”The magic is in the movement, the art is in the programming, the science is in the explanation, and the fun is in the community.” – Coach Greg Glassman

EMPIRICALLY BASED, CLINICALLY TESTED, COMMUNITY DRIVEN

Let’s break that apart and see what it means to us at No Excuses Athletics-CrossFit.

The magic is in the movement: Deadlift, Snatch, Pull-ups, Wallball, Clean and Jerk, Front Squat, Back Squat, Push-ups, SDHP, Running, Rowing and Burpees. All of these movements and more are what CrossFit is all about but it’s not just the movement alone. These are all MULTI-JOINT exercises which means you are moving more than just one muscle on each exercise and many times, doing it explosively. Because of this your body must adapt and do it quickly to keep up with the stimulus of these complex movements. Your brain must also engage so that it is getting as much stimulus as your body. I never understand why people wanted to tune out and not think about the exercise they are doing. If you are throwing 100 lbs over your head…your brain better be an active participant.

The art is in the programming: Constantly Varied. Have you heard that before? The beauty of the programming at No Excuses Athletics-CrossFit is the method to the madness. There is never a workout that is just pulled out of a hat or something to fill space or heaven forbid…just something that will hurt. Every day the workouts are specifically designed to create a response in the body. There is a reason for a time limit, or an endurance WOD, or light weight, or a sprint, or a Turkish Get-up, or Olympic lifts or rowing, or the “Heavy Stuff”. Do you know what that reason is every day? If not, ask your coach. If they can’t answer, ask why not. Our programming is special and you should know why.

The science is in the explanation: This comes down to your caoches. They know what they are talking about and have the gift of teaching. The ability to break down a new move, find a cue that works and to get a body moving correctly is an art. They share the whys along with the hows because if you don’t know why you are doing it; you are less likely to continue doing it. You should be told what muscles you are using, what it is supposed to feel like, and if the hurt is the right kind of hurt. We never want you leaving a workout questioning what just happened. You should know what happened and only be questioning your sanity. ☺

The fun is in the community: At No Excuses Athletics-CrossFit we have a solid lock on this part. Immerse yourself in the events, find a workout partner, talk smack, laugh, cry, puke and have a good time, go to ipolitos on Thursday nights, read your emails, write comments everyday on the comments section of the website, cheer each other on in positive ways, hug one another, encourage one another, and help one another in every way possible. These people are your friends. We care if you don’t come to class or if you had a really bad day. Share it with us. There is something really special about doing what we do together. Everything hurts less if someone else is feeling your pain. And lastly, just like Kelly Starret said, “And for crying out loud. Don’t go into the pain cave. I can’t stress this enough. Your Totem Animal won’t be in there to help you. You’ll be on your own. The Pain Cave is for cowards.
Pain is your companion, don’t go hide from it.”

-Coach Ben

* information gathered from Coach Glassman, Kelly Starrett of CrossFit San Francisco, and Crossfit 5280.*

Over the next couple of days, you may notice that we’re deviating a little from the M/W/F Max Effort Days (any day where you attempt to set a 1 rep max on any particular lift) + Met-con (nickname for metabolic conditioning, or what you know to be our WODs) structure.

I’m not delusional, I realize how I just made a post about our Max Effort programming and our class schedule about a week ago and I’m already back at it again, changing things up once we got in the groove The reason for the change is three fold.

First – if our programming is going to advance optimally for you, we need to program workouts around a 3-days on 1-day off (or very close to it) work to rest ratio.

For those of you who train all 5 days during the week and take the weekend off, the only thing that will change is that you’ll make-up WODs from the previous weekend when make-up days come up.

We’ve noticed that quite a few folks aren’t taking full advantage of the benefits of resting as much as they need to be either. I hope that by programming rest/make-up days into the week, people will be able to take advantage of a more calculated program without overtraining.

Trust me, I’d love for you to come in for a light row, practice with a PVC or double unders, or even to hang out on a rest/make-up day. But, keep in mind – optimal recovery must always precede training sessions.

Second – after multiple conversations with our trainers, and in conjunction with the reading I’ve done on my own, I believe that the Max Effort lifting days need to be separated out from the Met-con WODs.

