Absolute Self Defense and Fitness

Posts Tagged ‘CrossFit’

An Ex-Marine, Coming Back From Severe Injuries, Follows an Intense Regime He Calls a ‘Livelihood’

By JAMES WAGNER, Wall Street Journal. Please visit WSJ for full accounting of the article.

In April 2003, corporal Hector Delgado lay in an induced coma on a Navy ship in the Persian Gulf. His pelvis had been crushed into six pieces and his legs and nerves were mangled after a fuel tank fell on him while he was with the Marines in Iraq.

The accident kept him in a hospital for a year. His right foot was paralyzed and his left foot was partially damaged. Mr. Delgado, who often has to use a wheelchair, fell into what he calls a three-year “funk.” His weight ballooned to 230 pounds, his cholesterol shot up, and he was smoking and going to bars every night.

“When I got out of the hospital, I could care less,” says Mr. Delgado, 30. The accident left him three inches shorter than what he was before deployment.

But in 2008, a friend mentioned a vigorous cross-training routine, CrossFit, often used by military special forces. Mr. Delgado was enticed by the workout’s intensity and variety, and liked the camaraderie of the exercisers.

He now works out five times a week and keeps a strict eating regime. His 5-foot-6 frame is down to 149 pounds, and he now has the strength to walk short distances unassisted.

At this point, [working out] is more of a livelihood than anything,” says Mr. Delgado, who lives in North Patchogue, N.Y.

Mr. Delgado is an outreach worker at the Queens Vet Center in New York, where he educates other veteran organizations and service members about military benefits and support programs. He is also earning his Bachelor’s degree in education and psychology at St. Joseph’s College.

Want to read the rest of the article? Go to the WSJ.

Write to James Wagner at james.wagner@wsj.com

Banana Dessert

This is super easy, tasty and a great way to satisfy a sweet tooth. When done right, it can burn fat.

It can be made raw vegan, paleo or lightly warmed under on low flame. It can be served by itself or be added to your own homemade sorbet or ice cream (raw dairy or raw vegan). Believe it or not, its great with an omelette or grass fed sausage for breakfast.

Ingredients:

1 large banana

1 tbs coconut oil

½ orange, juiced

1 tsp honey

Prep:

Cut banana length wise and then in half

Place in heated fry pan with coconut oil and fry each side 3-4 minutes or golden brown

Place orange juice & honey in separate pan, simmer for 2-3 minutes, leave to cool slightly

To serve, place bananas in a bowl and drizzle the orange syrup over the top.

Serve as is, or on top of ice cream or coconut milk.

Optional – Garnish with cinnamon, vanilla powder, goji berries, shredded coconut or cacao nibs!

I want to welcome John Michael Gillaspy to our Self Defense and BJJ family. Say hello when you see him on the mat!

It’s SNOWING!!! Since I have the morning off, I was going through all the blogs that I follow on Fitness, Self Defense and such and found a great article on back pain and spinal alignment. Something I harp on during every workout.

So, here is the first paragraph, but you’ll have to read the full article here. Posture – Why Your Back Hurts.

From Craig Weller at Elevating Fitness.com

We’re all born with near-perfect postural alignment. Watch a toddler walk, stand, reach overhead and squat and you’ll see tremendous mobility and safe strong joints.

It’s pretty much downhill from there.

North American culture has us spending an inordinate amount of time in the sitting position. A great deal of time and effort goes into preventing us from expending, well, time and effort when it comes to moving around in our daily lives. Items on shelves are always within arms reach, if we have to move very far we hop on an escalator, an elevator or get in our cars; and a job that involves spending much time on one’s feet or lifting something heavier than twenty pounds is considered “strenuous.”

At the end of one of last weeks Boot Camp classes, I was talking to a couple of our athletes about needing certain amounts of fat in their diet. I did some research and found several articles. This is a good one to start with…

Borrowed From: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/09/06/saturated-fat/

Written By: T. Farris, author of the Four Hour Work Week.

