Work Out of the Day“Cindy”As many rounds as possible in 20min of:5 pullups10 pushups15 squatsPost rounds completed to beyondthewhiteboard.com

 

We all know that feeling we get before a crossfit workout.  It’s the same feeling you get right before a fight.  It’s the anticipation of knowing you’re gonna push your body to its limit and you’re going to finish it no matter what.  I think this is the reason why crossfit is just as much of a mental workout.  It trains your body to be able to react and perform under pressure.  It gives you the confidence to know no matter how hard of a challenge you face, you’ll get through it no matter what.  It kicks up that fight or flight response, and instills in you the will to fight everytime.  Besides joining the military, I can’t think of a better way to attain the confidence, camaraderie, and mental fortitude that is forged within us through crossfit.  Here’s another effect that wods can have on some of us. From Kevin Daigle’s blog of CrossFit New England

The Duece is Loose

 In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about something that everyone is well aware of but seldom discusses.  Well that’s not entirely true, we’re not as high-brow as some at CFNE so the topic does come up from time to time.  What is the taboo issue in question?  well to put it in eloquent scientific terminology….the extreme and undeniable laxative effect of barbells on the human bowel and it’s relativistic impact on the logistics of CrossFit.

That’s right boys and girls….there’s something about barbells….and CF in general for that matter that makes you run for the bathroom faster than giant bowl of chili from Wendy’s.  This phenomenon is so pronounced that after awhile, you can almost feel and unseen force applying pressure to your colon as you approach the gym in the car.  Is this an effect of the barbells, or is it a psycho-somatic result of your body’s situational awareness of the unholy thrashing you’re about to put it through?  The jury is out on that one, but there’s no mistaking the end result. 

As we mentioned previously, the effect is generalized and seems to be time-specific to training.  However the point of no return so to speak, does seem to be highly focused around contact with barbells.  What does this mean in english?  Everytime you touch a barbell, you have to take a massive shit within seconds/minutes.  This varies somewhat from person to person…for Harry and Myself, the effect is almost instantaneous.  So much so, that while warming up on a platform for some power cleans, We’d pull a few reps with a dowel….nothing.  Then, 1 rep with the empty bar and it’s, “…..be right back.”

At work there is frequent and daily touching and handling of steel…but this only happens at the gym.  So naturally this points towards some internal process by which your body knows you’re touching a barbell….and initiates gastrointestinal distress with extreme prejudice.  This seems more likely than the theory that somehow, the barbell is more than the sum of its steel parts and bronze bushings and thereby exerts some phantom grip on your poop-chute. 

Now how does this affect the logistical aspects of CF?  First let’s look at the our gym; At CFNE we have 1 stall in the men’s room.  On a typical Saturday class with about 25 people, the line can stack up  2-4 deep between warm-up and stretching depending on whether or not there’s a barbell movements on the given day.  This creates a bottle-neck in the warm-up process on days wich are heavy on the iron.  Also, the gym’s expenditure on TP is expanding faster than the GDP of a small industrialized country.  The author believes that this cost could be stemmed in the long term by capital investment in bidet’s. 

Moving outside the stalls of CFNE to the New England Sectionals at CrossFit Milford in CT.  As a preface, Jay and Jocelyn Leydon ran a TRULY top notch event last weekend.  It ran almost flawlessly, and as smooth as milk of magnesia.  There was only one issue overlooked in the planning and execution of this weekend of athletic awesomeness.  What detail was missing you ask?  They didn’t take into account the “CrossShits.”  Around 200 competitors crushing food all day and multitudes of spectators + 4 workouts(3 with barbells) + 2 days + 5 portable  shit-houses = epic fail.  Of course, there’s a formula (which the writer is not aware of) for establishing the correct number of sanitary facilities for a given event.  However, whatever that number is CrossFit should add a multiplier of 3-4 to account for the un-tying effect barbell enact upon the balloon knot.  This miscalculation led to a discovery on Sunday morning that pumping-out had not taken place the night before, and thus the count of shit-houses was less than adequate.  As one CF’er, who’ll remain nameless (It won’t be that hard to guess) intimated, the pile inside was so high that it encroached upon the comfort zone….being far to close to the top to be acceptable or safe.  Apparently, un-phased by such a disturbing development this intrepid and resourceful individual used the items available in the immediate surroundings to compress the “pile” and achieve acceptable clearance before succumbing to the revenge of the squat-clean.

Even training on a very empty stomach doesn’t seem to negate these effects, so it’s just something we’ll have to live with in perpetuity.  It’s important that we “air out” these issues as crossfitters to help us better understand the challenges we all share on a daily basis.  I’ll conclude with a public service announcement….and something we stress in CrossFit daily, listen to your body.  Don’t try and wait until later…..as the sage Mark Rippetoe once said of deadlifts (but it applies to all barbell movements)…..

“Shitting yourself when you deadlift was omitted from [Starting Strength].

The best way to avoid this is to not deadlift when you need to shit, and vice versa.

Planning is the key here.”