Whether we feel totally fresh after performing the Max Effort lifts or not, Max Effort days are very demanding on us nueroendocrinely. So, if we’re going to get the most out of each workout, we need to time these lifts correctly and avoid overtraining.

Don’t interpret max efforts being demanding on us as a bad thing at all – in fact, in my opinion these lifting days will stimulate our performance development in the gym more than anything else we do. The only problem is that when max effort days are overloaded with the additional demands on our system that a Met-con requires, at some point our performance is eventually going to decline.

I also don’t want anyone thinking what they’ve been doing has been bad or counter-productive. If you feel that way, then I’ll show you proof on how every single person in the gym has seen performance improvement from the old Max Effort style programming we’ve used the past couple months! We’re just always looking for ways to continually improve the quality of service for everyone in the gym.

I know that the max effort lifts aren’t everyone’s favorites in the gym. And for those of you who truly want to get everything you can from both your performance in the gym, and your personal development outside of it, I hope you believe me that half the battle is continuing to keep pushing for new limits in your max effort training.

For those of you who don’t want anything to do with the max efforts, I don’t have any problem with you using lighter weight and working with faster repetitions (using the dynamic effort/speed training described below). I wouldn’t ever want to lose anyone over people not wanting to do the lifts – in my opinion, doing the same 5 CrossFit WODs every week would ‘probably’ keep you healthier than the typical gym workouts – but I don’t want to come across like I don’t think the max effort days aren’t critically important either.

Third – and perhaps most importantly – the new style of programming is going to allow us to work on Dynamic Efforts (or Speed training).

The Dynamic Effort method helps develop speed with strength in our lifts. Our goal is to apply as much speed-strength to start moving a barbell off the ground/rack as in the case of a deadlift or shoulder press, or reverse its direction as quickly as possible as in the case of the squat or bench press.

One problem with only lifting a maxed out (or close to maxed out) load, is that it’s impossible to develop speed at this point. We need to work on developing our speed-strength, where we’re reaching maximum attainable speed on the barbell, on Dynamic Effort days where we’re only lifting a fraction of our 1 rep max.

Part of the Dynamic Effort method includes the use of bands and chains to supplement some of the weight on a barbell – and some of you may have seen McGriff playing around with bands attached to the racks. The reason for doing this is to teach our bodies to react with speed at the bottom of the lift in order to quickly reverse the weight’s direction and meet the majority of its resistance at the top.

There are countless ways to incorporate the dynamic method into our program – and we’ll continually seek out new ways to perform dynamic and max effort lifts in a number of new combinations to avoid accommodation. In short, the Law of Accommodation states that we will decrease our training volume over the long run if we do not vary our methods and movements as often as necessary.

We will frequently combine Met-con WODs on these Dynamic Effort lifting days, as well as individual days dedicated to met-cons. My hope is that with the improved recovery and optimized training program, we’ll see broad improvements across the board.

When the Max Effort method and Dynamic Effort method combine, they form the Conjugate Method.

In all honesty, it’s my belief that the combination of the conjugate method and the CrossFit met-con will set a new precedent for CrossFit gyms around the country. From what I’ve seen from people who have tried it so far, it’s pretty impressive in short order!

More to come on this topic in the next couple days!

Kyle

Check out our girls on 11Alive

PICTURES
Some CF Games Sectionals pictures: Here

There are a few things I’ve noticed in the gym lately that I want to address as a group before they cause any major issues with our overall service. Since Laura built this hot new interactive website with comments, one of my goals has been to discuss ways in which we can continually strive to improve the quality of the service. Ultimately, that’s our main focus – continually striving to improve the quality of the service for each one of you so that everyone can have an equally life-changing experience through CrossFit like I know it’s done for me. So, I thought I’d take a minute or two of yours and share some of my ideas.

First of all, I’m sure some of you have already noticed a few new trends – like the mini-WODs as a warm-up before our “3…2…1…GO!” My rationale behind this one in particular was a lack of intensity in the warm-ups. And don’t get me wrong, I’m the worst of them all when it comes to jumping into a WOD cold.

