admirable examples who make a difference by the excellence of our own lives.

Preachy? Yes. Not soapbox though. Realistic. It's about personal excellence. Everything else is theories about politics. How boring.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW

Responsibility

Yeah, it's a McGuffey Reader slash Book of Virtues sort of word. Responsibility. How outré. We do what we want, when we want, and consequences be hanged. Oh. Well, not we. We're not quite that cool. But we do what we want, sort of, when we want, if it's convenient, and although we do indeed care about the consequences, it's not enough to change our behavior. Oh. Well, again, that's not really us either. Actually we are sort of responsible.

Just not in terms of the full measure of our health. Sensible exercise, sensible diet. It's the absolute foundation of health. We can't change our genes, but we can change what we do with them. So, yes, responsibility.

Folks get busy, and tired, and have all sorts of excuses for not maintaining themselves. Over the age of 30, Americans gain an average of one pound of fat each year. That works out to about 10 extra calories a day. A dab of butter the size of your pinkie nail. So something is definitely wrong here. It isn't about calories, for all that you hear otherwise. It's about fitness.

Fitness is a self-selecting process, as is an adherence to any virtue. Some folks are, alas, as seed that falls on the hard ground or among the thorns or where the birds can devour them. Alas. But that's not you. Because you're reading this, it's clear you have the interest, and no doubt an awareness of the need for safety and effectiveness, and motivation. Not nagging, not cajoling. Encouragement and education and information.

FitWorks, as the name implies, is about FitNess. We counsel on diet and nutrition, and we prescribe and supervise workouts. Not everyone sticks with it. Of course not. It requires dedication and effort, and that's not everyone's cuppa. They prefer soda pop? But that's not you. You know that personal excellence is a -- well, it's a responsibility.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Sick

Behold! The exotic super berry from the dripping bowels of the Amazonian Rain Jungle! Açaí. Has even more antioxidants than blueberries. So, oh! Let's all race out and buy a couple of gallons worth, at ten bucks a gram. Cuz it has all them antioxidants and such.

How many people don't even bother with the easy stuff, yet get all tingly over the idea of the exotic? Yes, açaí has ... have? ... more antioxidants than blueberries. Which is fascinating, but not all that useful, if you don't even eat blueberries. The point is about being practical. True, you can bankrupt yourself on Baikal caviar, but why not eat fisheggs? If you're into that sort of thing. They taste the same, and do the same job. That's our theory anyway, and for purposes of this example, it is correct.

Consider that populations that eat a certain type of potato have less of a certain type of cancer. Not of all cancers -- just a certain type. This tells us that at least some cancers are a deficiency disease. Like scurvy.  Like, um, beriberi. The obvious lesson is that we want to include as wide a variety of nutrients in our diet as is reasonable. Give your body what it needs to heal itself and to keep itself healthy.

No medicine, no drug ever cured a disease. Diseases do get cured, but it isn't toxic chemicals that do it. Well, maybe they kill tapeworms -- but that's more a condition than a disease. What drugs do is suppress aggravating factors, so that your body can heal itself. It only takes a bit of thought to see the truth in this. Drugs can only stimulate your own body to do a job, or attack something that's causing a problem. Neither stimulation nor suppression is a cure. The really good doctors know this. It makes them humble. The foolish doctors are all about symptoms.

So, yes, add a spoonful of açaí berries to your diet. Why not? But don't imagine that it will make even a noticeable difference. What will make a noticeable difference is having a wide spectrum of nutrients in your bloodstream. Some your body will need, some not -- but it will have the choice. Maybe you're not susceptible to such and such a cancer. But since you don't have your genome memorized, it's better to graze than to binge -- roam the wide savanna, don't hunch over the carcass and glut yourself on zebra guts. Because your body does have its genome memorized -- it knows what it needs, even if you don't.

Eating complex meals, in which there are many nutrients, does have its risks. The enteric system -- the whole digestive system -- has as many neurons, as many "brain" cells as the brain does. The obvious conclusion is that digestion is a fantastically complex process. The greater the variety of foods you eat in a single meal, the more complex the process of digestion will be. It's not just a blender, your gut, where everything is dumped into an acid bath and dissolved into a featureless paste. Carbs aren't even digested in the stomach. Meat. Proteins. Not carbs. Carbs get digested farther along. The thirty feet of small intestines coiled up in our midsections aren't just a long hose to the restroom. Specific nutrients get absorbed at only certain spots along the way. It's very complex. So sometimes it makes sense to give your body a break, and eat simply.

Some folks have smart bodies -- very few health or digestive problems. Some people have, well, they have not-smart bodies. Through years of abuse, their digestive system has become befuddled and confused, and just can't do a lot of complex thinking anymore. It's like calculus. If you know it, and are thinking straight, you can solve the problem. If you never learned it, or have become stultified over the years through sloth and auto-intoxication, then forget about it. There's a brain in your gut. It has an IQ. You can make it backwards. If you do, it will take its unsubtle revenge.

