Fitness, Luck and Health PDF (CrossFit, LLC 2016)

FITNESS, LUCK AND HEALTH Adapted from Coach Glassman’s Feb. 27, 2016, L1 lecture in San Jose, California; March 27, 2016, L1 lecture in Aromas, California; and April 24, 2016, L1 lecture in Oakland, California. In 2002, we observed that almost any health...

FITNESS, LUCK AND HEALTH Adapted from Coach Glassman’s Feb. 27, 2016, L1 lecture in San Jose, California; March 27, 2016, L1 lecture in Aromas, California; and April 24, 2016, L1 lecture in Oakland, California. In 2002, we observed that almost any health parameter sits well ordered on a con- tinuum of values that ranged from sick to well to t. High-density lipoproteins (HDL cholesterol), for instance: At less than 35 mg/dL you have a problem, 50 mg/dL is nice, and 75 mg/dL is a whole lot better. Blood pressure: 195/115 mm/Hg you have a problem, 120/70 mm/Hg is healthy, and 105/50 mm/Hg looks more like an ath- lete. Triglycerides, bone density, muscle mass, body fat, hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c, aka glycated hemoglobin)—all can be plotted relative to these three values. The signi cance is that these are the predictors, the cause, and the manifesta- tion of chronic disease. Chronic diseases include obesity, coronary heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, stroke, cancer (to include breast, colon and lung, but my theory is this will include all the positron-emission-tomography-positive cancers eventu- ally, which are 95 percent of all cancers), Alzheimer’s, peripheral artery disease, advanced biological aging, drug addiction, among others. It is very likely that if you have any chronic disease, you have deranged markers. If you have Alzheimer’s, you would see your HDL suppressed, your blood pressure up, your triglycerides up, your body fat up, your muscle mass down, your bone density down, your HbA1c high, etc. The same is true with diabetes. The same is true with most cancers. Medicine has no effective treatment for chronic disease: It is symptomatic only. The doctor gives you a drug to bring your cholesterol down, a different drug to raise your bone density. You might need bariatric surgery if you have morbid obe- sity. If you have paved-over coronary arteries, they can do bypass surgery. If you become glucose intolerant, the doctor can put you on insulin. But all of these are not xes. They are masking the problem. If you have persistent malignant hyper- tension, you should take an antihypertensive if you cannot get your blood pres- sure down otherwise. But how would you get it down otherwise? CrossFit, LLC holds a uniquely elegant solution to the greatest problem facing the world today. It is not global warming or climate change. It is not the worst two choices imaginable for president. It is chronic disease. The CrossFit stimulus— which is constantly varied, high-intensity functional movement coupled with meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar—can give you a pass on chronic disease. It is elegant in the mathematical sense of being marked by simplicity and ef cacy. It is so simple. Seventy percent of deaths in the United States (U.S.) are attributable to chronic disease. Of the 2.6 million people who died in the U.S. in 2014, 1.8 million died from chronic disease. This pattern of increasing deaths due to chronic diseasesLevel 1 Training Guide METHODOLOGY Fitness, Luck and Health, continued Copyright © 2020 CrossFit, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Level 1 Training Guide | 51 of 255 also holds in countries that are ravaged by infectious disease. The numbers are ris- ing, and when we nally add the positron-emission-tomography-positive cancers in, the number might be 80-85 percent in the U.S. It is estimated by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that the U.S. could have up to a hundred million diabetics in 2050. That will affect everyone. You will not go into the emergency room for some- thing as simple as a broken arm: You will be seeing heart attacks on every corner. Medicine has no solution; you do. CrossFit, with meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar, will help you avoid all of this. The other 30 percent are dying from accidents that come in four “-ic” variants: ki- netic, genetic, toxic, and microbic. Kinetic: physical trauma, car crash, hit on a bike. Toxic: environmental toxins, such as lead poisoning. Genetic: genetic disorders like cystic brosis, you are born with it. Microbic: virus, bacteria, prions. This is where treatment can be symptomatic. This is where the miracles of medicine are. If you have got a genetic disorder that is making you sick, you need a doctor. If you have been poisoned, you need a doctor. If you caught a nasty virus or a esh-eating bacteria, you need a doctor. You do not need to go to the gym, and you do not need burpees. Doctors are like lifeguards; CrossFit trainers are like swim coaches. When you are drowning, you do not need a swim coach. You needed one, and you did not get one. What you need is a lifeguard. We will teach people how to swim, and when they do not pay attention, and they go under, the doctors take care of it. Accidents are largely stuff you can do nothing about, but there is