Blog Archive

Well the big day is here!

Love that guy.

Sprinting is one of the most basic forms of high intensity exercise.  We all evolved having to sprint short distances in order to survive.  Although its lauded as part of CrossFit, I believe it to be on the whole neglected as a focus.  So we are going to spend some time turning all of you into cheetahs!

We have laser timing blocks and are going to do 3 different sprinting tests to get accurate measured times.

Coaches please give the athletes a really good warm up that includes multiple escalating runs/sprints.

The 3 tests are:

1) 20m sprint (tests acceleration)

2) 50/50 out and back 100m sprint

3) 30m lead up to a measured 20m sprint – Tests top speed (my fav)

Coaches please have someone at the 50/50 m turn around point to watch out for traffic entering the alley (north end).

I had a running coach many years ago who told me we all run the way we did when we, as little toddlers, first figured out how to do it.  So by that logic we will not be doing much sprint technique today.  We will leave it very basic. Start low, drive up, pick your feet up and put them down fast. Pump your arms.  Use your whole body. BREATH! Run light and fast and HAVE FUN!!! No falling allowed.

We will have the timing blocks up and running for the 11 am class as well.

In the coming weeks we will be doing drills and practicing sprinting.  I think this raw test will give another dimension to our times when we test again in 6-8 weeks.

The 50/50 100m counts for the Leaderboard website and the Ladderboard challenges.  Currently Ronja sits a top the Ladderboard.  Who will her challenger be?

If you would like to donate a toonie to help pay for the equipment and compensate the Prof’s daughter Tessa for her time then please feel free.  There will be a jar at the front board. It will very much be appreciated.  Even if you don’t want to donate a toonie then please still come in and do the sprints.  I will pay for the rest out of my pocket.

Much Love,

Shep

That’s right folks!

Another instalment of Project Endurance is hitting CrossFit Vancouver.

The Project will kick off with a 2.5 hour ‘Running As A Skill’ workshop on Tuesday, September 25th at 6 pm (mark the date), and will provide 10 weeks of run specific programming and support, designed to be supplemented with 3 CVF group classes a week to help YOU improve your running and possibly do a race.

Andy, Shep and The Afghan will be instructing you in effective running technique and raising your all around running game.

We will meet as a group every Tuesday at 6 pm for a 1 hour session and you will also be given 2 homework sessions per week to complete.

The results last time around were phenomenal.

More details (cost/etc) to follow.
Please post interest to comments.
 
Wednesday’s Workout:
 
Tech: Shoulder mobility – Wall angels and 5 breath push up
Wod movements

Workout: Fractured J.T.

5 rounds for time

9 HSPU
9 Ring Dips
9 Push Up

25 minute time cap so choose your progressions appropriately (Under protest – Sheppy wanted to do 20 minute limit but was talked out of it).

Nous t’aime

Shep and Ali

On Thursday we will be sprinting.  Yeah!

Tony “The Prof” Leyland is lending us his laser timing block equipment and his offspring to run it for a day.

He wrote a great article for the Journal on why we should sprint train.  Here are a few excerpts:

” We evolved performing lots of endurance activities such as tracking animals, moving with the seasons, gathering food and materials, building shelter, etc.  However, we also required very short-duration outputs of peak power during fights and sprints (to chase, or flee, an opponent or animal).  Hence, sprinting distances of 10 to 40 meters is probably one of the most fundamental physical survival skills we ever developed as humans.”

“Maximal sprinting is also crucial in sport.  In the sport of soccer, for example, players sprint maximally an average of 15 meters (mostly between 5 and 30 meter) every 90 seconds on average.  During the game they cover around one kilometre sprinting at maximal speeds and a further two kilometers at fast speeds, but this is achieved in intervals over 90 minutes of game time.  Running in soccer—like efforts in many other sports—consists of short sprints (phosphagen system predominating) and then slower movements (cruising, jogging, backing up, walking) where the athlete has time to recover (oxidative system predominating).  The ratio of time spent in high-intensity and low-intensity activity is between 1:10 and 1:20.  Football, baseball, basketball, volleyball. rugby, hockey, racket sports, surfing, weightlifting, combat sports, and many if not most other sports also have patterns of quick bursts of maximal or near-maximal power outputs (1-5 seconds in duration) followed by lower-intensity activity periods which allow for a certain amount of recovery.”