I’ve invited Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades, two of my favorite bariatric (obesity treatment) doctors in the US and the first to introduce insulin resistance to the mainstream, to explain the facts and benefits of increased saturated fat intake…

The sub-headings are mine, and a few edits have been made for space and context. Please see Dr. Michael Eades’ references and responses to questions in the comments.

Mid-Section Fat Loss: Problem Solved?

A couple of generations ago two physicians—one on the East Coast, one on the West—while working long hours with many patients, serendipitously stumbled onto a method to rapidly decrease fat around the mid-section. We’re sure that other doctors figured out the same thing, but these two were locally famous and published their methods. Interestingly, neither was looking to help patients lose weight.

Blake Donaldson, M.D., who practiced in Manhattan, was looking for a treatment for allergies; Walter Voegtlin, M.D., a Seattle gastroenterologist, was trying to figure out a better method for treating his patients with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Dr. Donaldson got his inspiration from a meeting he had with the aforementioned Vilhalmur Stefansson; Dr. Voegtlin came up with the same idea based on his knowledge of comparative anatomy. Though they came at two different questions from very different angles, they arrived at the same dietary answer. Both solved the problems they were seeking to solve and, coincidentally, noticed that their overweight patients lost a tremendous amount of fat from their abdominal areas while undergoing the treatment. As happened later with us and with Dr. Atkins, word of their success in combating obesity spread rapidly, and before long both physicians were deluged with overweight patients seeking treatment, completely changing the character of their medical practices. In retirement, both wrote books about their methods. Donaldson’s was published in 1961; Voegtlin’s in 1972. And as far as we can tell, although their years of practice overlapped, they never knew one another.

What was their secret? What did these two men independently discover? What kind of nutritional regimen did they use to bring about such great results in their patients?

Both had their patients follow an all-meat diet.

An all-meat diet?

Yes, an all-meat diet. Remember that when these physicians were in practice, there hadn’t been all the negative publicity about saturated fat and red meat that there has been in recent years. At that time, most people considered meat as simply another food, just like potatoes, bread, or anything else. No one worried about eating it. The (misguided) hypothesis that fat in the diet causes heart disease hadn’t reared its ugly head, so telling people at that time to go on an all-meat diet didn’t provoke the same sort of knee-jerk emotions that it does—at least in some quarters—now.

The patients who followed these all-meat diets rapidly lost weight from their midsections and improved their blood sugar and blood pressure problems if they had them. Calculations of cholesterol in all its various permutations was still decades away, but both doctors even used the all-meat diet for their patients with heart disease without problem. The all-meat diet proved to be a safe, filling, rapid way to help patients lose abdominal fat while improving their health. And remember, one of these diets was developed to treat GI problems, the other to treat allergies. The rapid weight loss that followed was a surprising, but welcome side effect.

7 Reasons to Eat More Saturated Fat

In the not-so-distant past, the medical establishment considered all fats equally loathsome: all fats were created equal and they’re all bad for you. Things have changed in that quarter, if only slightly. You have no doubt heard the drumbeat of current medical thinking on fats: some fats are now good for you—olive oil and canola oil*—but others are bad for you—trans fats and all saturated fats. That’s an improvement from the old cry, but far from the truth.

It seems that no matter how the story spins from the denizens of the anti-fat camp, one piece of their advice remains staunchly constant: “You should sharply limit your intake of saturated fats.” The next admonition will invariably be, “which have been proven to raise cholesterol and cause heart disease.” Their over-arching belief is that saturated fat is bad, bad, bad.

You see with just a glance at [our suggested meal plans] that we’ve included fatty cuts of meat, chicken with the skin, bacon, eggs, butter, coconut oil, organic lard, and heavy cream in the plan. Aren’t we worried that these foods will increase your risk of heart disease and raise your cholesterol? In a word, nope. In fact, we encourage you to make these important fats a regular part of your healthy diet. Why? Because humans need them and here are just a few reasons why.

