I was leaning against the windows of the Walgreens, waiting for the 66 bus to come and bring me to the gym. Evening rush hour was slowing everything down. A young guy was pacing the sidewalk nearby, asking every second or third person if they might donate money to save the children, or the whales, or the trees.

She was a quarter of the way across the street before I saw her. When she stepped off the curb, I’m sure she had the light. But now, as she pushed her walker, the light was changing and a stream of cars could do nothing but watch and wait. Part of me wanted to go over, pick up the old lady and carry her the rest of the way. Every step was progress, but barely.

I admired her persistence, sad that it took her five full minutes to cross the street. I thought it wasn’t as sad as if she couldn’t make it at all, and I thought about a conversation I’d had recently.

I was sitting beneath the judge’s tent at the Northeast Qualifiers, in a beach chair real low to the pavement. A hundred yards away, barbells and bumper plates crashed to the ground. I could hear the pull-up bars shake under the momentum of kips. Rafael lowered himself into the seat next to me.

I don’t remember how we got to talking about it, but eventually he mentioned his father. He said there was no way his father could get in and out of a chair like the ones we were in. He said, “I love my father, but I don’t want to end up like him.”

If he isn’t already, Rafael is close to turning forty, though you’d never guess it. He’s a fighter, a trainer, an athlete, and a constant stream of encouragement. You’re always just a little bit better when Raf is nearby, and as we sat there, the irony of what we were talking about didn’t escape me.

It was a weekend to celebrate athleticism, to marvel at the virility, viability and ferociousness of youth, and we were talking about what it was like to grow old. All around us wandered the chiseled bodies of young gods and goddesses, but Rafael and I were talking about nursing homes. We were talking about our fathers.

My father isn’t in bad shape. He’s in his fifties and stays active. My mother sees to it that he eats relatively well, and when he’s not battling some knee or shoulder problem, he gets to the gym a couple times a week. I’ve tried to introduce him to CrossFit, but he’s a man of routine. Twenty minutes on the stationary bike, some seated shoulder presses and leg extensions and he’s happy. Every now and again, he’ll call me and tell me he got on the Concept2 at the Y, just like I showed him.

So maybe I shouldn’t be worried, but I am. I’ve watched his mother start showing signs of Alzheimer’s. At dinner with her, I’ve watched him put on a smile as she tells us the same story she told us ten minutes prior, and I can’t help but wonder if that smile will be mine some day. I want him to stop eating pasta and bread, but I’m fighting against years of homemade Italian cooking and I don’t know how hard to push. I don’t know how to tell him it’s because I don’t want him to end up like her.

Rafael and I are sitting in beach chairs real low to the pavement and he says, “I love my father, but I don’t want to end up like him,” and I start to wonder if my old man could get in and out of the chair. I don’t know the answer.

It’s so easy to get lost in the vanity of now. In the mirror’s reflection. It’s so easy to focus on the Fran time and the max deadlift and the consecutive pull-ups. What’s harder to remember is that we aren’t doing this for today.

It’s nice to look good with your clothes off, but it’s nicer to know that for the rest of your life you’ll be able to take those clothes off without the assistance of a certified health care provider. That you’ll be able to get across the street without the assistance of a traffic cop.

While my father’s mother forgets, my mother’s parents are on their boat, floating down the Hudson River on a trip they’ve taken many times before. When summer comes, family barbeques are scheduled around their arrival. My grandfather is still one of the strongest people I’ve ever known, and my grandmother is still one the sharpest.

I can’t know all the reasons my grandparents have aged differently. There are too many variables. I can’t know if it was environment, their diet, lifestyle, or genetics, but I do know that blaming randomness is too easy. The choices we make in youth give color to our future selves.

What we’re doing, it isn’t about today.

Raphael teaches at CrossFit Boston.  Picture courtesy of the author.

The car ride to Albany is quiet. The ‘what-if’ conversations and ‘I wonder’ talk gives way to long stretches of silence. The trees that line the Berkshire Highway whip by, and Stacey, in the back seat, says, “How about we just go to Buffalo instead.”

We meet James at the hotel. He’s sunburned and in good spirits. If he’s nervous, I can’t tell. If he gets nervous, it doesn’t show. He unpacks a bag of M&Ms and we leave for Albany CrossFit for registration.

The Northeast Qualifier is the final competition before Aromas. These athletes have watched the videos and done the workouts. They’ve compared themselves to those who have qualified and those who did not. They’ve run through the weekend’s programming, once in the gym, and a hundred times in their minds and in their sleep. The only thing left to do is pick up the barbell and go.

Saturday morning and the sun shines through clouds. With only three heats of women, Stacey doesn’t have to wait long. The numbers aren’t as high as we thought they’d be. Twelve minute AMRAP, thrusters and burpees. Sixes and sevens lead the way. Stacey finds eight rounds and goes into the second workout as the leader.

Nobody knows who he is when James starts his first workout. He’s in the back row, near the trees. I know to keep my camera on him, and it’s all I can do not to scream at him with each thruster. When he’s done, when he’s on the ground, sweating, heart racing, arms and legs sprawled, he looks up and catches my eye. He smiles the smile of a boy who just raced the dog home from the bus stop and finally won.

The second workout, a 2K row, only proves that the first wasn’t a fluke. Both James and Stacey place top 5. The leader board is announced after the sun goes down. After a first and a second place finish, Stacey leads the women’s division. James is in third for the men, only three points behind first.

The Day Two workout is announced, power cleans, pull-ups and KB swings. I hear a single cheer let loose from somewhere in the crowd. I can’t see him, but I know James is smiling.

Stacey spends the morning pacing and watching the men race through the workout. The knowledge that only two women have been able to finish weighs heavily on her mind, and she spends a few hours on the sidelines, as if looking for clues that might show her the secret.

She picks up an empty barbell in the warm-up area and says it feels heavy. She says that she doesn’t do power cleans.

She seems to be the only person in Albany who doesn’t think she can do this.

Ten minutes before the final heat, she wanders around beneath the pull up bars and amongst the barbells. She doesn’t know what she should do about dropping the bar on the cleans. She asks for advice. Asks people to show her. Doesn’t want the heat to start, but can’t wait for it to be over.

I remind her that everybody’s chasing her, that the pressure is on them, and she says she’d rather be in tenth place. That she’d rather be the one chasing. I wonder how somebody so unsure of her abilities has found such success in this test of mental strength. I watch her chalk her hands and try to understand the contradiction. And then I see something.

Camera zoomed in, her face filling the screen, I watch her close her eyes. The two-minute warning blares through the speakers. The crowd not ten feet away is nervous, loud. Camera zoomed in, her face filling the screen, I can see something change. For all the nervousness, all the self-doubt, all the jokes about wanting to go home, Stacey finds the place every great athlete must find. When her eyes open again, she’s different. She’s the girl that everybody’s chasing.

Thirteen minutes and forty-three seconds later, the last kettlebell swing falls from the sky and Stacey falls to the pavement. It’s good enough for third in the event, and more than enough to keep her atop the leader board.

Ten minutes later and the top 16 men stand in a wide circle, the pull up bars in the middle and the crowd surrounding them all. I weave through the athletes with my camera.

I make my way to James. As we stand and wait for the start, I watch as he shakes his judge’s hand. He asks her what CrossFit she’s from and where it’s located. If he’s nervous, I can’t tell. If he gets nervous, it doesn’t show.