“Does CrossFit target type-IIx fibres and the phosphagen system; does it help with your power, your acceleration?  Yes it does, most definitely.  To be fast and strong, you need a good strength base—strength training and heavy lifting is the way to achieve this.  To develop this strength into high power, Olympic-style lifts are king (cleans, jerks, snatches, and their variations, etc.)   …    However, while Olympic weightlifting develops excellent vertical acceleration, the principle of specificity means that translating that power into horizontal acceleration and sprint capacity requires practical application and practice.” 

Read the whole article here in our Exercise Science blog.

We will be doing 3 types of tests on Thursday:

1) 20m sprint (tests acceleration)
2) 50/50 out and back 100m sprint
3) 40m lead up to a measured 20m sprint – Tests top speed (my fav)

The 50/50 100m counts for the Leaderboard website and the Ladderboard challenges.

We will be sprinting more often over the next 6-8 weeks then will to retest with timing blocks.

So come on out and give it your all!

Ps.There will be a nominal fee of $2 a person to do the testing for equipment rental and woman power.  Bring a toonie! Coaches collect.

Tuesday’s Workout:

Warm Up: For Time:

50 KB Swings (Black/Red)
800 m Run
50 D ball slams
800 m Run

Tech: Practice snatch pulls and tall snatches

Workout:

Power Snatch  3,3,3

Score for the leaderboard is the total weight of all 3 sets. So if Ali did 100 lbs for her first set, 110 lbs for the second and 120 lbs for her third then her score will be 330 lbs.

Hoser Hugs and Scottish Kisses,

Shep and Ali

Why You Should Sprint Train

By Tony Leyland

 The ability to accelerate is essential to human performance.  Per Astrand, a world-renowned exercise physiologist argues that major adaptations for human survival “were consistent with habitual physical activity, including endurance and peak effort alternated with rest.”

We evolved performing lots of endurance activities such as tracking animals, moving with the seasons, gathering food and materials, building shelter, etc.  However, we also required very short-duration outputs of peak power during fights and sprints (to chase, or flee, an opponent or animal).  Hence, sprinting distances of 10 to 40 meters is probably one of the most fundamental physical survival skills we ever developed as humans.  If you were fleeing a more powerful animal you probably would be sprinting a short distance to safety or shelter.  If you were too far away from safety you would have to turn and fight.  Either way, you needed to be powerful…. and the outcome, good or bad, was probably decided in a matter of seconds.  Another thing to note is that this adaptive pressure did not require us to do multiple 20-metre sprints for time!  If the tree was 20-metres away you needed one sprint, some quick climbing and then rest!

I want to empathize here that I am specifically talking about acceleration.  Top speed is also important but if you take too long to get up to top speed then you may not get away from that animal or catch up to that ball.  A 10-metre sprint is very different from a 50-metre sprint and different again from a zig-zag agility sprint.  Let me discuss this further. Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis contested many 100-metre sprint races in the late 1980s. Who was the faster runner out of Johnson and Lewis?  The answer is Carl Lewis despite the fact that Ben Johnson, at his best, would consistently beat Lewis at 100-metre races. How come?  Lewis had a fractionally faster top speed, but Johnson was a better accelerator; he came out of the blocks quicker and reached his top speed sooner.  So by the time Lewis reached his, slightly higher, top speed, Johnson was far enough ahead to hold on for the win.  In the 100-metre sprint, acceleration over the first 10 meters can make the difference in who wins.  For a solider or police officer or firefighter it may be the difference between life and death.