There are a few members like Ashley Kubiak, Shannon Farnham, the Schiebers, etc., who come in and attack the warm-up everyday. Then there are several of us, myself included, who get sick of doing the same thing everyday and find it pretty hard to get a good sweat going before we hit the WOD.

My goal here is not to exhaust you out before the workout starts, nor is it for you to walk through these aimlessly – you should be working 75-80% as hard in these as you are in your WODs. Hopefully we’ll see this prevent injuries and increase everyone’s work output going forward. But feel free to smack me around if we need to dial up or down on intense-ometer.

Second on the agenda – CLASS SCHEDULE! As a trainer, getting everyone on the same class schedule can be maddening at times. This past week was a little crazy with some people hitting the benchmarks and other folks on alternate workouts, but if we’re going to keep a high level of coaching as we grow, we need to tighten up on this somewhat.

The best way you can help us achieve this is simply to show a few minutes before the class is scheduled to start, or earlier if you want more time to stretch. From now on, the first 10 minutes of class is always going to be your time – on your own – to hit your joint mobility and Samson stretches, and attack your warm-up.

If it’s scheduled on the site, and most every day it will be, the next 5 to 10 measly minutes of class is going to be devoted to skill work. If you’ve practiced a power clean with an educated coach and your PVC pipe 19 times in the past 6 months, honestly, you’re probably getting to a pretty good beginner’s level with it. Point being, nobody needs to feel like they’re too advanced to go back and hammer these fundamentals home every chance they get. I’ve met several Olympians in various sports who still practice the same fundamentals on a daily basis that they learned their first week of practice.

Even if you’re on a separate program – like OTP’s or CrossFit Football – I’d still like it if you would join the group in the skill work. Nobody in our box is close to perfect yet, and each of the trainers would be the first to tell you that’s the truth.

At the very latest, by the twenty-minute mark of class you’re going to move into the lift or WOD. By now, you’ve probably picked up on the trend that Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are a Max Effort lifting day before the typical CrossFit-style WODs.

On lifting days (M, W, F) it is imperative that we stay on schedule if we’re going to be able to start the next class on time!! This is actually a mini-issue inside of the larger scheduling issue, because on the Max Effort days, I’ve noticed that it’s easy for us to lose focus on the lifts and lose out on our intensity when we get distracted in conversation, or whatever’s going on around.

A handful of other pure strength coaches may disagree with me, but in my opinion there really isn’t ever a reason to wait more than 90-seconds to 2 minutes before you perform your next set of reps.

If the Max Effort looks like this ‘Front Squat 3-3-3-1-1-1’ and I know my max is around 250# the last time I tried it, then I’d probably add a set of 10 reps in there in the beginning in addition to the recommended lifts, around 135# (54% of my 1-rep max). Within 90 seconds I’d jump on my first set of 3 at around 175# (70% of my 1-rep max), moving up if I maintained form until I hit 190# (76% of my 1rm), and 205# (82% of 1rm). I’d rest around 90 seconds in-between each of those sets.

For my first attempt at a 1-rep set, I’d rest 2 minutes from the previous set and start at 250# (my previous 1rm). I’d rest 2 minutes again and assuming I made the lift, I’d move up to 255# (102% of previous 1rm) and 260# (104% of previous 1rm).

As you can tell, recording your maxes and knowing where to start is a big part of your personal responsibility. It’s impossible for a trainer to look and see where you should start if you don’t know yourself! If it’s your first time doing a lift, start with a little less weight than you think you could do and feel it out. Avoiding the injuries and living to train another day is far more important in the long run.

And with 3 minutes allotted to a barbell setup, the addition of another set, and the time it takes to actually perform the lifts, I’m still only looking at 13-minutes total time to knock these out!!

O.K. – enough of my rant on the lifts – back to the class schedule… We’re going to be starting the WODs in-between the 35 to 40-minute mark of class time (at the absolute latest!), so we need you to be wrapped up with your lifts and getting your equipment/stations ready to go for the “3…2…1…” count as soon as you finish your lifts.

The WODs we’re programming on these Max Effort days are typically going to be short and sweet (and by sweet, I mean awesomely awful!), and they probably won’t take you too long.