The heat starts and ends in what feels like thirty seconds. Between shots, I can’t help but look over my shoulder to watch James. To try to gauge what round he’s on. To see where he stands. I want so badly to be with our friends on the sidelines, screaming my voice away. The only thing we can do to help.

I realize he’s in the lead, but barely. Brad Posnanski and Scott Lewis are close. I watch James finish his second to last set of KB swings. I watch him pick the barbell up, rack it, drop it. I watch him run to the pull up bars. I watch him run back to the kettlebell.

When it hits the ground for the last time, I hear James scream. I watch him get sucked into a sea of arms. I don’t know if I’ve got the shot. In the moment, I don’t know how to marry my job and my friendship. I teeter somewhere in the middle for a moment before turning my camera around in time to catch Scott finish. James wins by six seconds.

The clock stops ticking and the competitors are picked up off the ground. Everybody knows who James is now. He shakes hands and says thank you. The smile on his face, it hasn’t changed. If he believed that this could happen, it doesn’t show.

The final standings are announced, and neither James nor Stacey are sure they’ve won. Their names crackle through the speakers when there are no other names to be read and I watch a mixture of relief and surprise wash across their faces.

Before the weekend, I would have told you that I didn’t think a person could win if they didn’t go into the event convinced of success. I’d seen the calm and confidence of Dutch Lowy in Hell’s Half Acre. I’d met Jeremy Thiel and felt the drive that emitted from him. I’d watched Carey Kepler take the lead the moment she stepped out onto the field.

And I thought that that’s what separated elite from very good. That level of intensity. The kind you can see. The kind you can hear in a voice.

But I’m beginning to realize that determination can’t be measured by my camera. I can’t zoom in close enough to see what happens to somebody when their eyes close and open again. I can’t get my microphone close enough to hear what they say to themselves in the moments before the gun goes off or in the moments when the pain sets in and there are more reps left to go.

Driving home, I think about how that is what we’re all chasing. Those answers. Those secrets. Those short cuts to our athletic potential. But I’m smart enough to know that even if Stacey Kroon and James Hobart, Dutch Lowy, Jeremy Thiel, Carey Kepler and the rest of the CrossFit Elite could tell me what they say to themselves, it wouldn’t matter. I’m smart enough to know that the voice in each of our heads speaks a language only we know how to translate. Their voices are foreign to me. Their answers are no good.

Driving home, I realize that for all the times I’ve witnessed Stacey and James rip through a workout in CrossFit Boston, for all the confidence I had in them, I failed to realize one thing: That they could still surprise me.

Driving home, I ask into the darkness if anybody still wants to go to Buffalo. Stacey in the backseat says no, and soon falls asleep.

Rafael encourages James to row just a little harder.  Picture courtesy of Evan Saint Clair.

This isn’t dangerous.  Wrestling lions is dangerous.  Climbing mountains is dangerous.   

This is a walk in the park.

You can stand there and scream, loading a thousand YouTube videos, a thousand screenshots of undereducated idiots throwing around barbells and calling it CrossFit.  It doesn’t make you right.  It makes you a YouTube-watching naysayer.  

What you’re lacking is honest proof.  Statistics.  A spreadsheet, a number, a definitive outcome, an analysis of variance showing that what we’re doing carries an outsized risk of injury.

Of course, you’ll never find it, because it doesn’t exist.  Instead, you’ll type hate mail on the nearest message board, insisting that thrusters break wrists and burpees break backs, that the clean and jerk is an abomination, the kipping pull-up an affront to humanity.

Good luck.  While you hold forth from the mountaintops, we’ll be pressing on, recognizing a singular truth that has escaped your narrow worldview: risk and reward go hand-in-hand.  

If you want the world’s safest fitness program, you’ll have to forego fitness.  You’ll strap into a lever-controlled, pulley-modulated padded seat, moving through a predetermined range of motion, and you’ll stay fat.  If you want to get fit, you’ll have to stand up, and the second you do, you’ll be subject to gravity.  

Gravity is a risk, and it would just as soon have you on your ass as on your feet.  It would just as soon snap you in two as leave you whole, twisting your ligaments from their tenuous foundations or leaving them intact.

Fortunately, gravity is also the supreme creator of athletes, the silent resistance that makes bones dense and muscles strong.  It rewards every second of fight, every moment we refuse to succumb to its pull.   The more advantage we give it through increased loads and coordinated movements, the more it gives back.  

Of course, the risks grow in lockstep, the hundred pound injury a mere trifle to the tragedy of its three hundred pound cousin.  With every fight, there is the spectre of failure, insignificant or catastrophic.

However compelling, these possibilities pale in comparison to the risk of stopping.  Frailty, immobility, and disease are not the result of working too hard, of waging war against a barbell.  They are the result of a padded seat.  They are the result of refusing to stand, of allowing fear to dictate the bounds of fitness. 

The true danger lies in non-participation.

Load your videos, and cite the miniscule incidence of rhabdomyolysis.  Write letters to your constituency, warning them of the dangers of CrossFit, of our singular drive to massacre, maim, and kill.  Yell and parade, and make as much noise as you can, and hope that the volume hides your lack of evidence.  Time will prove you an idiot, fighting a force as inexorable as gravity.

Eric Barber, owner of Next Generation CrossFit, locks out at Hell's Half Acre.  Picture courtesy of Patrick Cummings.

Before you say anything, I know.  Before you tell me the obvious answer, don’t.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate it.  It’s that I’ve been on this train before, and this is the stop I always seem to sleep through, the one I have to catch on the return trip.

It’s 6 a.m. and I’m in Texas.  I don’t want to be awake right now, but nobody asked my opinion an hour ago when my eyes opened and my mind flipped on.

I haven’t been sleeping much lately.

This used to happen frequently, years ago, prior to CrossFit finding me.  Before I knew what it was or why it was happening.  Before I knew I could stop it if I really wanted to.  I guess before I really wanted to.

See, though, it’s not the lack of sleep that’s the problem.  That’s simply a symptom.  A therapist I went to years back called it depression and I took some pills.  I called it unavoidable and took to staring blankly at the television set for long hours into late nights.  

But, again, that’s before I knew I could stop it.

During the first couple months of this year, I came down with a case of shingles.  A little over a month ago, I got unlucky on a clean and pinned my right elbow to my knee, stretching my wrist back under the weight of 210 pounds.  A few weeks later, I got lazy at the track and decided I didn’t need to warm up before attempting 200-meter repeats.  I felt my left hamstring pop before I made the turn on the first run.  Apparently I’m not 18 anymore.

Somewhere between my voluntary rest and self-induced stress over the movie, I stopped getting to the gym.  The hamstring healed, but even my evening C2 sprints faded in frequency.  The last time I was in the gym was two weeks ago, where I struggled through a one-armed dumbbell version of Jackie.

A couple months back, I was lucky enough to film CrossFit’s first Warrior Transition Certification.  I saw young men with no legs deadlift.  I saw young men on crutches squat.  I witnessed young men in pain push through.

But I hurt my wrist and suddenly everything stops.  It’s amazing how easily you can forget what you’ve been taught.

It’s been two weeks since I’ve been in the gym and I’m beginning to remember what I’ve learned these last couple years.  I don’t need to know the science behind it.  The black box is fine.  When I work hard, I feel better.  When I feel better, I eat better.  When I eat better, I am better.  Input, output.

It’s 6 a.m. in Texas, and today I’m starting over.

Patrick Cummings is the Senior Media Producer for Again Faster, and the creative mind behind our best stuff.  Check out the site for his upcoming flick, 100 Mile Movie, starring Brian MacKenzie and Carl Borg of CrossFit Endurance.

