Lots of people say that weight lifting has no value for runners.

But they’re not  3x Olympic gold medalists.

Here’s a thought. If you want to be good at running, maybe you should stop taking advice from magazine editors and shoe salesmen. Why not train like the best runner in the world?

Find a CrossFit gym. Learn the big lifts. Develop some real power.

Then see what you can do during your race.

In CrossFit we see health and athleticism as strongly overlapping constructs. By becoming a better athlete you are advancing your health. By becoming healthier you increase your athleticism.

This concept is difficult to get your arms around. Stand back. I’m about to make it real.

Meet Shawn Kinzel. Before joining TwinTown CrossFit, Shawn’s LDL cholesterol was 180. It’s now 87. When Shawn joined the gym he deadlifted 285 pounds. Today his 1-rep max on the deadlift is 405 pounds. So in less than a year Shawn saw huge improvement in a very important biomedical marker of health as well as a very important athletic benchmark. Oh I almost forgot – the dude went down four pant sizes.

Could Shawn have improved his health without upping his athleticism? No. Both things have to happen and they have to happen at the same time. Remember, the distinction between health and athleticism is illusory.

While I am insanely proud of Shawn’s many accomplishments, I am most proud of the fact that he took the first step. He didn’t wait until he was “ready” whatever that means. What could he have gained by waiting to start CrossFit? Zip. Zilch. Nada.

The point is you don’t have to be fit to to start CrossFit. You’re ready now. What’s holding you back?

At long last! The winter PR finals are right around the corner. Saturday at 1:00PM we’re going to drop it like it’s HAWT. Come and cheer on your team mates! Veins will bulge. Seams will pop. Heavy stuff will be lifted!

If you go to a regular gym you can practically work out in a bathrobe and bunny slippers. Cuz if you’re just cruising on a treadmill it really doesn’t matter what you’re wearing.

CrossFit is different. You only have to climb the rope once to realize that in a real gym, the stuff you wear actually matters.

Here are some examples:

Check out this funny article on urban gardens.  If you’re a locavore, or you just care about sustainability, why not eat lettuce from a rooftop garden? It’s the hip new thing!

I have to laugh because my parents have been growing their own produce for as long as I can remember. They weren’t motivated by health, or sustainability, but by that sense of thrift that you develop by starving through three wars. So while other kids in my neighborhood played croquet and badminton on manicured lawns. I tilled and hoed in my parents’ backyard garden. Grass? Pshaw. Can’t eat it. Don’t need it.

Commercial urban gardens are quirky, but they’re really just another form of elitist consumerism. The real game changer will occur when more people grow their own produce in their back yards.

This may seem like an outlandish claim but consider this. During World War II 20 million victory gardens produced an amount of food equal to the output of the entire commercial food industry!

The next time you’re pulling dandelions out of your lawn, just think how much cooler it would be if you were pulling carrots instead!

The fact of the matter is, I only have so much mental bandwidth to work with and I have to be selective about where I devote my grey matter. Here is the filtering algorithm I use. I call it “The Ignoralyzer.”

The Ignoralyzer

Reebok’s relationship with CrossFit won’t make me a more effective coach or ally. It won’t impact my clients’ health or training experience. Therefore I don’t care about it and it is relegated to that dusty corner of my brain where the Kardashians cavort with Honey Badger at the CrossFit Striking Certification.

It’s that time of year again! The CrossFit Games Open is starting February 22, 2012. There will be one workout per week for five weeks and if you do well you will advance to regionals. If you’re interested in participating in the Open we will be hosting events at CrossFit 612 every weekend. Be down!

Roy F. Baumeister’s book “Will Power” gives some insights into the complex behavior patterns and underlying biochemistry that constitute your operating system. Reading this book really helped me understand why dieting is so troublesome.

Here’s how it works: the brain circuitry that is responsible for self control relies on glucose. When you go on a strict paleo diet, your blood glucose drops which means your willpower is impaired. After extended periods of self control you experience ego fatigue and that bagel you so easily resisted on day 1 turns into an object of frantic obsession by day 7.

This is why 30 day challengers eat date rolls, Lara bars and the like. They need a hit of glucose to fuel their willpower so they can  make it through the day. The problem with date rolls and other “paleo-friendly” sweets is that they are very high glycemic load. What’s the point of a 30 day challenge if you spend the whole time wallowing in an insulin bath? Ideally a conscientious 30 day challenger would eat nothing but berries and spaghetti squash but almost nobody does this – because they haven’t addressed their underlying behavior patterns and reward mechanisms around food.

Baumeister suggests that a better approach is to gradually and incrementally introduce new eating patterns. I’ve had the most success, both personally and with my clients, by following this model. Gradually changing your relationship with food eliminates the psychodrama and confrontation that comes with strict dieting and allows you to eke out many little successes rather than a few enormous failures.

BAMF Jeremy Striffler writes:

Six months ago I began my membership at TwinTown CrossFit (TTCF). To mark the occasion, I performed a baseline workout during Open Gym. When I first ran through it with Teddy back in July, I struggled with the 40 squats, huffed and puffed through the sit-ups and pushups and suffered through the pull-ups.

Now after half a year of classes, open gym, Fight Gone Bad and the Winter PR challenge, I improved on my original time by 3 minutes and 17 seconds and did it at Rx. I am excited to be able to quantify the clear changes I have undergone in my strength and capabilities.

More important to me in these last six months than any gain in muscle or physical wellbeing is that I have found a community of friends and advocates who make every WOD seem doable, every lift seem bearable and every burpee seem possible. I realize the reason why is because we are a tribe.