1) Improved cardiovascular risk factors

Though you may not have heard of it on the front pages of your local newspaper, online news source, or local television or radio news program, saturated fat plays a couple of key roles in cardiovascular health. The addition of saturated fat to the diet reduces the levels of a substance called lipoprotein (a)—pronounced “lipoprotein little a” and abbreviated Lp(a)—that correlates strongly with risk for heart disease. Currently there are no medications to lower this substance and the only dietary means of lowering Lp(a) is eating saturated fat. Bet you didn’t hear that on the nightly news. Moreover, eating saturated (and other) fats also raises the level of HDL, the so-called good cholesterol. Lastly, research has shown that when women diet, those eating the greatest percentage of the total fat in their diets as saturated fat lose the most weight.

2) Stronger bones

In middle age, as bone mass begins to decline, an important goal (particularly for women) is to build strong bones. You can’t turn on the television without being told you need calcium for your bones, but do you recall ever hearing that saturated fat is required for calcium to be effectively incorporated into bone? According to one of the foremost research experts in dietary fats and human health, Mary Enig, Ph.D., there’s a case to be made for having as much as 50 percent of the fats in your diet as saturated fats for this reason. That’s a far cry from the 7 to 10 percent suggested by mainstream institutions. If her reasoning is sound—and we believe it is— is it any wonder that the vast majority of women told to avoid saturated fat and to selectively use vegetable oils instead would begin to lose bone mass, develop osteoporosis, and get put on expensive prescription medications plus calcium to try to recover the loss in middle age?

3) Improved liver health

Adding saturated fat to the diet has been shown in medical research to encourage the liver cells to dump their fat content. Clearing fat from the liver is the critical first step to calling a halt to middle-body fat storage. Additionally, saturated fat has been shown to protect the liver from the toxic insults of alcohol and medications, including acetaminophen and other drugs commonly used for pain and arthritis, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs, and even to reverse the damage once it has occurred. Since the liver is the lynchpin of a healthy metabolism, anything that is good for the liver is good for getting rid of fat in the middle. Polyunsaturated vegetable fats do not offer this protection.

4) Healthy lungs

For proper function, the airspaces of the lungs have to be coated with a thin layer of what’s called lung surfactant. The fat content of lung surfactant is 100 percent saturated fatty acids. Replacement of these critical fats by other types of fat makes faulty surfactant and potentially causes breathing difficulties. Absence of the correct amount and composition of this material leads to collapse of the airspaces and respiratory distress. It’s what’s missing in the lungs of premature infants who develop the breathing disorder called infant respiratory distress syndrome. Some researchers feel that the wholesale substitution of partially hydrogenated (trans) fats for naturally saturated fats in commercially prepared foods may be playing a role in the rise of asthma among children. Fortunately, the heyday of trans fats is ending and their use is on the decline. Unfortunately, however, the unreasoning fear of saturated fat leads many people to replace trans fats with an overabundance of polyunsaturated vegetable oils, which may prove just as unhealthful.

5) Healthy brain

You will likely be astounded to learn that your brain is mainly made of fat and cholesterol. Though many people are now familiar with the importance of the highly unsaturated essential fatty acids found in cold-water fish (EPA and DHA) for normal brain and nerve function, the lion’s share of the fatty acids in the brain are actually saturated. A diet that skimps on healthy saturated fats robs your brain of the raw materials it needs to function optimally.

6) Proper nerve signaling

Certain saturated fats, particularly those found in butter, lard, coconut oil, and palm oil, function directly as signaling messengers that influence the metabolism, including such critical jobs as the appropriate release of insulin. And just any old fat won’t do. Without the correct signals to tell the organs and glands what to do, the job doesn’t get done or gets done improperly.

