How to Minimize Callus Formation & Treat Ripped Calluses

Here's a great article from stronglifts.com on how to prevent and take care of ripped callus. I ripped my hands badly doing FRAN on day one of my Crossfit cert last summer. A few people ripped theirs on day one of my KB cert and suffered badly. I just spent the last 10 minutes shaving the callus build-up from my palms. Now the methods below are very safe however if I used those tools it would take hours to do just one palm. I would never advocate using a sharp hunting knife but if you do, do it very slowly. It will take you 10 minutes. From experience, if you don't shave them down every week or so, you will rip them. That takes away precious time from effective training.

Callus formation is a byproduct of strength training & weight lifting, just like building muscle & losing fat are. The pressure of the bar against the bones of your hands promotes callus formation.
Gripping the bar remains painful as long as you don’t have calluses. That’s one reason you should never wear gloves. However big calluses tear apart more easily, so you should minimize callus formation. Here’s how.

Grip Bars Correctly. The bar will slide down in your hand during Barbell Rows, Deadlifts & Pull-ups if you put it in the palm of your hands. Your skin will fold, increasing callus formation.
Put the bar close to your fingers. Not in the palm of your hand. This only applies to pulling exercises! On pushing exercises like Bench Press, Overhead Press or Dips, the bar must be close to your wrists.

Chalk. Chalk fills your skin folds, making the surface of your hand palm smooth. Less skin is pressed down, thus less callus formation. Chalk also provides a better a grip by preventing sweating. Click here to get chalk from Amazon.

Shave Calluses. Don’t bite or rip off calluses with your nails, you’ll rip off too much and they’ll bleed. Shave calluses every 10 days. Avoid too much shaving: it weakens the surrounding skin, causing ripped callus. Tools you can use:

• Pumice stones
• Nail files
• Foot files

How to Treat Ripped Calluses. In case you didn’t followed the above tips and ripped a callus, here’s what you can do:

• Cut the ripped skin away using scissors
• Disinfect
• Wrap nose tissue around your hand when working out

It will take 2 weeks for your hand to heal. Count another 2 weeks for your skin to toughen up. During those 2 weeks you can rip of the calluses again. So make sure you grip the bar correctly and use chalk.

Agatsu Kettlebell Cert

I had an incredible Agatsu Kettlebell (KB) Certification this weekend. We were lucky enough to have Shawn Mozen (The foremost authority on Kettlebell training in Canada) as our instructor. I must say that I was a little nervous months ago after signing up. Here is a cut and paste from their .com

Instructor courses are intense and very physical. Each weekend course is aprox 16hrs and covers: Kettlebell basics and advanced exercises, Joint Mobility and Bodyweight Exercises as well as marketing. This is NOT a pay for diploma, you must earn your diploma. Be prepared for an intense physical and educational challenge. Any instructor who is recognized by Agatsu Inc may attend any future workshop for their level free of charge to upgrade their skills. Anyone who does not pass an Agatsu instructor course course may within one year attempt the same course free of charge.

This was no joke. I was able to push my limits during this certification and explore new avenues of soreness. Check out this benchmark work-out. We had to complete this after a full day of training. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCsVnvubjYo&feature=fvw 

Day two started with the pistol squats (one legged squats) and then the Turkish Get up (TGU). The morning refining our skills, marketing lecture, bodyweight exercises and a 15 minute lunch. We spent a good portion of the afternoon coaching each other. There was a written exam and a demo exam that we had to pass. The end of the day consisted of....you guessed it, another work out. 5 rounds of 5 minutes each of alternating swings, presses, and bodyweight exercises with a 1 minute break between. Call it a champion fight. There was only 1 rule, put the KB on the floor and fail. Imagine 16 hours of driving the body and the putting your KB down on your last 25 minute work out. I am stoked about being able to start teaching my newly acquired skills.

Canadian obesity rates climb

Todays headline in the news on CBC! Why am I not surprised? It doesn't end there either, it's going to increase. Have a read.

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/09/23/obesity-canada-adults-oecd.html

Gym memberships among top consumer complaints

Globo gyms charging to use their machines and showers. You try and quit and look what happens.....
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/09/20/con-gym-membership.html

Benefits of High Intensity Workouts

In relation to getting into shape, the terms high intensity and low intensity are used a lot but aren’t defined with nearly the same frequency. I suppose that’s because we’re all supposed to know the difference…but many don’t really understand the difference at all.

In general, low intensity exercises work your heart rate at around 60 percent of your maximum heart rate. A high intensity exercise works your heart rate at around 75 percent or more of your maximum heart rate. I suppose this means that anything working your heart at between 60 percent and 75 percent of your maximum heart rate is a moderate intensity exercise, but they must have a bad public relations firm because you don’t hear much about them.

