Facebook Comments

31 thoughts on “Wed, Jan 14th”

1. I found an interesting thread over on rips Q&A forum this morning.

   http://strengthmill.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3689

   In other fascinating news I’ve got the real flu this week as opposed to the more commonly known form of flu i.e. the man flu. I hope rip will let my lack of squating this week slide just this once.

2. Man I love beastskills, such a great website! Always inspiring stuff.

   I’ll be down to the 7 o’clock class tonight, ah the ol crossfit love is back!

   Had a smoothie for breakfast, it was great (2 cups of milk, a cup of raspberries, 1/2 cup of blueberries, 2 Tbsp of Protein powder and a large scoop of cashews) and super tasty, I took it from CFJ 21 and it’s a 4-block breakfast and would highly recommend it. Although I’m thinking Will is going to tell me that it’s better to get my protein from natural sources, dairy ain’t paleo and my face is a smoothie but the fact is, the smoothie is super portable, takes less than a minute to make, is tasty and is better than my usual breakfast of either nothing or a hastily grabbed piece of fruit. Ideally I’d get my lazy ass out of bed earlier and make eggs but I have the luxury of being able to go home from work for lunch so it’s nice to tuck into some eggs, lean bacon, mushrooms and broccolli for the lunch. So what say you Will, is my smoothie drinking to be frowned at but accepted because it’s a zone friendly meal that I wouldn’t ordinarily have, or will I be held up for ridicule for all to see.

   Oh other people are welcome to hold me up for ridicule besides Will, it’s just he’s very good at it and has had lots of pracice considering some of the silly things I’ve said!

3. There’s no 7 o’clock class on Wednesday.

   Share what you’ve found on beastskills with the class, Pixie.

4. Feck, stupid brain, right so, I’ll be down to the 8 o’clock class then!

   On beast skills it was literally the Front Lever link posted above, just scrolling down through the whole thing and the guys doing 1 arm front levers, very impressive. Think one of the main things I’ve learned from doing the ol gymnastics is the unequivocal respect for gymnasts. Think it’s once you try these things yourself and realise how bloody hard they are that you really begin to appreciate the level of skill and strength some of these gymnasts have. Before while watching the Olympics it’d be “Oh that’s quite good” while secretly hoping for a humorous fall of some kind, but watching the Olympics a couple of months back I was just taken aback with the skills, inspiring…

   …I was still hoping for a humorous fall or two though, I’ve matured but not that much!

5. Pixie where did you get the smoothie maker, ie one that is good value and wont break

   Were the berries etc frozen ones, if so where would I get them…. I like the sound of this breakfast

6. No need for a smoothie maker, a cheap as chips blender will do the job no bother, think mine cost €40 or something and it’s great, and a hell of a lot easier to clean than a smoothie maker, I’ll get the model number at lunch time if you wanna check it out. Yep I use frozen berries from M&S, they usually have strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and a mixture of of berries so a nice selection but you can pick em up in most supermarkets. Frozen are nice and handy as they cool down the smoothie as well, if you’re using fresh throw some ice in there. Throw in the scoop of cashews and the frozen berries and blend for 10-20 seconds or so, then add the milk, blend again, then the protein powder and a final blend. Happy days. Basically tastes exactly like Fruit of the Forest Yop.

   Here’s another recipe I came across, looks to be a 3 blocker, haven’t tried this one yet so don’t know what it’s like.

   1 Cup Milk or Soymilk [1 C, 1 F,1 P]
   1 Cup frozen strawberries (or fresh if available) [1 C]
   1 kiwi, peeled [1 C]
   1 Cup ice cubes (if using fresh strawberries)
   2 scoops ZonePerfect Protein Powder (or other equal to 14 grams protein) [2 P]
   6 almonds (2 F)

   Directions:

   Add the milk, strawberries, and kiwi to a blender and mix until smooth.

   Add ice, if desired and continue to blend until smooth.

   Blend in protein powder and top with the almonds for a delightful summertime breakfast on the go!

7. Real food is generally superior, especially on a calorie restricted diet, but in the grand scheme of things, smoothies are spectacularly unlikely to kill you.

   If you really, really can’t get up 15 minutes earlier in the morning to cook and eat some eggs then go for it.

   This however, does raise the larger and potentially more important issue of getting enough sleep…

8. Cheers Will, yeah ideally I’d be up at 6 in the morning to cook a nice breakfast of eggs and veggies and so on, but I suffer badly from insomnia and panic attacks so 4 hours of sleep a night is pretty common, I’m working on it, so will hopefully get my 8 hours every night soon enough. How it is, I get 4 hours sleep, I’m so wrecked when I get home from work that I fall asleep, therefore not tired when go to bed, therefore 4 hours sleep, and so the cycle repeats itself! Hopefully the no smoking, proper eating and a healthier approach to things will improve the sleeping.