Antioxidants are like Stonehenge. One sarsen stone may be much taller and more impressive than all the others. But it's not Stonehenge unless it describes a circle. Açaí may indeed be the tallest pillar. But you can't live on a pillar. Built a wall. Build four of them, and add a roof. Some specific species of berry provides a rich supply of beneficent plant chemicals, although along a narrow band of the vast spectrum of nutrients. That's so wonderful, but how about you flood yourself in brilliant light? How about you ensconce yourself in the noble bastion of mighty security, so that when the chill hand of the boreal wind comes clutching after your throat, you'll have some shield to fend off the blah blapity blah. Shall we say it in blank verse? Have Frank Miller illustrate it?

The upshot is, get started. Go ahead and continue eating not-so-good things. But eat something that will help you live, too. Same thing with exercise. Do a little. Do that gym stuff that does a little something, but doesn't quite get the results that the muscleman mags promise. Because something is better than nothing, and mostly it's not actually bad for you. Well, some of the machines are bad for you, but only if you do them too much, however much that is for you -- just enough to do some damage, eh?

But if you're interested in doing more, in seeing really impressive results pretty fast, look for it. That's what effectiveness is about. Not magic, not quick fixes -- sound principles of how the body works -- a soul living in a body, not looking for a way out ... looking to prolong the experience, vigorously.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Commonalities

It's sad, when we look at each other with harsh, with impersonal eyes. We see the fat, rather than hear the music.

It only takes a little imagination, some generosity, and we smile not with arrogance, but in celebration of our shared humanity, with its frailty and tenderness.

What does any of this have to do with health and fitness, our focus? Well, there is a fitness and a health that isn't just physical. Of course we all know that, for all that reminders come in handy. It's just about appearance, though. It's so very important. You know it's true. That's why they sell magnifying mirrors. Yikes.

Nowadays we can banish our baldness with plugs and suck out the fat from our thighs and transplant it into our cheeks and tie off our stomachs and change the shape of our noses and the color of our eyes. Brave new world. What we cannot do is become more fit by taking pills or having operations. These can change us, but not in quite the same way that nature or its maker intended. To achieve the level of fitness, of physical health that makes living in a body a joy and a temptation to arrogance, we have to do, DO things differently. That's not the same thing as having someone else do something to us -- inject botox or apply spraytan. Aside from misfortune, the formula is simple: health is earned.

What do we have control over, if not our bodies? All those muffins and sodas, somehow finding their way into our hands and thence to our mouths. What insidious force motivates them? It's inexplicable. Surely we ourselves cannot be held accountable. Other than in our mere health, that is. And health hardly matters at all. We will live forever, after all, in eventual paradise or perdition, or we will be extinguished like smokeless flames -- take your pick, and live accordingly.

As for this other sort of health, emotional or spiritual, there's that venerable adage: Act as if you have faith, and it will be given to you. We live in bodies for a reason. It shapes the reality that our emotions feel. That's power. Change your behavior and you change your perceptions.

Physical redemption is about changing behavior. Effective exercise patterns, sensible dietary practices, and attention to an overall balanced lifestyle. Yes, we just love to look great naked. How gratifying. But when they bring out the magnifying mirror, none of us gets a pass. What we don't want to be is a magnifying mirror for the people around us. We take people as they come, and maybe try to make a bit of a difference. There should be no maybe about it. It's a mission.

It's like what Marley's ghost said to Scrooge: humanity is our business. Not just a no-man-is-an-island thing --  something to do with being human.  Something to do with mens sana in corpore sano.   It can't be all that complex.  Everyone after all knows how to be human.  It's just a matter of choices.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Motivation

It's not an entirely rational process. It's not really about information -- if we just hear that one fact, it will make the difference. Motivation, as the very sound of the word suggests, is about emotion. We do what we feel like doing. Most folks feel like eating and sitting. So why should we get in shape? What should we do? -- and how? How do we transform that potential energy into kinetic energy? How do we get moving?

Fitness is an investment, of time and effort and the cost of expertise. All of that sounds like even more reason to do nothing. And the very real, measurable, tangible benefit of increased health and attractiveness and energy and functioning -- honestly, such things can seem just too far away, too hard to get. So many reasons to stay the way we are.

There is a way to get started, though, on the things that need starting. A little phrase, a verbal formula that gets things into perspective. Do it now. Right now, while it's on your mind. Most likely, if you even ask the question, should I do it now, you've already figured out that you can do it now. So do it. In the present context, about getting fit, that first step is, well, it would be to drop us an email. Because you can't get fit right now. It takes time. But you can start the process. And it will come as no news flash, that starting comes before finishing. Get started.

It's not about the whole job, the vast and great goal of the thing, with all its effort and commitment. It's about one small task at a time. That thousand miles, single step thing. Step One isn't thinking about how hard it will be to lose those extra pounds or strengthen that weak lower back or get the knees to where they should be or doing what it takes to increase your energy. Step one is taking a single, simple first step. And we just looked at that. If you need help, ask for help.