You can determine your maximum heart rate by taking your current age from 220. So, for example, if you’re 50 at the moment, then your maximum heart rate is 170 beats per minute. Don’t let the term “maximum heart rate” fool or scare you. It isn’t referred to as such because it’s the maximum rate your heart can beat before damage occurs; it’s simply the absolute maximum rate your heart will beat.

The 220-age formula is only an estimate and, depending on your individual physiology, you may find yourself exceeding that number. That’s fine, you shouldn’t panic because it’s nearly impossible to damage a healthy heart with exercise. High intensity exercises are simply much more beneficial for your overall health. Aside from burning calories, these exercises help increase muscle mass; low intensity exercises don’t do this. Even if you’re not looking to become a bodybuilder, building muscle is always a good idea for your overall health and prevention of accidental injuries during everyday life.

Low intensity exercises also don’t do very much to increase your overall metabolism while high intensity exercises do. This increase in metabolism is crucial to overall weight loss and general health.
With the exception of the injured, ill, out-of-shape or elderly, there is no reason for anyone to stick solely to a low intensity workout. If you do happen to be in poor shape, then you should begin exercising with a low intensity workout for a little while as you build up to high intensity exercises.

So why do people stick to low intensity workouts? The main reasons are because low intensity exercises are easier and a trainer may have recommended it. Wait…If high intensity is better, why would a trainer recommend low intensity? The two main reasons are personal liability and a misunderstanding of the numbers involved. Basically, you are much less likely to injure yourself during a low intensity workout, so a trainer is protecting themselves by recommending a safe exercise plan. This is easy enough to understand, although a proper trainer will do their job and train you not to injure yourself during high intensity exercises.

The second reason, a misunderstanding, requires a bit more explanation. You see, low intensity exercises burn a higher percentage of calories from fat than high intensity exercises. Low intensity exercises burn approximately 50 percent fat for energy while high intensity exercises burn approximately 40 percent fat for energy. This difference is not great enough to justify the tradeoffs. Besides, it doesn’t actually mean you burn more fat with low intensity exercises. Confused? This is where the misunderstanding comes in. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say that you burn 100 calories by walking for 20 minutes. Walking is a low impact exercise, so you burned 50 fat calories (50 percent of one hundred).

Ten minutes of high intensity exercise, however, can easily burn 160 calories. Since high intensity exercises burn 40 percent fat for energy, you just burned 64 fat calories. You burned 14 more fat calories, but only spent 10 minutes doing it. Basically, the percentage is technically smaller, but you burn more total calories in less time with high intensity exercises. A smaller percentage of a bigger number is better than a bigger percentage of a smaller number.

In addition to this, low intensity workouts only burn fat calories while you’re actually doing them. High intensity workouts, because they increase your metabolism, continue burning fat for hours after you’re done working out. And, because muscle burns more calories than fat, the increased muscle mass means you’ll be burning more calories every second of the day because of your high intensity workout. As you can see, there really isn’t any reason to stick with a low intensity workout when you can step up to a high intensity workout and get a greater benefit in less time.

Nut Health

Here's a great study.

Impact of High Intensity on Body Fatness and Skeletal Muscle Metabolism

Would anyone care to start a riot?

CrossFit Games 2010 Adidas Commercial

I LOVE THIS COMMERCIAL

What's in it: Chef Boyardee Mac & Cheese

Think of food as a drug, look at the sodium and carbs in this product and tell me how this could possibly be healthy? 700 mg's of sodium, WTF? This should be outlawed. Say NO to processed food!
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/09/02/f-whats-in-it-mac-cheese.html

WHAT IS POSE METHOD®?

This weekend I am going on a road trip to CrossFit Colosseum in Toronto. Rick and I will be attending the CrossFit Running Certification. We will be taught the POSE METHOD.

The Pose Method® is a system for teaching of human movement developed by a 2-time Olympic Coach Dr. Nicholas S. Romanov in 1977 in the former Soviet Union. The name of the method comes from the word "pose" or "body position".

If you analyze the movement of any body through time and space, you will clearly see that the body passes through an infinite number of positions. Most of the positions (or poses) are transitional movements and are the result, not the cause, of proper positioning.

For more info you can check out http://www.posetech.com/

Predicting One Rep Max (1 RM)

Here's a great calculator to help you predict your 1 RM

http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/OneRepMax.html

Eicosanoids - Powerful super hormones

The essential fatty acids omega-3 and omega-6 are transformed in the body into hormones called eicosanoids, e.g. prostaglandin is an eicosanoid. They all have 20 carbon atoms, and the name comes from the Greek word eikos which means 20. The Nobel Prize for Medicin was in 1982 given to Sune Bergström, Bengt Samuelsson and John Vane for their research about eicosanoids. The first eicosanoid (prostaglandin) was discovered in 1936 by Ulf von Euler.

