Ingredients

2 cups fresh basil

2 cloves garlic

21⁄2 tbs olive oil

3 tbs pine nuts

2 tbs cashews

Instructions

Blend all ingredients together in an electric blender, or using a mortar and pestle.

Add oil slowly to form the right consistency.

Five rounds for time of:
Run 400 meters
185/135 pound Deadlift, 21 reps

12 Deadlifts 275/185 lbs

200 m Run

9 Deadlifts 275/185 lbs

30 Toes-to-Bars

6 Deadlifts 275/185 lbs

40 Push-ups

3 Deadlifts 275/185 lbs

50 Lateral Jumps

1 Deadlift 275/185 lbs

Post total time.

"Cupid"
Sandbag Clean and Jerk
Kb Swing American 53/35

Only sandbag can be moving when Kb is moving.

Less is more – as far as exercise goes – is becoming another accepted truth, especially when you understand that 80% of your body composition is determined by how you eat.

If you dial the diet in (Primal Blueprint, of course), you just don’t need to “burn off” tons of excess calories with a lot of hard work. Yet many people are still tied to that assumption and ride that fine line between training enough to maximize strength and unnecessarily reaching too far. Overtraining is a very real danger for those engaged in physical culture. In fact, while the majority of this country (and of many others) suffers from a massive physical activity deficit, a sizeable portion of my readers faces the opposite danger. Understanding exactly how much to exercise can be tricky. No activity is worse than some, while too much may be worse than none at all. The ideal lies somewhere in between – though not necessarily in the middle, but rather smack dab in the “just enough” section. Can “just enough” be quantified? Perhaps it could be quantified using a battery of round-the-clock tests and measurements of anabolic and catabolic hormones, various serum concentrations, lactate build-up, cortisol:testosterone ratios, etc, but that would be expensive, unwieldy, and completely individualized. These types of objective measurements, ironically, would be more subjective than anything else; you couldn’t accurately extrapolate an overtraining threshold for the entire population from a single trainee’s results.

People are unique. Sure, nutritional requirements for human physiology adhere to a set of overarching principles, yet a single, universally specific macronutrient profile cannot be nailed down for all humans. In the end, each of us must craft his or her own identity, plan, regimen, and discover his or her own weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and sensitivities. In short, we must each become our own test subject (as well as astute observer) if we wish to optimize our health and our fitness. The concept of overtraining is similar. There’s a clinical definition – a state of chronic fatigue, depression, and underperformance that persists despite rest – and there’s a more general, working definition – a basic imbalance between work and recovery. Overtraining can also be highly personal and goal-dependent. Overtraining might describe anytime your training is working against you, and where adding more of it makes the problem worse. If you want to avoid overtraining, there are some grand, overarching principles to follow, but you’ll also want to pay attention to certain personal, entirely subjective cues.

What follows is my basic list of signs that indicate you may be overtraining. Some are objective measures, while others derive from my own personal experiences with overtraining. There are overlaps, and I’ve probably missed more than a few, but I’m confident what’s listed will be invaluable to anyone who trains, and trains hard.

1. You repeatedly fail to complete your normal workout.

I’m not talking about normal failure. Some people train to failure as a rule, and that’s fine. I’m talking failure to lift the weights you usually lift, run the hill sprints you usually run, and complete the hike you normally complete. Regression. If you’re actively getting weaker, slower, and your stamina is deteriorating despite regular exercise, you’re probably training too much. Note, though, that this isn’t the same as deloading. Pushing yourself to higher weights and failing at those is a normal part of progression, but if you’re unable to lift weights that you formerly handled with relative ease, you may be overtrained.

