Jon Ingram

It has been far too long since my last post, but as an excuse, I have been rather busy and have an exciting announcement to make.

I started out as a co-founder of CrossFit Leman in 2009, which is now a thriving community of people and a fantastic place to train. It has been a huge pleasure participating in the development of CrossFit Leman, but my true goal was to do my own thing and open a CrossFit affiliate in Geneva.

It has taken quite a lot of blood, sweat and tears, particularly in trying to find a location in Geneva, but I am very happy to announce that CrossFit GVA will open its doors on 1st July 2011 at 55 rue de Lyon, 1203, Geneva.

I’m super excited about the new venue and further developing the CrossFit community in Geneva. The movement seems to be growing throughout the country and I think there are now at least 5 other affiliates in Switzerland.

I have been a vocal critic of the training scene in Geneva for some time and if you want to pursue a serious fitness program, Silhouette or Holmes Place just do not cut it. I hope that CrossFit GVA will fill that void and serve as a community centre for people who want to go beyond 20 minute cardio sessions and machine circuits.

Check out our web site or visit us on facebook for more info.  

Let me start off this post with a disclaimer. I am not a “paleo guy” by any means. Nutrition is not only an extremely complex issue, it is a highly emotive subject as can be seen bythe online spats between the different food camps (vegans vs paleo vs vegetarians vs high carb low fat vs atkins vs zone etc etc).

Why must it all be so confusing?

As a member of the CrossFit community, I have had a lot of exposure to the paleo diet. I think a paleo diet makes great sense for health, can be very effective for weight loss and teaches people the value of eating real food as opposed to processed junk, but I’m not 100% convinced that it is the optimal solution for the performance athlete.

I also don’t want to be one of those paleo nazis. I’m really not bothered what anybody else eats and I will never be the guy shooting daggers at colleagues or clients if they order a beer or dessert at a restaurant. I just don’t care that much and I’d rather see people think for themselves, experiment and find out what works best for them.

Just like strength and conditioning, I don’t believe there is a one-size-fits-all solution.

I'd like a steak cooked in olive oil please, not vegetable oil. I'll have that with a side of veggies instead of potatoes, but please don't chop them with the same knife you used to cut bread and I don't want the veggies to be contaminated... DON'T BE THAT GUY!

Nonetheless, I have a 4-month old daughter who will be weaned soon, and I would like her to follow paleo nutrition principles for as long as possible. This has posed a little more tricky than I anticipated, both in terms of finding good alternatives to breast milk and communicating my plan to the family.

My daughter is currently being nursed, so no problems there. I don’t think you can get any more paleo than good old breast milk. My partner will return to work in a few weeks and won’t breast feed any more, which brings problem number one. We will have to put her onto formula for a while, and my partner has been looking at various options. She came back home the other day with some organic formula, which according to the lady in the shop is the “best stuff on the market”.

I had a quick look at the ingredients, which were chesnuts (organic of course), maltodextrin and maltose. I could rant for pages about food companies and how they sell to the public, but this organic stuff is beyond a joke. Maltodextrin and maltose are basically sugars, and whether they are organic sugars or not, they are still pretty much crap.

Thankfully Nabisco have our health interests at heart, which is why they released this range of low fat and reduced calorie oreos

The Weston Price Foundation have some interesting recipes for making home made formula using raw cow’s milk, which is readily available in the area, but that leads to problem number two which I didn’t anticipate, communication.

There is no way in hell that my partner would let me give raw cow’s milk to our daughter, because it is “dangerous”. The argument goes that all milk is pasteurised for a reason, so raw milk must be dangerous. I don’t believe that there is a significant risk in giving her raw milk, but I admit that making home made formula is complicated and I wouldn’t want to mess it up, so we will use formula until she is weaned. It’s not the best solution, but it will have to do as a stopgap.

The raw milk issue has proved to be the tip of the iceberg in terms of informing various family members of the paleo plan. I have had several conversations with family members that go something like this:

Me: I want to wean her as soon as possible so we can get her onto real food, meat, fruits and vegetables.

Family member: You should start off with rice. That is what doctors recommend and how we did it.

Me: Actually I don’t want to give her any grains. I think she will be fine with meat, fruit and veggies.

Family member: I don’t think that is a good idea. If you don’t give her rice or something similar, she will not be getting all the nutrients she needs. Plus, that is what doctors recommend and everyone does it.

Me: I disagree. In fact, I can show you a comparison of a diet with and without grains (courtesy of Robb Wolf) and the diet without grains provides far more nutrient density, well in excess of daily recommendations.

Family member: You want to put her on that paleo diet, don’t you? I think it is a bad idea to put a child on a low carb diet.

Me (starting to get slightly irritated): It is not a low carb diet. Have a look at how it works out in terms of macronutrients. It is far from low carb.

Family member: Yes, but she is not getting all the nutrients she needs, plus she needs energy from carbohydrates.

