Mama Said Choke You Out

If you do Judo, MMA, or BJJ you've probably seen someone choked all the way out. In this video CrossFit athlete Brooke Ence learns how to do hadaka jime (naked choke) and goes out herself. Very interesting if you've never seen it before :-)

Judo/BJJ chokes block blood flow to the brain, not air flow to the lungs. Deprived of blood (hence, oxygen), the brain transitions to unconsciousness quickly and rather abruptly, with interesting effects on memory and awareness.

I trained for years with a former Navy SEAL who would fight a submission to the end, so I choked him out on a number of occasions. Sometimes he would wake up afterward and ask me what happened. He also made the same little gurgling noise that Ence makes in the video.

See also Mama said knock you out and here for the LL Cool J reference ;-)

Crossfit Games 2015

Some great highlights.

Sisu: Mikko Salo documentary

Documentary on Crossfit athlete Mikko Salo. His resting heart rate is 31 bpm! See also here.

Great deadlift / burpee metcon @34min. Compare to lullaby :-)

Wikipedia: Sisu is a Finnish term loosely translated into English as strength of will, determination, perseverance, and acting rationally in the face of adversity. However, the word is widely considered to lack a proper translation into any other language. Sisu has been described as being integral to understanding Finnish culture. However sisu is defined by a long-term element in it; it is not momentary courage, but the ability to sustain an action against the odds. Deciding on a course of action and then sticking to that decision against repeated failures is sisu. It is similar to equanimity, except the forbearance of sisu has a grimmer quality of stress management than the latter.

See Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.

Exercise response

Positive for most people, but with a lot of genetic variation. Interestingly, a fraction of the population (about 10%) can have a negative health or fitness response to training (see @40 min or so in the video). This professor's company claims to be able to predict exercise response by looking at about 30 gene variants. The talk also has some interesting results concerning high intensity training.

NYTimes: ... That original research, published in a landmark 2010 study, looked into the genetics of why some people respond to endurance exercise so robustly, while others do not. Some lucky men and women take up jogging, for example, and quickly become much more aerobically fit. Others complete the same program and develop little if any additional endurance, as measured by increases in their VO12 max, or their body’s ability to consume and distribute oxygen to laboring muscles.

For the 2010 study, Dr. Timmons and his colleagues genotyped muscle tissue from several groups of volunteers who had completed 6 to 20 weeks of endurance training. They found that about 30 variations in how genes were expressed had a significant effect on how fit people became. The new test looks for those genetic markers in people’s DNA. ...

Dig deep

I love this video.




This one is also good :-)  Check out the guy who won't tap and is choked completely out. I've done this to other people but I'm a quick tapper so it's never happened to me.




I think in my mid to late 20's prime I could have beaten up any other theoretical physicist in the world in a fight ;-)  But those days are gone!

Crossfit Lullaby

Crossfit competitor Blair Morrison does a brutal but very basic workout. AMRAP = As Many Reps As Possible.

Morrison was a wide receiver for Princeton and it's interesting to hear him in other videos talk about mental toughness and overcoming challenges.

How good is Morrison? In earlier years he qualified for and placed highly overall in the Crossfit Games, but as the talent pool deepens that's getting much harder. At the end of the open competition (anyone can compete by submitting video of their performance on the 5 workouts), he's ranked 12th in the NorCal region and 125th overall in the world.

Crossfit 2011

The guy in the video is Chris Spealler, a little 150 pounder (former collegiate wrestler) who is one of the top Crossfitters in the world.




This year's Crossfit Games are going to be very interesting, as their open qualifying process and the increasing popularity of the sport have attracted a much larger pool of athletes. It reminds me a bit of MMA 10 years ago, and even of what happened in physics in the 20th century. The Crossfit champions of today will soon be surpassed by the supermen of tomorrow, due simply to the increasing size of the gene pool.

