This Trendy “Strong is the New Skinny” Thing (and what it could mean for the next generation of girls)
You (Still) Don’t Know Squat
Where Are You First Rib??
The 7 Biggest CrossFit Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)
Weightlifting Shoes and Why You Need Them
Snack Attack

Reddit recently hosted an AMA with Dr. Mike Roussell, who is a well-respected nutritionist with a bachelor degree in biochemistry from Hobart College and a doctorate in nutrition from Pennsylvania State University. He has consulted with pharmaceutical and food companies, medical schools, and top rated fitness facilities, so he has a unique ability to translate scientific findings into relevant nutrition strategies. We thought we might highlight some of his tips from his discussion.

Q: Forgive the very beginner question: Where would you start with 40lbs to lose and 35% body fat (female)? I have fat-loss-information overload, confusion, and, consequently, paralysis.
A: Start slow and get good at a core set of habits. The core set of habits I work with clients on I call the 6 Pillars of Nutrition. 1. Eat four to six times a day. 2. Limit your consumption of sugars and processed foods. 3. Eat fruits and vegetables throughout the day. 4. Drink more water and cut out calorie-containing beverages (beer, soda, etc.). 5. Focus on consuming lean proteins throughout the day. 6. Save starch containing foods until after a workout or for breakfast. Pick 2 to focus on. Track your ability to do each habit everyday for 2-3 weeks before adding another habit. I have a $0.99 kindle book on this. It is a quick read and a good primer.

Q: If I was completely “new” to nutrition and you could only recommend one change, what would it be?
A: Don’t eat anything with refined or added sugar. Cutting sugar out of your diet is the one diet change that you would probably feel the most. Keep in mind this is added sugar. Blueberries contain fructose but naturally so the fructose in blueberries is not considered ‘added sugar.’ I think the exact difference between fructose added to a cookie and fructose in blueberries is up for debate. If you eliminated all the sugar in your diet, you’d end up with a ketogenic diet. That is fine as those diets are effective, but generally more extreme than most people need. I agree with you that we should lower our overall sugar intake as much as possible while taking care not to eliminate important nutrients found in whole foods that contain sugar.

Technically anything with “refined or added sugar” would include: * anhydrous dextrose * brown sugar * confectioner’s powdered sugar * corn syrup * corn syrup solids * dextrose * fructose * high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) * honey * invert sugar * lactose * malt syrup * maltose * maple syrup * molasses * nectars (e.g., peach nectar, pear nectar) * pancake syrup * raw sugar * sucrose * sugar * white granulated sugar

Q: 300 lb, 6’0, BF around 30% (I’m guessing). Wanting to lower BF is goal #1. Whats my best nutrition approach? Currently just cutting on 2k cals while lifting 5x a week, and seeing results, should I bother trying anything else?
A: I would guess (based on the numbers you shared) that you have some level of insulin resistance so I would keep your carbs at or below 30% of your total calories

Q: What advice do you have for maintaining energy and training intensity while in a calorie deficit? Specifically, I’m a rower, (6’2″, 200lb, ~15%bf) trying to cut to 185lb. I had success with low-carb paleo when I wasn’t training, but it leaves me with no energy for daily hour-plus sessions.
A: If you don’t have the energy when you are low carb, it might mean that you haven’t ‘fat adapted’. If this is the case then you need to decrease your carbs and increase your fat to get your body using fat as the primary fuel source. The other piece might be that your calories just went to low too fast when you went low-carb paleo.

Q: What are your “must have” supplements for aspiring meatheads? Conversely what do you strongly suggest we avoid?
A: Basics are multivitamin, vit D, fish oil, creatine, protein supplement
Next level would be: zinc, magnesium, L-carnitine/L-tartrate, BCAAs, Citrillune malate. Avoid – tribulus terrestris

Q: What is your view on pre, intra, and post workout nutrition for optimal fat loss and muscle hypertrophy? How does macronutrient timing differ between the two goals?
A: It depends on the duration of the workout, time of day (with respects to other meals), and total calories intake for the day. For example: If you are doing a 20 minute interval session and your goal is fat loss then 5-10g of BCAA pre would be all you would need. But if your goal is hypertrophy and you are training 90 minutes this would warrant aminos pre, carbs and a small amount of aminos during, and carbs and protein afterwards.

If I were to generalize it would be this:
-Fat Loss: BCAA/Protein Pre and Post. Water intra unless training exceeds 60 minutes then add aminos intra
-Hypertrophy: BCAA/Protein + Carbs pre and then again post. Water intra unless training exceeds 60 minutes then BCAA/Protein + Carbs.

