God Bless America

And happy 247th birthday

Reflecting

Body weight resistance training leads to intramuscular fat loss while lifting free weights for as little as eight weeks has measurable increase in muscle growth.  Neither should be surprising.  The connection between hypertrophy and fat loss comes from weightlifters elevating their basal metabolic rate (BMR) in which our bodies burn more calories even between workouts.  If cardio is your wage (pays off only while you work), weightlifting is your investment portfolio (pays off 24/7 even when you’re asleep).  BMR is one of the best overall health and fitness markers.  Measure regularly and elevate yours as high as possible.

If building muscle is key to staying lean across your lifetime, which muscles matter most?  To be a maximally functional athlete, the answer is: all of them.  You don’t know what challenges lie ahead.  I have a few basic standards: you should be able to say “yes” to whatever adventures friends want to do and should limit yourself only based on what you want to do and who you want to do it with, never based on physical limitations.  You should be able to actively play with your great grand kids someday.  Teach them ski mountaineering.  And if your home catches fire, you should be able to toss your spouse over your shoulder and run down a few flights of steps (you decide how you apportion blame if you can’t!). 

Aesthetically, it is easy to overemphasize the muscles you see in the mirror – biceps, chest, and quads.  That risks under training the muscles you see less of – triceps, back, and hams.  This can lead to a lack of functional balance.  It doesn’t accomplish what you want aesthetically (big arms are mostly a combination of big delts and triceps while the wider your lats, the smaller your waist looks).  Also, hams and glutes are where you can pack on dozens of more pounds of fat-incinerating lean muscle mass.  Even if you never get a good look, they’re your best bet for amping up your BMR.  As they say: don’t skip leg day!

Training

This morning’s whiteboard –

Holleyman (for time)

30 Rounds for time of:

• 5 Wall-Ball Shots, 20 lbs.

• 3 Handstand Push-ups

• 1 Power Clean, 225 lbs.

This WOD is named for U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Aaron N. Holleyman, 27, of Glasgow, MT.

According to the Fallen Heroes Project,

On August 30, 2004 Aaron was killed in Khutayiah, Iraq when his military vehicle hit an improved explosive device.

His awards include the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the Army Commendation Medal, The Noncommissioned Officer Professional Development Ribbon, The Army Service Ribbon, The Combat Medical Badge, the Expert Infantryman Badge, the Drive and Mechanic Badge, the Parachutist Badge and the Special Forces Tab. He was posthumously awarded a second Purple Heart and a second Bronze Star. He is survived by his three children, ages 5, 2 and 1 and his ex-wife, Gayla Holleyman of Fayetteville, N.C.

We honor his memory today.

Gym and sauna closed tomorrow morning, so hitting an hour and a half Fourth of July trail run.

Fueling

For my upcoming ultra marathon, I’m fueling with Maurten hydrogel.  My regular diet is very light on carbs, but I like them during long runs.  Maurten has a formula designed to get absorbed primarily after the stomach in the intestines to keep your stomach settled when you’re exercising and fueling simultaneously. 

Supplementing

I’m starting supplementing with nattokinase to help blood flow.  Results TBD.

Measuring

I’m staying consistent with a nine hour (and the same nine hours seven days per week) sleep opportunity window but have not been using a fitness tracker at night in order to avoid being counterproductively worried about exact numbers of minutes of sleep.  Overall it is working well – falling asleep fast, staying asleep for most of the night, and waking up refreshed the next morning –.  I had thee unavoidable exceptions in a row this past week (the Microsoft litigation pushed my evenings later than usual) and felt noticeably worse in the gym and at work.  Getting a lot of sleep is an unavoidable part of any serious health and fitness effort.

Recovering

There’s enough evidence to say that regular sauna use improves cardiovascular health.  The more they used it, the greater the reduction in cardiovascular events like heart attack. But you don’t need to be in there more than 20-30 minutes. That’s where it seemed to have the best effect.

-  Dr. Matthew Ganio

Hitting the sauna after workouts compounds the benefit of exercise.  After two hours in the gym, I don’t have much left for more movement, but am able to sit in the sauna for a half hour as I begin recovery.  Dr. Jari Laukkanen has extensively studied sauna use in his homeland of Finland where he’s found a physiological response equivalent to moderate to high intensity exercise.  It appears to improve cardiovascular function via improved dilation, reduced arterial stiffness, and lowered blood pressure. 

Closing

This new CrossFit Games documentary is worth watching here.  Tia was so self-conscious as a rookie, shed that self-consciousness after standing on top of the podium and is now… beyond confident.  False modesty seems like an obsessive tick common among Americans but less so abroad.