Motivation? You have all the motivation in the world. A huge host of reasons to be healthy, and no reasons at all to neglect the things that should be done. Excuses, yes. Reasons, no. That's it then. Do it now.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Unexpected Fruits

Cucumbers, tomatoes, melons, pumpkins, dates, strawberries, chili peppers, allspice, eggplant, lychee nuts, pepper, rosehips -- all fruits. Any gourd or melon, anything with a seed in it, that can be eaten. A fruit is, technically, an ovary. Yum. Sometimes it ripens into a shell, sometimes into something leathery or papery, sometimes into something juicy enough to recognize as a fruit. What's the big deal about fruit?

There is the large class of things with seeds. All fruits have seeds. All nuts have seeds. All nuts are fruits ... in a sense: with some nuts the part we would think of as the fruit, the ovary wall, is the shell, and we don't eat shells. A true nut is a type of seed where the actual "fruit" cannot be separated. Chestnuts and hazelnuts. Pretty small category, if we limit it the biological definition. But we shouldn't. A walnut is not a true nut -- the shell is separated and we eat the seed but not the fruit. Likewise, almonds, cashews, pistachios -- they are the seeds of nuts. But come on, they're nuts. A coconut is the seed of a nut.

As we all loved to remind people when we were 12, bananas are legumes. But legumes are fruits. We eat the seed and toss the fruit, the peel, the pod. Same with peanuts. Peas, alfalfa, lentils, beans, carob -- legumes are fruits. Same with cereal grains, wheat, corn, rice -- they are technically fruits. The fruit wall is fused and uselessly thin, and what's edible is the seed, but they're fruit.

Nuts? They, like obvious fruits, have a strategy. For animals: eat my nuts, but forget about some that you hide so they will grow. With humans the strategy is just as easy: eat my nuts, notice how useful I am, and plant orchards of me. It's the same deal that fruit trees make. Philosophically we can think of them as fruit.

It seems that human food is anything a tree or vine or bush produces that can be eaten. Likewise with berries and gourds and melons -- such vines and bushes are a subclass of fruit tree. Grains, however, do not come from trees. They come from grasses. Just different. Same with vegetables (the bodies of plants), and herbs (the leaves and twigs). Edible, but not quite the same as fruit.

Did you know that we have the gene to make vitamin C? We, and the higher primates. It's mutated though, and silent, and useless. Best evidence now, and pretty clearly correct, is that there was a pandemic virus that attacked the vitamin C gene in all species that had a sufficiently close gene-design. This is obvious from the fact that many of the passerine, perching/songbirds also have lost the ability to produce vitamin C, according to no intelligible evolutionary-mutation pattern. This argues for a non-random mutagenic cause -- ie, one that attacks various but similar species.

Point is, we are not what we once were. Maybe there are vitamins that we don't even know about, that we used to get from some common food, a fruit from a tree, a tree as it were of life. Now extinct. Some essential nutrient, for heart health, for brain function, for cancer repair. How long might we live, given nutrition that is no longer possible?

Conclusion? We live in an ad hoc world. We don't live by the old rules. Mass extinctions have withered the orchard. We have to find our nutrients where we may. Because we too are not what we were made to be. Meat? Sure, if it's necessary. Grains? Likewise. Moderation in almost all things. We wouldn't want to eat just apples, either. We've got to use some common sense -- which is not, alas, governed and guaranteed by appetite.

So we look at the nutritional content of a food, relative to the amount of calories and ease of digestion, and weigh that against taste, and get busy composing a livable, sustainable menu. It doesn't come from infonutrients, the proprietorial products that promise the moon, the sun and the stars, all in a ruby red or emerald green powder. The guy who's trying to sell you the incredible Infinite Dinosaurs Program™!!! which is just the bomb -- he has a capitalist motive. Not a bad thing, in itself. But we hope for a quality product at a reasonable price -- ethical capitalism. There is no fantastic new revolutionary mega supplement energy drink, PrimaVita-C Mutation Negation Libation™ (do not feed to canaries) , that will hyper repair your genetic macro deficiencies, so get it now, while supplies last. Don't ACT NOW!!!, because it's a ripoff.

A little common sense. Magic bullets are magic. Do you believe in magic? We believe in solid nutrition and effective exercise. You've heard about how adults are supposed to get some number of servings of fruits and vegetables every day. Less than 20% of grownups meet even the minimum requirement. What are the rest of them thinking? If they won't eat right, how do they expect to be healthy?

 It's so obvious. Yet, somehow, it's hard. If you have an adult-supply of skepticism, you don't believe in magic, and you care about evidence and results. Be effective and you will feel the difference, immediately. Promises are easy, but they're easy to test, too. At least this one is.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Jack LaLanne

Died, January 23, 2011, age 96.