On the days without the Max Effort lifts, we’re going to keep the same schedule for your warm-up (first 10 minutes of class) and skill work (second 10 minutes of class). The only difference is that we’re going to start the “3…2…1…” at the 20 to 25-minute mark of class since there’s no lift involved here. These are our standard CrossFit days and you’ll have approximately 5 minutes to set-up your equipment & stations before the countdown.

Third – I’m almost done, I promise – post-WOD STRETCHING, foam rolling, and icing is something I’d really like to see more of around the gym. I understand if there are days where you’ve really got to run and get on to the rest of your day, but I it makes my day when I see people take the time to stretch out after WODs.

This is your responsibility – on most days your trainer needs to be worrying about getting the next class going. You know you need to do it and we shouldn’t have to ask everyone to come together to get people stretching everyday.

We’re going to be offering a free once a month open lecture on a variety of different topics (nutrition, supplementation, weight lifting, gymnastics, etc.) after the last class ends starting next Saturday. I’d like to include a lecture on PNF stretching in there in the very near future. For the time being, you can ask any of the trainers (but I’ll tell you now you’d be better off talking to Ben, John, Jerome or Laura, this is a habit I need to get into myself!!).

Lastly – and perhaps the most important – the freakin’ music is changing within the next week or 2 – that, I promise you. One thing you can do to help me out with this – in addition to sharing your thoughts/questions/comments/ideas on the rest of my rant, I’d love it if you included 5 legit artists you’d like me to try and track down to put on the iPod. At least if you do this I’ll know you read through the end of the post! And if you suggest The Weather Girls, Dixie Chicks, or Hanson, I may be forced to put it on there and let everyone know who wanted it!

I hope I heard Craig Pake blare out Ghost Busters Techno remix for the last time today Well, actually we may have to keep that one on there for him to keep his “Fran” time down!

Thanks for taking the time to read through this and for your increased awareness of the service we’re trying to maintain for you!

Love you all,

Kyle

Since Monday March 1st is the end of our 7-week Paleo Challenge, we wanted to give you a quick run down of next week.

We will begin performance evaluations on Monday with the CrossFit Total (1rpm Back squat, Deadlift, Shoulder Press), Tuesday we’ll do Jackie (1000m Row, 50 Thrusters at 45/30#, 30 Pull-ups), and we’ll finish with Cindy on Wednesday (5 Pull-ups, 10 Push-ups, 15 Air squats).

I’d strongly suggest getting plenty of rest and quality sleep over the weekend if you want to look, feel & perform at optimum levels! And remember – immediately after you finish Jackie, be sure to take your “after” photos!! We want you to look and feel your best when you finish the competition.

Personally, I can’t wait to see how everything unfolds. We’re going to announce our judging criteria immediately after everyone finishes their performance testing next week. There have been quite a few people I’ve already spoken with who have had some pretty profound results.

I know this has been a big shift in lifestyle for a lot of you, but I truly hope you decide to keep Paleo as a regular part of your life. If you don’t believe what it can continue to do for you over the long haul, take a look at Ed Wood. He’s become one of our top performers in the gym even after enduring a shoulder dislocation. Ed didn’t participate directly in this challenge, but if you talk to him about the Paleo, he’d tell you that everyday is a Paleo challenge. He’s constantly improving his times & maxes, and he looks, feels & performs better than he has since he was a collegiate rower – AND he has an occasional pizza cheat night with his kids.

Looking forward to seeing you all back in the gym this week!

Kyle

Input & Output

For anyone of us who can claim to be among the converted, CrossFit has redefined the way we look at “fitness” with a relatively straightforward approach. The founder of CrossFit, Coach Greg Glassman, was one of the first personal trainers to employ the collection of data to track performance changes in workouts, even though collegiate & Olympic athletes had been doing this for decades.

It is because of Coach Glassman that our focus now is to seek after results we can continually measure, observe and repeat. If you try and remember back to 6th grade science class, we referred to this as The Scientific Method.

Whether you recognize it or not, you are performing a scientific experiment every time you conduct a workout and record your results. And as with any experiment, the better the collection of data, the more accurate our interpretations will be.

