Tip of the Spear

Congratulations to our Empower athletes whose outstanding CrossFit Open performances qualified them for the CrossFit 2024 Quarterfinals!

Motor - Women 55-59
Spice - Women 55-59
Silk - Women 50-54
Hardrock - Women 50-54
Magnum - Men 50-54
WOD Father - Men 50-54
Sandman - Men 50-54
The Touch - Men 35-39
Bobo - Men Open

These athletes represent the tip of the spear.  Please note that 7 of our top 9 athletes are over age 50.  At Empower our mission has always been to redefine the norms around ageing.  Getting older does not necessitate a decline into decrepitude as so many people in our society believe. 

My mother who is 80 recently argued that a 60 year old person has more in common with her than with me.  But I think Divinus, Mufasa and Mr. Fantastic are leading lives much more akin to the life I want to and am currently living.  They have not resigned themselves to physical decline and sedentarism. 

Maybe in your 70’s you need to slow down.  But that is not the example Pebbles, Iron Dam, Dizzy or Rico are setting for us!  3 of our Empower septuagenarians participated in this year’s CrossFit Open and on our Empower Intramural Teams.  So no, you do not need to stop playing.  Sedentarism is a choice not an inevitability.

This does not mean that there are no challenges associated with ageing.  Each one of our 2024 Quarterfinalists has had to navigate challenges, deal with setbacks and adapt their training to accommodate their body’s needs at some time in the last 12 months.  What they didn’t do was let their setbacks derail them!

The CrossFit Sick-Well-Fit curve illustrates how every measure associated with health is better among fit people than among well people meaning that for a fit person to become ill they must first pass through the state defined as “wellness”.  That’s why we are not part of the wellness movement.  Wellness is halfway to sickness.  We are not okay with falling within the average acceptable range, we are pushing to be superior in all health markers.  This is why we call our top performers the tip of the spear because it turns out that athletic performance correlates strongly with positive health markers.  At Empower we want to maximize your health markers and averaged across broad modal domains, the leaderboard does a reasonable job of telling you exactly where you stand.

Don’t fall into the normalcy trap.  Too many people confuse normal with natural.  The normal body fat percentage for North Americans is not the natural body fat percentage for our species.  In fact, people in different countries have very different percentages as their norm.  The chronic health problems we see associated with ageing and their subsequent pharmacological treatments may be normal in our society but they are not natural.  Your natural state is healthy.  But if you do what normal people do, you will get normal results.  For example, treating yourself to pizza once per week on a Friday night seems pretty normal but it is not at all natural.  As much as you love pizza, your body did not evolve to consume the kinds of foods that we now consider normal. 

Case in point: It has long been believed that declining testosterone was an inevitable outcome of ageing for men.  Along with this decline comes a loss of lean muscle mass and an increase in a whole host of age-related chronic illnesses.  This is normal in our society.  But more recent studies with both active and non-North American populations where men remained engaged in regular physical activity and more balanced eating throughout their lives saw no decline in testosterone levels among ageing men.  These men also retained their fit physiques, sex drive and health.  This may not be normal to us but it is natural for our species.

Our parent’s generation is the first in modern times to have a shorter life expectancy than the generation before them.  Up until their generation human life and health spans had been steadily increasing.  My grandparents lived longer and healthier lives than my parents.  What is scarier is that my generation is less healthy than my parent’s generation.  At CrossFit we are trying to reverse this trend and reclaim your natural birthright.  It is hard because the non-adaptive habits you learned from your parents are the very behaviours that reduced the healthspan of their generation.  We have to reach back a generation or two in order to identify lifestyle patterns that optimize healthspan.  This means we have to dismiss the norm and forge new health-supporting behaviour patterns. 

“A healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one.” - Naval Ravikant

Thanks to our Quarterfinalists for being models for healthy ageing!  They serve as examples of what is possible.  And though you may tell yourself that they are special, most of them started out their CrossFit journey just like you.  I know because I coached most of them.  The difference lies only in the choices they make daily.  Show up.  Push their limits.  Develop their skills.  Eat well.  Recover.  Repeat.  It's not genes, it's not magic, it’s habits.

How about you?  Would you like to be the tip of the spear and inspire your peers and younger generations by your example?  Do you want to accelerate your skills or optimize your nutrition?  Your Empower coaches are happy to help!  Book a Goal Setting session, a Personal Training session or a Nutrition consult and get yourself to that next level of performance.  We look forward to seeing you in the 2025 Quarterfinals!

As Forrest Gump might say: “Ageing is as ageing does.”

Friday Make Up Day

1) Empower Reset #38
1 min Breathing
30/30 sec Head Nods/Rotations

2 rounds (1 min each)
Deadbugs
Shoulder Bridges
Windshield Wipers
Hip Escapes
Rocking Chair
Back Breakfalls
Side Breakfalls
Upper Body Half Rolls
Lower Body Half Rolls
Shin Box Side-to-side
Shin Box get ups
Get Ups

3x Each:
Forward Rolls
Forward Rolls over horse
Backward breakfalls from horse
Side Breakfalls from standing

2) Walk 1 mile carrying 1 dumbbell @35/50#

Score = # of times you have to put dumbbell down.  Lower is better.

3) Kelly
5 Rounds
400m Run
30 Box Jumps
30 Wall Balls

4) Grace
30 C&J

5) Isabel
30 Snatch