Monthly: August 2011

“We get a lot of people that run from cars, run from scenes of crimes, things like that, that us as officers, as humans, would never find, but we use the dog’s nose, we use their sight, we use their hearing to try to track these suspects down,” says K-9 officer Steve Henderson. Watch him and his fellow officers in action during a K-9 training session.

Joel Rains, a CrossFit trainer and K-9 trainer, even uses CrossFit Spartanburg in South Carolina for K-9 training. The dogs become members of the CrossFit community and family members to the officers and their families, who share a close bond with their beasts.

The officers relate their stories with K-9 heroes Igor and Diezel, who gave their lives in the line of duty.

“He’d been with me longer than I’ve had my kids,” officer Nate Cantrell says of Igor. “It’s a void at home.”

To honor their fallen partners, the trainers came up with a fitting tribute: a hero workout named after each dog: K-9 Igor and K-9 Diezel.

“There’s no better way to honor those guys and what they do than just do a workout for them, and the gym just completely embraced it,” says Tal Young, owner of CrossFit Spartanburg.

12min 32sec

Additional video: We’re Buddies, published July 20, 2011.

Another Monday means another set of questions from my dear readers. I covered Ramadan already, so this week, I’m covering whether eating kosher makes eating Primal harder or easier, including what to watch out for and what to replace it with. I give my thoughts on nail-strengthening dietary strategies (and give bone broth a much-deserved plug) and explore whether tea seed oil is actually worth using (hint: it’s not exactly like those industrially-processed seed oils we hate around here). Finally, a reader unwittingly stumbles upon an extremely effective workout strategy, simply by trying to be more “Grok-like.”

Let’s go.

Dear Mark,

Now that you have addressed how to handle Ramadan, I was hoping you would give the limitations of keeping kosher a stab! My dietary restrictions influence my food choices (ie, no shellfish, no butter/dairy when eating meat/chicken, and obviously no pork/bacon), and I am wondering how to still meet the Primal [Blueprint] diet targets. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Julie

You’re in luck. The only tenets that would impact the Primal nutritional “targets” might be the shellfish restriction and the no-meat-with-dairy law. As I mentioned in the post on shellfish, oysters are the richest sources of dietary zinc, an important mineral lacking in many modern diets. Getting zinc elsewhere is easily accomplished – just eat lean beef shoulder (100 grams gets you 10 mg), lamb, or bison. And since dairy technically resides in a Primal gray area (despite the community’s general acceptance and adulation of grass-fed butter), you’re not missing much. Olive oil, coconut oil, beef tallow (as long as you avoid tallow rendered from the fat that lines the cow’s organs; that’s called chelev and it’s definitely not kosher), and palm oil are all fine cooking fats that don’t upset the kosher dietary laws.

Hi, I’m enjoying the Primal [Blueprint] diet, but I have gotten weaker nails. I eat lots of eggs, meat, vegetables, fruit, and nuts. What should I then eat more of?

Thank you,

Jonas

Eating lots of meat should take care of your B-vitamins, a lack of which could cause brittle nails, so I don’t think it’s that. You say you eat a lot of nuts. Are you also eating fatty fish or taking fish oil? I’d be wary of your omega-6:omega-3 ratio, which, if weighted too heavily toward omega-6, will be inflammatory.

After researching for the “Cooking with Bones” post a couple years ago I got serious about bone broth. Whereas before I would only make broth whenever I had leftover bones, after writing the post, I started buying bones specifically for making broth. I made sure to always have some sort of stock – chicken, beef, lamb – on hand in the freezer or fridge and ready to go. I might toss a cube of frozen broth into sauteed veggies, when braising meat, or even just by itself in a cup. I never set a schedule or kept track or anything, but I estimate that I had some form of broth three to four days a week. What does this have to do with nails, you might be wondering? All that broth had a definite effect on my nails: they got stronger, thicker, and harder. Now, this is just an anecdote and I don’t have any data to back me up, but the broth could have been partly responsible. I’ve heard similar testimonials from others around the web.

Real bone broth, as you probably know, contains gelatin and an as-yet-unconfirmed mix of bioavailable nutrients (calcium, magnesium, and who knows what else). Gelatin is the protein that makes your broth turn to jello in the fridge. In fact, the sign of a good broth is the jello-like consistency when cold. It should really wobble. Minerals are used by the body to manufacture bone and other structures (including fingernails), neurotransmitters, and various hormones. If your diet is lacking in minerals, broth is a good addition. Try to always have bone broth on hand (freeze in ice cube trays for easy storage and access) and try to eat some every single day. Barring that, just use powdered unflavored gelatin.

I would also make sure you’re getting plenty of vitamin D and vitamin K2, both of which are involved with calcium deposition. Get some sun (or take a supplement) and eat some liver and grass-fed butter (or, again, take a K2 supplement). Vitamin C is also important for nail health, so add some bell peppers, broccoli or strawberries to your diet if you haven’t already.

Hi Mark – Wondering your thoughts on camellia or tea seed oil. Is it Paleo, how does it compare to the other oils you talk about on MDA?

Thanks!

