Workouts for the week.....

Congrats Jim! 1/2 Marathon Miami

Workout #1:
The Deck!
Complete the whole deck of cards
Hearts = Burpees
Spades = Push ups
Diamonds = Jump lunges
Clubs = Air squats
Aces & Jokers = 400m run/ row


Workout #2:
20 minutes AMRAP
7 shoulder to overhead (BD or barbell/ coaches choice)
10 burpees
10 pull ups


Workout #3:
Complete 5 rounds of:


Max reps/ calories in 1 minute at each station:

• Double unders
• Row (for calories)
• Burpees

Rest 3 minutes after each round

Ian Wilson 2010 PanAm Champion (16 years old)

What A Gym Really Needs

By: Louie Simmons
    There are franchises and there are gyms. Westside Barbell is definitely a gym.
What's the difference? A franchise is a place where they sell baggy pants, Tshirts, protein powder, and a whole bunch of junk you don't need. You can't make
noise (don't even think about cursing), and chalk is forbidden. They have lots of
mirrors (all you weirdo's who look in them for hours, you know who you are) and
bodybuilding magazines featuring lots of girls and lots of bull.
    So what does a gym have that's so important? First is attitude. Everyone must
have the same goal, which is to get stronger. We don't care if you are trying a
300 bench press for a PR or a 600 PR.
    And what about equipment? Machines are a waste. They work on the theory of
peak contraction, which simply means you must start at your weakest point; this
is stupid and very dangerous. Machines build no stability. Also, how can one
machine work for two people if one is strong at the bottom of a lift and his partner
is strongest at the top? It's impossible.

January 19, 2011, 12:01 AM

Phys Ed: Brains and Brawn

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

Terry Vine/Getty Images

It has long been a cliché that muscle bulk doesn’t equate to intelligence. In fact, most of the science to date about activity and brain health has focused on the role of endurance exercise in improving our brain functioning. Aerobic exercise causes a steep spike in blood movement to the brain, an action that some researchers have speculated might be necessary for the creation of new brain cells, or neurogenesis. Running and other forms of aerobic exercise have been shown, in mice and men, to lead to neurogenesis in those portions of the brain associated with memory and thinking, providing another compelling reason to get out at lunchtime and run.

Since weight training doesn’t cause the same spike, few researchers have thought that it would have a similar effect. But recent studies intimate otherwise. Several studies involve animals. It’s not easy, of course, to induce a mouse or a lab rat to lift weights, so the experimenters have to develop clever approximations of resistance training to see what impact adding muscle and strength has on an animal’s brain. In a study presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in November, researchers from Brazil secured weights to the tails of a group of rats and had them climb a ladder five sessions a week. Other rats on the same schedule ran on a treadmill, and a third group just sat around. After eight weeks, the running rats had much higher levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (B.D.N.F.), a growth factor that is thought to help spark neurogenesis, than the sedentary rats. So did the rats with weights tied to their tails. The weight-­bearing rats, like the runners, did well on tests of rodent learning and memory, like rapidly negotiating a water maze. Both endurance and weight training seemed to make the rats smarter.

Happy Birthday River

Our son is 4 today!!!!

Happy birthday buddy!!!!

Love,

Mommy & Daddy

We are what our father ate – before we were born

You are what your father eats, according to new research, which shows that his diet while growing up can affect your future health.

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent 6:00PM GMT 23 Dec 2010

7 Comments

Researchers have discovered that a father's lifestyle can be passed down to his children because it "reprogrammes" his genes.

The study shows the hereditary effects of a process called "epigenetics" which is how our environment and lifestyle can permanently alter our genes as we grow up.

These altered genes can then be passed on to children.

Scientists specifically looked at the effects of paternal diet – finding whether it alters the risk of children developing complex diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

Dr Oliver Rando, at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, said his research could help identify individuals at high risk of illness such as heart disease and diabetes.

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He said: "Knowing what your parents were doing before you were conceived is turning out to be important in determining what disease risk factors you may be carrying.