2. You’re losing leanness despite increased exercise.

If losing fat was as easy as burning calories by increasing work output, overtraining would never result in fat gain – but that isn’t the case. It’s about the hormones. Sometimes, working out too much can actually cause muscle wasting and fat deposition. You’re “burning calories,” probably more than ever before, but it’s predominantly glucose/glycogen and precious muscle tissue. Net effect: you’re getting less lean. The hormonal balance has been tipped. You’ve been overtraining, and the all-important testosterone:cortisol ratio is lopsided. Generally speaking, a positive T:C ratio means more muscle and less fat, while a negative ratio means you’re either training too much, sleeping too little, or some combination of the two. Either way, too much cortisol will increase insulin resistance and fat deposition, especially around the midsection. Have you been working out like a madman only to see your definition decrease? You’re probably overtraining.

3. You’re lifting/sprinting/HIITing hard every single day.

The odd genetic freak could conceivably lift heavy, sprint fast, and engage in metabolic conditioning nearly every day of the week and adequately recover, without suffering ill effects. Chances are, however, you are not a genetic freak with Wolverine’s healing factor. Most people who maintain such a hectic physical schedule will not recover (especially if they have a family and/or a job). Performance will suffer, health will deteriorate, and everything they’ve worked to achieve will be compromised. Many professional athletes can practice for hours a day every day and see incredible results (especially if they are using performance enhancing substances), but you’re not a professional, are you?

4. You’re primarily an anaerobic/power/explosive/strength athlete, and you feel restless, excitable, and unable to sleep in your down time.

When a sprinter or a power athlete overtrains, the sympathetic nervous system dominates. Symptoms include hyperexcitability, restlessness, and an inability to focus (especially on athletic performance), even while at rest or on your off day. Sleep is generally disturbed in sympathetic-dominant overtrained athletes, recovery slows, and the resting heart rate remains elevated. Simply put, the body is reacting to a chronically stressful situation by heightening the sympathetic stress system’s activity levels. Most PBers who overtrain will see their sympathetic nervous system afflicted, simply because they lean toward the high-intensity, power, strength side.

5. You’re primarily an endurance athlete, and you feel overly fatigued, sluggish, and useless.

Too much resistance training can cause sympathetic overtraining; too much endurance work can cause parasympathetic overtraining, which is characterized by decreased testosterone levels, increased cortisol levels, debilitating fatigue (both mental and physical), and a failure to lose body fat. While I tend to advise against any appreciable amount of endurance training, chronic fatigue remains an issue worthy of repeating. Being fit enough to run ten miles doesn’t mean that you now have to do it every day.

6. Your joints, bones, or limbs hurt.

I’m unaware of any clinical tests that can identify overuse injuries specifically caused by overtraining, but don’t you think that pain in your knee might be an indication that you should reassess how you exercise that knee? In the lifts, limb pain can either be DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) or it can indicate poor technique or improper form; DOMS is a natural response that should go away in a day or two, while poor form is more serious and can be linked to overuse or overtraining. With regard to endurance training, if you creak, you wince at every step, and you dread staircases, it may be that you’ve run too far or too hard for too long. The danger here is that your daily endorphin high has over-ridden your natural pain receptors. You should probably listen to them more acutely. I tuned them out for longer than I should have and it cost me my career as a marathoner (so I got that going for me, which is nice).

7. You’re suddenly falling ill a lot more often.

Many things can compromise your immune system. Dietary changes (especially increased sugar intake), lack of Vitamin D/sunlight, poor sleep habits, mental stress are all usual suspects, but what if those are all locked in and stable? What if you’re eating right, getting plenty of sun, and enjoying a regular eight hours of solid sleep each night, but you find yourself getting sick? Nothing too serious, mind you. A nagging cough here, a little sniffle or two there, some congestion and a headache, perhaps. These were fairly normal before you went Primal, but they’ve returned. Your immune system may be suffering from the added stress of your overtraining. It’s an easy trap to fall into, simply because it’s often the natural progression for many accomplished athletes or trainees looking to increase their work or improve their performance: work harder, work longer. If you’ve recently increased your exercise output, keep track of those early morning sore throats and sneezes. Any increases may indicate a poor immune system brought on by overtraining.

