Tweet this!wasaga beach crossfit New CrossFit Box in Wasaga Beach! Check out CrossFit Indestri Beach or CFI Beach 707 River Rd West Unit #6 Wasaga Beach, Ontario L9Z 1N7 I [...]
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Tweet this!don’t let fitness take a backseat in firefighting Getting a prowler for our workplace has been one of the best investments we have made with our fitn [...]
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Tweet this!So last week I just spent $27 dollars on a fancy new black and red skipping rope. I also had a broken speed rope from too many double unders on the parking lot. I [...]
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Tweet this!Pull Push – Kettlebell Challenge Items Needed: Sled or Prowler Weight approximately 135 lbs 1 Length of 45 mm hose 1 Kettlebell Chalk Watch or timer With [...]
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Tweet this!Tip: Put weights at bottom to prevent rower from moving. Want a quick rowing workout that is sure to challenge you and be deceptively hard?! A lot of people use r [...]
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Tweet this! The 5 w’s of a Garage Gym Who: the garage gym is for someone who is determined to make a difference in their life and wants to have the convenience of fitn [...]
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Tweet this!“Holy crap, another obstacle race?” This sentence became the conversational theme in adventure racing circles this past year. Some AR race directors h [...]
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Tweet this!Don't get derailed by poor nutrition So we were at work at the Firehall and basically we were messing around with different ways to do sweet potatoes. The guy [...]
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Tweet this! FULL DAY TRAINING – A must do course! “It’s crazy – we are not a fast team – but after taking the training course we would go by t [...]
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Tweet this!Tell these guys they are sissies! “The Sissy Test” Sometimes called “21″ or “BlackJack” since all your reps add up to 21… [...]
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Written by Mark
So you want to train to paddle like the Dutch olympic kayaking team, but you don’t want to spend another $2000 on an indoor kayak trainer? Me too! Well up here in Canada we are frozen in most of the year, so you have to improvise.
I found this cool video of how a guy make his own indoor kayak trainer with a few pulleys and cords. It is a .mov file and is about 100 mb. Still worth it though
click here for DIY Kayak Trainer http://www.harkevents.com/ContourHD_ergometer.MOV
Written by Mark
One month, 30 days, eat the foods that a caveman in the Palaeolithic era would have eaten. It’s overly simple.. or is it? It’s called the Paleo diet.
The What
No dairy, no grains, no sugar, no beans, no alcohol (yes even you my beloved scotch) everything has to be “real food” and not processed. This really eliminates a lot of stuff that is in the middle of the grocery store. You can eat as much as you like, it just has to be quality food. I’m sort of looking forward to it, all fruits, veggies, meats, seeds, and seafood! You can even use fire to cook it!
The Why
from Wikepedia “The modern dietary regimen known as the Paleolithic diet (abbreviated paleo diet or paleodiet), also popularly referred to as the caveman diet, Stone Age diet and hunter-gatherer diet, is a nutritional plan based on the presumed ancient diet of wild plants and animals that various human species habitually consumed during the Paleolithic era—a period of about 2.5 million years duration that ended around 10,000 years ago with the development of agriculture. In common usage, such terms as the “Paleolithic diet” also refer to the actual ancestral human diet.”
When you talk to people about nutrition, you are treading in the same realm as religion. People have strong opinions and beliefs about both. I currently feel that there is a lot of misinformation about what good nutrition is, and what “healthy eating” is. People either eat what they want and really don’t care what they put in their bodies, or they may be well intentioned but misinformed. I’ve been doing some reading and getting information from such sources as Mark Sisson’s Daily Apple and his Primal Blueprint. As well, there is some great stuff out there with Robb Wolf who was with CrossFit, but has moved onto bigger and better things with his book the Palaeolithic Solution. Heather read Good Calorie Bad Calorie by Gary Taubes, and this is probably one of the books that has really fired a torpedo of truth into the hull of conventional wisdom as it pertains to nutrition and health advice. He was recently on the Dr. Oz show being vilified, when all he was really doing was speaking from the existing research and drawing a conclusion. This video from the Larry King show shows the initial clash between these two health titans. 
The When
So as of April 1, 2011 we will try it together and see how we feel and it is really more of an experiment to see how we feel and how we can make our lives better.
Additional Reading :
Related Links:
Great little Ebook on 21st Century Paleo Diet
Written by Mark
I’m not a chef, but I want to eat clean and have something that is delicious, quick, nutritious and mostly hormonally balanced. A lot of people think of their breakfast with a bagel, banana, and a glass of orange juice as being perfectly healthy. It’s all CARBS, and you might as well follow it up with an insulin shot, or just pass out at your workstation 20 minutes after consuming said meal as your blood sugar rockets skyward.
