Since beginning my CrossFit coaching journey back in 2008, I have made it my business to stay informed on everything pertaining to health, fitness, nutrition, strength & conditioning, sports performance, longevity and anything tangentially related. 

The internet makes this a lot easier as I can subscribe to the channels of hundreds of leading experts on these subjects who review the latest studies.  It is a lot of information but I am less focussed on the specific details and more on the macro trends across disparate health-adjacent fields.

My greatest frustration is how slow it is to change policy and public perception in the face of new emerging evidence.  This can be confounded when there are special interest groups with profit motives for perpetuating an established narrative.  But most of the time, slow course correction is a feature, not a bug.  Can you imagine if every medical professional did a 180 degree about face every time a new study presented a finding that called into question the current practice?

No, from a societal perspective, gradual change serves us best even though this fails to optimize results at the level of the individual.  Institutions, standard practices, public opinion and government regulations are always slow to change and they should be.  Even when they are wrong.  As they frequently are. 

What this means however, is that I am faced with skepticism when I give advice to the athletes in my care.  Especially when this advice fails to correspond with the information they have received from their medical professionals.  The problem is, not all medical professionals stay abreast of the most current information.  They may have graduated years or decades ago.  Their standards of care may not have changed much in that time.  They also may suffer from confirmation bias, ignoring legitimate findings that do not support their current practice.

Some of the recommendations I have made over the years have been dismissed by experts as voodoo, hocus pocus and pure bunk.  Some of these were dismissed as recently as a decade ago by people with much better qualifications than me.  To be fair, there is a lot of bad information out there but I don’t simply jump at the latest study headline.  I am watching for research trends and studies across disciplines that seem to support one another.  I try to be aware of new approaches but resist embracing them until the evidence in their favour is difficult to deny.

Here’s just a few of my favourites that I was once ridiculed for but that have now been accepted into mainstream medical practice:   

Epigenetics: the study of how methylation affects genetic expression.  One of my early CrossFit athletes is a PhD geneticist who taught me all about this subject way back in 2009.  As recently as 2018 I’ve had medical professionals tell me it was BS until I referred them to the mountain of published medical journal studies at which point they realized they were just 20 years behind on the science of gene expression.  Recent studies in mice have seen researchers actually reverse ageing in mice through manipulation of methyl groups suggesting that ageing is not baked into your DNA but determined by methylation.  They are now working on drugs that will affect ageing but to date, the two things we know to have the biggest impact on epigenetic expression are exercise and nutrition.  You don’t need to wait for the miracle anti-ageing pill, just get yourself to the gym and start paying attention to what you put on your plate.  What you put in your mouth determines what genetic traits you will express.  Are you swallowing the ageing pill or the pill of eternal youth?  

Microbiome: Turns out the microorganisms that live in us and on us aren’t just along for the ride, they play a critical role in the health of the organism including influencing your mood, your thoughts, your hormones, your appetite, your stress response, basically everything.  We like to think that we are driving the car but research has determined that the bacteria in your gut has a lot more control than you want to believe.  Don’t believe it?  Change your eating habits for one month and see what a profound mood, health and personality shift you experience.  Of course, when I began talking about this in 2010 medical doctors rolled their eyes like I was selling snake oil.  Now whole university departments focus on this research and people swallow poop pills to change their microbiome.  But you don’t need to eat poop to get a healthy gut.  As you probably guessed, a healthy diet and exercise are still the best way to cultivate a healthy gut.

Metabolic Syndrome:  Diabetes, obesity, heart disease, some cancers, Alzheimer’s, all of these diseases share common traits, so much so, that anyone diagnosed with one of the above is at higher risk of developing the others.  It all comes down to metabolic derangement.  These are lifestyle diseases caused by chronically elevated blood sugar levels.  Want to guess how to manage insulin levels and avoid these killers?  Yup, diet and exercise again!  By now metabolic syndrome is fairly widely recognized and understood by the medical establishment but when I started CrossFit in 2005 there were only a few fringe medical professionals championing this cause.  Many of them faced massive backlash for taking this courageous stand.  Some were discredited and lost their teaching positions when they ran afoul of big sugar and big cola.  Though they have been vindicated, the fight continues.

