Correcting my squat - a seven month process

First of all, I apologize for not being on here in a while. That is, however, about to change! I am very close to making a pretty big commitment, that I will start blogging about once I make sure I can get the day off from work.

Anyway, this post is about squatting. Well actually it's about more than squatting. It's about throwing everything you thought you were doing right in the trash and starting over. That's what I did to my squat.

The thing is I started squatting when I was 23 in a military gym. I didn't have anyone to teach me the right way of doing it, so I just did what everybody else did - I put as much weight as I possibly could on the bar and entered the guys' pissing contest. No one mentioned (or knew of?) form, we all lifted heavier each week, and life was good. 

In October of 2012, eight years had passed and I was still squatting. Nevertheless, I was still maxing out at the same amount of weight as I was eight years earlier. 150-155 pounds - just about my own weight. Not a very impressive progression curve...
October 2012 was the first time anyone ever told me I was squatting all wrong. At first, I found it hard to believe, not only because I had been doing it for so long, but also because I was lifting a lot more than most girls.

The incorrectness of my squat was a typical rookie mistake: I wasn't keeping my weight on my heals and in the squat position my knees were way in front of my toes.

When the trainer showed me how to do it correctly, I couldn't even do the movement without any weight. It was pitiful. And devastating. I went home and didn't really know what to do about it. The trainer said that I had a flexibility problem. Hmmm. Yeah, he was probably right. I tried to remember the last time I had really done a good stretch. Hmmm...

At this point I was faced with two options: 1) Keep squatting the way I was, stay at the weight I was, and quite possibly end up with a knee injury. Or 2) Start all over, concentrate on flexibility and lift a fraction of what I was doing, but with the possibility of lifting heavier and keeping my knees healthy.

It was painful to make the decision, but I decided to start all over. My main issue was flexibility, so I started stretching thoroughly after each and every workout. I stretched out my whole body but focused extra on the inner part of my thighs and my hip flexors. They were - to say the least - very, very tight. When we did squats at the gym, there were times that I would only lift the bar. I simply couldn't lift any more and still do it right.

If you want to test and see if you are squatting correctly; go find a wall. Face the wall and put your feet in the squatting position (feet a little more than shoulder width apart. Position your feet so that your toes are about about 1-2 inches from the wall. Now do a full squat facing the wall. It's not that easy! When doing this, I realized that I had pretty weak spinal erectors  - the muscles in the very lower part of your back that keep your back straight up. I used the GHD with great success to improve the strength of my spinal erectors. I highly recommend it.

It took me about 3-4 months to get my form right and then I started adding weight. I can honestly say that it has been a LOOOONG process. Nevertheless, I managed to set a new personal record on my squat about a week ago. I lifted 170 pound almost out of the blue. It was awesome! It was like something finally clicked.

170 pound is 15 pounds pounds more than I have ever lifted. I firmly believe that correcting my technique is the main factor in achieving this. What is even more important is that I feel like I have a lot more in me now. Kinda like its just the beginning of my squat. Pretty cool.

The crossfit mile from hell

My friend once told me a story about some of the Danish special forces having to do a night march. They all anticipated that the march would be quite long - because they usually are. However, when they had their briefing, they were told that the march was only going to be 2.5 miles long. Once in a blue moon, good things do happen to special force soldiers, so they got pretty excited that they might actually get a good night's sleep afterwards. Unfortunately, the instructor neglected to tell the soldiers that because the march was so short they would have to carry a European sized Volkswagen with no wheels for the full 2.5 miles through the woods. All of a sudden, the 2.5 miles just got a bit longer.

 

Likewise, the distance of my workout today was only one mile. Nevertheless, it was the longest mile I have ever experienced. A friend of mine told me he had done this particular workout. He also said that it was quite tough, and that he really wouldn't recommend it... That's how I got lured into doing it.

 

The was the workout:

 

400 meters (one stadium lap) of burpee wide jumps

400 meters of lunges

400 meters of the bear crawl

400 meters of running backwards.