9. Why, oh why do I do this every time? Any time I put a decent amount of weight overhead I screw my back up. I know what I’m doing, I’m arching way too much, not pulling my ribcage down and not activating my abs/back enough. I know this is a problem of mine, I know it when I’m doing it and yet I can’t seem to fix it before the fact. It’s like goldfish memory, fix rep 1 and by rep 2 I make the same mistake. So last night was a good 30 mistakes and my back is on fire. Ugh.

10. Quick question about breakfeast

    Just about everyone recommends porridge as a healthy breakfeast but i’m guessing from what i’ve read on this site it would be down the list as a breakfeast choice? I’m guessing it’s not a zone friendly choice anyway.

11. Will—why doesn’t a smoothie count as real food? Granted an Innocent smoothie isn’t, but if milk, nuts and berries are real food how does blending change that? Juicing removes the fiber but I assume blending doesn’t because the whole berry is going in, but I tend to assume such things.

12. Oh yeah Tom, if you look up top of this page there’s a box titled CrossFit Journal, click on the “Meal Plans” link and it’ll pull up a pdf of CFJ 21, that’s where I got the recipe for the smoothie, I’m using the 4 block one but they have a 3 and a 5 block listed in there as well, same ingredients just diff. quantities.

    p.s. this is definitly the most I’ve posted ever, I feel like the Kyle! Work is particularly boring when you’re not going for smoke breaks every hour or so!

13. Kyle I’m going to try and pre-empt Will’s answer, but I’d imagine he’s refering to the protein powder as opposed to the other ingredients, ideally you’d be getting your protein from a nice natural source, i.e. eggs, fish or a nice juicy bit of steak!

14. Hmm. That’s an interesting point. I know next to nothing about protein powders but isn’t whey protein made from egg whites or milk protein? So have they processed out all of the goodness to get it in powdered form?

15. By the way Pixie, what is your avatar a picutre of?

16. Eamonn – if Big Shane was still posting I’m sure he’d weigh in on this argument, he was a big fan of the ol oats for brekkie, however in regards to Zone-favourable not really. Oats are carbohydrates, so just having some porridge for breakfast leaves you lacking in protein and some good fat, you want a balance of all three for it to be considered Zone. Technically you could balance it out with some eggs or fish and some nuts and it could be considered Zone if you get your proportions right. I wouldn’t imagine that porridge would be considered the worst breakfast, especially if it was balanced with some protein and some fat, but eggs are the way to go or if time is a huge factor try one of the smoothies above.

17. Kyle – from a purely scientific point of view how I’d see it is that the more processing that’s involved in making a foodstuff the further away from natural you’re making it, whatever the original source material was. Protein powders usually contain some sort of colourant and/or sweetners to make them a bit more palatable as well. Saying that it’s not as easy to fit a chicken breast in a smoothie!

18. Oh my avatar is a wallpaper I used to have on my iPod, I’m a big fan of design and typography so it’s from ilovetypography.com (http://ilovetypography.com/love/), the original wallpaper is here (http://ilovetypography.com/img/ilt-wallpaper-abcilt-1920×1200.png)

19. I always thought it was a snapshot from the opening credits of Qi.

    On porridge, basically grains = bad things for the gut. Celiac desease, syndrome X, etc. Hopefully Will can link to something from Robb Wolf or Michael Eades on this.

20. Cool Pixie, if I cant rob my mums one then a blender is on the list. I will head down to fundrum and look at whats on offer,

    I am currently eating 2 eggs scrambled, with some cheese on it, and a piece of fruit, reckon I will have to give this zone a go eventually, but for now I am just gonna focus on eating less junk,

    -Colm
    Porridge cannot be bad for me, my granny said so……

21. I have a feeling this could turn into one of those – my granny could beat up your granny discussions!

22. Yep, the smoothie fails the “real food” test mostly by having protein powder in it, with another slight black mark for being liquidised (raising the GI etc).

    Not really a huge deal, mostly just a bias towards unprocessed food.

    If you’re on a low-calorie diet (and baseline Zone is about as low as you can go without loosing the ability to move), you’ll probably do a lot better if you’re eating food with the highest possible density of nutrients. Meat and eggs have all kinds of good stuff in them, whereas protein powder pretty much just has protein in it.

    It’s also been remarked by wiser people than me that having people eat actual food for the majority of the time tends to automatically clean up a lot of lifestyle issues, notably the rushing around all day and grabbing whatever packets of convenience food can be quickly stuffed down the ole throat between high-powered mergers, road rage and cocaine parties type lifestyle.

