Posted by: Darren Darsey
on Apr 15, 2010
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Last month I posted Tony Leyland’s article on strength and muscle size discussing neuromuscular efficiency and gains in muscle size. Here in Leylands’s follow up he goes on to discuss the evidence supporting these views.
Posted by: Darren Darsey
on Mar 29, 2010
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Rachel Fisher, MD
Darren Darsey, CrossFit Coach
You roll over in bed and everything seems to hurt. As you move to get up, the pain is now focused in both your quadriceps. Sitting on the toilet is a slow, tortuous exercise. You realize your gluteus muscles are also screaming. Damn those wall balls!
Posted by: Darren Darsey
on Mar 22, 2010
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Forging elite fitness is the CrossFit tag line but it might as well be forging fortitude. If you’ve been doing CrossFit for any length of time you’ll know what I’m taking about. It’s what you come up against midway through the WOD, when your mind is telling you to put the bar down, rest, this is too hard, you can’t go on. We learn more about ourselves at this moment than we probably ever wanted to know…
The mind is the hardest thing to train and it is when we hit that seemly insurmountable wall of “I can’t” that we have an opportunity and a choice. What we choose goes far beyond the WOD and effects all aspects of our lives. Do we cave and give in or do we push through one more rep, one more round? Our choices build momentum and train our minds. We can either become mired in our self imposed limits or we can push against those walls that hold us back, refuse to be overwhelmed by hardship and find out just how extraordinary we can be.
Everyday we have the power to choose. We get to say which way it goes.
Posted by: Darren Darsey
on Mar 01, 2010
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Here is a follow up to my last post and article by Tony Leyland, a Senior Lecturer at the School of Kinesiology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, that discussed neuromuscular efficiency, muscle size and the missed place concern that many women have about weight lifting making them “bulky”. This still is a concern for many women coming into CrossFit and seeing the weight training that is incorporated into our workouts. Our Northwest CrossFit coach Laurie Carver forwarded me this article that highlights some of the myths that she confronts with clients on a regular basis.
You don’t have to go far in the average gym to find someone willing to give you bad information. People are full of ideas and advice about women and weights. The other day I heard the most ludicrous thing yet: that cardio work was bad for you because it built muscle that pushed the fat out farther. Yep, I guess that’s why marathon runners are all so obese—duh. Some of the worst offenders are fitness magazines and personal trainers. This is somewhat distressing, considering that people look to such sources for help and information. The other day, reading a fitness magazine, I learned that yoga will firm my breasts (it won’t, unless they meant to write “plastic surgeon” instead of “yoga”), and that over 90% of all long term exercisers exercise in the morning (oops, I guess all the evening regulars at the gym are just fooling themselves).
Anyway I’ve compiled a list of some of the most common myths floating around like the alligator in the sewer stories. The difference is, of course, that there really ARE alligators in the sewer. And snakes that pop out of your toilet, heh heh.
Posted by: Darren Darsey
on Mar 01, 2010
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Tony Leyland is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Kinesiology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia. He discusses here two ways we develop strength (improvements in neuromuscular efficiency and gains in muscle size). Unfortunate many women mistakenly feel strength training will cause them to bulk up and look unattractive. It is this fear that typically leads to many women just dieting or perhaps dieting in conjunction with low-intensity aerobic exercise. Leyland explains why this in not the case and in a follow up article will discuss the direct evidence that supports this view.
Strength and Muscle Size
Posted by: Darren Darsey
on Jan 11, 2010
“Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.” – J. Friedrich von Schiller
Consistency in practicing basic movements well is the key to sophisticated performance. Too often the tendency is to rush through the seemingly simple exercises in pursuit of novelty. I certainly have been guilty of this myself in the past and it has always lead to a road blocks in performance progression and skill. People sweat bullets trying to do a one arm push up when they don’t have the physical control to do 30 crisp regular push ups. Master the later and the the former becomes possible. This is not to discourage trying new things but to emphasis the importance of building solid foundations that make new things possible.
