Learn new sports

CrossFit has a definition of fitness, called Fitness in 100 Words.

• Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.
• Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast.
• Five or six days per week mix these ele- ments in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense.
• Regularly learn and play new sports.

This year, I’m going to try something I haven’t done before… racing bikes.  You say, “but Eric, don’t you do triathlons and duathlons and stuff?”  To that, I say, yeah, but it’s not really racing bikes.  You can’t draft, there’s no paceline or peloton, it’s you and your bike, an individual effort.  I want to try racing a road bike with other people around.  It looks fun (until someone crashes).

So on November 1, I’m going to do a Team Time Trial at the Tour de Gruene, with my buddy Rich (who has no blog… so I can’t link anything to him.  we’re working on that).  Lance rode this last year, and I think he’s coming back this year, so it’ll be awesome to see that.  I just hope we can maintain about 22mph average for the 27 mile distance… we’ll see!

cycle 96

Endurance ride — lasts about an hour.  Mixed terrain, tempo with intervals.

1. Someone Great - LCD Soundsystem
2. In Your Honor - Foo Fighters
3. 1901 - Phoenix
4. Great DJ - The Ting Tings
5. Beside You In Time - Nine Inch Nails
6. Talk Like That - The Presets
7. Unwind - Julian Plenti
8. Arch Drive Goodbye - Eve 6
9. Anywhere - The Presets
10. Ares - Bloc Party
11. In Pieces - Linkin Park
12. The Approaching Curve - Rise Against
13. Go with the Flow - Queens of the Stone Age
14. Let It Die - Foo Fighters
15. Welcome To The Cruel World - Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals
16. Be Somebody - Kings of Leon

cycle 97

mixed ride with some hills and sprints.

1. All My Friends – LCD Soundsystem
2. An End Has a Start – Editors
3. 1901 – Phoenix
4. Great DJ – The Ting Tings
5. Medicate – AFI
6. Fun That We Have – Julian Plenti
7. Better Than Heaven – Bloc Party
8. Jigsaw Falling Into Place – Radiohead
9. Ares – Bloc Party
10. Parlez vous francais? – Art vs. Science

cycle 98 – lactate shuttle

This workout is based on a CrossFit Endurance workout… called the Lactate Shuttle.  The goal here is maximal efforts for each longer interval, training your muscles to make better use of lactic acid.

Warm-up

1. Come Alive – Foo Fighters
2. Rogues – Incubus
3. Machine in the Ghost – The Faint
4. Let It Happen – Jimmy Eat World
5. I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas

Interval 1: 5min on, 2:30 off

1. I Go Hard, I Go Home – The Presets
2. Life In Technicolor – Coldplay

Interval 2: 6min on, 3:00 off

1. Ion Square – Bloc Party
2. Carnival Barker (Instrumental) – Third Eye Blind

Interval 3: 7min on, done

1. Born Slippy Nuxx (1995) – Underworld

Recovery

1. Signs – Bloc Party
2. Dao of St. Paul – Third Eye Blind

Offseason? What offseason?

Summer’s almost over, and we’re all about to see the articles in our favorite sports magazines about what you have to do during the offseason to get better for next year.  Are you kidding me?  I already know I suck at swimming and my run needs to be about 30 seconds faster to have a shot at top 3-5 in my age group.  What is the magazine going to tell me that I don’t already know?  Nothing!

I can tell you what they will say.  They will say you need to hit the gym and get stronger.  There’s a concept.  Here’s the problem:

Bullshit.

You may hit the gym in the offseason, but the moment you need to start training for the season again, you stop the weight training… something about dropping muscle because those big arms and legs aren’t going to make you aero on the bike.

Those big muscles are the ones that propel you… and they don’t have to be huge.  (aside: if your legs and arms are growing out of control, check out your diet… I bet you’re eating stuff that promotes packing on muscle… like lots of milk… or maybe that protein shake (again, with more dairy) you get after every workout, I mean, really, do you not get enough protein through your regular diet?)

The notion of an offseason is garbage. Like you’re really going to stop running, biking, swimming, because you need to lift weights.  If anything you’ll stop because it’s too damn cold out to bear it.  But you’ll replace it with an indoor pool, a treadmill, a spin class, maybe even a rower.  You’re still putting on those miles, maybe a few less.   But you still neglect to hit the gym… and here’s the kicker.

You’re an athlete that’s not training like one.

Sure, the concept of getting stronger is useful and worthwhile.  So is the concept of focusing and improving your skill at a certain sport.  But you should be doing all of these things, all the time, anyway.  We’re athletes — we’re always trying to get better, we’re always trying to improve our skill.  It’s not like the season begins and you’re stuck at that 8-minute mile or 19mph bike split (or whatever gain you made during the offseason).  You can always improve!

This “offseason,” try something else… change your perspective…. be always on… train like an athlete. Train like you’re racing at any time.  Instead of piling on long miles during the season, cut those miles down into quality miles, executed at high intensity across broad time and modal domains.  Doing more of the same crap isn’t going to make you faster, it’s just going to solidify the fact that you can run 10 miles at that 8-minute pace, but damn, you can’t break through!

What about recovery, you say?  Take time off as you need to, always listen to your body.  But to be honest, you should be actively focused on recovery anyway.  Fix your diet!  Go find that TriggerPoint kit!  Hit the Yoga class you’ve been meaning to!  And please, one more time, fix your diet!

Then, you won’t need an offseason.