Here is my breakfast that I prefer most days, and I’m a bit of a creature of habit and I thought I would share my breakfast choice with you, even though in a guide to get retweeted Twitter says that nobody cares what you eat for breakfast, obviously you are or you wouldn’t have kept reading this far.
Prep time : 20 mins
Difficulty: Easy
Ingredients:
tap water1 tbsp butter (no margarine here)
4 farm fresh brown eggs (including the yolks)
4 cubes of Europe’s Best frozen spinach
Assorted Organic Spices (my fave is Cajun)
mozzarella cheese (out for Paleo, but hey I like cheese and have the enzyme to break it down)
avocados or salsa
some fruit, any will do, preferably berries
I try to portion my meals using the Zone diet and follow their principles of hormone regulation, this would be a 4 block meal 4 protein, 4 carbs, and probably 4 or more fats. It is really ballparked, but it seems to work for me. Depending on your size, you may use 3 eggs, or more if you are a hulking performance monster!
How to Make:
Fill a medium frying pan with enough water to cover the Europe’s best cubes, and turn on high, cook these little scrumptious green guys until all the water is gone, only will take 5 or 6 minutes probably. Once they are sauteed then put them aside on your serving plate.
Turn down the heat to medium and then toss in your butter and cover the bottom of the pan. Take your 4 eggs and break them into a little bowl and froth them up really good. Lots of whipping makes light fluffy eggs! Once your butter has melted then you want to dump the eggs into the frying pan. Season with your spices and herbs to give your breakfast some zing! I get my herbs from a place on the West coast called Health and Wellness house.
Take your sauteed spinach leaves and toss their leafy goodness into the omelette. Grab your ground up cheese and once your omelette is ready to flip then toss in the cheese, because if you put it in too early it melts all over the place and makes a big mess. You can leave the cheese out if you want to stay strictly Paleo.
Cook until the the eggs are done, but not brown and then you have a nice fold over omelette. You can now add your guacamole spread or straight avocados or salsa for more of a party.
Let the omelette sit for a couple minutes to let the cheese inside harden and for the egg to stop cooking and firm up. Grab your Java and your water (or even both! ) and you have yourself a nice little breakfast that should keep you satiated and happy until lunchtime at least!
Written by Mark
Looking for Abe Patterson’s son who contacted me before about this carving. I’d like to get in touch with him. Here goes the power of the internet and meta tags. Hello google!
Written by Mark
What is Fitness?
Looking through an older booklet from the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology the CSTF booklet (Canadian Standardized Test of Fitness) I found some surprisingly good info for the early 80′s period. It seems at this point in time the Canadian government was actually putting a lot of research into trying to define “Fitness”. Remember the old Canadian Fitness Testing? Well it seems that the the people in charge of this study and effort believed in the scientific method and that measurable repeatable results cannot be obtained without first developing a baseline of “fitness”.
This was a massive joint effort by the government to try to “improve the likelihood that participants who have a fitness appraisal will take appropriate action to improve their fitness” I believe this was a precursor to the whole Participation movement that attempted to get Canadians more active.
Physical Fitness Defined:
Traditionally, fitness has been defined as “the ability to carry out daily tasks with vigour and alertness, without undue fatigue and with ample energy to enjoy leisure-time pursuits and to meet unforeseen emergencies.
the manual goes on to expand on this definition :
To go beyond this simple statement of philosophy, fitness, in an applied sense can be looked upon as “a set of attributes of functional capacity that are related to the ability to perform physical activity.”
These attributes are the specific components of fitness:
A pretty good definition from a study from over 20 years ago. The Canadian Standardized Test of Fitness (CSTF) measured all of these, and was scrapped some years later. Too bad. It seems that CrossFit which is a huge up and coming fitness movement now has capitalized on this same scientific method and has defined worked hard to define “fitness” as well.
CrossFit’s New Three-Dimensional Definition of Fitness and Health, Greg Glassman (CFJ Preview) [wmv][mov] » Feb 22 09
CrossFit’s Definition of Fitness (CrossFit Journal)
Source: Canadian Standardized Test of Fitness – Interpretation and counselling manual 1987. A joint project of the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, National Fitness Appraisal Certification and Accreditation Program and Fitness Canada, a directorate of Fitness and Amateur Sport.
Written by Mark
I took these pics of a pull up bar station on a Canadian Forces Base. These have probably seen quite a few pull ups and i’m thinking that this is a pretty tried and true set up.
Notes:
1. They are using 4/4 posts, I’m guessing 12 footers as this whole thing was pretty high.
2. The bar was pretty thick compared to other pull up bars that I’ve seen and used. I’m guessing that the inside diameter of the bar would be 1.5 inches which would make the diameter around 1.75 inches.