Cholesterol myth:  Eating too many eggs raises your cholesterol.  Do you remember that fake news story that we were raised on?  This is another one that has by now been thoroughly debunked but for years I felt like I was fighting upstream trying to convince athletes that no, the cholesterol in eggs does not impact your serum cholesterol levels, that is not how digestion works!  Your body makes its own cholesterol.  And can you guess what triggers cholesterol production?  Yes, elevated blood sugar levels!  Hello again metabolic syndrome.  Do you want a sneak peek on the cholesterol story?  In a few decades you will discover that high cholesterol is not the risk factor that you have been told.  Within a certain range on that U-shaped curve, higher cholesterol may even be protective against all-cause mortality.  But cholesterol lowering statins are the biggest selling drugs worldwide so it will be a long uphill battle before this knowledge becomes mainstream.

Nose Breathing: In early 2020 we hosted a guest XPT instructor at Empower who worked with our athletes on nose breathing for athletic performance.  It is also a key feature of Original Strength.  Smash recently sent me this video by a heart surgeon listing the many health protective benefits of nose breathing.  It is great to see this getting mainstream acceptance.  No one actually ridiculed me for this one but it is nice to see it getting adopted more widely.

So, what are some other things we’re exploring at Empower that have not yet been fully embraced by the medical establishment?

Diaphragmatic breathing: Okay, no one thinks this is bad.  Breathing techniques are widely used already in the military and in sports performance.  But our medical professionals have not yet tapped into the ability to regulate your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system through breathing.  In a world where chronic stress plays a role in so many health-related issues, it holds so much promise.  It’s not airy-fairy psychological nonsense, it is grounded in physiological response.  You cannot remain stressed while performing proper diaphragmatic breathing.  I have tried.  In the gym we have used this effectively with athletes who suffer from chronic pain.  Can you imagine a day when your GP prescribes breathing exercises instead of painkillers?  Why wait?  Try it today, no prescription required.

Fascia: They’re onto this now too.  Recently researchers discovered that the fascia isn’t just some tough tissue you need to cut through in order to get at the muscles and organs but that it has a rich network of nerves.  Oh, and it connects every part of your body.  Turns out that the hip bone’s connected to the jaw bone and so much more.  Body workers like Lotus have known this for decades and the pronouncements of my RMT do not look so crazy now in light of current medical findings but we are still far from a comprehensive understanding of the full functional importance of fascia.

Vestibular & Neurological systems: My coach and places like Original Strength have been exploring these systems for more than a decade already.  I stood sceptically on the sidelines for a long time but the evidence is overwhelming and the principle is sound.  Your neurology governs your physiology.  Exercise that nourishes both improves your health and performance.  A simple neurological interrupt can temporarily change your flexibility and range of motion.  People are astounded when I demonstrate this.  It feels like magic.  But only because we do not fully understand it yet. 

This is just a short list.  Some of you will remain unconvinced.  That’s okay, so far time has proven the point for me.  Sometimes experts are too entrenched to embrace change or recognize the need for change.  Sometimes there are interests resisting change.  Sometimes fields of thought become myopic and need to be disrupted by researchers from outside the field.  Your doctor or physio are probably not going back to school to retrain and unlearn what they have been taught.  After a long day at the clinic they are probably not going home to follow hundreds of channels on the subject of health.  Why should they?  They are already qualified experts.

I, on the other hand, have no fancy degrees or qualifications.  The onus is on me to educate myself continuously in order to serve you better.  And there is so much yet to learn!  Remember: You heard it here first.

Save the Date: Special Farewell Workout & BBQ for Shaft

Join us on Saturday morning, July 20th, for a one-of-a-kind workout, barbecue, and potluck as we bid farewell to integral Empower Team member, Shaft. Shaft is embarking on a new adventure, moving to Nice, France, with her family in August.

Sign up for your regular class time and stay afterward to fuel up and hang out with fellow Empower members and Shaft. Let’s send her off in Empower style!

Monday
We have two versions of today’s workout.  The Rx’d version for those of using the prescribed movements and loads will be done for time.  The adapted version will be fixed at 27 minutes and will be played for total reps so that you can focus on developing your work capacity.

Warm Up
2 rounds (1 min/movement)
Single arm Ring Row/Rope Climb from floor
RDL/KB Deadlift
Ring Row Squats/KB Goblet Squat + Press

Tech
Rope Climb
Deadlift
Wall Ball
Farmer’s Carry

WOD
5 Rope Climbs
25 Deadlifts
50 Wall Balls
200ft KB Farmer’s Carry
50 Wall Balls
25 Deadlifts
5 Rope Climbs

Adapted Version:
3 mins Rope Climbs
4 mins Deadlifts
5 mins Wall Balls
3 mins KB Farmer’s Carry (each 25ft = 1)
5 mins Wall Balls
4 mins Deadlifts
3 mins Rope Climbs

Score = Total Reps