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Finally on our tour of the macronutrients are Fats! Another term you might be familiar with that is similar is Lipids, and the distinction is that lipid is a broader term. Kind of a square-rectangle relationship if you will. While fat has been the villain in the past, it is making its way back into popularity, but the truth is, it is just another macronutrient that should be present in a balanced eating lifestyle.

Like carbohydrate, fat contains carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms, but because the fatty acid chains have more carbon and hydrogen relative to oxygen, they provide more energy per gram when compared to protein or carbohydrates – this will become important later, tuck this away for now. 

Fat’s behavior in the body is related in part to the saturation of the fatty acids (i.e the amount of hydrogen it contains). Saturated fats contain all the hydrogen they can carry (no double bonds), and most animal fats and tropical oils are relatively high in saturated fatty acids. In unsaturated fats, some of the positions where hydrogen atoms are usually attached are missing, and carbon atoms are joined together by double bonds. Fatty acids containing one double bond are called monounsaturated, and olive, peanut, and canola oils are high in monounsaturated fatty acids. With two or more double bonds, a fatty acid is polyunsaturated, and soy, corn, sunflower, and safflower oils are relatively high in polyunsaturated fatty acids. An important thing to note is that no food item contains 100% of a certain type of fat. Most dietary fats and oils are a mix of all three types of fats, with one type predominating.

Fat serves many functions within the body. Energy is stored primarily as fat tissue, and while commonly considered negatively, body fat is necessary for insulation and protection of organs, and for hormonal regulation. Fat also serves as a carrier for many fat-soluble vitamins, and supplies the essential omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids which are necessary for the formation of healthy cell membranes, the proper development and functioning of the brain and nervous system, and the production of hormones. Without fat, we would not be able to live!

Additionally, fat is responsible for the characteristic flavor, aroma, and texture of many foods, and promotes a feeling of fullness after a meal. Read: it tastes good.

But how much should I consume? That is the real question right there. Assuming you have read the previous posts on protein and carbohydrates, and assuming that you have taken the advice given within, fat should make up the rest of your diet. That was easy! But also not very clear or satisfying, right? Here’s the deal. If you are eating enough protein (by the way, most protein sources are also great fat sources), and you are eating 800 grams of fruit and vegetables each day, you probably don’t want or need to eat much more than that. It all kind of works out. Now you should monitor your fat intake as it does have a greater effect on total caloric load than protein or carbohydrates, so those looking to lose some weight will want to proceed with caution. Additionally, like carbohydrates, try to vary the fat sources you consume. The two essential fatty acids (the omega-6 and -3) need to have a rough balance. By varying your diet you can help to keep these in the desired ratio, which is roughly 1:1 to 1:4 omega-3:omega-6. Typical American diets are very high in omega-6 due to the prevalence of seed oils in today’s culture.

I will conclude with fat and its relation to performance, seeing as most of us want to optimize our performance. Fats provide more energy per gram when compared to protein or carbohydrates as I mentioned before, just over twice as much in fact. This is important because ultimately staying alive is a matter of energy production – once we can no longer produce energy, we die. Generally, fat is used for energy production in low intensity, long-term activities – think lounging on the couch watching TV or long distance running. Since we have such large fat stores in our bodies (compared to our carbohydrate storage) we are able to do these activities extremely efficiently as the fat stores are vast sources of fuel. As the exercise intensity increases, there is a gradual shift from fat to carbohydrate as the body’s preferred source of fuel. What this means for us, is that our diet should be balanced across all macronutrients as we dabble in all types of exercise (constantly varied, right?). As I mentioned above, figure out the protein and the carbohydrates, and the fat should work itself out!

We have a couple new members we would like to introduce. If you see Tony or Mike at the gym, please welcome them! Here is a little bit about them, and what brought them to CrossFit Hakk!