Depending on the workout duration a lot of the pre/intra workout nutrients are going to be absorbed and use post workout.

Saturated Fat and Coronary Heart Disease, Part II: The Paleo Principle
How To Tape Your Hands
Proper Force Transfer in Weight Training: Grounding, Contacting, and Tightening

It’s an off-day, but there’s no reason why you can’t take five minutes to mobilize so you’re ready to roll on Monday.

WOD
Make up a workout you missed.

-or-

Coach’s choice.

Stop Doing Corrective Exercises
Progress… Twice As Hard For Half As Much
A Case for the 11th Fitness Domain: Self-Confidence
Favorite Nutrition Resources

Getting the Most Out of Low-Carb Meals
6 Truths About Squats
Is This Real?? —> 12 Things Women Think at the Gym
Staying Motivated
OHS Checklist
How You’re Sabotaging Your Posture and Your Time in the Gym

You just busted out a PR on your press the other day and the WOD today is clean and jerks. Even after a good warm-up and mobilization session, that overhead position is feeling less than awesome, even with the PVC pipe. What’s the deal?

Look how internally rotated and “forward” his shoulders are.

Try something out: Lay on the ground. Try to get your shoulder blades situated underneath you with your low back on the floor. And by situated, I mean flat underneath you so that you are essentially lying on them. “Down and in”, “pinch your shoulder blades together”. Can you do this without flaring your ribs or arching your back? Are your shoulders even touching the ground or do you have “forward shoulder” positioning? Now step two.

Left shoulder is “good” against the ground. Right shoulder is elevated and “forward”. Which one are you?

Shoulder is against the ground in a “good” shoulder position (but ribs are a little flared).

Try and raise your arm to 90 degrees. Where did your shoulder go? Could you drive a semi underneath? If so, that’s BAD. You should be able to get your shoulder on the floor, essentially in the back of the joint.

Here’s what’s going on. Most of us spend most of our time in crappy positions; sitting with poor posture, standing with poor posture, sitting at a computer, watching TV, etc… all with this “forward shoulder” positioning.

What does that have to do with your overhead position?

Not too much space for those tendons.

When you hang out in this crappy position all the time, coupled with training like a beast at the box (pushups, dips, burpees, etc.), not only does the anterior musculature around your shoulder get tight and matted down, but you can mess up your shoulder alignment. Look at the picture above. Even though your shoulder should have a large range of motion, the humeral head does not have a lot of room to move around underneath the acromion. When you have this forward head/shoulder posture, the humeral head tends to sit forward in the glenoid. This allows for even less space for the musculature to pass through.

How do we get your shoulder to sit back into the glenoid where it is supposed to be?

Lie on the ground and get into a good horizontal active shoulder position. Hollow your abs. Hold a heavy kettlebell above your head, locking out your elbow with your opposite hand. Allow the weight of the kettlebell to push the shoulder back into ground. Make sure your elbow stays locked out. You should feel a stretch behind your shoulder. Hold for two minutes. Try externally rotating your shoulder by rotating your bicep towards your head. Now retest your overhead position. Better? To undo years of crappy position, you’re going to have to work on this consistently – just as you would a muscle-up or anything else.

Per the Postural Restoration Institute, nearly everyone has rotation in their spine to the right related to the strength of the diaphragm. Here is a simple repositioning exercise you can do to reduce the rotation in your spine and improve your shoulders. I suggest you do it before you start your day as well as near the end of the day. You probably can’t do this exercise too often.

Lie on your back with your feet flat on a wall and your knees and hips bent at a 90 degree angle. Place a foam roller between your knees. Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth performing a pelvic tilt so that your tailbone is flat on the floor. Keep your back imprinted into the surface you are lying on.

As you maintain the pelvic tilt, shift your left hip down and your right hip up so that your right knee is slightly above the left.

Slowly take your bent right leg on and off the wall so that your right thigh comes toward your chest. You should feel the muscle behind your left thigh engage.

Now, with your abs on, breathe with your diaphgram to move air into upper portion of your lungs. Then, while breathing, test/retest your shoulder range of motion, by externally rotating your shoulder (turning your thumb up) and raising your locked arm up and overhead.

Not the best picture for the homework described, but it’s going to have to work.

Perform this 15-20 times on each shoulder. As you continue to release the anterior shoulder musculature and mobilize the shoulder to the back of the joint, you should notice an improvement in how far you can go.

Remember, there is no magical cure for crappy positioning.