He invented the leg extension machine, and the smith machine, and the weight stack, and cable pulls, and jumping jacks. He invented the idea of the fitness health club. He had a right to be self-assured. He didn't eat meat. No dairy. No white bread. No sugar. Lots of fruits and vegetables. Worked out for two hours daily. He stopped towing submarines across the Straits of Hormuz for his birthday, but into his nineties he was still looking pretty good. A bit shaky, advertising his juicers, but looking good. His philosophy was  simple unto simplistic, and not entirely up-to-date -- but he was right.

There's talk in certain circles about the genetic lifespan of humanity being 120 years. The evidence for this conclusion is not convincing. There seems to be exactly one honest record of such a thing, outside of the Bible. All those ancient Russians and Turks and Nepalese are just lying about their age to gullible anthropologists. That is after all what happened to Margaret Mead, so why not? Theoretical expectations don't seem to meet real world demands.

Old age is unavoidable, if you live that long. Jack L looked really good for nearly a hundred, but he didn't look 60. He looked like a pretty good mid-70s. That's two decades he shaved off his apparent age. Pretty good. But time's ragged hand mars every lotus. We'd like to see vigor thrive like the sunrise. It just seems like that's what should happen. It doesn't.

We get wiser, some of us, but we will never again be what we were, or might have been had we tended after ourselves properly. How can we regret sunsets, though? As much as to mourn our disbelief in Santa Claus. We pass through stages, and regret for this fact must itself be a stage through which we pass. Our beauty will crumble, even such great beauty as yours, and your power will fail, unshaken though it now may be. There never has been an empire that has lasted. All that remains is the land, and even land succumbs to tide. There comes a day when we realize that all our school teachers are dead.

The care we take of ourselves -- diet, exercise, morals, morale -- that's part of our character. Stewardship. Integrity isn't just about business transactions. Pig-out on cream puffs? Sure. The once-in-a-while things aren't likely to do much harm, just like the passing of a moment doesn't make you that much older. But they do add up, these bon bons, these moments. And you find yourself old, if not sick.

Jack L said, "There are two things that people have in their lives that will never fail: pride and discipline." Well, he was a man who constructed himself out of pride. And he certainly didn't actually mean "never". But he was a motivational speaker, and short declarative sentences motivate.

Almost everything fails. Our bodies will fail. Our intellect will fail. But we don't fail until our character fails. That's another aspect of what fitness is. It's something that needs to be tended. We nurture it, or we become decrepit. There is an old age that has its own vitality. Mostly, it's a blessing that we bestow upon ourselves. Moderation, sensible diet, sensible exercise -- but it's a sort of jealous guarding of something valuable, too.

Competence identifies and clarifies goals, and then achieves them. It's a balance between the short- and the long-term. We've just looked at the long view. If you live that long, you'll be old. It can be an ugly thing. But it can be inspirational, too. Know what? You can be like that.  The best dreams are the ones we turn into plans.  Sensible diet, sensible exercise.  Seems like a reasonable place to start.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW

CrossFitBurbank

Still Crazy

President Garfield was killed by Charles Julius Guiteau,

who wanted to be made ambassador to Paris. When his dream was dashed by the cold reality of his complete lack of qualifications -- like, sanity -- God told him to buy a gun. Having plagiarized a book on theology, Guiteau counted himself sensitive to the Lord's will, secured a revolver -- not as pearl-handled as he had wished -- and killed Garfield. At trial his defense was that he was legally but not medically insane. All the while he was planning his triumphal post-trial lecture tour and campaign to run for president in 1884. On the scaffold, he asked for an orchestra to play so he could sing a poem he had written: "I Am Going to the Lordy."


McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz,

anarchist of the Emma Goldman flock. The president had to die because, uh, there are rich people. Bang. Czolgosz was electrocuted, zap, his body dissolved in sulfuric acid and his papers and clothes were burned. Good riddance.


Kennedy? Well aside from the Mafia, which does not exist, and the CIA, and Castro and Johnson,

and, uh, all the others involved in the conspiracy, like the Dallas police, there was Oswald.

Who was a Marxist.


Theodore Roosevelt was shot but not killed by John Flammang Schrank.

TR, with a bullet lodged in his chest, continued to give his speech, for another ninety minutes. As for Schrank, he wrote poetry and was told by God in a dream to avenge McKinley's death. So, of course, what else could he do? He spent the rest of his life in an insane asylum.


FDR was shot at by Giuseppe Zangara,

a delusional bricklayer, who instead shot five other people, killed a woman and Anton Cermak the mayor of Chicago, who threw himself into the line of fire. Zangara's motive: he hated rich and powerful people. Madness? Who can say.


Truman was shot at by Puerto Rican leftists, Oscar Collazo, right,

and Griselio Torresola.

Ford was shot at by Manson freak Squeaky Fromme

and by SLA radical Sarah Jane Moore.

Samuel Byck

-- a Sean Penn look-alike

-- was a psychiatric patient, who tried to join the Black Panthers and also incidentally wanted to fly a plane into the White House, to kill Nixon because the government conspired to oppress the poor. He killed the pilot and co-pilot, then himself. Bang bang bang.