Tony DuPont

Tony has lived most of his life in the UP, outside of about 6 years affiliated with the Navy where he spent time in Chicago, Norfolk, San Diego, Guam, and cruising around the ocean. He was an athlete in high school and he has been wanting to get back into shape. His interest in CrossFit started with his brother and his wife who joined a CrossFit gym in Green Bay. He was intrigued by the variety of their workouts, how multiple muscle groups are worked simultaneously, and how much they enjoyed it. Tony’s favorite movement in the intro was the Wall Ball, and he really liked learning about the deadlift and how the hinge is integrated into many of the movements we perform. He is most excited about joining the group classes, perfecting the movements in a structured environment, and having the scheduled times formulate more of a commitment to exercising!

Michael LaBeau

Mike was born in Petoskey, but now resides in Houghton. He heard about CrossFit from his friend Jay after he joined, and saw the results that Jay was obtaining from his training. Mike realized he needed motivation and accountability in his own workouts, decided he wasn’t doing enough by himself, and hopped into the Intro program! His favorite part of Intro was the idea of total body/core strength and how CrossFit approaches this task. Mike is excited to join the classes and they give an inclusive feel, because everyone is there by choice, and they want to do better for themselves, while motivating others. 

Before we get to the definition, I want to finish off the remaining three defining characteristics of foundational movements:

Universal Motor Recruitment Patterns – How similar are the movements? Functional movements have tremendous carry over and skill transfer to other functional movements, and by training functional movements you will get better at other things. For instance improvements in the push press will typically improve your pull ups and your running because you learn to use your hips more effectively.

Core to Extremity – The movement starts from your core with the large main muscles and works its way out to the smaller supporting muscles. Generally movement starts with the hips and core and radiates out from there. “It’s all in the hips, it’s all in the hips, it’s all in the hips, it’s all in the hips” – Chubbs, 1996.

Compound yet irreducible – You can’t break the movement down to smaller exercises or functional movements. A squat is a squat and there isn’t a simpler movement pattern to get the job done. And no, partial squats do not count no matter how many times you see them in Globo gyms.

And now to the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The definition of functional movements, according to Crossfit, is that functional movements are characteristic in their ability to move large loads, long distances, quickly. Which if you remember from July, all comes back to power and intensity. Large loads is force, long distances is distance, and quickly refers to time. Functional movements create power and intensity.

Based on the defining characteristics and the definition, we can then start to classify movements as either functional or not. Keep in mind that the defining characteristics do not always apply and that the definition should be the end all evaluation. For example, take the bicep curl. Is a bicep curl natural, essential, or safe? Is it a compound movement, a universal motor recruitment pattern, or core to extremity? Of those characteristics a few may apply which might lead you to believe that it could be – core to extremity and safe come to mind (definitely not natural – no one drinks like that). But when looking at the power equation we can see that it is not functional. You are not moving large loads, it is not a fast movement, and you are not moving the weight very far. Compared to a hang power clean with a DB, the distance is roughly the same (maybe a little more when you add the hinge), faster because of the addition of the hip, and you are able to handle significantly more weight. Therefore hang power cleans with DBs are functional, bicep curls are not. When in doubt, use the power test to see if a movement is functional. 

Why do we care? Functional movements are life movements as discussed last month. We need these movements in order to be human, and once we can no longer perform them, we cannot live independently. Non-functional movements (gym movements) are not the enemy, however, you should strive to make the main focus of your training functional. Gym movements will only get you better at gym movements, whereas functional movements will get you better for life!

Things just keep getting better – this is biggest committed club of the year so far with 24 of our members attending 15 or more classes in October! Here are the members that made it in October!

Here we have our Committed Club members (attended 15+ classes) for September!

   

Wow – where has the summer gone?! Here are some very belated celebrations for member accomplishments in the back half of the summer…

First – our committed club members for July!