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Ian:    Hello?

Jon:    Ian?  Jon Gilson.  How are you?

Ian:    Hey, Jon.  Good.  How are you?

Jon:    Good, man.  Good.  Just wanted to call today, talk a little bit about your history with CrossFit and your profession now and, you know, the interplay between the two.

Ian:    Yes, by all means.

Jon:    Tell me about the beginning of your career over there in Santa Cruz County.

Ian:    You know, I started - I went to work for the Sheriff's department in Santa Cruz County in 1997 and prior to that I'd been an elite level cyclist.  I'd raced in the U.S. and in Europe for amateur trade teams and for U.S. national team and a few races in Europe.  

I came back after an injury and pretty much just hung up the bike and got into law enforcement on a whim.  I went to work for Santa Cruz and started doing the job and realizing that there was probably going to be a need to change my fitness.  I was a pretty thin guy.  I was an endurance athlete and bad guys size you up real quick and dirty when they get a look at you.  If you're a skinny little guy, they're going to try to take you for a ride.  
    
With that in mind I made a lot of changes to how I was training and what I was doing as far as trying to stay strong and healthy and keep some maintenance of good fitness, and did the typical body building routine for quite a number of years.  And actually, before I had left Santa Cruz in 2002, I was up to about 205 and I was just the typical muscle-meathead kind of guy, but I felt good I thought and I thought I looked good and what not.  

I definitely felt a little more confident in the way I looked and the way I presented myself in the uniform.  So that was a good thing.  But there was some definite downsides to it as well.  And it just took a while to work through that and kind of figure that out and eventually find CrossFit, which came quite a few years later though.

Jon:    It sounds like you were in Santa Cruz at the kind of the - one of the nexuses, kind of a generation of CrossFitters that first became known nationwide and worldwide.  Did you ever make it over to the box in Santa Cruz in the early days?

Ian:    You know, it's funny because I, what was it?  I want to say '99 or 2000, Greg Amundson had come out of the academy and I had a couple (inaudible) and a couple grip with CrossFit folks and the one of them being Greg and the other one being Jason Highbarger from CrossFit in North Santa Cruz.  

 At that time  my wife and I were going to a gym pretty consistently on 41st Avenue there.  It was the Spa Fitness.  And Jason would be in there doing just this crazy stuff in the corner.  I mean he'd, you know, he's doing like Turkish getups with the barbell, standing on like one of those half bosu balls and just a lot of compound movements and just it was really bizarre.  

He'd always get the strange looks, but he was over there doing it every time we were in there.  And he would talk to me about it and I was kind of, "Yes, okay, okay.  Yes, it's cool.  Whatever."  About the same time I get Greg Amundson as a trainee and he comes into my car and he and I just hit it off great.  We're both real athletic and really into fitness and health.  We got along great.  He was getting involved in CrossFit roughly the same time.  

Greg had a reputation of doing some pretty outlandish training and being a real student of whatever game he was taking on.  He was talking to me about it and I just couldn't get it through my thick skull at the time.  I was like, "Hey, yes, it's great and all.  I've got some press downs to do, or something."  You know, I said, "I've got stuff to do, buddy."  

I stuck with my program. I never got a chance to really immerse myself in the CrossFit culture in Santa Cruz as it started up.  It wasn't until I got to Sacramento a number of years later that I actually took the dive into it.  It was, you know, obviously a shock.  Like, "Oh, man, what did I miss out on in the heyday?"  But as they say, it's better late than never, I guess.

Jon:    Absolutely.  When you were in Santa Cruz, you were a Patrol Officer?

Ian:    Yes, I worked in Patrol for five years and some change and I was a Field Training Officer there.  I also spent a year and a half on the SWAT team.  Through all those different requirements of my job, I could really see where the modality and the methodology of CrossFit came into play.  Was very important to combine not only strength, but endurance and stamina and the ability to function at a very high level in a very short timeframe and then be able to do again if necessary.  

During that tenure in Santa Cruz, I was constantly struggling once I kind of started with the concept of, hey, how do I combine, good power, good relative strength and endurance?  You do the typical lift and then cardio, lift and then cardio, whether you split it up on opposite days or whether you combine the two, which you know was more detrimental than it was good.  

But nonetheless it was a hard thing to figure out.  I remember vividly being on SWAT call outs loaded down, you know, 50 pounds of gear and just gasping, just an hour into it, whether you're sitting on a perimeter or whether you're moving around and shucking and jiving, I just remember being, "God, I'm getting tired."  I knew there had to be a better way.  

In Patrol you go from zero to 60.  You're out talking to somebody and the next thing you know it's a foot pursuit and you're going over fences and then you're getting in a fist fight.  That exact scenario happened to me prior to me leaving there one day.  That was really a changing life for me was getting into a fight with a guy that I chased for a long time, getting stuck in a backyard with him and just being in a literal toe-to-toe fist fight for about a minute and a half straight until the first units got there.  

It was going good.  It was going my way there for a while, but towards the end I knew I was gassing.  And I couldn't get out on the radio because he tore my radio off and it was starting to go south.  So thankfully the homeowner came out of the house and saw us.  I said, "Hey, call 911.  Tell them where I'm at."  And units got there.  

But had that gone on longer, I don't know what would have happened.  This guy was pretty big and he was holding his ground and so was I.  But at some point in time I knew it was going to go downhill.  So I definitely made some changes after that.

Jon:    Did you realize that your fitness wasn't quite up to par at that point?  Is it something that you realized in retrospect?  I mean, was that really a big catalyst for you, Ian?

Ian:    Huge, huge.   That was - if nothing else, going on SWAT calls is one thing, but I thought, "Okay, maybe I need to up my running, get back on the bike," whatever.  But then when I actually had the chance to - not necessarily by looking for it, but I'd be stuck in the opportunity of having to go through multiple modalities.  

Literally, we ran for, no joke, about a quarter mile.  We jumped a couple fences.  We got in the back yard and we fought.  And that right there is saying, "Hey, I had to run.  I had to climb over things.  And then I had to go toe-to-toe with somebody."  So I combined all these different elements of fitness and requirements of fitness into one big package all the sudden that was going to either be a win or lose situation for me.  

Win or lose law enforcement combat in public, it’s not go home as the loser.  It's you don't go home.  And that right there, with him latched onto my gun, grabbing for my gun in that backyard and me doing all I could to fight this guy off and keep myself safe was the catalyst for me to go, "Okay, this is not the right way to train.  There's got to be a better way.  I know it's out there somewhere.  Now what do I do?"  

And so I tinkered with doing my own thing, but not to the same degree and intensity as CrossFit.  It wasn't until I got involved with CrossFit in late '04 that I really started to see things come about and really started to understand how it comes together and what makes it work as well as it does.

Jon:    You were in Sacramento at this point.  You transferred from Santa Cruz up to Sacramento?

Ian:    Yes.  In 2002, just because the cost of living in the Bay area was so ungodly high, my wife and I packed up.  We came out to Sacramento and I went to work for the Sheriff's department, where I still am.  I'd heard again about CrossFit through a couple people that I worked with and I said, "You know, we'll see.  We'll see.  We'll see."  

And then finally, after a couple years of being here - in fact, I got back on the bike and raced for a year.  I think it was in '03.  And I'd been off the bike for six, seven, eight years.  I forgot how hard it was.  I still wanted to be competitive and do things that I enjoyed doing, but being a lot bigger and not quite the athlete I was.  It was hard for me to find something that I really I could fall into a niche with.