Reagan was shot by John Hinkley

to impress Jody Foster.

The madman thought that Jody might be interested in a man of his caliber.


Saddam Hussein

tried to get HW. So, another madman.


Frank Corder,

a drug dealer, tried to fly a plane into Clinton. Francisco Duran

fired 29 rounds at what he thought was Clinton. Tourists tackled him. His defense at trial was that he was trying to save the world from a mist fed by an umbilical cord connected to a space alien hidden in the lofty mountains of Colorado. He might not have been insane.


Robert Pickett,

emotionally problematic and employmentally aggrieved, stood this side of the fence and unloaded a handgun at the W White House. Sentenced to three years. The gun got off scot free again. Then on 9-11, aside from other notable events, some dudes tried to sneak into Bush's motel room in Florida.


These two pasty geniuses,

Paul Schlesselman and Daniel Cowart, complete with swastica tattoos, had it against Obama, as did these three, Shawn Adolf, Tharin Gartrell and Dwaine Johnson,

also geniuses.


So that's about it then. Everyone who's gone for a president. But it just seems like maybe ... maybe there's another one? OH! LOL!!! How silly!!!!!! LINCOLN! HAHAHAHA!!!!!! Killed by a man who thought slavery was a very good thing.

Assassins are all insane, or extremists, or potheads. People who listen to their delusions and want ambassadorships for which they are not qualified. Well. There is craziness that does not lead to murder. Dishonesty is a sort of madness. Reality should be affirmed, after all. The political blame-game is nothing but shameful. Let's not be shameful. Let's be, oh, say, excellent. And integrity applies to the physical as well as to character -- to lifestyle as well as philosophy.


So? No blame. Accountability. Sensible exercise, sensible diet. No excuses, only valid reasons. You do know what that leads to. It leads to excellence. So?


Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Apples to Apples

The workout that the FW crew did on Jan 6 is a good demonstration of the power of the Power Grid.  Some surprising results after crunching the numbers.  Case in point:

ETo, of the Amazing Chinup Prowess, racked up a stellar total of 427 -- 134 chinups, 186 pushups and 107 ball slams.  Because each movement got 6 minutes, we can find their individual grid results:

chins: 37K workload/ 6100 power/ 25 power ratio;
pushups: 29K/ 4900/ 20
ball slams: 12K/ 2100/ 8
Workout total: 79K/ 4400/ 18 PR.

Looks unbeatable.  And it was.

But JHo's results have a few surprises.  Total points, 348 -- 77 chins, 141 pushups and 130 ball slams.  That total is like ... well, a lot less than ETo's.  So sad.  Some might say, pathetic.  They however would be wrong.  The results for the individual movements are:

chins: 26K WL/ 4400 power/ 19 PR;
pushups: 28K/ 4600/ 20;
ball slams: 16K/ 2700/ 12.
Workout total: 70K/ 3900/ 17 PR.

Analysis:  Even though JHo outperformed in the ball slams, that workload was relatively smaller, and had a small effect on the total -- regardless of the movement's subjective difficulty.  Even though ETo did 45 more pushups, when we make a pound for pound comparison, a relative power comparison, JHo and ETo performed approximately the same.  But talent will out, and ETo is a chinup prodigy.  To match his power ratio for that movement, JHo would have to do approximately 100 -- nearly 25 more.  On the other hand, to match JHo's ball slam power, ETo would have to do about 155 -- nearly 50 more.

Takeaway lesson?  There are several.  The thing that you're best at may not be enough.  Or it may make you the champion.  An apparently smashing victory may actually be rather more modest, when objectively considered.  A murky performance may turn out to have been an impressive effort.

It is unlikely that JHo, heavier and longer, would ever match ETo's raw number for this WOD.  Boo hoo.  But the Power Grid shows that to beat the pound-for-pound results for the total workout, all other things remaining the same (which they wouldn't since we do not remain static), JHo would have had to do only 8 more chinups, 85 instead of 77.  The total power ratio would then be ETo's 17.9 to JHo's hypothetical 18.0 -- instead of the 17.3 that implacable reality insists upon.

Does it matter?  Well, for all that we want to be excellent in ourselves, we want to be excellent when compared to others.  So, yes, it matters, sort of.  In this, the New Year, a new decade of a new century of a new millennium, there is much talk about resolutions.  At the root of that word is resolve.  A fierce and firm determination, unwaivering.  Talking won't do it, neither scheming, nor grand emotional declarations.  Reality, like resolve, is about doing.  So?

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Incurring Debt

Bob Dude sent FW an email, asking that it be posted, with the above title.  His email goes on and on about how effective his workouts are, now that he's adopting a different fitness modality. He says he was doing a strength workout the other night, making himself "even more gorgeous, if such a thing is possible," and a fellow he'd shown some stuff a while back was doing his thing. Sort of slow, deliberate, not actually what Bob Dude would suggest, now that he's doing things differently. He asked the fellow what his goal was, and the reply was, "Strength. And endurance." Oh. Both. With that workout. Hmm.