I did my mile inside the Pepper Geddings Recreational Center. I have posted a picture of it for your convenience :). 16 laps on the track is a mile, so I did four laps of each exercise.

The first lap of the burpee wide jumps went okay. For those of you who are not familiar with crossfit, you do the following in a burpee wide jump: stand up straight, get into the push up position, lower your entire body to the ground, straighten your arms to lift your upper body off the floor, bring your feet up to your hands in one movement, get back up on your feet, jump as far forward with both legs at the same time as you can, repeat, repeat, repeat. Needless to say, this exercise pretty much sucks. After the second lap my legs were pretty tired, and I may or may not have shed a small tear during the fourth lap. Completing just the 400 meters of burpee wide jumps too me about 20 minutes!

 

Next up were the lunges. They weren't as hard on my respiratory system, but they sure did make my legs BURN.

 

After that, I started on the bear crawl. A bear crawl is when you crawl (like a bear) with your hands on the ground in front of you. It may sound pretty silly, but it gets pretty tough, pretty fast. Not only do your legs start to burn, but it also requires a decent amount of cardio to do the exercise over a sustained period of time. My first lap went okay, but over the next three laps I had to stop and shake the lactic acid out of my legs several times.

After many, many minutes of pure torture, I finally made it to the backwards run. This part was luckily very easy, although my legs were pretty numb.

All in all it took me 1 hour, 2 minutes, and 9 seconds to get this mile in. I actually do recommend this workout, if you want to try something a bit different and like to feel your legs burn. Enjoy!

24 day challenge - results and conclusions

My 24 day challenge has (finally) ended. For readers who are new to my page, I stopped eating junk for 24 days and cut out drinking diet sodas as well. I did the experiment to see if I would achieve any of the same types of benefits that the people using the Advocare 24 day challenge claim to achieve.

Over the course of my challenge I have lost 2 pounds of body weight and an inch around my waist. I won’t know my new body fat percentage till Friday. Nevertheless, it is obvious that my measurable results aren’t stunning. That being said, I made no effort to cut down my caloric intake – I just stayed off the junk food. Finally, I did not have as much to lose as some people who start the Advocare challenge – I was at 17% body fat when I started the experiment and I wasn’t really eating that bad before. So bottom line is that if I want to lose weight, I need to eat less and do more.

On a more subjective scale, I started feeling a lot better when I cut out the junk. This was especially evident when I went from eating very clean to eating not as clean – which was the case when I was stuck with cafeteria food for a couple of days and on the day of my birthday (yes I did cheat on that day and had chocolate cake, and yes it was delicious). Bottom line is that I can definitely tell a difference in my well-being when I eat clean, and this is down to a meal by meal basis.

So where does this leave me now. I am sure that Advocare could help me lose a couple pounds, but to be honest I could probably lose those pounds on my own by just eating less. Pretty simple. Am I willing to eat less at this point to lose a couple pounds…? Nope.

I will however keep eating as clean as I can, because I really do feel a difference for the better. And as for the Diet Cokes… I’m still off them and I feel good. I don’t crave them anymore. I don’t have to have them in my house. I don’t think about them much anymore – not even when I wake up J. I don’t hold on to one dollar bills (for the soda machine) like I used to. We’re done. I have moved on. That being said, I will still drink one or two on occasion but never again will drink them to the extent I did before.

All in all my 24 day challenge was a big success for me. And it didn’t cost me 160 dollars. Like I said, I wanted to compare my 24 day challenge to Advocare’s 24 day challenge. So far I havn’t tried the Advocare challenge and I probably won’t try it unless someone gives it to me for free. Multiple people have told me that it works wonders, but I think that if people are really serious about losing weight and feeling better the default solution should be for them to clean out their diet first. Maybe that's all they need to do and they’ll have to do this with Advocare anyway.

Well this was my last post about the 24 day challenge. I hope that is was of interest. I've got more cool stuff coming up soon! Stay tuned!