Finally in late '04 I started dabbling in CrossFit again.  I jumped into it full force pretty much in '05 and in all honesty, I've never looked back since then.  It's just been go, go, go.

Jon:    Tell me a little bit about what it is that you're doing now in Sacramento.

Ian:    Since I got into CrossFit I wanted to find a way to obviously get more out to the law enforcement masses, so to speak.  I wanted people to have an understanding of the importance of their fitness beyond arm curls, bench press, lat pull downs, you know.  And bring something more well-rounded.  That opportunity was really hard for me to come by up until about, God, I don't know.  I want to say it was about three years ago.  

Every other year the officers in the department - we have some 2,000 officers in the department – every other year we rotate through an advanced officer training course.  It's a weeklong series of classes and courses designed to teach handgun skills again and refreshers in legal updates and different topics.  One of those topics at the time was a health and wellness presentation put on by Lieutenant Rick Englemoyer.  He's a very athletic individual mountain biker.  He's a former college lacrosse player, nutrition degree in college, pretty squared away guy.

He's putting on this class and it was seeing some results, but he wanted to make it more.  He wanted to expound upon that.   So last year he really took it to the administration and said, "Look, I want to make this more of a department well-rounded issue.  I want to bring it out to the forefront, make a blog, make a newsletter, get a team of people dedicated doing presentations, you name it."  And that's what we did.  

I approached Rick.  I said, "Hey, I'd really like to be on this group.  Here are my backgrounds, my credentials as an athlete, as a scholar and understanding sports and the science behind it.  How can I help?"  We put together the Sheriff's Department Health and Wellness team.  It consisted of eight people.  One of our primary goals was educating the department in diet and fitness through the AOT classes, which are the Advanced Officer Training classes.

On every Wednesday afternoon myself and another instructor would trade-off teaching these classes.  We brought CrossFit and the Zone and Paleo principles to the masses.  Let me tell you, they had never ever heard of this stuff.  It was really like the first time they'd seen the light.  And even for Rick Englemoyer who was pretty well versed.  He was a vegetarian at the time and had his own mindset of fitness, which is the typical mindset of an endurance athlete or a strength athlete.  

I started talking to him about it and working with him on it and he jumped into it and went back to regular, diet, a Paleolithic diet including meat again and all of a sudden he started seeing improvements.  He was like, "Holy crap.  This really does work."

Throughout teaching these classes we began to see the light go on in people.  I mean, literally.  I'd sit there and I'd be - you know, doing a two-hour block there and a one-hour CrossFit functional fitness stuff and another hour of dietary stuff and you see the light bulb go on in people's heads.  It was really interesting.  They'd walk into a class and they didn't want to be there.  It was like, "Oh, my God.  What is this going to be about?  I mean, here's my life here I’m never going to get back.  What am I going to learn?"

You know, that's how you go to these classes.  You're like, "Oh geez, just kill me now.  Thank God I had to leave my gun in the car."  So we'd be in there and I'd start in on it.  All the sudden about five minutes into it you're starting to see their eyes perk up. They're all starting to sit up in their chairs.  You've got a classroom of 30 people that were about to fall asleep all now really listening to what you're saying.

That was huge because from that people began to contact us more about advice on training, whether it was, basic strength training or some sort of endurance-based training or weight, mix the modalities or CrossFit specific stuff.  Also more so about diets because God knows cops are generally - we're lousy with diets.  We're lousy with fitness as a whole.  People really want to make these changes.  And we started to.  We really started to make some great gains and great inroads into that.

Jon:    That's fantastic.  I mean, you've got your Police Officers not routinely, I wouldn't say, but on a regular basis coming toe-to-toe with those life and death situations, giving the tools they need to survive in there.  

Ian, let's just back it up just a step, though.  Where did you learn CrossFit originally?  Were you an internet guy?  Were you doing it in your basement?  Was there an Affiliate?

Ian:    Yes.  I - how did - I remember someone telling me...I think it was a partner of mine that I actually work on the K9 detail now.  It was Sean Hampton.  He said, "Hey, you know, so-and-so does CrossFit.  You should check it out, crossfit.com."  I went there and I went, "Okay, that's kind of interesting.  What the hell is a thruster?  What's a double under?  Okay, I’m bored."

And then I came back a couple months later and I surfed the net again.  I said, "Okay, I'm going to try this workout."  The first workout I ever did was a Filthy Fifty.  And…

Jon:    Good choice.

Ian:    Oh, dear God.  Yes, I was - we live in a gated community kind of out to the east of the foothills out here.  We have a little private gym out here by the little shopping center.  It's mainly populated by older folks who are retirement community.  I go in there and I do the Filthy 50 and, no joke, I get done.  I must have just looked like crap.  I mean, my forearm was feeling horrible and I was probably rhabdo about halfway through it but I get done and I literally collapse against the wall.

There's this old lady walking on a treadmill and she's watching me real suspiciously for about three minutes and she finally looks at me and says, "Hun, you want me to call 911?"  And I go, "Wow."  I must have looked bad.  For me that was kind of where it started.  Once I did that I said, "You know what?  I'm going to try this again."  And of course I made some modifications to what I was doing.  

I think with most people like, they get into it and they go pretty hard for the first few months.  It's a lot of, “Let's just do it because it's fun and exciting and it's something new.”  And then slowly gradually start really understanding the science and the concepts behind it.  You start seeing where the application's made alive.  For me, that was definitely where it was.  I started seeing where its application was and where I could take it.

We started - I was doing it here in the little gym here and then probably in, it was probably '06 or so we actually built a little garage gym.  We had a three and a half car garage where I cleaned out the half car side and made a real functional garage gym down there that my wife and I could use.  

From there, come last spring, my wife had been getting really heavily involved in CrossFit after the birth of our second child and she had lost a ton of weight and didn't look like a mom who had had two kids.  She was actually kind of on a play date with a bunch of other moms and their kids and they were asking how she was staying as fit as she was.  She told them CrossFit and all the sudden it was literally these people were like, "I want in.  Tell me how.  Tell me where."

For us, that was a catalyst there because we had - I talked to Coach Glassman several times before and had a great rapport with the man.  I talked to him one time about Affiliating and he said to me, he goes, "Ian, you'll know when the time is.  You'll know when it's right.  It'll hit you like a bolt of lightning.  You'll know when it's right."  
 
Allison had come home and told me about this and I was like, "That's the bolt of lightning.  That has to be it.  Let's go forward with it."  It's something we both wanted to do.  We just never knew how we would time it with two kids, two real young kids.  We're like, "Well, you know what?  Let's find out."

We did that.  We actually affiliated last summer, started in the garage.  And then at the beginning of this year we actually moved into a 2,800 square foot facility just about 15 minutes from our house and it's growing by leaps and bounds every day.  It's growing scary fast, actually.  So, but it's a good thing.

Jon:    That's fantastic.  And you're seeing kind of an amalgamation—are you seeing officers from the Sacramento Sheriff's Department as well as your wife's friends, as well as the public?  Who's coming in the door?

Ian:    You know, the majority of the folks we had were initially Fire guys.  We had a lot of interest, of course, from the department.  So we did get a few department personnel.  We retained our original handful of clients that we had that were just civilian clients.  And then we started getting a lot of fire, metro fire guys that started coming in.  We’ve got a couple that are just phenomenal athletes.  