8. You feel like crap the hours and days after a big workout.

Once you get into the swing of things, one of the great benefits of exercise is the post-workout feeling of wellness. You’ve got the big, immediate, heady rush of endorphins during and right after a session, followed by that luxurious, warm glow that infuses your mind and body for hours (and even days). It’s the best feeling, isn’t it? We all love it. What if that glow never comes, though? What if instead of feeling energetic and enriched after a workout, you feel sketchy and uncomfortable? As I said before, post-workout DOMS is completely normal, but feeling like death (mentally and physically) is not. Exercise generally elevates mood; if it’s having a negative effect on your mood, it’s probably too much.

Read more: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/overtraining/#ixzz1mNEeKWvu

“Cupid”

SandBag Clean and Jerk

KB Swings American 53/35

8min amrap

Sandbag is the only rep that counts

21-15-9

Thrusters 95/65

Pull-ups

There are laws that govern us all and there is no changing the way gravity affects us. In every sport the elite all have some things in common: they use gravity to their advantage; they are compact in their movements; and everything is done with almost an effortless approach.

How do elite athletes run? If you were stripped of your shoes and asked to run barefoot on the road, would you run the same way as you did with shoes? Why not?

Because unless you already Gebrselassie or Michael Johnson, you probably run with your foot landing in a manner that quite destructively sends shock waves up your legs into the ankle, knee, and hip joints. In most cases, your foot will land in front of you. Think about this for a second. If a car were traveling down the street would you stick something in front of it to speed it up? When an object is in motion, if something lands

in front of its center of mass, it will either slow down or stop quite harshly.

The human foot is designed with enough padding on the ball of the foot for the Tarahumara Indians, certain indigenous peoples of Africa, and our ancestors to get around without Nike Shox. It is not designed for the heel to strike the ground first and to roll through to the toes. Take off your shoes and jump up and down barefoot on your heels. Do it! I dare you! Wait, no don’t, you didn’t sign a waiver! What you should do instead is to jump from and land on the balls of your feet as if you are jumping rope. Then give it a whirl with those heels, or even from “mid-foot.” Doesn’t work so well, huh?

This brings up another point. If you were to do a set of twenty jumping squats or a set of twenty jump rope jumps, which would be a more efficient movement for getting your feet off the ground? Obviously, the jump rope hops require less muscle activation, less energy, and less effort. In part, this reflects the difference between muscle contraction (jumping squats) and muscle elasticity (jumping rope). That makes the difference between finishing a marathon ineffectively and finishing a marathon effectively. One will have a lot of pain associated with it (for various reasons I will talk about in another article), and the other will have much less.

We like to think of running—or other movement— happening in three separate phases: the pose, the fall, and the pull. The pose is the point at which your foot passes under your center of mass and you make the

shape of the number 4 with your legs and look great. The fall happens when you let go, use gravity to your advantage, and just fall. You can see the slight forward lean in both pictures. The pull, where the supporting foot is pulled, instead of pushed, from the ground and movement continues. You can see this happening in photo 3, where the rear leg is still bent but coming off the ground. You can also see how neither foot is in contact with the ground at this point. If you are not in contact with the ground, you cannot get hurt!

As a 180-pound man whose background is in power and strength sports, I am by definition not a runner. Now, though, some would beg to differ as I have completed several runs ranging in length from 5 kilometers to 101 miles. There is a reason that, at 180 pounds, I am faster than most men and women 30 pounds lighter than I and why I have the ability to run for 100 miles at a time. It started by changing the way I ran. I have worked at it since 2001, and I have trained others at it for more than three years. I am by no means fast but I sure as hell am more efficient than most. Learning how to run properly and train properly (and safely) is why I can do this.

http://www.crossfitendurance.com/run

CrossFit Journal Article Reprint. First Published in CrossFit Journal Issue 64 – December 2007