 

    

 

Box War Battle - Myrtle Beach Crossfit vs. Palmetto Crossfit

Saturday was the first of the so-called 'Box War Battle' that Myrtle Beach Crossfit participated in. The concept of the Box War Battle is that participating crossfit gyms set a team and then these teams compete against one another. On the day of the competition when the two teams meet five WODs (workout of the day) are drawn out of a bucket and then each team decides who on the team will do what WOD. Some of the WODs require two people.

 

Palmetto Crossfit drove all the way from Charleston to compete against us and we had a great time with them. The five WODs drawn were:

 

1) 1 rep max. dead-lift in 15 minutes

2) Holleyman

3) Nutts

4) Karen

5) Barbara

 

To those of you who are not familiar with crossfit, some of the WODs in crossfit are named after girls, for example Karen and Barbara. Karen is 150 wall balls as fast as possible and Barbara is 5 rounds of the following:

 

20 pull ups

30 push ups

40 sit ups

50 squats

 

You get a 3 minute break between each round. I did this workout and including the 3 minute breaks it took me 36 minutes and 26 seconds. Here is a video of my first round: 

 

On the next four rounds I ended up having to break the pull ups up into tens and fives, and in the end I was doing only five push ups at a time. For some reason I found the push ups a lot harder than the pull ups. I managed to go unbroken on the sit ups all the way through and by round 4 and 5 my squats were a lot deeper (and actually a lot better) than in this video. Needless to say, this workout sucks and I was exhausted by the end. Luckily the girl I competed against was more exhausted than me and I won the workout :)


Another crazy WOD was 'Holleyman' named after a fallen soldier. In this WOD two guys had to do 30 (!) rounds of the following:

5 Wall balls (20 pounds)
3 Handstand push ups
1 Power clean (225 pounds)

 Handstand push ups

 

 

 Wall balls and then a pretty heavy power clean... Only one guy can work at a time.

Myrtle Beach Crossfit also won this workout :). The guys' time was 14:51.

Next up was 'Nutts'. This WOD was also a two person workout. It consisted of:

10 Handstand push ups
15 Dead lifts (250 pounds)
25 Box jumps (30 inches)
50 Pull ups
100 Wall balls (20 pounds)
200 Double unders
400 Meter run with a 45 pound plate

Double unders. 200 of them...

 

 



400 meter run with a 45 pound plate.

 

Crossfit Myrtle Beach also won this WOD with a time of 12:44.

 

Crossfit Myrtle Beach also won the WOD Karen (150 wall balls) with a time of 5:50. Finally, Crossfit Myrtle Beach also won the dead lift competition in which one of our guys dead lifted 435 pounds. Grrr beast!

 

All in all it was a great competition and I think everyone had fun. Thanks to Palmetto Crossfit for coming to see us!

 



 

 





Day 7 of the 24 day challenge

First of all I do apologize for not writing a post in a whole week. Last week was a little bit crazy in an unexpected way as I ended up spending it all waiting in a hospital (all is good now though so no worries). Unfortunately, that also meant that it was impossible for me to stay 100% dedicated to my 24 day challenge as cafeteria food by nature always will be cafeteria food. Although I made the best choices I could they didn't live up to the standard that I had been keeping the previous week, so I have decided to start off again where I left the week before. This means I am now on day 7.

On a positive note, I no longer doubt the effect of eating clean. After just 6 days, I felt a significant negative difference when I started eating the still-okay-but-not-so-perfect-food in the cafeteria. To top it off my only option in the cafeteria Sunday night was pizza and even though it tasted quite delicious I paid for it the rest of that night and could still feel it laying like a piece of concrete in my stomach the morning after. Honestly, I don't think that pizza would have bothered me very much before I started eating clean. I guess the body adapts quite quickly and right now I don't even want to eat pizza. Ain't that something..

Likewise, I did manage to stay off the Diet Cokes and I am happy to announce that at this point in time I am doing pretty good without them. I don't get the urge like I used to and I don't think of them as part of my daily routine anymore. As a real challenge someone put a 12 pack of them in my house 36 hours ago but I haven't touched them and I won't so that is pretty good. All that being said we did have a long and genuine relationship so I still miss them of course.