In my opinion, if there’s anything you must understand about the methodology behind CrossFit, it’s that “Intensity” must be the most monitored variable in any effective fitness regimen. And when referring to Intensity, I don’t mean how mean you can get your face to look in the mirrors, Intensity is the measure of Power – and Power can be quantified.

In fact, Power (Intensity) = (Force x Distance) / Time

Let’s take our member Paul Whaley for example – Paul started out with close to a 17 minute “Fran” time (Fran is 21-15-9 reps of both Thrusters at 95lbs. & Pull-ups for time). The reason Paul is a perfect example is that he’s one of the only members we’ve had who could do a prescribed (Rx’d) WOD right out of the gate.

After several months of training, he came back to try out Fran again and his time dropped considerably. I believe at his second attempt he was around the 11-minute mark. Subsequent attempts left him with a Fran right below 8-minutes.

Because the weight Paul was moving and the distance he was moving was constant (still 95lbs. on the bar, roughly the same bodyweight for pull-ups, probably close to the same height & distance the bar/body has to travel), when Paul’s time dropped below 8-minutes, roughly half the time of his original effort, he had effectively doubled his fitness in this particular domain.

By making an effective observation that doing the first set of 21 Thrusters & Pull-ups unbroken was fatiguing him too much, Paul made a hypothesis that dropping the weight and coming off the bar to rest for a few seconds after the 11 rep mark would help his time improve even more. And he was right – his latest crack at Fran left him with a very respectable time of 6:02… 2 seconds from breaking under 6 minutes. I have little doubt that his next attempt will be in the 5:30 range or below.

It’s the same concept when anyone in the gym doubles the rounds of “Cindy” they can perform from 5 rounds to 10 rounds two months, they have doubled their fitness in that particular domain. This can be applied and measured with any task.

The whole point of CrossFit is to increase our fitness along broad time and modal domain. We will only consider ourselves as fit as the weakest chink in our armor. If you can back squat 600 lbs., but it takes you 10 minutes to run a mile, by my standards you are not fit. You may be strong, but you aren’t fit. Likewise, if you can run a 5-minute mile, but you can’t back squat at least your bodyweight, you are not fit.

There are so many measures of fitness around that sometimes it can seem more than a little confusing. And frankly, that’s why so many gyms can get away with charging a criminal amount for personal training.

They’ll convince you that it’s a good idea to get hooked up to the latest VO2max device and will want to monitor your anaerobic threshold. Some trainers may even try convincing you that maintaining a lower heart rate during your workout means you’re getting in elite shape and having it raise to high at any point in time means you’re deconditioned.

I have heard Coach Glassman say many times over, and I agree with him wholeheartedly – I would never take an improvement in any other measure of fitness or health, from heart rate to blood pressure to lactate threshold, for a reduction in my performance across broad time and modal domain.

And oh by the way, the guys & gals doing Fran in under 3 minutes still feel like their heart is about to beat through their chests – I’d love to meet anyone who argues that they’re not in good shape.

Kyle Maynard

I came across this very inspirational letter and thought to myself, “everyone needs to read it, act upon it, and true change will occur in all of our lives!” It is from a CrossFitter from New jersey. Enjoy!

The Circle of Influence

by Patrick Cummings

“You know, your grandmother’s been doing CrossFit in her basement.”

Maybe it’s only a rumor, an exaggeration at best. But as the potatoes are getting mashed and the pumpkin pies are batting their eyelashes at me from the countertop, as my family mills about the kitchen waiting for the official start of our Thanksgiving festivities, my mother whispers to me and I can’t help but believe it.

“She’s not telling anybody, but she’s doing it.”

My grandmother is almost eighty years old, but don’t tell her that. She’s a former nurse, mother to nine children, and wife to one stubborn and amazing old man. Together, they are the picture of what retirement should be—travel, family, continued intellectual curiosity and the occasional glass of good scotch. They are the reason I’m not scared of getting older.

Give us the one thing we can do to turn this all around. One thing, and we’ll all do it and it’ll set us heading back in the right direction.

