Tag: pull-ups

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One month CrossFit update with photos

Quick update on CrossFit progress before I sack out for the night.

Been about a month since switching from my homemade workouts to CrossFit. Since starting, I’ve completed four to five workouts a week. For the past two weeks (approx.), I have been practicing daily eating-window-style fasts1. Over that same two-week time period, I’ve also cut back on alcohol consumption on days I worked out. Even still, there was a glutinous July 4th last weekend, where I managed to scarf down three DQ blizzards over four nights with a monster bowl of ice cream the night in the middle. I slipped up. It happens. It’s okay!

The alcohol-fasting is just an experiment to ensure that I don’t down-regulate testosterone, or increase cortisol, thereby maximizing post-workout gene expression.

If you’re wondering, I consider four to five highly-intense workouts a week to be too much to maintain indefinitely2; however, I’ve been driving myself harder in anticipation of achieving the desired results faster.

Some five months since embarking on this lifestyle-shift, I’m happy to say that the combo has been a resounding success so far and I believe will prove out to be a success indefinitely. My goal is to publish my before shot from February and an after shot in August (Just a guesstimate. The goal is satisfaction with with my leaning out, which is equivalent to achieving some optimal vasculature and probably means reaching around 7% body fat).

Until then, I’ve decided to publish some interim before and after voyeurism. I submit the following self-taken camera phone pictures, taken four weeks apart on June 12 and July 9, 2008, from left to right.

Believe it or not, I’m flexing my midsection in both photos. What’s making up the change? A bit more muscle combined with a bit less adiposity. I’m 27, 5’10.5″ and around 168 in both photos. I’m happy to say that I’m currently more lean and defined than I’ve been since I was less than ten years old. Prior to a few months ago, I had given up on leaning out. Just didn’t think it was in my genes.

I was most happily wrong.

Regarding CrossFit, I did the “Nasty Girls” workout today, subbing out pull-ups and dips at a ratio of 3:1 for the normally prescribed seven muscle ups. This made for three rounds of:

  • 50 air squats
  • 21 pull-ups
  • 21 dips, and
  • 10 hanging powercleans @ 95 lbs

I managed to complete it in 19:56, which is incredibly slow relative to CrossFit vets; however, I was happy with my time — likely because I thought I was about to die at the end, and I managed to rock out all 63 pull-ups and dips.

I could not have accomplished this without practicing insulin control. That is, without a doubt, the secret ingredient to maximizing my health.

Footnotes

1 Whereby I compress my eating window to about eight hours — usually noon or 1 pm to 9 pm though its just a target. My workouts tend to fall in the middle. This is (intended to be) similar to the Lean Gains Intermittent Fasting approach (Martin Berkhan).

2 No reason to put your body through that much chronic stress.

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Update on Crossfit and Diet

Wanted to do a brief update on my progress with Crossfit and diet.

I’ve finished week three of Crossfit and it continues to kick my ass. The good news is that I’m getting closer to proficiency on kipping pull-ups. I sometimes seem to slip into a bit of a butterfly kip, so I wonder if I should try to develop that (as the butterfly is arguably more efficient). Regardless, I’m feeling better about the pull-up, which is important for Crossfit.

In the past week or so, I’ve switched to incorporating Martin Berkhan’s LeanGains 16-hour-fast, 8-hours-fed diet methodology. So I typically won’t eat until lunch, and I’ll Crossfit around 5pm and eat dinner around 7:30 or 8:00 pm. I’ll quit eating after 9pm (or so) until the following day at lunch. Berkhan’s idea is to charge up on energy around lunch, workout and then provide the right macronutrient combo post-workout going into a fast. During the fast, your body has the tools it needs to repair/rebuild/build muscle.

Its a decent combination of fasting and exercise. It just “works” for me as the Crossfit gym here is only open in the afternoon/evenings (prohibiting me from working out fasted in the morning).

I have seen some noticeable improvement in muscle definition, which I mainly attribute to continued reduction in body fat though I’m optimistic that I’ve been able to build some lean muscle mass, as well. The real clincher here will be if I can:

  1. Lean out and achieve a never-before-seen vasculature in my midsection (a.k.a. the “six pack”, but also the lesser-mentioned-but-equally-important pectoral definition)
  2. Put on some weight, which would necessarily be lean tissue (per the requirement in No. 1)

I have taken some steady progress photos that have, as yet, gone unpublished. Assuming I accomplish the above goals, which I now expect will happen soon, I will publish these shots on this site — bashfulness be damned!

Stay tuned.

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Kipping Pull-ups

A huge part of Crossfit is pull-ups. Contrary to the tenet that the only proper pull-up is one that has no lower body movement, the default pull-up in Crossfit is one that employs a “kip” or a “kipping” movement. Kipping is a perfected derivative of what most of us do when we try to do a pull-up naturally — namely, use our swinging body and legs to aid us on the upward motion.

I am still learning the kipping pull-up. And since they are so integral to Crossfit, it’s imperative that I learn this motion fast.

Thankfully, there is YouTube. Specifically, I found a short, four-part series of tutorial videos on kipping pull-ups!

As today was Day 5 of Crossfit for me and the fourth day in a row this week, I’m resting tomorrow. However, I plan on getting in some kipping pull-up practice this weekend. These videos will be my guide. My goal is to get decent at kipping pull-ups over the next two weeks.

If you’re curious about kipping pull-ups or want to learn them yourself, they are embedded below (after the jump).

Continue reading “Kipping Pull-ups”