Maximal sprinting is also crucial in sport.  In the sport of soccer, for example, players sprint maximally an average of 15 meters (mostly between 5 and 30 meter) every 90 seconds on average.  During the game they cover around one kilometre sprinting at maximal speeds and a further two kilometers at fast speeds, but this is achieved in intervals over 90 minutes of game time.  Running in soccer—like efforts in many other sports—consists of short sprints (phosphagen system predominating) and then slower movements (cruising, jogging, backing up, walking) where the athlete has time to recover (oxidative system predominating).  The ratio of time spent in high-intensity and low-intensity activity is between 1:10 and 1:20.  Football, baseball, basketball, volleyball. rugby, hockey, racket sports, surfing, weightlifting, combat sports, and many if not most other sports also have patterns of quick bursts of maximal or near-maximal power outputs (1-5 seconds in duration) followed by lower-intensity activity periods which allow for a certain amount of recovery.

Not all short-distance sprinting targets the same components of physical performance. One study looked at the correlation among acceleration (a 10-metre sprint from a stationary start), maximum speed (a 20-metre timed sprint from a 30-metre run-up), and agility (time over a 20-metre zig-zag course consisting of four 5-metre sections at 100-degree angles to each other).  Obviously the results were correlated, and many of the athletes scoring well in one test scored well in another.  However, the authors concluded that the correlation wasn’t total and that “acceleration, maximum speed, and agility are specific qualities and relatively unrelated to one another.”  This highlights, on a micro level, one of CrossFit’s fundamental critiques of many standard training programs—that single-sport athletes are narrowly specialized, at the expense of other components of fitness and athleticism.

Does CrossFit target type-IIx fibres and the phosphagen system; does it help with your power, your acceleration?  Yes it does, most definitely.  To be fast and strong, you need a good strength base—strength training and heavy lifting is the way to achieve this.  To develop this strength into high power, Olympic-style lifts are king (cleans, jerks, snatches, and their variations, etc.).  One study showed measured power in the jerk drive ranging from 2,140 watts (2.9 horsepower) in the 56-kg class to 4,786 watts (6.4 horsepower) for a 110-kg lifter. The same researcher calculated that during the second pull, the average power output, from transition to maximum vertical velocity, was 5,600 watts for a 100-kg male and 2,900 watts for a 75-kg female. Peak power over a split second would be higher still. Average power outputs for powerlifting events are: bench, 300 watts; squat, 1,000 watts; and deadlift, 1,100 watts.  The numbers are much lower because the lifts are performed slowly.  They also show that the term powerlifting is a misnomer and highlight the need to include fast, explosive movements such as the Olympic lifts and maximal sprints in your training. Powerlifting is essential in developing a strength base, but you have to work fast as well.

However, while Olympic weightlifting develops excellent vertical acceleration, the principle of specificity means that translating that power into horizontal acceleration and sprint capacity requires practical application and practice.  The soldier, law enforcement officer, and football, basketball, rugby, tennis, and soccer player (to name just a few) also need to do specific work to translate the vertical power they develop in the gym into horizontal acceleration of the body.  Like the Olympic lifts, sprinting is very technical, and optimizing your sprinting technique requires focused work at that skill.  So while we may not want to specialize in sprinting, we should learn what we can from sprint coaches.  Therefore, I suggest that you include in your workouts some 10-metre accelerations and some 20-metre, 30-metre, and 40-metre sprints.  Add in some zig- zag and other agility sprinting patterns also.  Each type of distance and movement pattern has a slightly different focus.

So why do we not see “Sprint 20-m” WODs in CrossFit?  CrossFit loves to have workouts that are measurable, as this really helps to challenge and motivate the athletes. Unfortunately, very short sprints are really hard to measure accurately enough to determine improvement (or drop off).  Obviously, monitoring progress in Olympic lifting is easy—you know the weight you are lifting.  However, a 20-metre sprint may take 3.12 seconds, and improvements may come in increments of hundredths of seconds. Therefore, it is tough to measure progress on short sprints because you obviously can’t time yourself and any improvements in time will be very small and hence the reaction time of a coach or friend using a stopwatch has to be as consistent as possible.