7) Strong immune system

Saturated fats found in butter and coconut oil (myristic acid and lauric acid) play key roles in immune health. Loss of sufficient saturated fatty acids in the white blood cells hampers their ability to recognize and destroy foreign invaders, such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Human breast milk is quite rich in myristic and lauric acid, which have potent germ-killing ability. But the importance of the fats lives on beyond infancy; we need dietary replenishment of them throughout adulthood, middle age, and into seniority to keep the immune system vigilant against the development of cancerous cells as well as infectious invaders.

—

The above post is an exclusive excerpt from Dr. Eades’ newest book, which is directed at people who want to reduce abdominal fat. Despite the title, the principles it details are ideal for anyone who wants to decrease both visceral (internal) and subcutaneous (under the skin) fat in the abdomen.

Keith Owen BJJ

I wanted to take a second of your day and tell everyone that I (we) have been accepted as students and affiliated members of Mr. Keith Owen BJJ.

Mr. Owen was gracious enough to accept me as his student even with all the military moving baggage that comes with being a Soldier who loves the ground game. Mr. Owen has a outstanding background in the martial arts with instructing BJJ as his forte. He is a accomplished BJJ instructor who comes very recommended from some of the more well known instructors and black belts in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Here is part of his bio…

Keith Owen is a 1st Degree Black Belt under Professor Pedro Sauer and is a Pedro Sauer affiliate in Boise/Meridian Idaho.  He has trained in Jiu-Jitsu for the last 17 years and has made it his life’s work to promote the technical side of gi, no-gi and MMA Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

You can check out Mr. Owen at BJJ Moves.com to see more of his work and instructional ability.

I am very excited about this new opportunity to learn more Jiu-Jitsu and to be able to learn from Mr. Owen.

Sweet Potato, Bacon and Egg Salad

Ingredients
2/3 cup diced sweet potato
2 eggs
2 rashes of bacon, diced using meat only
1tbs oil
4tbs dill, finely chopped
2tbs mayonnaise
2tbs lemon juice

Instructions

Boil eggs in water for 4-6minutes. Peel and dice eggs.

Boil sweet potato for 4-5minutes or until cooked through.

Place a frying pan on medium-high heat, add olive oil and bacon and fry until browned and slightly crunchy.

In a small bowl, combine dill, mayonnaise and lemon juice.

Place eggs, sweet potato, bacon and mayonnaise sauce into a medium size serving bowl. Combine well.

Serve.

In this segment, I will teach you how to drill the fighting frame and the combat application that I taught last post. I will also post this as a pod cast that will be up on the site later today.

There are two basic drills that you can easily use to functionalize this particular skill set. They are:

Give and Take. To describe this easier, I’ll give each partner a name. Trainer and Trainee. To start the drill, stand in front of your partner and get what we call the “fighting measure”. This means to reach out with your arms and touch their shoulder. If you can’t, you are too far away. Once you have the fighting measure, assume a fighting stance. Here we go.

1. Trainer slowly steps forward and delivers a right jab to the trainee’s head and freezes. The trainee steps towards the trainer and assumes the fighting frame posture, striking the trainer with the frame. Once contact has been made, the trainee steps back and assume a new fighting stance. Okay. Now, the trainee becomes the trainer and the trainer becomes the trainee. Get it?
2. To continue the drill, the trainer slowly steps forward and delivers a right jab to the trainee’s head and freezes. The trainee steps towards the trainer and assumes the fighting frame posture, striking the trainer with the frame. Once contact has been made, the trainee steps back and assume a new fighting stance. Now, the trainee becomes the trainer and the trainer becomes the trainee.
3. Repeat this action until both partners are comfortable with the motions. Once you are good to go, you may slowly speed up the action until you are at combat speed!

Block and Strike. This drill is an adaptation of the Filipino combat arts training methodology “Abecedario”.  It is a progressive skill development tool that is very effective and has endless possibilities. The set up is just like before. Trainer and Trainee. To start the drill, stand in front of your partner and get what we call the “fighting measure”. This means to reach out with your arms and touch their shoulder. If you can’t, you are too far away. Once you have the fighting measure, assume a fighting stance. Here we go.