3. The tape, well it was added, but probably not needed. It looks like the bar was constructed from pipe used for gas fittings.
4. The wedges on the side of the posts are super important to get the people up to the bar, and also important to have them on BOTH sides of the post as you have to grip the beam to get up to the bar.
Pull ups are the ultimate upper body strengthening exercise, and a great way to get better at doing pull ups…. well do more pull ups!
Written by Mark
On a side note, I found this while surfing the web, if anyone knows the source of this, then I’d be happy to source it.
# 2, 14, & 20 ring true to me.
Mark
Written by Mark
Our team finished Raid the Hammer which is a 25 plus orienteering adventure run just outside of Toronto in the Burlington area this year. The course features some large ups and downs and is a great blend of trail running, mucky trekking, technical scrambling, and road running.
Our team is still getting better at navigation, so we had to maximize our team strength which was speed.
I always ask people when we are putting on our adventure racing training courses “How fast can you travel on your team in AR?” and the response that I emphatically get 99 percent of the time is “As fast as your slowest person!”.
WRONG!
In adventure racing you can travel FASTER than your slowest person because you can tow, you can push, you can share weight, and you can draft.
It still surprises me in a longer team race such as this one that we just finished this weekend, that more teams don’t tow. There were 100 teams that lined up for the start of the longer race and I only saw one other team towing. Ironically enough it was our neighbours, long time adventure racers, and sometime training partners from the team Beowulf. There is no rule against it, and it is a potent aid to maximize your teams efficiency!
See team Beowulf’s interview on AR Radio here
Benefits of Towing
Detractors of Towing
I don’t know about you, but for the weight, I’ll take this little piece of race insurance in my pack any day! Try it and I think you will like it. You will make race more enjoyable for everyone on your team.
What you need:
7 feet of thera-band, surgical tubing, or stretchy cord.
2 non-locking carabiners
Just tie off the carabiners with a double overhand knot and you are ready to rock.
Click here to have a look at our Bike Tow system.
Written by Mark
When the teachers went on strike on an episode of the Simpsons, poor little Lisa was without any feedback and she went into intellectual withdrawal and sought out sources and authority figures to get “graded”. It has become unpopular to assign labels or to have competition within schools and the new “everybody is a winner” attitude seems to be the purveying train of thought. What happened to awarding achievement?
Many of you remember the Canada fitness testing as being a day of dread because people actually quantified your fitness level with numbers and levels. This was a source of ridicule and hardships for some, but for others like me and my wife, it was play day and a chance to get “graded” on our fitness which for the competitive types was a challenge and a reward. Maybe I am jaded with my work as a firefighter, but being a first responder at many medical emergency calls, I can tell you that I see overweight unhealthy YOUNG people who require medical assistance ahead of their time. I say bring back the Canada Fitness Testing, because we are reaching epidemic levels of obesity in a socialized health care system. Here is a novel thought, maybe we should give the healthy fit kids some incentive to stay that way! Either we are
all going to pay now, or pay later, as the unhealthy little kids are going to inherently burden the health care system later on in life unless their life choices change, and peer pressure is a great motivator! Pointing out someones physical weakness or inherent incompetence can be done without shaming the kids, and it can be done in a way that we can set goals for them and work on shoring up weaknesses. Why is this such a verboten idea? We grade kids in all other aspects of their school curriculum, but give them no feedback on how Physically Fit or HEALTHY they are. To sum it up, I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said ” Your body is your window through which you see the world.”
While I was in the Air Cadet system we did the Canada Fitness testing protocols as part of our fitness component. I know that they still do the fitness testing and there are awards to the top cadets. In the air cadet program there are few badges that you can wear, compared to the other elements (army) and one of them is the Canada Fitness badge.
So if you were living under a rock, and you must ask: What were the Canada Fitness Test Standards?
Here they are: It is based on six fitness performance tests that give an overall picture of your general physical
fitness condition. The six tests, each of which have a specific purpose, include the following:
The Canada Fitness testing used levels that were represented by elements such as gold, silver, bronze. There were two others, and they were the level of excellence, and the dreaded participation pin. So after you completed all the tests, you received a grade based on the lowest scoring of any of the sections. For example if you get silver ratings in 5 out of the 6 test, and then you get a bronze level in the push ups. Then your overall rating and your little fancy badge is a bronze. So the Canada fitness test was promoting overall health and fitness, and was in fact a blend of speed, agility, strength, and stamina. It sounds eerily similar to CrossFit’s 10 general physical skills that they promote as one of the pillars of their fitness program.
Click below to see all of the standards and levels for the now defunct Canada Fitness Testing
I say it was a great test of overall health and fitness and think that the idea should be revisited. After all, what we are doing now to keep our youth healthy and fit is clearly NOT working.