Remember – committed club status requires attending at least 15 classes in any given month. Here are the members that achieved this in July:

Katie LaCosse
Rochelle Spencer
Aaron Persenaire
Nick Turner
Michelle Miller
Gerald Huffman
Amanda Hoffman
Sarah Dowd
Jay Martineau
Hannah Soumis
Joanne Coponen
Dawn Coon
Sophia Michels
Emily Geiger-Dedo
Clint Johnson
Laura Konkel
Julie Jalkanen
Nicole Heinonen
Kartik Iyer

We say that Crossfit utilizes functional movements, but what does that really mean? Plugging the word “functional” into the Google machine gives two definitions, the second of which I like better: “designed to be practical and useful, rather than attractive.” However, this is still not good enough for us in Crossfit and therefore, we have our own definition of functional when it pertains to movements. In fact, Crossfit has six defining characteristics and a definition for functional movements, which should indicate to you how important functionality is when it comes to functional movements in Crossfit.

In this first post on functional movements I am going to cover the big three of the defining characteristics, which are: functional movements are natural, essential, and safe.

These movements are natural in that no one created them, they are just things that we do. Yes, we still need to be taught how to squat correctly, but who taught the first person to ever squat how to squat? No one! It is just built into our systems and our DNA. It is just the natural movement that you have to use to move from a seated position to a standing one. Look at all of the babies learning to walk. They have a beautiful, below parallel, rock solid squat position. Who taught them how to do that? No one! This holds true for deadlifting, pressing overhead, cleaning, etc. 

Since the movements are natural, they are also essential. Essential in the sense that once we lose the ability to perform these movements, our quality of life decreases and we are no longer able to live independently. Squatting is getting up off of the toilet, deadlifting is picking your groceries up off the ground, pressing is placing the toaster back up on the top shelf. I mean, even sled pushes are essential – ever take a cart outside in the Econo parking lot towards the end of winter? Those wheels aren’t spinning and you are pushing that cart just like you would a sled. By performing functional movements and becoming stronger in them, we are prolonging the time that we are capable of independent living and therefore prolonging our freedom to live as we choose.

And to close, since these movements are natural and essential, they are inherently safe. Otherwise you would be hurting yourself every time you got up off of the couch. Yes, I understand that you still can hurt yourself doing these movements, but you can also hurt yourself walking, and not to get too morbid, but you can die driving to the gym to perform these functional movements. By learning to perform these movements correctly, and becoming proficient and stronger in them, we are also increasing the safety. Imagine that you have a 400 pound back squat with pristine form. Now imagine that same person does an air squat with a slightly rounded back. Are they safe? Most likely yes. Being stronger in these movements allows for us to be in not-so-great positions in unloaded situations. Meaning, it is ok to have a rounded back when you pick up your groceries from the floor if you can safely and properly deadlift 225 pounds. Being stronger gives you a buffer of safety for our everyday tasks.

Hopefully that clears up a little of the fog surrounding functional movements, next month we will delve a little deeper into the defining characteristics and the definition!

August Post: Nutrition 101 – Carbohydrates

Continuing our macronutrient discussion From June, we will delve into Carbohydrates this month, affectionately referred to as Carbs. Much like protein, carbohydrates are composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms, however, they do not contain nitrogen atoms. Their primary role in humans is to serve as an energy source through the form of sugar.

Carbs can be classified into three groups according to the number of sugar units they contain, Monosaccharides (single sugar molecules), Disaccharides (two simple sugar units joined together), and Polysaccharides (complex carbohydrates which can contain up to thousands of sugar units). We will break these down further below.

Monosaccharides consist of glucose, fructose and galactose, with glucose being the most common. Glucose is a building block for many larger sugars, and is present circulating in the blood (as your blood sugar) and stored as glycogen in your muscles and liver to be used as energy. Fructose is similar to glucose, but has a different atom arrangement which makes it taste much sweeter than glucose. Fructose is naturally present in fruits and vegetables. Galactose is a milk sugar, and gets its name from the Greek galaktos (milk) and the generic chemical suffix for sugars -ose.