Tomorrow, I will be competing in another crossfit competition with the people from my crossfit gym. We will be competing as a team against another gym. I will blog about it tomorrow along with a bunch of pictures!

 

Day 6 of my 24 day challenge - Quitting the Diet Cokes

It's now day 6 of my 24 day challenge. Eating good foods is still pretty easy but staying off the Diet Cokes is killing me. I don't know what it is about them but I sure do miss them. I've thought about what's so difficult about staying off them and I have come up with several things:

- I have a habit of drinking them at certain points during the day. It's hard to break an old habit even though its a bad one. I started drinking just plain water instead. At least this quenches the thirst.

- I like a Coke when I eat something salty. The two just compliment each other so deliciously well. Solution - eat less salty things even though I don't have a salt problem. 

- This may seem ridiculous but I really like the design of a can of Coke and I like drinking my drinks out of cans. Yes this is stupid, but at least I'm honest about it. I have always found a can of coke more tempting than a bottle. I don't know what it is. Of course most people don't like their beer in plastic bottles either so maybe I'm not that crazy.

- I like the fizz. I started ordering a club soda when I go out instead of Coke. It works pretty well and like that I get something a bit more exciting than water.

I've also found that reading about the adverse effects of Cokes helps me. There's just nothing like getting motivated by articles about depression, kidney damage, cell abnormalities, obesity etc. 

Anyway, the bottom line is that I'm still off the 'juice' and I expect the urge to decrease with time. Other than my Coke cravings I feel really good. I feel my body responding positively to what I'm doing although I'm only on day 6. What's even more clear at this point is that I feel really good about the stuff that I eat and that I'm making the best choices I can throughout the day.

I promise to complain less about my Coke addiction in my next blog. Thanks for stopping by!

Becoming a beast - Day 3 out of 24

Today is day three of my 24 day challenge of eating clean. So far so good. Since Friday night I haven't had a single diet soda which is probably a record for me. There is no doubt that those bastards are addictive like crack. I don't have shaky hands but I feel like I'm missing and old faithful friend. I am starting to think that Coca Cola puts stuff in their drinks that make them addictive. All the more reason to let go of them I reckon.

The rest of my diet is going well too. No junk food at all and I feel pretty good. I switched out my almost daily piece of banana bread from Starbucks with a handful of roasted almonds and stopped buying chocolate covered raisins. They say that 'you are what you eat', but I find it even more true that 'you eat what you buy'. So all in all, the real battle is at the supermarket. My diet is now mostly proteins and good fats and a large amount of veggies and fruits. Laying off the carbs is pretty easy. I just make sure I don't go hungry which keeps me from wanting them.

Yesterday I tried to get an overview of how many grams of protein I get a day and the number was disturbingly low - about 70-90 grams a day. I need to get about 150 grams (a gram for each pound of weight). To better this, I ordered a five pound bag of pure whey protein and two scoops of this will give me an additional 52 grams a days. Furthermore, I will start supplementing my breakfast with two eggs which will give me roughly 15 grams more. I'm excited to see if my lifting improves once I start getting my required amount of protein.

Yesterday, I did my own body measurements (they are listed below). These will be my benchmark measurements. Even more exciting, I went and did my first body composition test today, which included a fat percentage. I have included a picture of the chart they gave me. Anyway, I'm 17% fat and have 127.8 pounds of lean weight which is not bad. Ideal fat percentage is between 13 and 25 percent for women. I would like to get down to 13% body fat and substitute my fat loss with some more muscle. Grrrr...!
Alright enough talk. Here are my body measurements as taken on day 2:

Weight: 150.4 pounds
Waist, narrowest point: 30 inches
Butt, widest point: 37 inches
Thigh, widest point: 22.5 inches
Upper arm, widest point: 11.5 inches
Energy level: going up!

 

 

My body composition chart. I had it done at Gold's Gym for 10 bucks. You can't beat that.

 

No this is not me... Nevertheless, this is how I had my body fat measured. I got measured in three different spots: the triceps, the waist and the thigh.

 

 

This is were I went for my run yesterday.