So when my mother tells me that my grandmother is doing CrossFit in the basement, she unwittingly jars me from my newfound CrossFit malaise.

It’s been a week of reading blog posts and endless pages of repetitive comments. Days of conversations with no real conclusions. Hours spent trying to determine how I felt about the whole mess, with no result other than disappointment pointed in no general direction.

But now it’s as if my mother’s taken me by the shoulders and shaken me back to reality.

I think about my aunt in Virginia emailing me a few days earlier to tell me her “Fran” time. I think about doing “Daniel” at CrossFit Cape Cod alongside two aunts and a cousin, my uncle across the gym on the C2, pulling himself toward a new 2K PR. I think about teaching my twenty-nine year old sister how to do pullups with a band and my four year-old cousin showing me what a burpee was.

Later, after the turkey has been cleared from the table and I’ve finally given in to the pumpkin pie, I sit across from my grandfather. We’re talking about why the world seems so imperfect these days and I ask him a simple question. I ask, “If someone comes to you tomorrow and says, ‘Give us the one thing we can do to turn this all around. One thing, and we’ll all do it and it’ll set us heading back in the right direction.’ What’s that one thing?”

He thinks about it for a few seconds, leans back and smiles. He says he has no idea, which, if you know my Grandfather, is a rare occurrence.

He says change isn’t so simple, that it doesn’t work like that. He says the best we can hope for is to positively affect those people within our own circle of influence. Do right by the people closest to you, and they will do right by those closest to them.

I make a quick mental list: one grandmother, one mother, two sisters, three aunts, one uncle, three cousins and three college friends. I claim no credit but being lucky enough to have been introduced to CrossFit two years ago by a good friend. I was within his circle of influence and they are within mine. The two women my aunt has recruited to workout with her in the basement are within hers.

They don’t care about the drama. They don’t care about the ramifications or the politics. They care only about feeling better and living fuller lives.

And that’s what I’m back to thinking about now. Because my grandmother might be CrossFitting in her basement.

Who can you influence? Moms, Dads, Brothers, Sisters, Aunts and Uncles. What about cousins? Friends? College roommates? Co-Workers? Some of you are already on the right path to creating change in the lives of the ones around you. To you, I say, “keep up the change!” To the others, I ask you, “who can you influence?” It starts with those closest to you and will spread like a virus if you allow it to. What a satisfaction it is to know that you were able to help someone for the better! To do good to those around you! Man, I get excited when I think about the unlimited possibilities of great change that can occur when we help those closest to us! To everyone, I say, ” Get out there and encourage those around you!”

-Coach Ben

Here is a great way to welcome one of our newest members to the gym. Many have already met him. Steven is a professor in psychology and neuroscience at the Georgia Gwinnett College and is highly motivated to pursue research-based fitness. How does that play a role with CrossFit? Well, by CrossFit being an evidence-based fitness methodology, there has to be research behind the evidence and Steven is on the road to scientifically researching all aspects of fitness. So we welcome you Steven and look forward to seeing and reading what you come up with!

Camaraderie

Saturday was my first taste of the camaraderie of CF No Excuses and I loved it! Everyone was super friendly, supportive, motivational, and encouraging. This feeling was seconded this (Monday) afternoon in completing the ’300′ workout. Without the encouragement of Coach Ben and the others my time (20:32) would have even been slower. Thanks! This helped me get through the WOD, WithOut Dying!

This got me thinking about the CF model and it’s relationship with pain. One of the key aspects of CrossFit is that it’s considered a “sport – the sport of fitness”. By being competitive, and supportive at the same time, a sense of camaraderie develops. We post our times on the whiteboard to be competitive, but not to brag. In fact, I post my time in hopes that I and others will defeat it, driving me harder to beat their time and mine! What does this have to do with pain? Well if you can bare to read on, I will try to explain….