Robert

Tea seed oil looks like a solid cooking oil. It’s high in vitamin E (increases resistance to oxidation and heat damage), extremely high in monounsaturated fat (80%), and it has roughly equal amounts of saturated fat and polyunsaturated fat (10% and 10%). There’s not a ton of literature on it – mostly articles written by companies selling the stuff – but I did find an interesting abstract of a study in which tea seed oil offered hepatoprotection to rats with toxin-induced liver damage. Most seed oils are high in omega-6 fats and actually increase the liver’s susceptibility to damage, so if tea seed oil pans out, it’d be a nice change of pace. Hunan, a province in southern China, apparently uses tea seed oil as its primary cooking oil.

I’d be really interested to see how disease rates in Hunan compare to disease rates in other provinces that use soybean or some other high-PUFA oil for cooking.

Dear Mark,

I’ve been doing the progressive LHT workouts twice a week for around two months and have made some progress. Recently I’ve been thinking: would it be more accurate (at least Grok-like) to do bursts of the essential movements throughout the day on most days of the week (assuming allowance for a rest day)?

Example: I just read the WOW about going for the hour walk and fitting in the essential movements during that walk – it resonated with me more than working out for 30 minutes twice a week.

Bottom Line: Would incorporating the essential movements into everyday life on most days of the week (in bursts intense enough to FEEL the movements being done) be a feasible replacement for the regimented 2X/ week LHT workouts?

BTW – LOVE sprinting! SO much!!! I do need to play more though

May Grok be with you ,

Emily Mekeel
-Future Dietitian and PB Warrior!

Your intuitive exercise idea isn’t just more Grok-like, it’s also (and more importantly) a legitimate way to strength train. Have you heard of Pavel Tsatsouline? He has a workout methodology called “Greasing the Groove” that’s extremely similar to what you describe. When you grease the groove, you hit a movement multiple times per day, as often as you can without getting fatigued. Pretty much whenever you get a chance to do the movement, you do it. So if you’re trying to grease the pullup, you might do five or six pullups every time you see the pull up bar, ten times a day perhaps (or more!). So by the end of the day you’ve done fifty to sixty pullups without having to grind any of the reps out. Each rep is crisp and clean, and you never go to failure. You never really struggle but you’re getting a lot of volume in each day. Each rep feels easy, you feel fresh, and yet you’re constantly getting stronger.

I think it sounds like a great idea, especially since it’s resonating with you more than the traditional setups. I always say that the most important aspect of any workout regimen is that you enjoy doing it, and it sounds like you’re really digging this. I say go for it (and don’t forget to play)!

Well, that’s it for this week. I have some questions in the queue, but I’m always taking more. Send them along and thanks for reading.

Grab The Primal Blueprint Cookbook Today and Receive Free S&H and a Free Primal Blueprint Poster

Perry

Related posts:

1. Dear Mark: D-Ribose, Bean Sprouts, Backyard Rabbits, and More
2. Dear Mark: Nuts and Omega-6s
3. Dear Mark: Arachidonic Acid

Josh MacDonald explains how he managed a host of kids for a no-parents evening at the box.

During some recent Crossfit Kids classes, we noticed that we always seem rushed to fit in everything we have planned. Either we have to shorten the WOD or rush through the game to get in all the planned activities.

That got us thinking, “What could we do if we had a lot more time with the kids?” If we had several hours, we could really explore each game fully, and we could fit in some of the games that never seem to fit into a normal class. We also knew that the kids at Crossfit Kids Fury always love the games more than anything else. We can put just about any challenge into a game and they would love it.

After some brainstorming, we put together our first Parents’ Night Out. This is an evening when parents drop off their kids for a couple of hours. The kids get to take part in a ton of CrossFit games and play around in the gym, while the parents get a date night.

The night was a huge success, and we plan to do it again, but we learned some valuable lessons we thought we would share with others who might want to try Parents’ Night Out for themselves.

Here are the individual PDF articles published in July 2011, collected together in a single download.

The video and audio articles are not contained in the PDF.

The articles included here are:

Underloading Equals Reloading – Bell
Slime Soup – Brown/Dazet
North and South – Cecil/Achauer
CrossFit Kids Goes to Middle School – Rakos/Edelman
The Face of Battle – Barnett
All About the Peak? – MacKenzie/Roberts
CrossFit Kids Warm-Up: Making Ant Food – Martin
Today’s WOD: A Half-Marathon – Achauer
Why Use a Training Log? – Harrison
“Dude, This Is a League Game” – Goodson
Handy Snacks – Brown/Dazet
A Hippie Lifts Heavy – Cecil
Taking Age Out of the Equation – Achauer
Beyond the CrossFit Games: Part 4 – Goodson
There’s Something About CFNE – Cecil
Move the Mess! – Patenaude
Who Will Win the Games?—Part 1 – Leyland
Who Will Win the Games?—Part 2 – Leyland
Before the Competition Takes Over – Beers
Only in America – Beers
Outside the Games Bubble – Beers
Team Taranis: Canada’s Team – Beers

With Iceland Annie the fittest woman on Earth, Emily Beers talks about the international flavor of the 2011 Reebok CrossFit Games.

Palms sweating, heart beating. I look over at a teammate.

“I’m nervous,” she says.

“I know. Me too,” I reply.

No, we weren’t about to compete.

In fact, we’re sitting in the stands with an afternoon beer in hand. We are about to watch our fellow Canada West team—Team Taranis—in the Sunday afternoon Team final of the 2011 Reebok CrossFit Games.