Testosterone Levels Tied to Vitamin D Levels
How And Why I Train No Matter What
Wrist Mobility Is Key to a Good Rack
8 Reasons Why You Keep Hitting A (Life) Plateau
How to Take a 16 Minute Nap
Mastering the Chin-Up: 7 Variations to Beat Gym Boredom

The Secret to Great Abs
Admit it: half the reason we watch the CrossFit Games on ESPN is because the athletes are nearly naked and oozing sex appeal. Everybody’s got ripped abs and sick arms, or whatever it is you’re into. Guess what? Getting abs isnt’ as tough as you’d think.

The big myth about getting a sleek, jelly-free belly is that you have to do endless stomach exercises. Hence the never-ending procession of rollers, riders, crunchers and other fitness gimmicks that never give you the washboard you want.

You cannot roll, twist, or squeeze your way to a sexy stomach, no matter what the infomercials tell you.

Here’s why: you already have abs! They might not be as developed as Rich Froning’s, but you already have abs. The problem is that fat is covering them up. Get rid of the fat, and your abs will show up just fine. Believe me, they are there.

Doing stomach exercises is important for further developing those muscles and building core strength, but the best thing you can do as far as your torso is concerned – not only for improving confidence, your looks, and your comfort with your body, but your health – is to shed fat. Midsection fat is the most harmful kind of fat to your health and is a critical indicator of stress.

Flex your stomach – even if you’re a couch potato, there’s a little muscle there. Now, if you are flexing and you can still grab abdominal fat in your hand, that’s exactly how much is surrounding your precious internal organs – and that’s a dangerous thing. Fat on your backside? Not so much.

So by all means, crunch away – but your middle will actually get bigger if you don’t simultaneously shrink the fat. Spot toning without overall fat reduction is the wrong approach to getting flat abs, but it’s what most people do. And notice, nothing changes much.

A healthy middle means reduced chances of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and sleep problems. What’s the best way to start seeing abs? Cut out all refined carbs, sugar and alcohol for two weeks. I guarantee you’ll see a major reduction in bloat and midsection fat. Although excess calories are what adds the poundage, sugar is the culprit that goes right to the gut. It’s incredibly difficult to have a spare tire if you are primarily getting your calories from protein and produce.

How Will You Leave Your Mark?
Know Your Pain
Everything You Need to Know About Unsaturated Fats
20 Surprising Strength Training Benefits
“Broccoli has more protein than steak” —and other crap
70s Big Discusses the Deadlift
Deadlift Troubleshooting Using the Coach’s Eye

Location: The diaphragm lines the bottom of the ribcage/thoracic cavity, separating it from the abdominal cavity. It has attachments to the lower 6 ribs, sternum, and the upper 3 lumbar vertebrae. It also has connections to the psoas muscle.

Function: It is the most important and efficient muscle for the inspiration portion of breathing, allowing for about 70-80% of the work in a 3 dimensional movement (inferior/superior, anterior/posterior, medial/lateral).

It is the roof of the “core”, allowing for stability in the lumbar spine when it contracts with the other “core” muscles such as the transverse abdominus and pelvic floor muscles.

Lastly, when this muscle moves properly it helps to massage our internal organs and keep them moving properly (they need mobility too!).

Diaphragm Breathing vs. Dysfunctional Diaphragm

Dysfunction means either not activating, lack of strength or lack of mobility around the muscle. This can be caused by a variety of things including asthma, stress, smoking, lung disease, low back pain, pregnancy… the list goes on. The main thing here is to know that even if you’re injury free in this area, you may have a dysfunctional diaphragm from not taking deep breathes during your day because you’re stressed. Once you have a dysfunctional diaphragm, it causes you to go into a problematic cycle of increasing your initial issues. For instance, I don’t breathe properly, and over time I’ve come to rely on chest-breathing while heavily depending on the erector muscles of my lumbar spine to maintain stability at the bottom of squats & deadlifts. Unfortunately, that has stretched and weakened my psoas and anterior core (abs). So, I can’t activate my diaphragm to create better stability allowing me to lift heavier weights. And, with decreased stability comes increased compression on my lumbar spine. Bad cycle.

Check out the closeness of the diaphragm to the psoas, QL and lumbar spine. No wonder it affects the lower back so much!

Going into more depth about the mobility around the diaphragm, imagine that you have a diaphragm that’s not working properly. So, if you aren’t good at taking deep breathes, you still have to breathe somewhere. This usually means you use your neck and upper shoulders to breathe OR you breathe mostly in and out your belly. Using your neck causes those muscles to overwork leading to other issues like headaches, stiff necks, or limited shoulder mobility. Breathing only into your belly doesn’t allow you to maintain good midline stability (core activation), especially when you are out of breathe during a WOD. If you don’t believe me, try taking a deep breathe into your belly while staying hollow. It’s not really possible! I think a lot of people are a combination of the 2 (neck/shoulder/belly) and long term breathing patterns likes these can lead to a lot of stiffness in the thoracic spine and ribcage. This is because the diaphragm is not being used to help expand this area and keep it mobile.