    Eamonn – In general grains (including oats) aren’t amazing food. They have feck-all nutrients on a per-calorie basis and they’re full of various compounds that can be highly allergenic for a lot of people (gluten, phytates, lectins etc).

    Some people tolerate them better than others, and generally the only reliable way to find out how well you do on them is to cut them out for a month or two, the likelihood being that you’ve been eating them for so long that you consider the way you feel now to be “normal”.

    There’s obviously a dosage-response here. A bowl of porridge once in a while probably isn’t going to be sufficient to give you a full-blown case of leaky gut syndrome ( http://www.theiflife.com/2008/03/19/is-your-gut-leaking-what-to-do-about-it/ ), but at the same time you don’t want grains to be a major part of your diet.

    I don’t eat any of the damn things myself as they make me feel like complete crap, but your mileage may vary.

23. -Pixie, just for the record my granny could definitely do charlie murphy quicker than your granny….

    -Will, you have vastly superior knowledge than me on these things so can I ask you this,

    Next month I will be doing starting strength again, for a month then back to crossfit, and so on. The reasons are boring and not that important,

    So based on that, if I do starting strength, and eat well, eg breakfast as outlined,
    1)Scrambled eggs, some cheese, a piece of fruit, solgar fish oil capsule,
    2)Some cashews, and a piece of fruit
    3)Tuna sandwich, brown bread with some cheese, piece of fruit
    Cashews and fruit,
    4)Chicken, fish or lean meat with some greens,
    5)Tin of tuna,
    *)And on top of that 2 liters of milk, for all of february will I pile on lots of fat or some decent muscle,

    I know Rippetoe suggests 4 liters or an american gallon but I doubt I can stomach that but would work towards it,

    Thanks for the input so far,

24. Man, most posts ever before 3pm.

    Eamonn, I have some kind of flu / cold as well. Been itching to get back and do a WOD since Saturday, but I think its counterproductive to train when your body is fighting an infection or virus. I base that only on personal experience (of being sick for practically weeks because I insisted on still going for a 5k run most days), not on any objective science. Being on nights probably isn’t helping me shake this thing off.

25. Oh, and Eamonn, I resent the implication that man flu isn’t real flu.

26. There was a good summation of appropriate feeding for Starting Strength over on Rip’s forum today Tom –

    “Diet
    For skinny dudes who want to be big (Go eat, right now, GOMAD)
    For Fat dudes who don;t want to be fat(clean up the diet, mostly paleo,
    drink some milk)
    For regular dudes who want to be big (GOMAD, not much junk food)
    For skinny dudes who want to be skinny (Why the fuck are you here)”

    - http://www.strengthmill.net/forum/showpost.php?p=22852&postcount=14

    (GOMAD is code for Gallon Of Milk A Day over there)

    Without knowing a hell of a lot about your build, training history and response to training, I’d guess the best thing to do would be to keep one eye on the scales and add whatever quantity of milk it takes to make the number on it rise continuously while being reasonably agressive about adding weight to the bar each workout. If that turned out to be 1, 2 or 4 litres then so be it.

27. Turns out I was wrong. Again. If a CF affiliate can have a Kiwi bird OHS http://byerscrossfit.blogspot.com/2009/01/byers-gets-premium-part-two.html, then I guess Colm can have a Lapreeshun snatching.

28. Hey all, I have an overtraining question. I had several weeks off or greatly diminished WOD’s. I’ve been back to CFI since Saturday which, with decent run on Sunday means makes yesterday 4 days in a row. I know I should take a day off and planned to but not only am I not tired, I still have that antsy feeling from not working out enough. I know CFHQ say mix it up but I wonder—people say listen to your body and if you need a break take it, so is the opposite true or am I setting myself up for a big crash?

29. Kyle – http://strengthmill.net/forum/showpost.php?p=8981&postcount=2

30. Ames, Colm & Deirdre got their first workout of the new year in tonight.

    Kyle, The: 14,17,11,15,12; 125-118-106
    Deirdre: 23,30,30,32,27; 62-53-56
    Scott: 60,13,21,21,33; 67-40-52
    Pixie: 41,27,16,28,29; 91-71-64
    Colm: 26-31-19-20-30; 28-22-18
    John: 60,25,24,24,23; 60-72-74
    Tom: 60,47,33,28,29; 78-71-58

    Ames: 27,60,3,4,60; 55-50-41
    Paul: 60,34,34,41,25; 107-83-71
    Pistol: J; 49-40-38

31. Pingback: Sat, Jan 31st – CrossFit Ireland - Forging Elite Fitness