Well, it's possible, the way pyramids on Mars are possible, or base metal into gold. You know, where things happen in a progression that has no relationship to cause and effect -- just one thing that happens after another thing that went before, for some reason other than what logic and experience would support.

But it got Bob to thinking, he says, about what actually is the outcome of such slowish movements, like pushups from dumbbells and then you lift one of them and twist it into the air while supporting yourself on the other one. Like something you see on an infomercial about DVDs that will get you INSANELY RIPPED! There's no actual intensity -- a slightly elevated heartrate, the fellow said, and some perspiration -- we shan't call it sweat -- and some breathing ... but no intensity. But there's muscular activity, so it is exercise.

The benefit of real exercise? There are two goals. Evoking a hormonal response, which builds muscle by adding contractile protein and therefore strength; and evoking CNS efficiency, so that existing motor units fire more efficiently, resulting in agility, strength, athleticism and so on. Which of these would result from the ponderous workout the fellow was doing? There was no meaningful intensity, so there was no effective (in terms of cost-benefit, effort to outcome) hormonal response. The brain responds to the stress of intensity by causing the release of anaerobic hormones, testosterone and HGH. And there was no meaningful CNS training, since the motions were so slow, so deliberate, that they were entirely under the conscious direction of the forebrain.

If there is such a thing as passive exercise, that was it. Like passive learning, sitting in front of the TV and letting it soak in. Maybe. But if so, the last several generations should be supergeniuses. Having someone else manipulate your limbs into the semblance of an activity that requires actual motor skills may have some therapeutic benefit, like, say, if you have spinal damage. But it's exercise the way a ventriloquist act is conversation. Take charge, is the point. Participate in your pursuit of excellence. There's a cost. But there's a benefit.

The benefit of slow, not very intense exercise? Of course there is one. Of course. Long walks, brisk hikes, bowling or golf -- good pastimes that give a health benefit. Not something however that a gym, of any meaningful description, is about. Not what weights are about -- you know, added strength. Not what athleticism is about -- the mild, moderate leisure-time display seen in most glass-and-chrome gyms sucks up time, and promotes short-term self-esteem, and raises heartrate and gives a pump, but in terms of reaching actual training goals, not so much.

Nagging doesn't do any good, of course, and the observations that Bob Dude made aren't really a criticism. People can spend their time and energy as they please. Be happy. And we have to make our own mistakes, hopefully free from harsh judgments or tragic consequences. And we can receive advice only when our experience has brought us to such a place where it may be heard. So Bob was non-committal, apparently non-judgmental, seemingly supportive in the fellow's greater goals, encouraging in his quest to find what works for him. Bob said, "Do what you enjoy doing. It's not as good as the more effective thing that you don't enjoy, but maybe you'll actually do the thing you enjoy." And they laughed, because it seemed funny and wise.

Now Bob Dude wants you to send him one hundred dollars. He says, "Homie. You were warned up front. You can read. This is called "incurring debt". You don't know what that means? This is a legally binding contract. This is my new career, giving unsolicited but debt-incurring fitness advice on the internet. You read it, you owe me. Send me your Social Security Number, so I can sue you for non-payment or at least ruin your credit. Cuz I know how you are."

It seems Bob isn't as wise as we had come to hope. His character is not entirely reformed. Our opinion about him may have to be revised. Bob says that next time his email, that he wants posted, will be called, "Sexual Satisfaction." He says you should be sure to read it.

No matter. Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

The Memory of Roses

George Will has written in achingly poignant prose about the long decline of his aged mother into the oblivion of dementia and the final release of death. He wrote as beautifully in prose as a great poet writes in verse, impelled by a theme that is rarely matched in its grip on our souls. It fills the heart with inexpressible sadness, having known something of grief, as we all have, or will.

We can love people -- opt to love them, volunteer -- who are not worthy of love, humanly speaking. No need for elaboration. It’s a provocative enough statement, for all that betrayal might seem almost commonplace. And we drag ourselves away from such and such a situation trailing most of our courage and all of our hope behind. And being human, imperfect in our capacity for tranquility, we might be infected with rage like a low-grade fever. Self-pity? Yes. It comes with an awareness of our flaws. But who even has a right to an opinion on the matter of the secret flaws in someone else's secret heart? All this is the negative.

And if the ones who work havoc were to fall into the hands of their victims? Best not to speak of it. But the one, the ones we have loved, despite their betrayals? Of course we're angry. Here’s what we must tell ourselves: "I did not love, that it might turn into hate. I did not sacrifice, that it should bring only loss." To love is an act of will as much as a sort of pit into which we fall. This is what it means when we are told that love does not fail. It’s not that the flame doesn’t scorch but that its light doesn’t fade. The outcome of love is not assured, but its reality should never be in doubt.