Diaphragm Fixes
Step 1: Assess your breathing pattern. First things first, take the Movement & Breathing Class with Coach Brown. Seriously. Now, try this test standing, sitting and lying down. Put your hands on your abdomen, ribcage and chest and try to see where you breathe during a normal breath. Then try a few deep breathes (as if you were WOD-ing). Just take note of where you breathe. Then, can you breathe into the side of your ribcage? Can you breathe into the front and back of your upper back? Without getting into your neck?

Here’s an exaggeration of those of you who are stress breathers, really expanding in your neck and shoulders rather than through your chest. This is BAD.

Step 2: Work on your mobility in areas that may be stiff from not breathing correctly. Instead of listing all the areas, I’m sending you to watch three quick videos at the bottom of this post by Jill Miller and K-Starr. They cover all the basic areas to work on to give your diaphragm a good environment to work in. Watch all 3. It will improve your life. Just do it.

Step 3: Retrain your diaphragm to work well. I can’t create normal flexion in my lumbar spine. So, I sit on my hands and knees, with my butt resting on my heels, head neutral, I tighten my abs and then I breathe deeply through my nose to try to fill my back with air. I’m trying to create some flexion in my lumbar and thoracic spine with the aid of air pressure. You’ve got to work on your weaknesses, and breathing is a weakness of mine.

HOMEWORK
Jill Miller fixes your t-spine and crappy breathing mechanics

Jill Miller smashes your guts and psoas tacked down viscera and matted down abdominals

Jill Miller diaphragm evolution

Pick It Up
6 Things a CrossFitter Won’t Tell You
The Truth About a Healthy Spine – Part I
30 Years & 30 Lessons – Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3
Crossfit Crazies

Health Scams
You’re a member of DCCF/DarkSide hopefully because you trust us to guide you in the right direction with regard to your health. So, today, we’re going to tell you about some of the worst health scams floating around. Personally, I know of a few acquaintances hawking this junk. Be smart and see past the BS.

9. Hoodia – The only kind that works must be eaten fresh, and it’s banned from export because it’s a protected flora. This weight-loss gimmick even comes with the #1 dead giveaway of scams everywhere: a heretofore undiscovered culture/tribe has finally, miraculously, revealed their secret, conveniently, to a white man who can’t wait to share this magical product with the world. Get real. That’s called a movie, not science.

8. Cellulite shoes – Again with the mysterious culture shrouded in lore. These don’t work – period.

7. Cellulite creams – The best way to deal with cellulite – which isn’t curable, no matter what the quacks like Mesunique claim – is to cut down on sugar, which stores itself in outer fat cells, and get some daily exercise. The more muscle and less fat you have, the smoother you look.

6. Colon cleansers – The colon is important, delicate, and needs to stay in top shape. That said, it does not have a brain, and your body does not store fecal matter for years on end just waiting to finally be emptied by some miracle cleansing product. What comes out is just buildup of a few days, and anything beyond that is, well, b.s. This myth was actually completely debunked by surgeons a century ago. We’re in favor of probiotics, such as those sold by Natren but extra fiber from psyllium or other “miracle” cleansers is totally unnecessary. So, get your fiber from fruits and vegetables.

5. Algae – Yes, this slimeball is abundant in protein – if you eat a truckload of it. Pay attention to serving size. Often, companies make claims about a product being extremely potent, but hope you’ll remain blissfully ignorant about how this potency relates to serving size. Supplementing with algae for aminos and other health benefits is like relying on water for your vitamin and mineral needs. Stick with a multivitamin.

4. MonaVie or ViSalus – Companies like this claim to sell fitness/health in a bottle. And, oh, “they only align themselves with the best, so they’re only offering this opportunity to select people.” Really? And, you’re one of those lucky people? In the words of Tyler Durden, “You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.” These companies are pyramid-schemes and they have been sued for making illegal health claims.

3. Bottled waters – You cannot oxygenate or enhance water. You can’t penta it, hydro it, living-cell it, or do anything else but drink it. Drink up, but don’t fall for the water hype.

2. Vegetable oils – Refined oils like canola, soybean and corn oil are free radical oil slicks that manage to get a bill of health from Uncle Sam. Lobbying gets the credit for that. Avoid these oils like the plague, and go for healthy fats like organic butter, Smart Butter (rich in Omega-3′s), olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, or nut oils.

