I’d like to introduce a concept to you guys today called the 1/23 principal.  Very simply the 1/23 principal states:  You have 1 hour a day in the gym, and 23 hours a day to make the most of, or potentially ruin the work you have done in the gym.  Let’s make sure we aren’t sabotaging ourselves over the 23 hours a day we spend outside of the gym.  How can we be sure we are doing this?  In a few very key ways:

1:  Get your diet straight!  Eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little

I vote that Apple Fritters should be honorary Paleo food!

starch, and no sugar.  Sound familiar?  It should, it is the first sentence of “World Class Fitness in 100 Words” that I am always nagging you guys about at the end of class.

Nutrition will make up 60%+ of the gains that you can make toward your health and fitness goals.  Get moving toward the Paleo track and I assure you that you that you will start feeling and looking better, your WOD times will drop, and your loads lifted will increase.

2:  Drink plenty of water.  Water does so much for our bodies that it warrants its own topic.  Get at least a gallon a day.

3: SLEEP!  All of that hard work that we do in the gym breaks us down, and we need time to recover from the hard work that we are putting out.  If you are not getting 8+ hours of sleep per night, you are not allowing your body adequate rest time to recover.  I know we all get busy, but losing sleep is not the way to get more done.  Besides that, if you are sleepy and cloudy headed all day, how well are you going to work anyway?

Are you putting these steps to use on a daily basis?  Post me a reply telling me what you are doing to make the most of those other 23 hours a day when I am not seeing you.

A couple of announcements today:

Don’t forget, we will be having our first “Open House” workout this Saturday (4/3) at 10am.  Do you have trouble explaining what CrossFit is, and why it is so cool to your friends and family?  Now is your chance to bring them along and show them.  This is a free workout, open to the public, and all ability levels.

We will still have our regular 9am class on Saturday as well.  This class will have a more advanced workout than the 10am class.

Our nutritional challenge is coming up!  If you have been wondering how to make #1 from above work for you, now is the time!  We will have a kick-off lecture next Saturday (4/10) at 10am.  Here we will lay out the Paleo diet challenge for you, and give you all of the tools that you need to make your diet go to work for you, and your hectic schedule.

-Ryan

Been looking for a little more information on the Paleo diet?  A big thanks to CrossFit Santa Clara and their Nutrition Blog for turning me on to this video that summarizes Paleo and how it will work for you.  Let me know what you think of the video and post any questions you have to the comments!

As a reminder, this week marks the change in weekend class schedule.  There will no longer be a Sunday class.  We will now be holding class at 9am on Saturday.  Hope to see you all there.

New in April, we will be offering a class that is open to the public at 10am on the first Saturday of each month.  The first class will be April 3rd, so if you have  friends or family members who you think might enjoy CrossFit, gather them up and come on out for a fun, all levels and abilities workout.

-Ryan

3 Rounds for time:
400m Run
21 kettlebell swings, 1.5pood (53lb)
12 pullups

This is probably my favorite CrossFit “Girl” workout, and I am excited to say that today I posted a HUGE personal record, which I believe I owe to my eating habits.  My prior best Helen was 15:45 on 2/1/09.  I am proud to say today I completed her in 10:17!  In 3 months, I have improved by about 33%, and I know my training hasn’t changed much in that amount of time.

Anyone who is interested in getting better, faster results than you already are, come talk to me!  You will be amazed… I know I am!

The hardest part of any diet plan is getting started.  For a long time I was of the mindset that I couldn’t weigh and measure my food.  I didn’t want that much structure over what I was able to eat, and I was absolutely certain that I couldn’t live that way.  I had every excuse in the book:  “But I eat pretty well.”  “But what about when I want to go out to eat?”  “My wife loves to cook, I could never weigh and measure when she is cooking!”  I’m telling you, I had ‘em all.  If you think you can’t do it, come talk to me, you can!

The first thing that I think everyone who is interested in the Zone should do is to get a copy of one of Dr. Barry Sears books.  Personally, I chose “Mastering the Zone“.  This will lay the foundations for you as to how the Zone works, what foods to eat, and more importantly, how much of each of them to eat. “Mastering the Zone” is also full of recipes, and tricks to keep you on track.  While these books are good, they still left me with quite a few questions and excuses.

Whereas the Dr. Sears books are a good start, I have found that real world articles are the most helpful to me.  Most of the articles that I am speaking of are available online.  There are several articles available in the CrossFit Journal, CrossFit’s online publication, which is available for $25/year.  I would highly recommend a subscription to the journal as that with a subscription, you are entitled to access all of the archives, including the articles listed below.   The Journals #15 and 21 are available for free download:

• CrossFit Journal #15 – recommendations on books to read, diet and health, diet plans, and why CrossFit recommends what it does.
• CrossFit Journal #21 – All about making the Zone work (includes block chart and meal plans).
• “Getting Off The Crack” by Nicole Carroll – A first hand review of the first two weeks of the Zone.

Outside of CrossFit, there are many great articles as well.  I have found a few to be especially helpful from Performance Menu, an Olympic weightlifting website that is quite synergistic with CrossFit.

• “42 Ways to Skin the Zone” By Robb Wolf – How to make the Zone work for you.
• “The Golden Ratio” – How to get the most out of the Zone by choosing the best foods

if you start to spend time at the CrossFit Mainsite, you will see that Robb is our nutritional guru.  Many of the top CrossFitters will tell you that they keep their diet on track by simply doing what Robb tells them to.

I hope that these articles are as helpful to you as they have been to me!  As for me, less than a week in, I have more energy than I have had in recent memory, I have dropped a couple pounds, and had personal records in two benchmark workouts!  More on my progress to come!

-Ryan

If you’ve been to Wine Country CrossFit, you have undoubtedly seen the pyramid that has a permanent place on our whiteboard.

This pyramid shows that nutrition is the base for all of our fitness. If you have read What is Fitness (and you should), you know that Coach Glassman recommends that we eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar.  Taking a step beyond that, we have seen amazing performance gains through people eating those foods in Dr. Barry Sears’ Zone Diet proportions.  In other words, we want to be eating those foods in the proportions of 40% Carbohydrate, 30% Protein, and 30% Fat.

With this in mind, I have decided that it is time for me to take the plunge into The Zone.  Over the next few weeks, I plan to keep you updated on my performance, how I feel, and my general sentiments on the Zone.  So please stay tuned, or join in with me as I dive head first into “The Zone”

Ryan