one exception. Be fi fi fi fi fi fi fl  t. Kinetic: We hear stories from war of CrossFit athletes who survive things that people have not survived previously. Toxicity: Someone who is tter is more likely to survive the same poisoning than someone who is not. Genetic: There are genes you have inherited that will or will not express because of your behavior through diet and exercise. Microbic: Who is most vulnerable to viral pneumonia? The frail, the feeble. So tness offers a protection here. But assume there is no protection from tness because what you need in terms of preventing accidents largely is luck. Luck—there is no “good luck” versus “bad luck”—looks like not having these things happen to you. Seventy percent of what kills people can be addressed by what CrossFit trainers do, and the other 30 per- cent of deaths occur based on luck, so get t and do not think about luck. If you stand around worried about germs, worried about the tire that is going to come through the windshield, worried about breathing toxic air, and worried about your genes, you are wasting your time. It will not make you happy. It will not make you better. It will not make you safer. You are not going to live any longer. This sums to my “kinetic theory of health.” The singular focus on kinematics—in- creasing work capacity, increasing your tness—is how to avoid chronic disease. Just get a better Fran time, better deadlift, better Diane time, and do all the things that would support a better Fran time—like eating meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar; getting plenty of sleep; and maybe taking some sh oil. After that, we are out of stuff that matters. With that singularLevel 1 Training Guide METHODOLOGY Fitness, Luck and Health, continued Copyright © 2020 CrossFit, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Level 1 Training Guide | 52 of 255 focus on work capacity, we can avoid chronic disease and there is nothing really to worry about. You have the lifestyle answer. Make it to the gym, eat like we tell you, and enjoy yourself. We have hacked health. Here is the magic formula for you: Fitness + Luck (bad) = Health. It is the part you can do something about plus the part you can do nothing about that sums to your outcome. So make the most out of tness and you will not be part of the seven out of 10 who die unnecessarily due to lifestyle. In the end, chron- ic disease is a de ciency syndrome. It is sedentation with malnutrition. The cost of chronic disease is such that U.S. medical expenditure is now about $4 trillion a year. In 2008, Pricewaterhousecoopers estimated that roughly half of all U.S. medical expenditure was wasted on unnecessary procedures, administra- tive inef ciencies, treatment of preventable conditions and so on. Add in fraud and abuse and we are wasting well more than a trillion dollars. We also know 86 percent of overall health-care spending goes to treating the chronically diseased ineffectively. Of the remaining 14 percent, half goes to the stuff that medicine can actually do something about. That means seven percent of health-care spending is not wasted. The amount spent on chronic disease is a waste. What CrossFit trainers are providing is non-medical health care. When doctors treat those affected by accidents (the 30 percent), that is medical health care. If you are confused about the two, it is easy to distinguish by methods and tools. If someone is cut open, given radiation, prescribed pills, injected with syringes, it is medicine. It is treatment by a doctor. On our side, it looks like CrossFit. We have rings, dumbbells, pull-up bars, our own bodies—and the prescription is universal. It is not to treat disease. It does not mat- ter where you fall on this continuum: You get put on the same program. If the pre- scription is universal, it cannot be medicine. If it is something everyone needs—like air or oxygen—that is not medicine. Without vitamin C, you can get scurvy. Should physicians control orange and lemon groves, onion and kale production because they have vitamin C that you cannot live without? We do not want them doing that to food. We cannot let them do that to exercise, and there is a powerful movement with a lot of funding afoot to do exactly that. Millions of dollars are being spent to bring exercise into the purview of the medical arena so that it falls under the Affordable Care Act. We have 13,000 gyms with 2 to 4 million people safe from chronic disease right now. This community is doing a lot of good things on a lot of fronts. Yet our gyms are thriving not because of our impact on chronic disease. They are thriving be- cause the end users, the customers, are extremely happy with the transformation. And it is part physical, part emotional, part health markers, part relationships. That is the miracle of CrossFit: People are getting something that they did not even fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi  know they wanted or needed.Level 1 Training Guide METHODOLOGY Zone Meal Plans, continued Copyright © 2020 CrossFit, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Level 1 Training Guide | 53 of 255 ZONE MEAL PLANS Originally published in May 2004. Our recommendation to “eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar” is adequate to the task of preventing the scourges of diet-induced disease, but a more accurate and precise prescription is necessary to optimize physical performance. Finely tuned, a good diet will increase energy, sense of well-being, and acumen, while simultaneously ensing fat and packing on muscle. When properly com- posed, the right diet can nudge every important quanti able marker for health in the right direction. Diet is critical to optimizing human function, and our clinical experience leads us to believe that Dr. Barry Sears’ Zone Diet closely models optimal nutrition. CrossFit’s best performers are Zone eaters. When our second-tier athletes commit to strict adherence to the Zone parameters, they generally become top-tier per- formers quickly. It seems that the Zone Diet accelerates and ampli es the effects of the CrossFit regimen. Unfortunately, the full bene t of the Zone Diet is largely limited to those who have at least at rst weighed and measured their food. For a decade, we experimented with sizing and portioning strategies that avoid scales, and measuring cups and spoons, only to conclude that natural variances inLevel 1 Training Guide METHODOLOGY Zone Meal Plans, continued Copyright © 2020 CrossFit, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Level 1 Training Guide | 54 of 255 caloric intake and macronutrient composition without measurement are greater than the resolution required to turn good performance to great. Life would be much easier for us were this not so! The 1-Block Equivalents for Protein, Fat, and Carbohydrates (Figure 1, Table 3) and Sample Zone Meals and Snacks (Table 4) have been our most expedient approach for eliciting athletes’ best performances and optimal health. Even discounting any theoretical or technical content, this portal to sound nutri- tion still requires some basic arithmetic and weighing and measuring portions for the rst weeks. Too many athletes, after supposedly reading Sears’ book “Enter the Zone,” still ask, “So what do I eat for dinner?” They get meal plans and block charts. We can make the Zone more complicated or simpler, but not more effective. We encourage everyone to weigh and measure portions for a couple weeks because it is supremely worth the effort, not because it is fun. If you choose to “guesstimate” portions, you will have the result of CrossFit’s top performers only if and when you are lucky. Within a couple of weeks of weighing and measuring, you will have developed an uncanny ability to estimate the mass of common food portions, but, more impor- tantly, you will have formed a keen visual sense of your nutritional needs. This is a profound awareness. In the Zone scheme, all of humanity calculates to either 2-, 3-, 4-, or 5-block meals at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with either 1- or 2-block snacks between lunch and dinner and again between dinner and bedtime. We have simpli ed the process for determining which of the four meal sizes and two snack sizes best suits your needs (Table 1). We assume that you are doing CrossFit; i.e., active. Being a “4-blocker,” for instance, means that you eat three meals each day, where each meal is composed of 4 blocks of protein, 4 blocks of carbohydrate, and 4 blocks of fat. Whether you are a “smallish” medium-sized guy or a “largish” medi- um-sized guy would determine whether you will need snacks of 1 or 2 blocks twice a day (Table 2). The “meal plans” we give stand as examples of 2-, 3-, 4-, or 5-block meals, and the “block chart” gives quantities of common foods equivalent to 1 block of protein, carbohydrate, or fat. Once you determine that you need, say, 4-block meals, it is simple to use the block fi fi fl fi fi fi fi  chart and select four times something from the protein list, four times something from the carbohydrate list, and four times something from the fat list every meal.Level 1 Training Guide METHODOLOGY Zone Meal Plans, continued Copyright © 2020 CrossFit, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Level 1 Training Guide | 55 of 255 One-block snacks are chosen from the block chart at face value for a single snack of protein, carbohydrate, and fat, whereas 2-block snacks are, naturally, composed of twice something from the carbohydrate list combined with twice something from the protein list and twice something from the fat list. Every meal, every snack, must contain equivalent blocks of protein, carbohy- drate, and fat. If the protein source is speci cally labeled “non-fat,” then double the usual fat blocks for that meal. Read “Enter the Zone” to learn why. For those eating according to Zone parameters, body fat comes off fast. When our men fall below 10 percent body fat and start approaching 5 percent, we kick up the fat intake. The majority of our best athletes end up at X blocks of protein, X blocks of carbohydrate, and 4X or 5X blocks of fat. Learn to modulate fat intake to produce a level of leanness that optimizes performance. The Zone Diet neither prohibits nor requires any particular food. It can accommo- date paleo or vegan, organic or kosher, fast food or ne dining, while delivering the bene ts of high-performance nutrition. fi fi fi