Monthly: February 2011

Sebastian Rieder is a Level 1 staff member out of CrossFit Vienna. He shares how he found CrossFit and how CrossFit has changed his life. For him, one of the most profound changes CrossFit has brought is improved health.

“I haven’t been ill, like I’ve had no flu, no sickness, no nothing for, like, three and half years now since I changed my diet a bit,” he says. “It’s just the whole thing. I’m hooked.”

Rieder coaches the air squat at a Level 1 Seminar and points out how to correct squatting flaws.

“The one big thing is he’s definitely moving too fast to feel what’s going on with his body,” he says of an athlete brought to the center of the circle.

He slows the athlete down and helps him find and maintain his lumbar curve during the squat.

7min 3sec

Additional reading: Squat Clinic by Greg Glassman, published Dec. 1, 2002.

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There’s still some of the cow left for sale at CFSB: pastured beef kidney available for sale and a few pounds of ground beef and some knuckle soup bones.

Kidney is prized as a delicacy throughout much of the world. From a nutrition perspective, it’s a veritable nutrition treasure trove; in a 3-oz serving there’s approximately:

• Vitamins: 800% Rec. Daily Value for Vitamin B12, 20% for B6, 200% DV for riboflavin, 26% DV for pantothenic acid, 22% DV for niacin
• Minerals: 250% DV for selenium, 50% for iron, 50% for copper, 36% for phosphorus, 25% for zinc
• 600mg cholesterol (200% DV which we know being smart paleo researchers is a healthy amount)

Stop by CFSB to buy some or contact me.

Kidney is best sauteed briefly on med-high heat for no more than 5 mins, so slice thinly (do not remove the fat), and add at the end of a saute.

At Reebok World Headquarters in Canton, Mass., sports marketing executive Don Hasselbeck shares his experiences with CrossFit and how it has changed his life.

Hasselbeck was at first skeptical of CrossFit. He has knee issues and other injuries resulting from the years he spent as an NFL tight end with the New England Patriots, Oakland Raiders, Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants, and he didn’t think he could ever do the workouts.

“I didn’t think it was scalable,” he says. “You see it for the first time and you associate it with just being absolutely incredible.”

Since Reebok has embraced CrossFit, the winner of Super Bowl XVIII has found everyone can participate and benefit from CrossFit.

“When you really start to think about it, all those movements are the same movement in life … . You’re picking something up off the ground or putting something in the overhead bin in the airplane—it’s all that same stuff,” says Hasselbeck, father of Seattle Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck. “So if you’re not doing those things well at 55, you’re not going to do them any better at 65.”

He adds: “I think that’s our goal to make it not just the culture here but the culture outside these walls here at Reebok so everyone realizes that, you know, you don’t have to be unfit the rest of your life.”

8min 21sec

Additional reading: If the Shoe Fits … by Kevin Daigle, published Feb. 7, 2011.

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“It turns out that even top athletes who are really really good at what they do they still need to stretch,” says seminar team member Jami Tikkanen of Thames CrossFit. He addresses tight hip issues he identified in one of the seminar attendees, Diego Derscentis, a professional soccer player in Europe.

Tikkanen shows Derscentis a series of stretches taught by mobility guru Kelly Starrett. Beginning with Starrett’s classic couch stretch, Tikkanen adds two more versions to help fix Derscentis’ tight hips.

“We see a lot of elite athletes (who’ve) still got difficulties in coming up from the bottom of the squat,” Tikkanen says. “Everybody’s working the bottom, but they’re not working necessarily coming up all the way to full extension.”

He instructs Dercentis to spend two minutes in each stretch and to consistently use the tools to make progress increasing mobility.

“With new range comes new responsibility,” Tikkanen says.

8min 41sec

Additional reading: A Postural Error: A Costly Biomechanical Fault—Muted Hip Function (MHF) by Greg Glassman, published Jan. 1, 2003.

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CrossFit Pleasanton recently hosted the Southern Powerlifting Federation’s 4-in-1 Powerlifting Event, which included divisions for CrossFit, raw, and single-ply and double-ply suits.

While there, cameras caught Terry Dickman, the fifth-place finisher from the 2010 CrossFit Games masters division and part owner of CrossFit Excel. He was competing at the powerlifting event to try something new.

“I thought it would actually help my CrossFit training, working on strength,” he says. “My goal is to try to get some PRs today.”

Dickman went on to share his Games experiences and how he found CrossFit.

“I was a little bit overweight, actually a lot overweight, you know, and looking for something that wasn’t so boring. After a month of doing (CrossFit), I was totally hooked and I’ve been doing it ever since,” he says.

In just two years, he became a Games competitor.

“That kind of tells you about the program or CrossFit, what it can do for somebody,” Dickman says.

6min 07sec

Additional reading: My Story: Terry Dickman.

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