Spealler and Mikko Salo (see below) are my favorite Crossfitters, but if the sport continues to grow it's only a matter of time before they are eclipsed.

CrossFit Games

I love this video. I don't do CrossFit, mostly because I'm a bit too old and creaky, although I do use HIIT and Tabata.

Check out the 2010 CrossFit Games -- see link to videos, of training as well as competition. The sport is kind of wacky -- kind of like the early days of triathlon, I guess. The competitors are wannabes in each of the core movements: weak Olympic lifters, clumsy gymnasts, slow sprinters, etc. But they have an all-around versatility.

I like the sisu (toughness) of this Finnish guy, Mikko Salo.

Crossfit: cult or ultimate training?

Having played a lot of sports and done a lot of physical training, it's not often that I see something in the gym that shocks me.

But recently I came across the Crossfit training system. It's based around short, hyper intense workouts using basic bodyweight gymnastic moves (pushups, pullups, burpees, rope climbing), olympic and power lifts (cleans, jerks, presses, squats) and track sprints and rowing. The goal is to engage the large muscle groups and push them to both anaerobic and aerobic failure at the same time. For experienced athletes, the idea of using olympic lifts for cardiovascular stress training seems over the top, but anyone who can survive this is going to get very, very fit.

The founder of Crossfit, former gymnast Greg Glassman, is the guru behind this movement. He rails against bodybuilders who lack functional strength, and runners, cyclists and triathletes who are so specialized that they lack overall athleticism. (He doesn't have any bad words for ultimate fighters, though, some of whom use his system :-) The point I think Glassman overlooks is that the traditional training methods are meant to minimize injury and allow regular performance by an average person. It's telling that Glassman, 49, doesn't Crossfit train anymore. (See this NYTimes profile from a few years ago; the followup reader discussion is very good.)

If you have any athletic background at all (endurance training doesn't count -- it's gotta be something with a little explosiveness and testosterone ;-), watch the videos and tell me you are not freaked out.





More video:

Uneven Grace mov wmv
(check out the women doing 30 clean and jerks with 85lbs in 5-7 minutes!)

GI Jane mov wmv
(pushup, burpee, pullup -- basic, but so brutal. Greg Amundson is a badass!)

Interview: Coach Greg Glassman

CFJ: What’s wrong with fitness training today?

Coach Glassman: The popular media, commercial gyms, and general public hold great interest in endurance performance. Triathletes and winners of the Tour de France are held as paradigms of fitness. Well, triathletes and their long distance ilk are specialists in the word of fitness and the forces of combat and nature do not favor the performance model they embrace. The sport of competitive cycling is full of amazing people doing amazing things, but they cannot do what we do. They are not prepared for the challenges that our athletes are. The bodybuilding model of isolation movements combined with insignificant metabolic conditioning similarly needs to be replaced with a strength and conditioning model that contains more complex functional movements with a potent systemic stimulus. Sound familiar? Seniors citizens and U.S. Marine Combatant Divers will most benefit from a program built entirely from functional movement.


CFJ: What about aerobic conditioning?

Coach Glassman: I know you’re messing with me – trying to get me going. Look, why is it that a 20 minute bout on the stationery bike at 165 bpm is held by the public to be good cardio vascular work, whereas a mixed mode workout keeping athletes between 165-195 bpm for twenty minutes inspires the question, ”what about aerobic Conditioning?” For the record, the aerobic conditioning developed by CrossFit is not only high-level, but more importantly, it is more useful than the aerobic conditioning that comes from regimens comprised entirely of monostructural elements like cycling, running, or rowing. Now that should start some fires! Put one of our guys in a gravel shoveling competition with a pro cyclist and our guy smokes the cyclist. Neither guy trains by shoveling gravel, why does the CrossFit guy dominate? Because CrossFit’s workouts better model high demand functional activities. Think about it – a circuit of wall ball, lunges and deadlift/highpull at max heart rate better matches more activities than does cycling at any heart rate.