So I admit it is tough to have very short sprints as a measurable WOD.  But don’t let that stop you; you need to work at short sprints especially if you are not involved in sports that challenge this component of fitness.  One possibility is to do some short sprints after your CrossFit warm-up and prior to the main WOD.  You could do some three-quarter-pace sprints as an additional warm-up and then do some maximal sprints.  Maybe only five or six 20-metre sprints with a minimum of a minute break in between (the work to rest ratio should be 1:20 or higher).  Remember, when we evolved we didn’t have WODs like “sprint to tree away from sabre tooth tiger” x 20 reps!  You will not feel particularly fatigued at this point, but this is very explosive work, and, with regular use, the benefit will carry over into other aspects of your performance.  It may take a slight edge off your work output for that day’s WOD, but the benefits gained far outweigh that inconvenience.

As we are discussing maximal efforts, I should emphasize the need for correct rest periods during weight lifting and interval training, as not every athlete really understands the need for relatively long rest periods following short-duration, peak-intensity work that lasts less than 10 to 15 seconds.  When it comes to sprint workouts that train short, maximal-effort running intervals, many CrossFitters—always trying to push the intensity envelope—seem to want to reduce rest periods as much as possible.  However, this changes the focus and stimulus of the workout—and not necessarily for the better.  Too many CrossFitters harbour the misconception that unless you are close to a visit from Pukie, you haven’t worked hard enough.  Wrong.  As with most workouts it depends on what you are specifically working on.  Pure strength workouts generally don’t get you to the state of lying on the floor, gasping for breath, feeling absolutely wiped out and ready to throw up, and neither should a sprint workout where the focus is really on sprint technique and high power output.

When you work predominantly type-IIx muscle fibres (these are the high force low endurance muscle fibres) using the phosphagen system, there is little to no lactate and hydrogen ions (responsible for high muscle acidity) production.  So, when you work on low-rep Olympic lifts, train for the CrossFit Total, or do short sprint interval work, you should not produce much lactate nor feel local muscle fatigue (that well known muscle burn!).  You will start to tire after repeated efforts (those muscle fibres will take a beating) and you may be a little sore the next day or two, as the muscles have worked hard, but you shouldn’t feel any significant muscle burn.

In contrast, consider the CrossFit workouts “Kelly” (five rounds for time of a 400-metre run, thirty 24-inch box jumps, and thirty 20-pound wall ball shots) or “Nancy” (five rounds for time of a 400-metre run and fifteen 95-pound overhead squats) or even good old “Cindy” (20 minutes of rounds of five pull-ups, ten push-ups, and fifteen squats).  Cindy will take 20 minutes, Nancy will take anywhere from 12 to 24 minutes for most people, and Kelly will take me all day!  For all three, then, the vast majority of energy comes from the oxidative system. (See CFJ issues 56 and 10 if you need to review energy systems.)

Despite the “look” of these workouts, they really are NOT interval training workouts; they are circuit-training workouts.  By definition, interval training is a series of periods of EXERCISE and REST.  Most CrossFit WODs do not have any rest periods incorporated into their design; you are meant to storm through as fast as you can. Granted, if you aren’t strong enough and fit enough to move through them without breaks, you will end up working in intervals and will use some phosphagen and glycolytic systems during the work phases and then use the oxidative system to recover.  However, stronger athletes (or ones who scale the weights down) who can work continually during these types of workouts will be obtaining the vast majority of their energy via the oxidative system.  The top CrossFit athletes are aerobic beasts working sub-maximally at each individual effort.  (If you can do “Fran” in 3 to 5 minutes, 95 pounds is obviously nowhere near your one-rep max thruster weight.)