One couple, John and Kim, they'll be going to the Qualifiers this year for NorCal; great athletes, unbelievable people.  They started drawing some more folks in.  Slowly we started getting more cops in there again.  And cops are kind of a hard sell, I think with anything.  Unless it's got the word "free" on it it's really hard to sell a cop on something.

Jon:    You know, we've found that as well.  And as you might imagine, I mean, I get a lot of questions in that they…as far as recruiting law enforcement officers to come to CrossFit.  How did you find that you were received in your AOT classes?  How are you finding getting these people to come in the door even with the in of being an officer yourself?

Ian:    Yes, that was tricky.  The AOT was pivotal in that because those AOT classes perked their ears up and they went on the internet and they went on our blog site.  They started digging around and the next thing you know they're sending me emails and they're saying, "Hey, can we set something up one-on-one?  Can we talk some more about it?"  

I actually started doing a lot of little mini-training sessions with folks one-on-one.  I had had my Level I Cert for a while and I was able to relay a lot of the information I had learned and get it to them.  Then when the affiliates started coming down the pipe it was, again - you've got to be careful where you tread with it, pushing business within a government job.  You've always got to watch after personal business.  

But nonetheless, I would put our blog site up there as, "Hey, you know, we have good information and links and articles up here.  And by all means, if there's something I can do for you, let me know."  That was where we started seeing people all of a sudden start getting in touch.  "Hey, I'd like to join.  What should I do?  What can I do?"  And I'd say, "All right, let's do a fundamentals class," etc., etc.  

We took that a step further as part of the Health and Wellness team.  We took that a step further and outside of the AOT classes we actually started doing presentations for divisions.  So a division would call me and say, "Hey, we want to have a diet and fitness presentation.  We want to come in."  

I did it for a handful of divisions and units.  I'd go out there and spend a couple of hours with them and chart dietary plans if they needed it and talk about the programming and how everything worked.  These guys started doing this stuff on their own at the station houses.  

And then, of course, like a lot of people do, they get to a point where they're like, "Hey, you know, I need a little extra coaching, guidance, help, motivation," whatever.  Then they start having more interest coming into a gym for training and coaching sessions.  And that was real big.  

By doing that we were able to really expand upon it.  We actually at the end of January held a 40-person, a four-hour block session of like a mini CrossFit fundamentals course basically.   We took everybody, gave them one hour PowerPoint presentation.  There were actually a handful of academy instructors that are Level I Certified.  

We all went out on the gym floor and we talked about the movements, we worked the movements, we went over everything, we ran them through a mini-workout.  And I'll tell you what.  That started a fire.  It started a huge fire.  People that weren't into it were totally into it.  People that were just getting into it just dove head first into it.  

So that's been very pivotal.  And from that, of course, people have come back to our affiliate with their family members or as referrals and it's grown in that regard quite well.

Jon:    That's fantastic.  Have you heard anecdotally or otherwise on-the-job support for what you're doing?   Are your charges starting to see the integration there between the on-the-job requirements and CrossFit?

Ian:    Yes, tremendously.  We have a lot of support.  We publish a newsletter every three months.  People read that thing like it's going out of style now.  They're really into it.  We get questions from that all the time.  

People are really starting to understand the application of functional fitness into what their job role is.  I mean, like I said, it's zero to 60.  And you can be required to do so much in such a little timeframe that can, honestly be life-saving, your own or someone else's.  You need to be up to the par to handle those tasks.  And people started to see that and they understood that.  

Many people really took to it.  And like I said, they'd go to station house gyms before they started their shift.  They'd go in there and they'd do a workout together.  I'm sure some are doing it just for fun and other ones really understand it.  But they're doing it.  That's the biggest plus is that they're doing it.  

They're changing the way they view fitness.  They're not worried about the mirror, the good looks—just have big biceps and a big chest.  They're worried about getting out of this alive and improving their health and their fitness and keeping one up on the bad guys.  

As cops in a tumultuous economic time right now, we definitely see a rise in crime.  We see a rise in violent crime.  We see a rise of crime against law enforcement.  So trust me, it's no joke when I say that we get out of the car and we don't know what's going to happen, especially these days.  There's so many guys more willing to take on cops than there used to be.

The penalties are higher and there's a lot more desperation.  So bad guys want to keep one up on us and I think now a lot of people are realizing that their fitness is a weak link.  They need to get one up.  They need to keep one up on the bad guys because you send a guy to jail and he's got nothing but 23 hours a day to do burpees and pushups and pull-ups in his jail cell.  

What a cop's doing most of the time they don’t want to do that.  They just don't want to work that hard that long, but if you show them a light, you show them a way, show them you can do, hey, 30, 40 minutes of, high intensity movement, even less.  Within one hour in and out my doors in my gym and I'm making you fitter, faster, stronger. They can prove that on the battlefield, so to speak, they really buy into it.  And that's exactly what we wanted.

Jon:    Very cool.  You’d mentioned something earlier that kind of intrigued me, the idea that they're more willing, the bad guys, that is, they're more willing to take you on if you're smaller.  CrossFit doesn't breed large monsters by and large.  Have you seen any issues with that, any protestations from the fitter officers that you do work with as far as size?

Ian:    It's kind of funny because I think although, yes, CrossFit's not going to make you a muscle-bound monster of any sort, so to speak.  But there is a degree of confidence and presence that an officer needs to have and bring to the uniform when he steps out of a car or deals with a violent situation or subject who's out of control.  That command presence is so important.  It is so important.  

For a lot of people, if you are unsure of your physical capabilities walking into a certain situation, what your limitations are, what your output and your abilities are, you are not going to have that command presence.  And I don't care what size you are.  I don't care if you're 250 pounds, yolked, 6 percent body fat.  If - you're just not going to have it.  

I've seen that.  I've seen guys who are big and thick but they're like, "I don't feel good here."  I've seen little thin toothpick guys who have great fitness walk in there and take charge, take control.  And if it goes to crap, then they can also handle it.  So funny thing is that CrossFit plays a very psychological game in how we handle ourselves as law enforcement officers.   

And anybody, whether it's a soccer mom, a business man or a cop, you're going to see a definite change in a person's confidence and ability when they realize they can get through something ugly like the Filthy Fifty or Murph or Fight Gone Bad.  You know, just some brutal workout.  And, of course, you know, you scale back their intensity level.  Intensity's relative to each person, but nonetheless, to them, that is a huge milestone.  

When they get that little bit of confidence they know, "Hey, I can understand, I can accept what my limitations are and I know where I can do.  And it's probably a hell of a lot more than the bad guy here."  They become so much more confident whether they're large or whether they're small.  We have thin guys out there who maybe weigh a buck-seventy, buck-sixty five.  But I'll tell you what.  They can put up one hell of a fight.  And they'll walk away the winner.  And I put money on that.  
    
My partners have proven that.  I've proven that coming back down to 178 pounds from 205 and I'm way fitter, faster, stronger than I ever was at my heavier weight.  My power-to-weight ratio, my relative strength is phenomenal compared to what it was way back then.  We see that all the time with the other guys who are following protocol.

Jon:    Sure.  Do you have any on-the-job anecdotes, stories of these guys coming through?  Anything that will really drive that point home?

Ian:    Yes.  We've had, in fact, just recently, number one, in the job that I do as a canine handler, it is extremely physical.  We've had a number of guys in the detail since I've kind of really pushed the Kool-Aid to everybody, they've had no choice.  But they'll go, "Okay, geez, I've got to shut this guy up so I'm going to try it."  A lot of them never turn back.  