Me: Have a look again at this example. Plenty of energy in the form of calories and carbs and more (!) nutrients than in the grain based version.

Family member: Well, I think this all sounds quite dangerous. Everyone else I know gives their children rice when they are weaned and they are just fine.

Me: I’m sure they are, and I’m sure she would be fine too. But I want her to be better than fine and give her a diet which is optimal, not a diet on which she can just be fine.

Family member: It still sounds dangerous to me, I don’t like it.

Me: All I’m proposing is to give her real food. What can be so dangerous about that?

Family member: She will miss out on nutrients. It’s like that protein powder and creatine you take. It’s not natural at all and I’ve read in (insert generic fashion/lifestyle magazine name here) that it is very dangerous and leads to kidney failure.

Me: aarrrgghhh!

I may be exaggerating slightly for comic effect, but that’s more or less how the conversations go. I never would have anticipated that I would have a fight on my hands to give my daughter nothing more than real food.

How dare you want to feed this to your daughter!!

I’m really not an expert on nutrition by any stretch of the imagination. But I am very interested in the subject, have done some reading and personal experimentation, and consider myself to be reasonably well informed. But up against the “well everybody does it so it must be ok” argument, that all counts for nought. 

If anyone has any tips on how to best inform people of this crazy plan on how to feed my daughter, all advice would be welcome!

Sitting here from my lofty vantage point over Silhouette, I’ve been enjoying the traditional New Year’s fitness resurgence. The place has been packed in January, a stark contrast to the quiet days in December, when barely a soul could be seen outside lunchtime and after 18:00.

Of course, most of these folks will probably stop going to the gym after a month, frustrated either at their lack of progress or perhaps fallen into a coma after the deadly boredom of 1hr per day on the treadmill.

There are many reasons why people give up going to the gym, mostly due to the retarded programs that they get from a muscle magazine or personal trainer. But another key factor is lack of goals.

Going to the gym because you “feel like you should”, “need to get in shape” or want “to lose weight” is a recipe for disaster. Those goals must be refined into something measureable like, “lose 10kgs” or “bench press 100kgs”.

Some people are lucky enough to like training and don’t need any extra motivation to go to the gym, which is great. Personally, however, I think that training becomes more focused and interesting when you have goals.

The ultimate goal is to compete in a sport, a powelifting contest, triathlon or regular competition like football or rugby. For those who will never compete, athletic goals should be the focus.

I recently came across a very complete set of athletic standards at this web site. Based on the Dynamax definition of the componenents of physical fitness (cardiovascular endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, speed, power, coordination, agility, balance and accuracy), the document proposes the types of skill that athletes should be able to perform from beginner (level 1) to highly specialised athletes (level 5 – think world record holders).

I think the list is a great rule of thumb for those who want to use their gym time to test whether or not they are making progress. Please read the full document to see the entire scope of the standards, but below I have cherry picked some of the skills that I think are very achievable for the regular trainee.

Run 400m
Level 2 – 85 seconds
Level 3 – 60 seconds

Row 500m
Level 2 – 110 seconds
Level 3 – 90 seconds

Dips
Level 2 – 10
Level 3 – 30

Pull-ups
Level 2 – 12
Level 3 - 20

L-sit
Level 2 – 25 seconds
Level 3 – 60 seconds

Standing Vertical Jump
Level 2 – 18 inches
Level 3 – 24 inches

Just  a quick note on the above video. This is Kadour Ziani of the Slamnation, a phenomenal athlete with a vertical leap of 50 inches. Back in the days when I worked in basketball, I got to meet him a couple of times – very cool dude. If you like watching amazing dunk artists, I highly recommend you check out Kadour and some of the slamnation videos on YouTube.

Weighted Pull-up
Level 2 – 1.4x bodyweight
Level 3 – 1.7x bodyweight

Bench Press
Level 2 – 1.2x bodyweight
Level 3 – 1.5x bodyweight

Deadlift
Level 2 – 2x bodyweight
Level 3 – 2.4x bodyweight

Back squat
Level 2 – 1.75x bodyweight
Level 3 – 2.15x bodyweight

Overhead Squat
Level 2 – .65x bodyweight
Level 3 – 1x bodyweight

Press
Level 2 – .75x bodyweight
Level 3 – .95x bodyweight

Now any list like this always creates controversy on the interwebz. Everyone is different and most people have strengths and weaknesses, meaning they could be very good at one movement and crap at another. Anthropometry, i.e. your own particular body dimentions,  is another major factor. If you have long arms that is great for deadlifting, but not so good for overhead pressing.

In my own case, I am firmly at level 2 for most skills (tragically), but I can row a sub 90 second 500m, which would put me closer to level 4. The main reason for this is because I am tall, and have ideal leverages for rowing.

The point of all this is don’t take the list as gospel, and don’t expect that you will be on the same level in every single skill. Nonetheless, use it to help define your own goals and measure whether or not all that time in the gym is bearing fruit.