Wed, February 15, 2012 Hey everyone:
We're due for another group run this Sunday. Let's meet up at the western entrance to the Korstian Division of Duke Forest (only a couple miles from the gym, near the New Hope Fire Department) at high noon.
If you google "Whitfield Rd & Sunrise Rd, Chapel Hill, NC 27514" you can map it up, or see below:
Wed, February 1, 2012 Hey team-
Ken and I are going to be out at the Chape Hill High School track (off of Homestead-just south of Local) running this Sunday at noon.
We're hoping to tune up our running skills, and throw down some either short (100-200m) or long (800m) repeats-your choice.
We'll do some burpees too if you're keen...
Fri, January 27, 2012 We spend a lot of time emphasizing how the combination of external rotation with arm and leg flexion can improve your mechanics. In the snatch, external rotation of the arms puts the shoulders into a stable, solid position, both for pulling the bar (greater power transfer), and for locking it out overhead (greater stability). External rotation of the legs in the bottom position of the back squat gives us access to a greater range of musculature, as the flexed external rotators increase the stretch on the various adductors and the hammies.
We cannot improve our power generation and stability through external rotation in the pushup and overhead squat, but then just say, "oh, it's just running", and then fly out the door with a crappy, internally rotated shoulder position. But this is what will happen if you don't make it a part of your active todo list while running. In the snatch, we're trying to improve the transmission of power from our lower body to our hands, which are connected through the shoulders. In running, our hands aren't really doing any of the work, so why do we care?
Putting the arms in external rotation does a couple beneficial things. First, it encourages putting the thoracic spine into its strong, neutral position (not rounded!). I'm sure we have hammered the importance of the hollow-body position into you enough that you know why this is important. It's the second reason that may be more of an insight: putting your arms in external rotation acts like a shock absorber for your upper body, neck, and head.
When you externally rotate, you take all of the slack out of that system, and everything is connected, supported, and unified. If you just let everything hang loose the way it wants to, every bounce and jolt will hit your shoulders, and neck. If you have ever had tight shoulders or neck pain from running, chances are pretty good that you were following the common advice to relax everything in your upper body. You can really take a beating over a long trail run.
I'm not saying you need to tense everything either-use the good positioning we taught you, and the 20% rule, and you may find that you no longer experience any tightness or pain in these areas, as well as increased overall efficiency.
Progression is the key to this, as to everything else we do. Start small, and keep an eye on it. If you can't maintain the correct arm/neck/shoulder positioning beyond 400 meters, scale things back to 200. Over time, you need to develop the capacity to keep your form for the entire run.
Here are some great ideas for improving your ability to do this:
Tue, January 24, 2012 At the running workshop we talked just briefly about the underlying science behind CrossFit Endurance training versus the more traditional marathon training model. CrossFit Endurance posted a link to an article today which argues for a training plan heavy on high intensity, but what most interested me was that this website, www.zone5endurance.com, maintains a very large and growing list of references. There is an organized bibliography of studies looking at high intensity training for endurance, along with links to the abstracts and sometimes commentary from the website's maintainers. This is good stuff! http://www.zone5endurance.com/?page_id=144
In the near future I plan to start outlining some of the endurance training plan more. In the meantime, those of you who just attended the workshop, keep plugging away at your running homework. For those of you who didn't attend the workshop, I'm going to start posting the study guide material in chunks, so stay tuned.
Finally, I'm looking at the Philosopher's Way trail race (15k and 7k @ Carolina North, not announced yet) to be our next big CrossFit Local team event-this is pretty much our "home" trail, so we need to prepare!
Mon, January 16, 2012 
Saturday January 21st, 9 am-11 pm, Crossfit Local with be hosting a running seminar where we will be teaching the basics of the POSE method which we learned during the Crossfit Endurance Seminar in November. This workshop will include a warm up, brief lecture, drills, before and after recording of your running, video review, and of course it wouldn't be Crossfit without a WOD to wrap it all up!
Space is limited for this workshop with a cut of of 15 participants. Please email shea@crossfitlocal.com to RSVP.