They've gone on to their other assignments and other details and other specialized units.  They're like, "Hey, this is the way to fly because it puts the fitness into your job that you were lacking."  As a canine handler, for me, it became very evident when we would be out doing super high-risk searches, you're loaded down with body armor, helmet, guns, dogs.  You're climbing over a fence and putting dogs in attics, pushing through gates and just breaking through fences.  

You're finding the guy, your dog on the guy, and you're fighting with the guy and the dog and it's, you know, there's a lot that goes on there.  Over the course of this you've covered several miles, maybe at a jog, maybe at a run, God, who knows?  For those of us in positions like that definitely we saw it there.  

Also we've had other guys who have also started getting CrossFit come encounter within our agency and other local agencies.  Come encounter with some very dangerous, life threatening situations for themselves as well as the public, and a couple very recently within our own agency.  Our officers who were involved in those situations were able to take control of that situation, overpower the suspects who were planning on using deadly force against the officers and walk away from those situations unscathed.  

I talked to these officers afterwards.  I said, "You know, was fitness and the type of fitness that you have, the well-rounded fitness that you have now versus what you were - was that a part of it?"  And each one of them said, unequivocally, “Yes, without a doubt.  Had I done what I had been doing for years, who knows what would have happened?”  

“But knowing that I was comfortable with where I was because of my own abilities, I was confident in my own abilities, and knowing that I was as strong as I was.  I could take the bad guy for a ride if I really wanted to and I did.  Yes, I was 100 percent confident that my fitness had something to do with me walking away from that."  
That's huge.  When guys start to hear that and see that and understand where that concept goes, where the concept of functional fitness goes beyond just a term, but actually as it relates to our job and as it relates to using the body in its entirety to reach a specific athletic or life-preserving goal.  That's where functional fitness comes in and people see that.  All of a sudden the light goes on and they yell, "Hey, I've got to get some of this."

Jon:    We see the benefits of this are pretty unequivocal.  They get seen by military, law enforcement, by the fire guys.  A lot of them complain to me or will talk to me about the difficulty of the actual implementation of getting the command structure to allow them to do what they're doing for any multitude of fears.  Did you have any issues in Sacramento in getting this implemented?  It sounds like you had a pretty easy in.

Ian:    Yes, it's got a little bit of both.  I think the thing that helped was Lieutenant Englemoyer having the Health and Wellness program kind of in a very premature state already in place.  It was kind of going.  When he implemented this full bore team of people to work on this on a three quarter time basis besides their regular job as cops, doing whatever they did within the department, one of the big questions that came up, and it's probably all over the U.S., is due to our economic situation:  

“How are we going to afford this?” I mean, budgets are a huge concern right now.  It's unbelievable the kind of turmoil we're all facing at different county and state and local level and what not.  So that was a big concern for our department was how are we going to afford this?  

So they had looked to outsourcing to a couple other local, functional fitness groups that are fairly well known, a couple of franchises that they tend to use a variant of what they consider sports specific conditioning.  The application's there to some degree, but not as much as I would like to see or that I necessarily agree with.  

When Englemoyer really presented it he said, "Look, we can do this in house and, in all honesty, it'll probably cost you next to nothing."  That was a huge point for the administration.  That was absolutely huge was that, if they were to outsource it, it would be 25 to God knows how much thousand dollars per year versus staying in-house, it's only going to cost a few hundred dollars.  

The administration that oversaw the project was very supportive of helping us get additional training.  They would say, "Hey, I know we can't pay you guys for this necessarily, but we can help you out with some extra training if you like.  We can get you some classes, some Certifications, whatever you like."  So that was huge because it didn't cost the Department a lot of money.  

The other thing was really implementing it to all levels and not just to the cops but to the civilian staff.  We have a lot of dispatch and we have a lot of records officers.  We have a lot of clerical staff.  And even the administration on the fourth floor, make it something tangible to them.  The one thing I always hear about CrossFit and from people who are unfamiliar with it is they would go to Main Site.  They'd see some fire breather on there, you know, they see Greg Amundson or, OPT on there doing something ungodly fast and just looking like a ripped muscle machine.  They're like, "This is not for me.  I can't do that."  

So you have to take this concept to them and present it to them professionally by a PowerPoint or by one-on-one or some sort of - and really make it understandable that this is something that we can do on the cheap.  We have the equipment.  We have the ability.  We have the instructors.  We have the resources.  We can do it on the cheap and we can scale it to anybody.  

I can beat you down with a piece of PVC as well as a 45-pound bar.  It doesn't matter one bit.  By selling it that way it made a huge impact.  We were able to get people involved throughout the department, we were able to use a lot of our department facilities.  We have numerous station houses across the county that have workout equipment in them.  So that was a plus.  

Our academy gym is a CrossFitters paradise, in all honesty.  It could be another affiliate gym if you walked in there and didn't know differently.  It was - it's got bumper plates and kettle bells and C2 rowers and pull-up machines and squat racks, you name it, it's got it.  It's gorgeous.  

Having that as a resource to us was huge because it was already in place for our academy recruits.  The academy was already implementing CrossFit into their academy training programs.  So we could walk in, pick up where we wanted to and start training very easily and very affordably within the house.  That was a big selling point.  

So cost savings and making it understandable to the administration is probably what's going to do the best trick for people.  That's probably the best area to start selling the administration is making it understandable and making it affordable.

Jon:    Solid piece of advice.  Let's switch gears here a little bit.  Ian, you were a Games competitor last year.

Ian:    Yes, yes, I was.

Jon:    Tell me about the experience.  What's it like in Aromas in that dirt patch?

Ian:    Last year’s Games, I wanted to go in '07 and I couldn't make it because of family commitments.  So in '08 I said, "I'm going one way or the other."  It was kind of bittersweet.  My personal feeling walking away from it was that I did not have the Games I wanted to.  I had worked grave yards the day before, so I only had a few hours of sleep.  I had peaked actually a little bit earlier than I wanted to and I was kind of charting my progress.  

So I was a little off coming into it and it definitely showed some weaknesses in my training, anything going overhead.  So when the heavy Grace came out the last day I knew I was sunk when I heard that.  And I did.  I lost a lot of time there and tumbled down the rank into the 50s.

But nonetheless, all that being said, the event itself was phenomenal.  I mean, it was run well.  It was a great crowd.  The group of not only spectators but competitors, it was bar none, probably the best group of athletes and people I've been around.  I've had the opportunity to race internationally on bikes and see some really phenomenal athletes in their chosen fields.   

But to go there and see the level of athleticism and ability on a multi-planar level, it was unreal.  I mean, it was just unreal to see these guys that were so well-rounded.  And it was a great time.  I had a wonderful time competing.  I would have liked to have done better.

Like I said, I had a couple things that were weaknesses and a couple other issues I could have cleaned up.  But, you know, so it goes.  And it was just - it was a great experience overall.   I'm, unfortunately, not going to be able to make it this year, but, you know, I’m - I'd love to go back again hopefully next year.  We'll see how it goes.

Jon:    Well, very cool, Ian.  Thanks for taking the time to speak with me about your experiences with CrossFit.  Absolutely.  Driving home that point that we're saving Police Officers' lives can never be done enough in my estimation.

Ian:    Yes, and I agree.  I hope more people really get that, understanding that, yes, it is a great means of getting fit and fast.  But it's also a means of really utilizing the tools that we were given to survive a very hard job and a very rigorous and dangerous profession, be it in law enforcement, public safety of some sort or in the military.