"A major and underappreciated aspect of what is transmitted from parent to child is ancestral environment.

"Our findings suggest there are many ways that parents can 'tell' their children things.

"We often look at a patient's behaviour and their genes to assess risk. If the patient smokes, they are going to be at an increased risk for cancer.

"If the family has a long history of heart disease, they might carry a gene that makes them more susceptible to heart disease.

"But we're more than just our genes and our behaviour.

"Knowing what environmental factors your parents experienced is also important."

The phenomenon, called epigenetic inheritance – where changes in gene expression not caused by changes to the underlying DNA sequence are passed from a parent to a child – may be relevant to a number of illnesses.

Researchers fed different diets to two groups of male mice – the first set receiving a standard diet, while the second received a low-protein diet.

All females were fed the same, standard diet.

They observed that offspring of the mice fed the low-protein diet exhibited a marked increase in the genes responsible for lipid and cholesterol synthesis in comparison to offspring of the control group fed the standard diet – indicating an increased risk of heart disease.

Lance Armstrong Does Drugs...DUH..He Rides Bikes for a Living!

SLOW MUSCLE UP

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Because I can...

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2011 CrossFit Games

The CrossFit Games Open begins Tuesday, March 15th

The six week worldwide competition is the first step in qualifying for the 2011 CrossFit Games in Los Angeles.

The CrossFit Games Open is a six-week competition that will begin Tuesday, March 15th at 17:00 PDT. This competition is the first step in qualifying for the 2011 CrossFit Games. Each week, one event will be announced each Tuesday, and everyone has until the following Sunday at 17:00 PDT to complete the event and record their scores.

Can You Live Forever?

Can You Live Forever? Maybe Not--But You Can Have Fun Trying

In this chapter from his new e-book, journalist Carl Zimmer tries to reconcile the visions of techno-immortalists with the exigencies imposed by real-world biology

By Carl Zimmer  | Wednesday, December 22, 2010 | 27

Image: iStockphoto/ktsimage

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The US economy relies on a guaranteed supply of energy. What steps should the US government take to help secure national energy supply? (Click all that apply, and please contribute to the conversation in the comments below)

		Wind energy
		Biofuels development
		Solar power
		Capturing carbon and storing it underground
		Boosting the production of oil from existing reservoirs
		Nuclear power technology
		Other

Editor's Note: Carl Zimmer, author of this month's article, "100 Trillion Connections," has just brought out a much-acclaimed e-book, Brain Cuttings: 15 Journeys Through the Mind (Scott & Nix), that compiles a series of his writings on neuroscience. In this chapter, adapted from an article that was first published inPlayboy, Zimmer takes the reader on a tour of the 2009 Singularity Summit in New York City. His ability to contrast the fantastical predictions of speakers at the conference with the sometimes more skeptical assessments from other scientists makes his account a fascinating read. 

Let's say you transfer your mind into a computer—not all at once but gradually, having electrodes inserted into your brain and then wirelessly outsourcing your faculties. Someone reroutes your vision through cameras. Someone stores your memories on a net of microprocessors. Step by step your metamorphosis continues until at last the transfer is complete. As engineers get to work boosting the performance of your electronic mind so you can now think as a god, a nurse heaves your fleshy brain into a bag of medical waste. As you—for now let's just call it "you"—start a new chapter of existence exclusively within a machine, an existence that will last as long as there are server farms and hard-disk space and the solar power to run them, are "you" still actually you?

This question was being considered carefully and thoroughly by a 43-year-old man standing on a giant stage backed by high black curtains. He had the bedraggled hair and beard of a Reagan-era metalhead. He wore a black leather coat and an orange-and-red T-shirt covered in stretched-out figures from a Stone Age cave painting.

He was not, in fact, insane.

The man was David Chalmers, one of the world's leading philosophers of the mind. He has written some of the most influential papers on the nature of consciousness. He is director of the Centre for Consciousness at Australian National University and is also a visiting professor at New York University. In other words, he has his wits about him.