Dr. Barry Sears calls the eicosanoids powerful super hormones. They control other hormones and practically all important functions in the body, e.g. the central nervous system and the immune system. Thus, they are very important for good health and well-being. There are both good and bad eicosanoids, and a good balance between them is achieved by eating food that contains both omega-3 and omega-6.

There are also other things that determine the balance between good and bad eicosanoids, such as the hormones insulin and glucagon. A diet consisting of a high amount of carbohydrates - especially fast carbohydrates - creates too much insulin in the body. This means that there will be an over-production of bad eicosanoids. A zone-favorable diet means less carbohydrates, this will produce more glucagon and good eicosanoids which enhances health. The fatty acid EPA is an important fat since more good eicosanoids will be produced. A high consumption of the short-chain fatty acid ALA can interfere with the production of eicosanoids, according to researcher Barry Sears, and the same is true for trans fatty acids.

Barry Sears explains in his book "The Zone" why both good and bad eicosanoids are needed in the body. The good ones prevent the blood from clumping, which lowers the risk for blood clots. However, when you bleed, the bad eicosanoids are needed in order for the blood platelets to aggregate and stop the bleeding. This is why the balance between them is important, since they are both needed in the body.

There are inbalances that lead to disease, inbalance between insulin and glucagon, good and bad eicosanoids, omega-3 and omega-6, and carbohydrates, proteins and fat. If you eat healthy the levels are adjusted automatically. Read more about eicosanoids and why fast carbs are bad for your health in the book "The Zone" by Barry Sears.

Health Benefits of Walnuts

Walnuts are one of the best plant sources of protein. They are rich in fiber, B vitamins, magnesium, and antioxidants such as Vitamin E. Nuts in general are also high in plant sterols and fat - but mostly monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (omega 3 fatty acids - the good fats) that have been shown to lower LDL cholesterol. Walnuts, in particular, have significantly higher amounts of omega 3 fatty acids as compared to other nuts.


More than a decade of scientific evidence shows that incorporating walnuts in a healthy diet reduces the risk of heart disease by improving blood vessel elasticity and plaque accumulation. Walnuts have also been shown to aid in the lowering LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) and the C-Reactive Protein (CRP). CRP was recently recognized as an independent marker and predictor of heart disease.

FDA Approved Health Claim for Walnuts

In 2003, the FDA recognized the benefits of nuts and their role in heart disease prevention by approving a health claim for 7 kinds of nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts, pecans, some pine nuts, pistachios and walnuts). These seven nuts were approved as they are the only kinds that contain less than 4g of saturated fats per 50g.

In response to a petition filed by the California Walnut Commission, the FDA further endorsed the health benefits of walnuts by approving the following health claim in March 2004.

"Supportive but not conclusive research shows that eating 1.5 oz of walnuts per day, as part of a low saturated fat and low cholesterol diet, and not resulting in increased caloric intake may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease."

Walnuts in a Healthy Diet

Nuts in general are high in calories, so moderation is the key. The best approach is to reap the health benefits of eating walnuts but not add excessive calories to your daily intake. Therefore, instead of just adding walnuts to your current diet, eat them in replacement of foods that are high in saturated fats (such as cheese and meat) and limit your intake of these tasty treats to the recommended 1.5 oz per day. That is about 20 walnut halves.

Walnuts add a flavorful crunch to dishes. Here are some simple ideas to incorporate walnuts in your diet:

instead of snacking on cookies, crack some walnuts open and eat them as snacks
instead of using meat, toss toasted walnuts in your salad or pasta to add some crunch
instead of layering pepperoni, use chopped walnuts in your pizza
instead of eating bacons or eggs, use walnuts as a protein choice by sprinkling chopped walnuts in your oatmeal or breakfast cereal

Theoretical Heirarchy of Development

A theoretical hierarchy exists for the development of an athlete. It starts with nutrition and moves to metabolic conditioning, gymnastics,weightlifting, and finally sport. This hierarchy largely reflects foundational dependence, skill, and to some degree, time ordering of development. The logical flow is from molecular foundations, cardiovascular sufficiency, body control, external object control, and ultimately mastery and application. This model has greatest utility in analyzing athletes’ shortcomings or difficulties.We don’t deliberately order these components but nature will. If you have a deficiency at any level of “the pyramid” the components above will suffer.

Tabata Training - The fastest way to fitness and fat loss

Tabata Training - The fastest way to fitness and fat loss

Reduce salt intake to prevent stroke: study.

•Processed foods are the main source of the sodium Canadians consume, as they make up over 70% of average daily sodium intake.

•Only about 15 % of our sodium intake comes from salt added during cooking or at the table.

•Unprocessed whole foods such as fruits, vegetables and fresh cuts of meat contain very little sodium. The sodium “naturally” present in foods accounts for only 10-15 % of our daily intake.

High Back Squats

225lbs
3-3-3-3-3

Paleo in a Nutshell Part 1: Food

Paleo in a Nutshell Part 2: Exercise