Disaccharides consist of sucrose (glucose + fructose), lactose (glucose + galactose), and maltose (glucose + glucose). Sucrose is the most common and is known as table sugar, and lactose is only found in mammalian milk. Maltose occurs primarily when polysaccharides are broken down during digestion, or during the fermentation process of alcohol and is the primary carbohydrate in beer.

Polysaccharides consist of starches, dietary fiber, and glycogen. Starch is the storage form of glucose in plants, and grains, nuts, legumes, and vegetables are all good sources of starch. Important to note, before starch can be used as a source of energy, it must first be broken down into its glucose components. Dietary fiber is a constituent of the plant cell wall, and includes cellulose, hemicellulose, beta-glucans, and pectins. Glycogen is found in small amounts in human and animal tissue as a temporary source of stored energy, although it is not present to any large extent in the foods we eat. Therefore, when glucose enters the muscles and liver, if it is not metabolized for energy it is synthesized to form glycogen through the process of glycogenesis.

All types of dietary carbohydrates, sugars as well as starches, are effective in supplying us with glucose and glycogen (energy). Consumption of a mix of sugars and starches is desirable though, as a varied source of carbohydrates will increase the amount of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) available to us, and limit boredom with food selection – variety is the spice of life after all.

But carbs are the enemy, right? Well, not really. While the body does not technically need carbohydrates to survive, they do provide a great source of micronutrients and variety to our diet as mentioned above. They also provide quick energy for exercise and activity, which is something that most of us do every day! What should be the main focus is what type of carbohydrates and how much should be consumed. 

Carbohydrates, while varied in nature, should consist of mostly whole foods and avoid processed foods. A good rule of thumb is to stick with vegetables, nuts and seeds, and fruit while avoiding pure or added sugar as much as possible. Reason being, vegetables and fruit contain significant amounts of water and fiber which help to make you feel full faster. I am sure I’m not the only one who can crush a bag of M&Ms in one day and still be hungry, so let’s do the math. One “share size” (lol, right?) package of M&Ms has roughly 46 grams by weight of candy, and 28 grams of carbohydrates, most of which is in added sugar. A half cup of chopped broccoli (roughly 44 grams by weight) has 3 grams of carbohydrates. That means that you would have to eat 4.5 cups of chopped broccoli to eat the equivalent number of carbohydrates! I don’t know about you, but that is a LOT of broccoli and would be very hard to accomplish and still want to eat more food. Now, don’t be the person that avoids the birthday cake, but try to limit your carb selections to the healthier alternatives.

As for quantity, at the bare minimum, about 50 to 100 grams of carbohydrate per day is needed to prevent ketosis. And yes, for most people ketosis is not a desired state, especially athletes. As a reference, a medium banana has roughly 27 grams of carbohydrates, so it does not take much to avoid ketosis. Beyond that need, carbohydrates provide fuel for energy, so consumption should match your activity level each day. The CrossFit recommendation does state: keep intake to levels that support exercise, but not body fat. If you feel your workouts have been lagging lately, you might consider bumping up your carbohydrate intake, especially a few hours before you go to the gym. 

My personal recommendation, and something that I and many others have found success with, is to try E.C. Synkowski’s 800 Gram ChallengeⓇ. This “diet” makes things very simple: eat 800 grams of fruit and vegetables (by weight) each day, and if you are still hungry after that, eat whatever you want! By adding fruits and veggies and not restricting any food items, this way of eating encourages you to fill up on high quality, natural foods so that you are not hungry to eat the less ideal sugary items. Give her site a look over and I encourage you to try it out!

Photo compliments of ownyoureating.com

Katie Kozma

Katie is originally from Hesperia, MI (a small town in the lower peninsula), but now resides in Baraga. She decided to join CrossFit because she was looking to restart her fitness journey and she decided to complete a Spartan race and thought CrossFit would be the perfect thing for training. Her favorite part of Intro was learning all of the new lifting techniques that we cover. She is really excited about the motivational aspect of the group classes. She finds that it is easy to stay motivated when there is a group of people also working hard alongside each other!