1. The trainer steps forward and punches to the trainee’s head. The trainee steps forward and executes the fighting frame. Once contact has been made with the trainer, the trainee will follow up the frame with a counter strike.
2. For the purposes of this segment. I will prescribe a specific response for ease of use. The trainee unclasps his/her left hand from the right wrist and wraps it over the trainers attacking limb. With the right hand, (already on the head/neck) open your fist and grab the back of the trainer’s head. Next, the trainee will pull down sharply on the trainer’s neck while at the same time delivering a right knee spike to the trainer’s stomach. Lastly, the trainee will push the trainer backwards; step back and assume the fighting stance. Okay. Now, the trainee becomes the trainer and the trainer becomes the trainee. Get it?
3. To continue the drill, the trainer slowly steps forward and delivers a right jab to the trainee’s head and freezes. The trainer steps forward and punches to the trainee’s head. The trainee steps forward and executes the fighting frame. Once contact has been made with the trainer, the trainee will follow up the frame with a counter strike.
4. The trainee unclasps his/her left hand from the right wrist and wraps it over the trainers attacking limb. With the right hand, (already on the head/neck) open your fist and grab the back of the trainer’s head. Next, the trainee will pull down sharply on the trainer’s neck while at the same time delivering a right knee spike to the trainer’s stomach. Lastly, the trainee will push the trainer backwards; step back and assume the fighting stance.

Repeat this action until both partners are comfortable with the motions. Once you are good to go, you may slowly speed up the action until you are at combat speed!

One more thing. Ensure that both partners take all safety precautions. Wear the proper protective equipment especially eye protection. Because we all know its fun and games until you put an eye out!

These two drills should get you started on the road to functional defense. If you have comments or suggestions, please email me or comment in the form below.

Until next time, let’s get training!

Hey! I want to welcome another Boot Camp athlete to our family. Please welcome Molly White to our athletic family. When you see her next week, say Hello and introduce yourself.

Everybody should invest in a notebook and write in it everyday. There are many, many reasons to keep a journal. It is a great tool in the organization of thoughts and ideas. It is an invaluable tool in charting your progress in life. For the athlete, a journal is a necessity and should be in your gym bag along with your shoes, towel and other workout gear. I have long neglected the religious journaling of my training, my workouts and other important details of my life and now kick my self for it.

I have forgotten so much of what I have learned over the years in my Martial Arts and Fitness travels. Furthermore, I have many achievements and accomplishments that have gone unjournaled and have thus faded into distant memories. It is unfortunate, but it is not too late.

I encourage you to keep track of  your workouts or fit test results, but that simply isn’t enough. You need to keep a copy with you. You should record what you did during your whole workout: warmup, workout, cool down, scores, times and weights. You should record your impressions of your workout. If you felt good or bad or injured or energized. You should record strategies that worked and did not work.

Thoughts and ideas on how to improve your performance between workouts or to improve on your performance on a specific workout. If you learned some great detail that improved your form or time, you should write that down so you do not forget.

There is no limit to what you can write about in your journal. The important thing is that you write in it consistently and refer back to it to see your progress. If you are working on a goal (and you all should have a goal) like weight loss for example, then you should state your goal in your journal. Outline your plan and then record the steps you are taking to fulfill your goal.

Perhaps you read a good article on improving your eating habits and are trying to follow the program. You can cut it out and tape it into your journal or write down the details in your journal and then see if day by day, week by week, you are following the program. Not all programs are one-size-fits-all and so if you are not finding success you can analyze where it might be going wrong and thus make some adjustments.

Remember it is your journal and you should feel free to write in it, personalize it, make it as interesting and enjoyable and user friendly as possible. Many people tape inspiring pictures in their journals of six-pack abs that they want to have or inspiring athletes that they idolize. Here is one tip that I find works really well. Use two pages that face each other and track your workouts in columns going across so that you can fit several weeks of workouts on those two pages.

