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Learning to be Human: Part I

This is a topic I LOVE, but will be extremely boring for most (you have been warned). I will be talking about human evolution, fitness, and how to reconnect with our deep brain. It will also be long and split up into a few different parts (once again, you have been warned).

There was a time and age where gyms did not exist. People didn’t do WODs. They just lived. Their daily lives required them to be functional, strong, mobile, healthy, fit humans. Homo sapiens are a species of animal, and the human body we all occupy today is a subspecies of homo sapiens.

The first human ancestor appeared on earth 5 million to 7 million years ago. Our modern human subspecies is believed to be about 200,000 years old. 

So, for a good long while, humans were like every other animal out there. We were walking around, licking rocks and mouth breathing just trying not to die. 

About 10,000 years ago humans learned how to farm and domesticate animals, and roughly 3,000 years ago “sports” were ‘invented’. The more time between humans and their animal roots, the more artificial our lives become. This especially applies to our training lives.

Just living without connecting to our deep brain

Most modern humans have it pretty easy. We don’t have to seek out shelter, food, water. Our needs are mostly taken care of. Even when we do have to see out the basics, it’s not too difficult. 

We have transportation, stores, our meat is already hunted and our produce already gathered. If we even have to cook, we have controlled fire (ovens, stoves, instant pots) in the safety and comfort of our own dwellings.  

We buy, cook, and eat this food, then we go to the gym and workout in an air conditioned building, with perfectly balanced weights that come in perfectly round plates. We can run on a perfectly flat treadmill, or swim in a perfectly calm body of water. Our Peloton creates a nice gradual slope to pedal up, instead of something so steep or obstacle filled you have to dismount and walk/climb up. 

We don’t do any crawling or odd obstacle movements, we don’t duck under, climb on or over. We don’t have to go out in the cold, the hot, the rain, the sun, or the snow if we don’t want to. Our time is spent mostly indoors, our feet rarely touch anything but socks, and our entertainment comes from multiple black boxes of varying sizes.

Just living has become easy, domesticated, simple, and artificial.

Progress above all else

There’s a reason humans are at the top of the food chain (for now). We are smart compared to most other animals. We can critically think and analyze. 

Humans take joy from progress and when we become better at things. Because of this it comes as no surprise that we would rather push progress and move further down the road of betterment instead of looking back to where we came from.

Where did we come from? Well, being a CrossFit coach, my view is that humans came from fitness. It is literally in our DNA. You are descended from the fittest, healthiest, and smartest humans. 

Sometimes that is VERY hard to believe, but it’s true. All of us alive and who have lived in the past only did so because the ones who came before them ran faster, hunted better, gathered more, or were smart enough to remember where clean water was. That’s a crazy thing to think about, but that’s why I think we each need to reconnect with our deep brain.

Transcend Domestication

I have a shirt that reads the above title.  It’s one of my favorite shirts, due to the message, and also the images it has on it. The message is trying to bring focus to ourselves.  

Are we living how we are supposed to be living?  

Is this the best time to be a human?

Of course, we have tons of technology. Our life expectancy is higher than ever. We have the ability to travel. We are bigger, stronger, and faster. Our lives allow us time to relax and enjoy things for fun. On a whole, our lives are very peaceful.

But are peaceful and fulfillment the same thing? I would argue they are not. I would also argue that most modern humans are not truly fulfilled.  

Reconnect with our deep brain

Everyone is different, and I’m not trying to generalize or make the suggestion serious conditions or issues could be fixed this simply. But I honestly think we humans are missing a huge part of being fulfilled. We have forgotten the primal, animal side of ourselves.

Here are ways we can relearn, reconnect with our deep brain, and hopefully become more fulfilled. We can do these things to remember a little of the humans we once were.

  • Change your routine
  • Start back at step one
  • Remember what playing is
  • Immerse yourself in nature
  • Reconnect with your tribe
  • Leave the shoes at the door
  • Learn about your food
  • Observe without distractions
  • Gain old skills

In the future parts of this post (here, and here) I will explore these ideas further. I will discuss what these actions can do to help you feel more connected to your inner self, boost your fitness, and feel more fulfilled.

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Changing How You Think About Fitness Progress

CrossFitters, and athletes in general are type A personalities. Go-getters. We are competitive and usually have a very strong inner drive to make fitness progress.  I believe this is a good trait to have in life and it also helps us to push ourselves during our training and or competitions. 

CrossFit is the sport of fitness. The revolutionary thing CrossFit did was combined all these different exercises and then tracked the data to see how fit people were getting. This has been great and it has helped thousands if not millions of people be introduced to health and fitness as well as improve their life in the same way.  

However, with hyper-competitiveness and intense training comes some issues. These may include strains, injuries, burn-out, technique failures, loss of proper technique, and many more. So how are we measuring fitness progress and how can we improve the process?

The standard way

Most people measure fitness progress in ways that are as old as time. These ways might include:

  • 1 rep max
  • Volume/rep maxes (such as 3, 5, 10, 20 rep max)
  • Size
  • Weight
  • Body fat

Of course all of these can be important and are great ways to measure fitness progress. That’s a reason they have always been used. They work, plain and simple. 