There's so much that we glean from it while still getting fit and having a good time.  There's so much more we glean from it on other fronts that it is so well worth it to devote the time and the effort to understanding the protocol and training yourself.  Spending some time with a knowledgeable trainer or coach and it just makes a world of difference when the chips are down.

Jon:    Very cool.  Thanks, Ian.

Ian:    You're welcome, Jon.  Take care.

Pictures courtesy of Ian Carver, CrossFit Centurion, and the CrossFit Journal.

You think you know pain, but you have no idea.  The heart thumping, chest expanding, lactic acid burn of your last workout was a walk through the meadow.

Somewhere, there’s a guy who did it in half the time it took you.  He suffered.  Plasma forced its way into his lungs, causing him to hack on repeat.  He choked down bile halfway through, and ended on his back, pupils dilated to the size of dimes.

While you were walking around, telling your friends how hardcore your workout was, Guy Number Two was still collapsed, the prospect of driving home as daunting as climbing K2 during a snowstorm.

When he finally stood up, he didn’t say a word.

CrossFit is a decidedly masochistic pursuit.  To be any good at it, you have to enjoy the pain.  You have to push back the threshold day after day, until last year’s traumas feel like an hour-long rubdown at the Canyon Ranch.  One day, you find a threshold that takes the whole thing just a little too far, and you get scared to go back.

The men and women that decimate your times are not superhuman.  They’re not particularly genetically gifted.  Hell, most of the top CrossFitters in the world would get absolutely pummeled in your standard game of rugby, buried by larger athletes begat by larger parents.

What differentiates these individuals is not a gift, but an unreasonable desire to push self-imposed suck beyond its logical limits.  What comes out the other side becomes legendary.

Like any human pursuit, we seek ways around the hard part.  Limited range of motion and new techniques.  Dropping the deadlift from the top, bouncing it off the floor.  Squatting above parallel and not standing up all the way.  Chicken-necking above the chin-up bar, and reviewing the tape to see if we made it.  

We want the reward (speed) without the sacrifice (pain).

This is not conscious cowardice.  It’s pure out-and-out rationalism.  Atsomepoint, the next threshold is the one that takes it too far, leaving us in an exercise-induced hallucination that lasts a few moments too long.  Our hearts bounce around our insides for one beat too many, and our lungs beg to explode for an unwanted extra second.  Every exhalation coincides with a constriction of vision, and the cold taste of copper.  

No sane human being would enjoy such a feeling.

Still, the glory beckons.  Surely, with enough training and the right supplements, there’s a way around the Hard Part.  Enough sleep and enough vitamin B will get you the sub-whatever time without the attendant pain.  There’s no need to redline your heart rate or pop capillaries.  No need to ache so badly at night that you can’t sleep.  Surely, there are ways around this.

Fortunately, the steroids are a no-go, and the exercises are done correctly or not at all.  The only way to legend is through ever-mounting piles of pain.  The meadow has to tilt at 45-degrees, and he rubdown at the Ranch must be done with Brillo Pads.  If you can talk, you’re not trying hard enough.  If your nerves aren’t frayed and ready to rebel, you’ll never get there.

Do yourself a favor, and realize that there’s no technique in the world that will save you.  There are no pills, no secrets, no passwords on the path to greatness.  You’ve got to embrace the pain, push the threshold, and feel the suck, and then you’ve got to muster the courage to go back six times a week.

After all, the world is a lot brighter when your pupils are the size of dimes, and massaging your sternum with your heart starts to feel good after a while.  The plasma finds its way out of your lungs, and eventually you’ll be able to drive. 

Sometimes, lying on the floor is its own reward.

Dave Castro takes his kettlebell for a walk.  Picture courtesy of CrossFit.com.

You have no right to bitch.  Your sore hamstrings and screaming core are artifacts of high intensity compound movement, enabled by firm contact with Mother Earth and the primate’s gift of an opposable thumb.  The very fact that your arms feel like lead and your legs like the business end of a propane torch is a gift of inclusion, given only because you have legs and arms to hurt.

The men of the Warrior Transition Battalion at Brooke Army Medical Center don’t know your pain.  They brought guns to a bomb fight, and came home with fewer limbs than they packed, blown apart by the cowardice of other men. 

Their pain is worse, one of exclusion, borne of wheelchairs and ramps, endless hours of physical therapy and prosthetic fittings, hobbled by the incessant need for painkillers.  You will never know the agony that they’ve endured, first physically mangled, and then pitied, seen as victims of a botched War.

Luckily, they don’t share the viewpoint.  An even twenty, enabled by the efforts of a young Lieutenant, are pursuing rehabilitation with revenge. 

These men came to Alamo CrossFit to learn the tenets of CrossFit, supported by a crackerjack crew of trainers and an unrelenting need to go beyond the bounds of traditional recovery. 

Placed in an environment where pity was gone and intensity was the only goal, I watched men do handstand pushups, femurs balanced against their wheelchairs, no feet weighing them down.  I watched a Marine pull himself up a gymnastics ring, ripping as hard as he could while an unwieldy leg brace fought his every effort.  I watched a man with no patella tendon sit into a full-depth squat, and a man with no legs clean a medicine ball from the ground.

These men, broken in body, were impossible to stop.  The pain that we could inflict—jackhammering hearts, mental torment, and burning muscles—paled in comparison to the months of adversity that led them to our doorstep.  They deadlifted and squatted, ran and pressed, displaying a fortitude far beyond our capacity to keep up. 

Every moment hammered home a single point:  You’ll be fine.

Remember that the pain is a gift, and men have overcome far worse.  When your training results in injury, remember that there are those whose injuries dwarf yours by degrees of magnitude, men who would kill for the right to feel a strained Achilles or a jammed thumb.  They will not quit regardless of the odds, and you will not disgrace their example. 

The next time your muscles protest or you feel a callus give way, be thankful for the feeling, and the comparative ease with which you train every day.  Be thankful for the gift that is your body, and the pain that it brings.

In Northern Texas, there are twenty men battling to reclaim lost capacity, showing the world that injury is not an endpoint, that sacrifice does not end in martyrdom.  Their courage is physical and mental, and their lesson is one that will serve far beyond their lifetimes. 

Their pain is unimaginable, but their message is easily understood:  the struggle to become a better human being ends only in death.  Don’t let them down.

Kyle Maynard coaches Josh through a muscle-up attempt at Alamo CrossFit.  Picture courtesy of The Napping Poet.

My father’s cardiologist needs to have his face forcibly rearranged.  I’m not one to bang heads, but I’d love to walk into that guy’s office and knock him around a little bit.

Two weeks ago, Dad had a massive coronary.  Three stents and a stay in the ICU later, he received the worst piece of advice I’ve ever heard, courtesy of a man who should know better.  With no hint of irony, the cardiologist told him to limit his fat intake.

The last thing my favorite four-heart-attack survivor needs is to stop eating fat.  Quite the contrary, he needs to swerve his runaway diet directly toward lipids.  A few fat calories would serve to displace a portion of his rampant carbohydrate consumption, regulating his blood sugar levels and mitigating his fortress-like insulin resistance.

Unfortunately, there was no mention of carbohydrates in their discussion.  My dad will avoid fat like the plague, continuing his steady diet of egg noodles, bread, potatoes, and skim milk.  He’ll be eating the very stuff that’s been killing him for the last sixty years.

Even worse, his highly educated, stethoscope-toting Specialist will sleep well at night, thinking he did everything he could to save Dad’s life.  In reality, he put him on track for heart attack number five, albeit with a bit more metal in his chest and a newfound appreciation for the freedom of hospital apparel.  