Chalmers was speaking midway through a conference in New York called Singularity Summit, where computer scientists, neuroscientists and other researchers were offering their visions of the future of intelligence. Some ideas were tentative, while others careened into what seemed like science fiction. At their most extreme the speakers foresaw a time when we would understand the human brain in its fine details, be able to build machines not just with artificial intelligence but with superintelligence and be able to merge our own minds with those machines.

"This raises all kinds of questions for a philosopher," Chalmers said. "Question one: Will an uploaded system be conscious? Uploading is going to suck if, once you upload yourself, you're a zombie."

The dreaded stairs

Workouts...

Workout #1
Complete the following:
5 DB snatch
50 Double unders
10 DB snatch
50 Double unders
15 DB snatch
50 Double unders
20 DB snatch
50 Double unders


Workout #2
4 rounds of:
1 minute max effort at each station

• Pull ups
• MB cleans
• KBS
• Burpees

Rest 1 minute after each station

Workout #3

Part 1:

10 minutes to find your 1 rep max squat clean

Part 2:

Back squat

10 reps X 5 sets

The truth about alcohol, fat loss and muscle growth

12:04 PM | Posted by Martin Berkhan

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I've been getting tons of questions relating to alcohol and fat loss lately. Happens every time summer rolls around. Outdoor parties, clubbing, vacations and the whole shebang. Alcohol is a key ingredient. What people want to know is basically how fattening alcohol is, how it affects protein synthesis, how to make it work with their diet, and what drinks to go for at the club.


I think this is very good topic to cover today, since we're right in the middle of summer and all, because most people involved in the fitness and health game tend to miss out on a lot of fun due to avoiding alcohol. I know a lot of peeps who'd rather stay home and manage their diet than go out and have a few drinks. Sad, really, because it's all for the wrong reasons. I don't blame them though. Read the mags or listen to the "experts" and you'll soon be believing that a few drinks will make your muscles fall off, make you impotent, and leave you with a big gut. It's mostly bullshit, of course. No big surprise when we're dealing with the alarmist fitness mainstream that can't seem to put things in the right perspective if their life depended on it.


This is a definitive primer on the effects of alcohol on all things someone interested in optimizing body composition might be interested in. At the end of this article I'm also going to show you how a hopeless drunk like myself can stay lean while drinking on a regular basis.









C'mere and lemme me tell you my secretz...*hick*



Alcohol and thermogenesis


There's been an ongoing debate for years whether alcohol calories "count" or not. This debate has been spurred on by the fact that drinkers weigh less than non-drinkers and studies showing accelerated weight loss when fat and carbs are exchanged for an equivalent amount of calories from alcohol. The connection between a lower body weight and moderate alcohol consumption is particularly strong among women. In men it's either neutral or weak, but it's there.


How can this be explained, considering that alcohol is a close second to dietary fat in terms of energy density per gram? Not to mention the fact that alcohol is consumed via liquids, which doesn't do much for satiety?


Alcohol is labeled as 7.1 calories per gram, but the real value is more along the lines of 5.7 calories due to thethermic effect of food (TEF) which is 20% of the ingested calories. This makes the TEF of alcohol a close second to protein (20-35% depending on amino acid composition). The heightened thermogenesis resulting from alcohol intake is partly mediated by catecholamines.


Is higher TEF a reasonable explanation for lower body fat percentage in regular drinkers? We need to consider that alcohol does not affect satiety like other nutrients. The disinhibition of impulse control that follows intoxication may also encourage overeating. Ever come home from a party in the middle of the night and downed a box of cereals? That's what I mean.


It's unlikely that the effect of alcohol on body weight in the general population can be attributed solely to the high TEF of alcohol. An alternative explanation is that alcohol consumption decreases food intake in the long term.


Another explanation is that regular alcohol consumption affects nutrient partitioning favorably via improvements in insulin sensitivity.