But to stay healthy and fit for life you also have to focus on recovery, movement quality, and overall well-being and nutrition.

Other ways to measure fitness progress

  • Number of days you maintain heavy work loads or high intensity workouts
  • Ability to stay injury free
  • Improved technique
  • Mobilization improvements
  • Recovery time after an intense WOD
  • Aptness to move in a pain free way
  • Potential to complete life tasks and care for one’s own well being

CrossFit, health, fitness, and life are about much more than how heavy you lift. It’s not about if you have abs or not, or if you can’t sit in a standard airplane seat easily because your legs are so big. I think your health and fitness should be utilitarian. In essence, fitness progress is about how your body serves you in day to day life.

Keep the big (life) picture in sight

You might move heavy weight, you might be 5% body fat, or maybe you have the biggest arms around. But if your joints constantly hurt, you have zero energy and are cranky, or you can’t reach behind you or across your body then what’s the point?!  

Your body is a machine, and it has to be taken care of. Like all well-built machines it can take a lot of abuse and mishandling before an important piece fails. And I promise that if you push too hard, eventually pieces will fail and break.

But a machine that is run at the appropriate RPMs, paid attention to, handled properly, and gets regular maintenance will serve its owner for a long, long time.  

Start caring about your body, it is the only one you get.

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Consistency Vs Intensity When Working Out

It’s a difficult balance, consistency vs intensity. Intensity is a cornerstone of CrossFit methodology. And yes, it is important that certain workouts are high intensity. But another key to actually seeing results from a fitness or diet plan is consistency. 

For some people consistency is easy. They like routine and structure in their day to day lives. For others, it can be more difficult to maintain and follow a plan. And while the stimulus of an individual WOD might be intensity, the goal for health and fitness is to be consistent with your effort.

Is consistency better than intensity?

When it comes to your fitness and you’re wondering about consistency vs intensity, the answer is to go with consistency. Here is why.

Choosing a health/fitness/diet plan shouldn’t be difficult but it is. With literally hundreds of different options out there, who knows what to pick?! Do you go with intermittent fasting, keto, macros, CrossFit, cycling, weightlifting, movnat, yoga…? And the list goes on and on.  

A large majority of us are attracted to the latest and greatest. When anything new comes out or some sort of exercise gains popularity, people flock to it. 

Most of these ‘fireworks’ are very fickle. I say fireworks because these are the people who start something and have tons of enthusiasm and are overly excited. But, for most of these people, that excitement and enthusiasm is hot and fast burning. They quickly lose interest. With a bang, pop or fizzle they are gone. Onto the next thing.

I think it is important to try and experience every opportunity one gets. However if you want to see results it is important to stay consistent and with a program long enough to see those results. 

This philosophy means that when starting a program it should be easy, practical, and enjoyable. This helps most people to become consistent. These principles allow the large majority to see regular and steady progress over a long period of time. As much as people like new and shiny things, they are addicted to results. Fitness helps you feel and look amazing.

Intensity can be dangerous

I think every member at Buffalo Nickel CrossFit has had a period of absences at some point. Vacation, work, surgeries, and life in general can keep people busy. Sometimes a week or two from the gym just happens. This is probably the case with anyone reading this as well.  

We all know how it feels that first day or two back after being gone for a week or so. It is rough, we feel slow, or like we have lost everything we worked so hard for. Our joints feel tight, and we probably breathe a little harder than we did when we were consistent.  

When you are consistent, and exercise 3-5 times a week, you might be sore and tired, but after a warm up you probably feel okay and ready to work out. That is the consistency doing its job. 

Remember how you felt after 2 weeks off, and now imagine that you are going to try a 1 rep max deadlift. After your attempt you will take 2 weeks off, and try it again. You will continue to do this for 8 weeks total. I think anyone would agree this can be dangerous. You could get seriously injured not doing anything for 2 weeks, walking in and trying to move heavy weight.

Intensity probably won’t get you the results you want

Let’s flip the coin now. You have just started a new training program from Buff-flex-stud-muffin that promises you will be strong, have a 6 pack, and only have to work out 30 minutes a day for 4 weeks. 

So you complete your 4 weeks. It was really hard but you made it and now you are wiped out and just need a couple days to rest. But a couple days turns into a week, which turns into a month, and then 3 months.  

You fireworked! You came in hot and fast, but it was too hot, you couldn’t maintain that heat for very long. And now you are so burned out that it’s hard to start again. Your results are gone, and you are left feeling demotivated instead of inspired to keep going.

Consistency vs intensity: what to take away

Be consistent. Some days you may not feel like exercising or you look at the WOD before leaving the house and decide that looks hard and you don’t want to do it. But go do it anyway. You will feel better and you will have checked off one more consistency box. Plus, the great thing about CrossFit is that it promotes variation across workouts. We recommend getting in cardio, strength training, bodyweight fitness, team sports…anything you want, just to stay active.

When and if you choose a new program, make sure it is easy, practical, and enjoyable starting out. When I say easy I mean easy to follow. If your program looks like an IKEA instruction manual you might have to try even harder to be consistent with it. Try to find a balance of consistency vs intensity, and you’ll be an unstoppable force.