Perhaps a little less textbook and a bit more common sense would’ve done the trick.  A simple lifestyle examination shows that my father’s diet is carbohydrate-based, his protein consumption is deficient, and the sum total of his daily exercise consists of getting in and out of his truck.  Furthermore, his stress levels are off the charts.  

These behavioral patterns haven’t changed a lick during the twenty-seven years I’ve had the pleasure of being my father’s son.  Given the long duration of this lifestyle and the very unpleasant result, you would think that Captain Cardiologist’s advice would’ve turned Dad’s daily routine on its head.  It didn’t.  It just politely asked him to consume 80% less hamburger.

After I finish the Doctor’s impromptu facelift, I’m going to sit down with Dad.  We’re going to cut the sugar from his diet, replace those calories with lean protein and unsaturated fats, and then we’re going to exercise with as much intensity as we can without blowing his ticker.  If he has a fifth heart attack, it’ll be during a PR attempt.  

I’ll be damned if he’s going to go while eating a grilled cheese sandwich made with low-fat cheddar and a dollop of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”, staring vacantly at the ceiling while his no-fat diet drops him into an early grave.

Picture courtesy of dartmed.dartmouth.edu, the fine Ivy-League Institution responsible for my father's care. 

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the United States Department of Agriculture is an asphalt factory.

The USDA is responsible for providing Americans with dietary recommendations.  Unfortunately, they’re also responsible for creating national and international markets for American crops, a money-driven mission that makes a mockery of diet and health.

The United States’ primary agricultural products—wheat, corn, and milk—are all carbohydrate-rich.  This is not a problem in and of itself, were the USDA to recommend their consumption in moderation.  They do not.  The USDA asks Americans to consume over of 70% of their calories from these sources.

The financial incentive for this request, embodied by the Food Pyramid, is easy to ascertain.  More carbohydrate consumption, in the form of wheat, milk, and high fructose corn syrup, subsidizes American crops and keeps the USDA in business.  It benefits the economy and the American farmer, a worthy endpoint.

Regrettably, it also prescribes hyperinsulinemia to 300 million trusting souls.

Hyperinsulinemia is a state of chronically elevated blood sugar, brought about by the incessant overconsumption of carbohydrates.  It is linked to diabetes, heart disease, and obesity through a very simple and undeniable causal chain.

Insulin, a hormone secreted by the pancreas, removes sugar from the bloodstream, putting it into cellular storage for later energy production.  When blood sugar is chronically elevated, insulin is unable to remove the bulk, and the pancreas ramps production back, recognizing the futility of rampant insulin release.  Sugar remains in the blood stream, where it oxidizes with LDL cholesterol and creates arterial plaques.  

Artery walls harden, and people die.  

Clearly, money and health are at odds at the USDA, yet the conflict of interest goes unaddressed.  As their mission statement illustrates, the organization is more interested in the economic benefits of high carbohydrate consumption than they are in health of the American people:
    
“USDA has created a strategic plan to implement its vision. The framework of this plan depends on these key activities: expanding markets for agricultural products and support(ing) international economic development, further developing alternative markets for agricultural products and activities, providing financing needed to help expand job opportunities and improve housing, utilities and infrastructure in rural America, enhancing food safety by taking steps to reduce the prevalence of foodborne hazards from farm to table, improving nutrition and health by providing food assistance and nutrition education and promotion, and managing and protecting America's public and private lands working cooperatively with other levels of government and the private sector.”

Nutrition warrants a brief mention, but actions speak louder than words.  Visiting mypyramid.gov, I plugged in my statistics to get a dietary recommendation.  As a 5’9”, 170-pound male with less than a half-hour of physical activity per day, the site recommended I eat 2600 calories per day, including a whopping 9 ounces of grains and 24 ounces of milk, while consuming only 6.5 ounces of meat.  

Per the Zone Diet, my recommendations amounted to 27 blocks of carbohydrates, 9.5 blocks of protein, and 24 blocks of fat, a short path to hyperinsulinemia and more than enough to induce obesity.

Seemingly unaware that they’d just doomed me to poor health, the USDA left me this little gem:

“The weight you entered is above the healthy range for your height. This may increase your risk for health problems. Some people who are overweight should consider weight loss. Click here for more information about health risks and whether you should try to lose weight, or talk with your health care provider.”      

The irony is palpable.

Given the USDA’s (colossally laughable) position as America’s foremost authority on nutrition, this ignorance is unforgivable, and worth fighting.  The power to dictate diet needs to be removed from the hands of an organization with so much skin in the game, and transferred to individuals with the knowledge and freedom to act in the best interests of the American people.

This will not happen at the top level. Billions of dollars and an extraordinarily powerful farming lobby dictate that grassroots education and individual change are the only tenable way to affect a diet revolution in America.

American farmer or no, this will not stand.  We will bring the USDA’s elemental flaw to light, one person at a time. The road to hell is still under construction, but we’re bringing the jackhammers, and the asphalt will crumble. 

Chris fights obesity at Crossfit Boston.  Picture courtesy of The Napping Poet.

Last week, I watched an ordinary girl do something extraordinary.

The exemplary nature of her accomplishment was not in the volume, nor the load, but in the sheer struggle of the attempt.

Erica did 210 thrusters with thirty-pound dumbbells.   Her repetitions were broken and fractured, her will tested with every squat.  Her knees buckled and her spine rounded, her left arm betraying her right’s desire to lockout again and again.  She fought each ascent as a battle; pushing a load she had no right to stand with to a shaky end.

Her goal transcended time and place, competition and score.  It was merely to finish.  Taking an hour to complete what had taken others ten minutes, she spiked the iron into the ground, collapsing in a heap while her classmates clapped.

Normally, I would have stopped her after the first halting repetitions.  In her struggle, Erica left behind both technique and intensity, forsaking power output and its impact on fitness.  The high-load, long-duration stress she placed herself under could cause nothing but harm, and yet I allowed her to continue.

This could be seen as a dereliction of duty, a coach’s neglect in the name of masochism, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I knew that Erica had gone to a place where technique and intensity are irrelevant, a place where physiology is no longer the primary driver of fitness, and I let her stay there.

She was in her mind, fighting to survive.  Erica had tapped her most primitive instincts, equating her failure at the task as a failure to carry on.  Beyond bodily fitness, she was forging her resolve to a razor-fine point, refining her ability to cut through the hardest challenge.  She was developing that which is most difficult to develop: mental toughness.

This characteristic does not manifest itself as a physical change, making it difficult to quantify and easy to neglect.  It may come and go, depending on the time and task at hand.  Nonetheless, mental toughness is the single most important quality we can gain as athletes, pushing our boundaries beyond the acceptable and on toward pain.  

Constrained by a focus on intensity and technique, we may never arrive at this place.  Scaling load to allow quick motion and flawless technique ensures that there will be no Sisyphean struggle, no hour-long workouts at near-maximal loads.  In this manner, we will develop athletes with fantastic horsepower and great technique, but we may never give them the drive to perform at their highest capacity.

Next time Erica picks up a pair of twenty-five pound dumbbells, she’ll know that she’s capable of moving them with speed and grace, able to finish any rep scheme that I put in front of her.  She’s hardened her mind with greater loads and longer durations, struggling to finish far harder tasks than the one in question.  She'll be ready when the pain comes, and she'll smile when she finishes first.

Erica puts herself to the test at CrossFit Boston.  Picture courtesy of The Napping Poet.