These types of workouts challenge the oxidative system and hence your cardiorespiratory fitness.  This is not a criticism of these CrossFit circuits, as they also challenge the muscular endurance of every muscle group; improve your skill, and develop balance and core stability. I have argued that CrossFit programming is protective of one’s health precisely because it does develop all components of fitness, and these kinds of intense, no-rest circuit training sessions are an integral part of that programming.

However, these longer workouts are NOT about improving your 400-metre sprint performance.  The metabolic hit these workouts deliver to the oxidative system (and a very large number of muscle groups) is very strong, so you fatigue and the 400-metre runs are like a jog (or maybe a cruise for the fitter athlete); they are certainly not 400-metre maximal sprints.  One CrossFit circuit WOD includes 100-metre runs, but it is a 20-minute multi-round workout with two other exercises, so the runs would have to be performed at less than maximal pace due to fatigue.  However, the WODs requiring ten 100-metre sprints or three 800-metre sprints are true interval workouts.  You must rest between the bouts of exercise.

Although the circuit training WODs rely predominantly on the oxidative system, if you really push for a good time or high number of rounds you will also finish with high muscle acidity and blood lactate, so the glycolytic system will certainly have been stressed and you might feel like Pukie is knocking on the door.  But these kinds of workouts do not target type-IIx muscle fibres and the phosphagen system. For that you need heavy lifts and maximal sprints… and relatively long rest intervals.  If you tried to sprint 100m maximally and then only took a 30-second rest and tried again, and kept doing this – by round five you would be cruising not maximally sprinting.

Don’t worry if when you do a sprint workout, a CrossFit Total, or some heavy overhead squats you do not feel like you worked as hard as the circuit training type of workouts. Remember this part of the CrossFit definition of fitness: “Five or six days per week mix [various kinds of functional exercises] in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow.  Routine is the enemy.  Keep workouts short and intense.”

Studies and text cited in this article:

Åstrand, P. O. 1992. “J. B. Wolffe Memorial Lecture. ‘Why Exercise?’” Medical Science and Sports Exercise 24(2): 153-162

Baechle, T. R., and E. W. Earle, eds. 2000. Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning. 2nd ed. Champaign. Ill: Human Kinetics.

Garhammer, John. 1993. “A Review of Power Output Studies of Olympic and Powerlifting: Methodology, Performance Prediction, and Evaluation Tests. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 7(2): 76-89.

Little, Thomas, and Alun G. Williams. 2005. “Specificity of Acceleration, Maximum Speed, and Agility in Professional Soccer Players. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 19(1): 76-78.

Tony Leyland is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology, Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, Canada. He has taught at the university level for 28 years and has been heavily involved in competitive sports such as soccer, tennis, squash, and rugby as both an athlete and a coach for over 40 years. He is a professional member of the National Strength and Conditioning Association, a Canadian National B-licensed soccer coach, and a level-1 CrossFit trainer.

Do you know what it is?

Originally hypothesized in 1964 by Peter Higgs (and others), on July 4th 2012 its existence was confirmed.

Sometimes called the “God Particle”, to put it simply it is a field that gives mass to anything that passes through it.  Its discovery is a big step forward in figuring out how the universe works.  It is even suggested that there are several different types of Higgs Bosons.

“Today … we have the standard model, which reduces all of reality to a dozen or so particles and four forces. … It’s a hard-won simplicity [...and...] remarkably accurate. But it is also incomplete and, in fact, internally inconsistent… This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle.”

Read more here about the Higgs Boson

All material here was taken from the above link. There are also a trillion videos of it on YouTube.

Monday’s Workout:

Tech:  Deadlift  3,3,3,3,3

Make them heavy and pretty

Workout: Up and Down

100 Wall Balls (20/14 lbs)
100 Burpees

Mix them up however you want.

20 minute time limit

Mucho Amore,

Shep and Ali