Having several weeks worth of work staring you in the face makes it easy to look at your recent progress. This is especially true if you are working a progressive goal like those pullups. You can see from left to right how many pullups and other assistance exercises you did for those weeks and quickly see if you are progressing.

If you are doing a fitness and body composition test every Friday, then you might have 4 weeks of tests on those pages staring at you and thus you can see if the program was working that month.

There are no limits. I haven’t even touched on food journaling. If you are following the Paleo plan and zoning, it is a must that your write down everything you eat. Charting your fuel and performance will allow you to really see how everything works together. Getting really personal is also good because you can see how your emotions effect your diet and exercise. If you are a good journaler, you might notice patterns that help or hinder your performance.

You might notice that every time your boss gives you a new assignment, you eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and you don’t workout for 3 or 4 days. You might notice that every time burpees are posted on the WOD board, you come down with a cold, a sore back or some other reason not to give it your all.

Hmmm…interesting.

There are certain body positions that nullify a opponent’s attacks. Their strikes, kicks, locks and chokes are no longer effective due to the attack options presented by your defensive position. Yet from these positions, the superior fighter can launch effective strikes and finishes or can move to an even more advantageous position. There is no reasonable way without a position such as this to hit another person that doesn’t leave you vulnerable to an attack in return. These positions are the frame from which we attempt to organize our training.

Natural Stance - Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, this basic ready stance is often used to disguise tactics or intent. The entire body should be relaxed. Allow your arms to hang at the sides, bring both arms slightly to the front and clasp the left hand over the right wrist in the “monkey’s paw” grip. This is done by aligning all five of your fingers together and curving them the meet the curvature of your right wrist. Grip with all the fingers on one side of the other wrist. This will allow a unconscious release of the other arm. If you use a normal “grip”, you will subconsciously have to tell yourself to let go and complete another motion. This grip removes that step.  If used with a stick, stand with stick under left arm and left hand holding right forearm.

Fighting Stance – A general rule of stance is to keep both legs flexed for balance, and to be able to move rapidly. One heel is always lifted, usually the one with the least weight. This is a relatively general principle, which in particular facilitates turning. It may also help with explosive motions. The feet are 45 degrees to the major line of the body. There should be a feeling of being ready to take off like a sprinter. Hide the head behind the shoulder and the throat behind the chin. It is a good rule of thumb to keep the elbows low and close to the body and head. The guarding hand is used to block and check incoming attacks. When in an fighting position, hold the hand in accordance with your range to the opponent. If a weapon is being used, it is always in the lead hand.

Fighting Stance

Fighting Frame - In response to your opponent’s attack, you step slightly off the side of their body that the attack originated. You bring your arms up in the instinctive flinch response then link your wrists. Both arms are slightly bent at the elbow with your head tucked down and in-between and looking forward at the attacker.  Form your hands into fists and grasp your right wrist with the left hand in the “monkey’s paw”. You are attempting to blast your way past the attack (normally a jab or a haymaker style punch) by striking your opponent’s forearm / bicep area with your left forearm and your right forearm striking the opponent’s shoulder / neck area with emphasis on hitting the Brachial Plexus Origin nerve cluster.

Fighting Frame Position 1

This combative application of instinctively protection our face will hopefully do several things.

1. Protect our head and face from the incoming attack.
2. Deliver a debilitating blow to the attacking limb by striking the bicep brachial nerve which should stun the limb and hopefully effect a “impact driven grip release” of any weapon.
3. Place us into position for the Tactical phase of our Combative Application: The delivery of counter attack techniques.

This sample response simply shows a beginning option:

Fighting Frame Position 1

Left Knee Spike

Right Elbow Strike

Headtwist Takedown

Knee Drop

Hammerfist Finishing Technique

The fighting frame is a simple, yet effective strategic and tactical application tool. Practice, Practice, Practice until it is instinctive. Next post I’ll show you how to drill this with a willing partner.

Until then, Let’s Get Training!

jim