1. Alli (orlistat) – This ineffective, unproven, no-good OTC weight-loss pill offers nothing but side effects and oily spotting. Yes, oily spotting. Gross.

Sources:
-National Institute on Aging
-Mark’s Daily Apple
-Food & Drug Administration

The Hall of Manly Excellence: Viking Supremacy
Day In The Life of a Crossfit Douchette…
How to Improve the Bottom Position of a Squat
The 12 Worst Guys in the Gym
Coach Brown’s 9-Week MMA/CrossFit Program
Motivation Secret: Quit Tomorrow

Our good friend, Molly Galbraith, recently wrote a fantastic article focused on women and their squat technique. We would be idiots if we didn’t highlight it for you here. Enjoy.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Squats have been called “The King of Exercises,” and with good reason. There are very few exercises out there that have the potential to increase strength, change your body composition, and make you feel like the ultimate bad-ass in the gym quite like the squat.

The problem is, most people don’t perform squats correctly, and that’s totally understandable. Squats are a very complex exercise and there are a lot of moving parts, and things to remember. Heck, I’ve been squatting for almost 10 years and I still get coached and cued on a regular basis!

In an effort to help you start mastering the squat, my business partner Jim Laird of J&M Strength and Conditioning, and I shot a video where we explain and demonstrate some of the main mistakes we see in women when they are squatting, and how to correct them. Check it out:

1. Check your stance! Most average women (i.e. women who aren’t geared powerlifters) don’t need to be squatting much wider than just beyond shoulder width, with their toes pointed out between ~15-30 degrees. Squatting very wide is harder on the hips, and once you get extremely wide, it can be even harder to drive your knees out, which, as you’ll see below, is very important.

2. Brace your core! Again, most women don’t know how to brace their core effectively. Even if you think your abs are strong, you might not be bracing correctly. You actually have to learn how to create pressure in your low back when you squat, not just in your anterior core (i.e. abs). Here and here are a couple of fantastic videos that teach you how to breathe, and create pressure in your core.

3. Keep a neutral head! It’s really popular in the powerlifting world to throw your head back when you squat. This is completely understandable as it can help you “drive out of the hole” (i.e. stand up from the bottom of a squat) and it’s common knowledge in the training world that the body will go where the eyes go. That can be fine for competitive powerlifters, but most women need to keep a neutral head. Throwing your head back causes you to go into lumbar hyperextension, effectively putting all of the pressure on your lower back, and not allowing you to use your entire core, or your glutes, as effectively as you could. Think neutral head, eyes up.

This little man has the right idea when it comes to keeping his head neutral.

4. Use your hips! As you’ll see in the video, it’s very common for women to use their spine to “catapult” themselves off of the box, instead of using their hips and their entire core. Once you learn how to effectively brace your core, you will allow your hips and your entire core to start taking the load, and you’ll get much stronger, and stay much safer.

5. Drive your knees out! Using your glutes to drive your knees out, allows you to open up your hips so you can sink down into the proper squat position. If you don’t drive your knees out, you’ll not only run into your hips, but you won’t have a comfortable (or safe) hip, knee, and ankle angle. This also ties into tip number 1. If your stance is too wide, you often won’t be able to drive your knees out effectively, so bring your stance in, and think about driving your knees OUT to open up your hips. Using a light mini-band right below the knees here as a reminder to drive them out, can be very helpful.

6. Sit back! Women tend to be very quad dominant creatures, and we typically either want to shoot our knees forward on a squat, or almost “plié” down into the squat. Neither of these are correct when you’re trying to do a true squat. This is why we have women learn how to squat onto a box first. It teaches them to sit back into their hips safely, and allows them to learn this pattern without feeling like they are going to fall backward.

This is not the position you want to be in when you’re trying to squat real weight!

7. Use an appropriate range of motion! When first learning to squat, many women won’t be able to hit depth, which is typically defined as parallel or slightly below parallel. If they can hit depth, they often can’t control their pelvis in that position, and they will experience “butt wink” where their butt tucks under at the bottom. Only squat as low as you can maintain good form, and over time, with practice and the correct mobility and stability work, most women should be able to squat to depth. If you are squatting onto a bench or box, and can’t control your squat, throw a plate or two onto the box until you get strong in the range of motion, and then slowly but surely increase your range of motion by removing plates until you can squat the your desired depth.
-via Girls Gone Strong

Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks
Don’t End up Like This Douchebag
CrossFit + POSE: How to Easily Run 50 Miles on a Whim
Here Are 14 Foods You Should Never Eat
10 YouTube Videos Every Entrepreneur Should Watch
Anatomy Lesson: The Knee