High-sounding sentiments however about the unfailing character of love have little merit if they have no effect in the real world. But we do need soft phrases sometimes, as we need soft touches -- they are comforting to us. It isn’t only monkeys that clutch onto each other when the skies grow dark. It’s a picture of ourselves. We are created to love. We were made that we might count ourselves less, that someone else might be more. There is no race that knows no expression of this truth.

It isn’t something that needs to be written in a holy book. It’s written in our hearts -- incised, rather, in deep and ragged gouges. This too might make us angry. What sane person wants more pain? But can it be helped? Honestly. We must, must love, and it hurts the way a little child cries when stung or struck. But we cannot escape our nature any more than we can change our destiny -- or rather, as fools and saints attempt, change the destiny of someone else.

George Will reminds us of the words of J.M. Barrie: God gave us memory that we might have roses in winter. How lovely a thought. Someone wisely said that pain comes to pass, not to stay. It calls to mind the fact that even in our wrath, we may forgo our demand for justice and discover almost out of vacuum a capacity for mercy, and forgiveness.

So, after a long and blessed life, an old woman may descend into the darkness and indignity of senility. Her character so carefully built-up over the decades might fall away as cities succumb to earthquakes. What is left remains only as a mockery. But it doesn’t remain forever, and when she finally passes from sight, that dimming light must flair up bright as garden sunshine. So might we hope.

In this same way, we can only hope ... if we can hope ... that those who have passed beyond our sight after having shed darkness upon our world like Satan in his fall, might with the passing of time enjoy a sort of dementia of an evil character -- where repentance works its transformation and nobility is found where only betrayal has been seen.

It cannot be that the world is destined only for decay. There must be some counterbalancing force, where the agony of watching those we love reduced almost to animals, is matched in some measure by the redemption of those who started life as animals, but who discover the very purpose of what humanity is. This would be grace, and a sort of justice too. For to be human is to be condemned to love.

You see the point. We speak here of health and of fitness. For what purpose? That we might be a more excellent sort of animal? It is an easy thing to hold out cliches of love and betrayal -- how wise we might seem. But honestly. What matters? We arrive at the answers we believe by traveling through our lives like fishermen dragging nets. Perhaps we come up with hope, and courage. But it takes strength. We grow strong by enduring trials. The trials of exercise and of diet are easy, then, and a good starting place. That's the point.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

More re Diet

Diet. It's so hard. It just always needs reinforcing. There are so many conflicting, contradictory ideas about it. Carbs? Fats? Proteins? The correct ratios? Their effects on health and performance? Well, the health aspect of being vegetarian, or at least of having a very high proportion of the diet as vegetables, is established and beyond debate. But what about athletic performance? There are anecdotal claims that vegetarian athletes who switch to animal foods increase performance. The methodology is nonexistent at this point, but the claims are made. Are they true?

It could be that performance is enhances by the metabolic byproducts of meat -- uric acid, say, acting as a toxifying stimulant. Or by hormones, both artificial, from commercial and factory-fed beef, and also natural hormones, left in the flesh from the terror of being butchered. Yes, all that adrenaline could act as a performance enhancer -- stimulants will do that. At the expense perhaps of long term health, but if it's only about short term performance, well there you go.

Like coffee. Caffeine definitely increase the availability of fat to be used as an energy source with distance runners, and presumably other athletes. But we are reading more and more about adrenal fatigue -- the over-activity of stress hormones. It would be a counterpart to pre-diabetes, where the pancreas is forced to over-produce insulin, because of a dangerous lifestyle. It's imbalanced, it's damaging to long-term health, and it's unnatural. Stimulants, including meat, are or may be performance enhancers. Well? If that's okay, what's wrong with steroids? Extreme example. Draw the line back where you will.

It's just a theory, the stimulatory effect of meat, invented to answer the possibility, the anecdotal possibility that switching from vegetarian to meat-eating yield results. It needs to be investigated.

And let's look at protein. It is said that animal proteins are dangerous simply by being like those proteins we ourselves make. If you introduce a similar but alien protein into your bloodstream, your body produces antibodies to destroy it. All well and good. But if those alien proteins are too similar, your body learns how to attack itself. Auto-immune disease, thank you very much. It's a theory. But it makes sense.

Another problem is in the composition of the meat people eat. First, you cannot use protein. Nobody every used protein. It's useless. That why we digest it. We break it down into its constituent amino acids, and use them. Now here's the thing. If we eat meat, it's fair to suppose that the ratio of amino acids the meat yields is comparable to the meat, muscle, of our own bodies. So, yes, meat could go to make muscle. But there's a problem with the reasoning. The meat/amino acids that we might use does/do not go just to make muscle. Our bodies use amino acids for a host of other functions. Amino acids are used to build every hormone we have. They are used as peptides, as neurotransmitters, as the building blocks of bone and hair and fingernails and organs and, well, everything. Everything that gets done in your body is done by proteins. It's not about meat. Proteins are robots, that travel throughout the body and get things done. See? You are guaranteed to get exactly the WRONG ratio of amino acids, if you rely on meat.