Pain is a bio-physiological response, usually in response to cellular death and/or damage. That is, cells are dying (or stretching or bursting or shrinking or… you get the idea) and that cues sensory neurons (nociceptors) responsible for transmitting pain signals to the brain (technically pain is called nociception). The pathway from pain (e.g., putting your hand on a hot burner like I did Sunday morning) to the brain is fast and efficient and multi-faceted. Fast and efficient, as you’d expect since pain, the perception of things hurting or not feeling good and normal, is our biology’s way, our body’s way of saying: “STOP! Now do something different!” When my hand hit the burner this morning a very rapid set of neuronal signals told my brain to automatically pull my hand away. It was a reflex. However, there was other stuff going on at a level that is usually unconscious to us. Our brains where making rapid associations (learning) that burners, when red, are hot and that’s bad and therefore DO NOT put your hand on one again (STUPID!) I’m a slow learner, so chances are I will burn myself again this week.

In this neuronal cascade from hand to brain, as I’ve tried to explain simply above, there are actually several “pathways”, hence the multifaceted part. One of the most important pathways is called the spino-thalamic pathway. This is what brings the signal from the injury to a parts of the brain involved in generating virtually automatic behavioral responses like pulling your hand back and holding it as you wince in pain. The signal is also transmitted to several other parts of the brain including subcortical brain areas that are considered “pain” transducers (these sort of decide whether we pay attention to the pain) and to the cerebral cortex, which is where your brain/self figures out where on your body you are feeling the pain (e.g., hand, back, abs, legs, or everywhere after the ’300′ workout). Without these pathways you cannot “feel” pain correctly. But, “feeling” pain is not all there is to this story. See, feeling pain is like feeling the “burn”, feeling a cut, feeling the impact of a punch, or feeling the tear of your ACL. Often we “feel” pain, but do not respond immediately to it. For example, think about a little kid who has just fallen and scraped their knee. They usually jump right up, then they look at their knee and see a red liquid (blood) oozing from it, and then the crying begins. This is what we neuroscientists refer to as the “neural alarm system”. The brain’s “Oh Shit!” response. It’s an interpretation of the “feeling” of pain as something important, something that demands our attention and demands that we respond. For the little fella it’s: 1) cry 2) so mom or dad will pick me up and 3) then all things in the universe will be good again! For the chef: it’s wrap my finger so I don’t get blood in the soup! And so forth.

Interestingly, our “feeling” of pain in the physical realm (e.g., getting burned, cut, punched, etc.) is tightly linked, neurologically, to our feeling pain in the social realm (being excluded, ostracized, socially rejected, or made fun of). The kid who doesn’t get picked for dodgeball experiences a sense of pain very similar to what he would feel if he were just kicked with a dodgeball: although all of this pain is associated with the “neural alarm system”, not the physical aspects of pain. See humans have been social critters for, well a long, long time (~4 million years or so)! So, our brains have evolved to be a group organism. We like to be in groups. We like the feeling of team support. We like when our teammates slap our ass. We like camaraderie. And when any of those things are threatened our brain responds using the same exact systems as those used in physical pain in order to motivate us to do something different: this time it’s not to pull your hand from the hot burner, but to make friends, work to get picked for dodgeball, or work to complete that WOD even if you think you’ll meet Pukie, or die! In the same way Tylenol and Ibuprofen reduce physical pain, camaraderie can reduce social pain. Let’s take this thought experiment one step further: if the physical pain and social pain systems are so tightly linked and intertwined, neurologically, then we might assume that medicines that reduce physical pain ought to reduce social pain. Indeed, there is new scientific data suggesting that certain pain killers can actually make someone feel LESS upset about being excluded from a group. Amazing isn’t it! So when your kid is feeling low about being cut from the team, “take 2 Tylenol and call me in the morning”, might actually work! Similarly, the thing that reduces social pain – camaraderie – should be able to reduce physical pain. There is little data on this in the scientific, sports science literature, but I think we see this everyday in CrossFit through a highly cooperative, competitive, friendly, and sporting environment. Camaraderie, being made to feel part of a group that is supporting you, with a larger purpose, can make you push through a WOD (or any challenge you face in life: an exam, a war, an athletic competition) without “feeling” the physical pain!

Written by: Steven Platek

IMPORTANT NOTE-– Steven will be publishing an article in the CrossFit Journal very soon! Be on the lookout for that and go read it!! We will also be posting it when it comes out