Matt Garland

Matt is from Houghton but now lives in Hancock. Matt did CrossFit a while back, but a friend recently convinced him to try it again. His favorite movement is anything heavy, but he particularly likes deadlifts. He is looking forward to getting back into an exercise routine and enjoying working out again!

Sunit Girdhar

Originally from New Delhi, India, Sunit is currently living in Hancock to attend school at Michigan Tech. He studies architectural acoustics and found CrossFit in his schooling when he came across projects where people wanted a CrossFit gym on the 6th floor of a 21 floor building. As you all can imagine, this is not a good idea. But it did get him thinking that it would be a fun type of workout to try! His favorite movement during the intro class was the clean because he had never been able to do them in the past and he used to swap them out of his workouts. He is really excited to join the group class as the environment is fun and it is motivating with everyone alongside you which helps to push the intensity!

What is Intensity?

When looking at the definition of Crossfit, we are presented with three distinct parts. Constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity. We discussed “constantly varied” in March, and now we are going to tackle the last part – intensity. And you can probably see where we will be going after that…

First off, what is intensity? Generally, people think of intensity from their previous fitness experiences. The endurance community thinks intensity is a high heart rate, and the bodybuilding community thinks of it as yelling and screaming  as they lift massive amounts of weight. You know, things that people look at and think, “wow, that is intense!”

However, in Crossfit, we define intensity as something else, and for good reason. For example, you can watch a scary movie and have a high heart rate. Are you getting fitter? Or, imagine that one person who is bicep curling with 10# dumbbells and making a huge ruckus, sweating and yelling all over the place. Is that intense? I think we could argue in both cases: No. Not to say that these things aren’t part of intensity and might be related, but they do not define intensity.

Crossfit defines intensity directly as power (took that one from the exercise physiologists). What is power then? Well, if you remember your high-school physics, power is Force times Distance, divided by Time. Force times Distance happens to be Work, and we can therefore state that intensity is maximizing the amount of work performed in a certain amount of time. This intensity is measurable, and comparable between different individuals and between the same individual at different points in time. Let’s explore these three variables a little more.

Force: Force is equal to mass times acceleration (more physics for you), but for our purposes, I want you to think of it as weight. How much does the movement weigh? This includes both the external object (if one is present) and the bodyweight of the individual. Because in a thruster, you are not only moving the barbell, you are also moving your body, and the force needs to account for both pieces.

Distance: Pretty simple really, how far you, or an object (or both), travel. This could be a linear distance as in a run or a swim, or it could be a vertical distance as in a squat or press. To measure the distance, you literally measure how far the object or your center of mass actually moves in each movement.

Time: Also pretty simple. How long does the movement, set, or workout take? This is why we use a clock for all of our workouts.

Using these variables we can accurately measure the amount of work and power that is being performed in a movement or a workout. You may be asking yourself, which of these variables is the most important one to manipulate your intensity? Probably the easiest one is to modify the loading or force component, which is why the load is often the first thing you will end up changing when scaling a movement. However, lowering the weight does not always lower the intensity. Bear with me on this. Let’s say you lower the weight on a workout, but as a result, it allows you to move through the workout more consistently and you finish the workout three minutes faster than if you would have used a heavier weight. Depending on the difference in the weights used in this hypothetical situation, the reduction in time may be big enough to actually result in an increased intensity compared to the slower, heavier workout – math can be pretty neat sometimes.

The only time that increasing a load makes things more intense is when you can do the same amount of work in a relatively similar amount of time. For instance, Fran RXed at 3:00 is more intense than Fran with 75# at 2:45. However, Fran RXed in 3:00 is probably not more intense than Fran at 75# in 1:25. For more reading on how playing with weight and time can affect intensity, check out this old Crossfit Journal article.

All of this looks good on paper, sure, but how do you know what is more intense and what you need each day? Talk to your coaches! We will help you figure out the best plan of action for you based on the day, and get you the appropriate amount of intensity based on the workout and your abilities.