In David Logan’s business tome, Tribal Leadership, he hypothesizes that people have always naturally formed tribes of 20 to 150 people. (Is it a mere coincidence that TTCF recently capped membership around 150 members?)

Logan says that recognizing our tendency to form tribes is a key to understanding our own history: “Tribes helped humans survive the last ice age, build farming communities, and, later, cities. Birds flock, fish school, people ‘tribe’.”

Logan identifies five tribal stages that we all fall within, differentiated by their tribal culture and language. While in his book he applies this to the corporate world, its application can be seen in understanding the experience at TTCF. It can also explain why we have all benefited from the Stage Five culture that TTCF has developed.

Here are the five stages:

Stage One – Life Sucks
In the lowest of the stages, people are “lost, alienated and alone.” It is the stage of gangs and prisons and thankfully one that we at TTCF are far removed from.

Stage Two – My Life Sucks
In Stage Two of tribal leadership, language is focused on the mantra of “my life sucks” and it is where I believe most of us joined TTCF. Left to our own devices, we would skip work outs, make poor decisions about what we eat and drink, and resolve ourselves to the fact that life is great for some people, but not for us.

To some degree, we all inquired about TTCF because we were looking for a way to improve our lives. Whether we wanted to lose weight, increase strength or just feel better about our general health and wellness, we sought out a membership in TTCF for some personal gain. Many of us though that “my life sucks but I know it can be better.” Simply by becoming a member of TTCF, we allowed ourselves the possibility that life could become better at a superficial level thanks to the help of the trainers, the routine and the workouts.

Stage Three – I’m Great
So while we knew life was going to be improved by committing to at least two classes a week, our confidence was still shaky. However, the culture of TTCF quickly raised us out of a mindset of “my life sucks” into one of “I am great.” Time after time, doing push-ups and sit-ups and squats, the trainers cheer us on and applaud our efforts. This is true no matter whether we are using a green band or one hand to do a pull-up. If we work hard, we are encouraged to believe in ourselves and know that with time and sweat we are going to do great things.

This is the stage where most tribal cultures remain. People believe themselves to be great and find ways to compete with others. They say, ‘Did you see how many pull-ups I did?’ Or, ‘Dude, I just dead-lifted 400 pounds.’ As Logan writes in his book, “People in Stage Three tribes try to outperform each other and put each other down.” But this is not the case at TTCF.

Stage Four – We’re Great
The greatest challenge tribes find is moving from Stage Three to Stage Four. However, it was an easy transition at TTCF. The key is that the encouragement and support that we receive does not begin and end with the trainers. Rather, most of the cheers and hugs and high-fives come from our fellow members. At TTCF we are united by our values, which includes having an outward focus.

According to Logan, “We have become a tribe that is aware of our own existence.” Because of this mindset we can do remarkable things. We can motivate and inspire each other to reach new personal records every day. Simply attend a clinic or Fight Gone Bad or the Winter PR Challenge to see it in action.

Further, Logan writes, “In Stage Four Groups, when two members of the group meet, they’re excited about being with another member of the tribe. People are fully themselves. Everyone seems happy, inspired, genuine. The overall vibe of the room is ‘tribal pride’, which is the mood of Stage Four.” Witness the rapport between people at Open Gym or just go to Muddy Waters on a Saturday night, run into a TTCF member and tell me that’s not true of us.

Stage Five – Life is Great
At TTCF, we don’t dwell in a language of ‘life sucks’ or ‘my life sucks’. Nor do we tolerate those who simply think ‘I’m great’ – a narcissistic mindset often employed at chain gyms full of mirrors and preening muscle heads. Rather, TTCF has created a culture that celebrates everyone.

Logan explains, “People who have ever been part of a Stage Five tribe – or even seen one at work – often describe it in the same tone of reverence and gratitude they use to tell stories of their kids.”

I truly believe that TTCF is a Stage Five cultures whose values are not based simply in the language of ‘my’ or ‘ours’ but have a global tone. We have developed an ever-growing network of organizations and groups whose values resonate with our own. TTCF members are active participants in Mud Run MS Minnesota, Bike MS and countless other fundraisers giving their time and money to these great causes. And they support local businesses, like placing group orders for grass-fed cattle, and care about universal issues.

Not to speak in hyperboles but in TTCF we have found a Stage Five tribal culture that focuses on developing the body, mind and soul. And because of it, life is great!

Loren Cordain’s first book on the paleo diet recommended lean meats. “Lean” means trimmed of visible fat. From a gustatory perspective eating lean meat is barely a step above eating a rice cake.

Hello! Flavor! Are you in there?

But Cordain’s views on saturated fats have evolved since he first wrote The Paleo Diet. In a recent newsletter he wrote

“Recommendations to lower dietary saturated fats below 10% to reduce the risk of coronary artery disease have little or no evolutionary foundation in pre-agricultural Homo sapiens… So we do not need restrict ourselves to only tuna and turkey breast, avoiding every last gram of saturated fat.”

Phew. Pass the bacon.

But seriously, if you are buying meat from Cub or Rainbow or even Kowalski’s or Lund’s you should still trim the fat. Most farm animals are grain fed, rather than pastured and fat from those animals is essentially devoid of omega 3′s and very high in omega 6.

If you can, try to buy local, organic, grass-fed meats. If your food is the product of an ordered and natural food chain you don’t have to be afraid of it. Imagine that!