What is the ideal proportion of essential amino acids? It's unlikely that anyone knows. But we can be sure it's not that of any meat. Milk, perhaps? Human milk? But you do not plan on doubling your weight in the next few months, do you? Because that's what milk is designed to do. So milk is the wrong ratio too, for adults. It must be, must be, some admixture of plant materials. What recipe? Who knows.

That's why we advocate eating as wide a variety of plant nutrients as is convenient. You don't know what you need, but your body needs it anyway. So give it a chance to choose. You don't need to have every nutrient at every meal. It's not about loading the stew up with absolutely everything. Indeed, that may be a bad idea. Digestion is a very very very complex thing. We know this because there are as many neurons in the gut as there are in the brain. From this we might conclude that digestion is as hard a thing to figure out as calculating the orbit of Neptune. No worries, our gut can do that. But let's not make it unnecessarily difficult.

So consider those dietary supplements, the powders that have every fruit ever heard of, all in a single tablespoon. Sounds pretty good, right? Maybe. But that's like 112 different plant families that your body has to figure out how to digest and absorb, all in one sitting. Sure, it can be done. But it seems like a strain. Like stimulants would be a strain. Like adrenal fatigue would be a strain. Like pre-diabetes would be a strain. Stress is okay. Distress is bad. How about getting all those nutrients over a few meals, or a week, or something like that. Rather than glut yourself, for all that the portions are small.

It's not about being perfect. It's about being sensible. Sensible diet, sensible exercise. Since you are made out of what you eat, it seems like starting with diet would be smart.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Stuff

Catch that show about “Hoarders”? Lots of anxiety and catastrophizing. “I feel like just leaving and never coming back.” Yeah, sure, you’re going to go kill yourself because people are exasperated with all your mess and crap. You’ll just disappear from the planet. It’s not the hoarding of course. It’s the mess. If it were organized it wouldn’t be hoarding. It would be collecting. It's more than just some reluctance to throw out anything that might possibly someday be somehow useful. Pathological.

But really, it’s not the stuff. It’s the mess. It’s really important to stay on top of it. Especially with boys. Two rules. First, have a place for everything. All the papers -- work, academic, finance -- all the books, dishes, jackets, shoes, toys, games -- they all have a place. Boxes, chests, closets, hampers, drawers, cupboards, shelves -- these are places, for things. Armoires. Credenzas. Highboys. Whatever. They don’t have to be neat in their place, but they have to be in their place, and out of sight. Their place is not on tabletops, chairs, beds, floors, floors under beds. Their place is not, ever, on a surface. Surfaces do not count as places. Things are either out of sight, or on display. It’s more a matter of judgment than of taste. And when they get messy in their place, out of sight, well, once a week, places get a going over. Sunday evening, after dinner and before family time. It's a part of family time.

Second rule, no mess at bedtime. Never let it get out of control. You do that by having a procedure. Whose ever bedtime it is, there’s a few minutes before that, for spot check. You know what you’ve been doing. If it’s kids, they don’t know what they’ve been doing. So there’s a checklist, formal or informal. Of course kids want to do a sloppy job. It’s not bad, it’s human. But there’s accountability too.

Too much stuff? Not enough places? Really, that's not hard. Decide if you want to be a hoarder. Keep what you need, keep what you like, but don't keep what you might perhaps someday maybe have a use for possibly. It's like paint cans. When you repaint, many years from now, is it going to be the same color? Really? Liar. Buy less than you want. It's more than you need. One fellow had the rule, anything that wouldn't fit on the one shelf in his garage, had to go. Severe, but it worked. He had one big place, rather than a lot of more specific ones. It worked for him.

Too much mess? There's the Mount Vernon technique of housekeeping. It's such a big place, how do you clean it? Start in a corner, and work out. It's a system, and systems get things done. Doesn't have to be the best system ever, or the most efficient. Just effective. No search-and-rescue grids required. Overwhelmed? Schedule time. Do it in pieces. Make it a project. Ask for help. Hire someone. Just get it done.

It's important because people form judgments. Family overlooks it. Friends make allowances. Strangers don't care, or shouldn't. Social workers write reports. But everyone has opinions. And if there are kids, well, there it is. We want them to benefit from our excellence. Sadly, they have to deal with it all.

That’s it. Two rules. Have a place, and use it. But that's how it is with everything. A few rules, just common sense, and chaos becomes cosmos. This is how God created the universe. With a rule, a unified field. Light. Then a lot of separating.

Point? It's not about messy stuff. It's about being in charge. First, most, of yourself. Health and fitness. Because we are not our stuff, and we are not the place that our stuff is in. For purposes of this discussion, we are our bodies. Don't have a messy body. Don't be a hoarder of body stuff. You know, fat. Fungus. Yeast infections. Impacted fecal matter on the colon wall. You know, stuff. Don't do that. How? Two rules. Sensible diet, sensible exercise.

Be excellent.

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CrossFit Burbank