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Let’s Talk About SOY.

So, yes, let’s talk about soy. Soy is made from soybeans. Interestingly, soybeans are not beans at all. They are legumes. Now, legumes and their negative effects on our health are a different post all together but, they aren’t necessarily good. In fact, legumes are the primary cause of a condition called “Leaky Gut”. Mmmm, sounds wonderful doesn’t it? We will talk about legumes in general and Leaky Gut a different day. Now, back to the soybeans and soy. Now, why am I interested in soy? Well, it’s in a ton of modern day, highly processed “foods” and “food products” (I find it bizarre to even put the words food and product in the same phrase). Now, when you look at soy there are two versions. The fermented version, primarily found in Asia, has some positive health effects. However, we don’t live in Asia. We live in the good ole’ U.S. of A. where the USDA won’t ban anything that profits big food companies. So, we get the other version, unfermented soy. Here are a few of the side effects of unfermented soy products: infants that are fed soy products may have more than 20,000 times more estrogen in their bodies than infants fed other formulas, soy increases your body’s requirement for Vitamin D (so they put a toxic version called D2 in to soy milk for good measure), it contains potent agents that block the synthesis of the thyroid, it interferes with protein digestion. So, let’s look specifically at protein digestion. Some weight-loss powders used in shakes and smoothies use soy in their products. They then tout the weight-loss effects. So, here is the connection, down and dirty. The soy blocks ones ability to process protein and many other nutrients correctly. Then, if you replace a REAL food meal with this shake that is loaded with soy, you are in effect starving your body of nutrients. Oh! but, you lose weight. Well, I can lose weight in that fashion in a concentration camp too. I think we can agree that, that wouldn’t be a healthy way to go about losing weight. So here is my advice to you: avoid soy and every other modern day “food products”. Trust that nature knows better than we do when it comes to food. Eat lean meats, lots of vegetables, some fruits, seeds and nuts. You will be glad that you did. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/soy-health_b_1822466.html http://www.foodrenegade.com/dangers-of-soy/

Milk…Should We Be Drinking This Stuff??

There are a lot of views on this topic…our view is NO we should NOT drink milk. If you look around you will notice we (humans) are the only mammals that drink milk after weaning in childhood and it’s doesn’t even come from another human being! Cows do not drink cow’s milk. Calves stop drinking cow’s milk between the ages of six to eight months. Here is a good article outlining more details on why you should stay away from milk and we encourage you to check it out and to consider the alternatives to milk for a healthier lifestyle. 6 Reasons Why Milk Doesn’t Do a Body Good.  http://julesfuel.com/2012/06/14/6-reasons-why-milk-doesnt-do-a-body-good/  

Dead Period Training Camp

From June 24th to July 5th is “Dead Period” for High School athletes. This is a time in which their coaches and staff have no contact with student athletes. While many kids take this time to hang out with friends, eat Twinkies and play video games, some kids choose to work hard instead. This year was our first of what we hope to be many years for hosting a Dead Period Training Camp. I think the guys would agree that it was very hard work but, without a doubt, worthwhile. In just the short 2 weeks of working Monday, Wednesday, Friday, each of the boys saw big improvements in agility, strength, flexibility and speed. Fortunately one of our members is Roy M. He is a competitive power-lifter and is a huge fan of CrossFit. Not only has CrossFit Combustion helped Roy to be a healthier, stronger version of himself but, he believes in it so much that he encouraged some friends from Independence High School to come to our Dead Period Camp. While CrossFit is a General Physical Preparedness Program (GPPP) what we have found is that it will also make most athletes in most sports better at their sport while not necessarily training toward that sport only. Essentially, the fitter one becomes, he or she will improve at his or her sport just by doing CrossFit. It works over and over again. That was the experience of these guys too. They each learned many movements and lifts: Pull-ups, dead lifts, squats, power cleans, snatch and lots and lots of Prowler pushes, just to name a few. The explosiveness and speed that they gained in such a short time was jaw dropping. We really put the camp together on short notice. However, after it started we continued to get a great deal of interest in what we were doing. We will absolutely continue to host camps like this one. If we can help young athletes get better at their sport and take the opportunity to sing the praises of good nutrition…CrossFit Combustion will be there!  

Crossfit Combustion Launches New Website

We are excited for you all to see our New Website! We see this as a huge step forward for CrossFit Combustion as a community and a business. Events, Schedules, Fundraisers, Happenings- In the past we have used FaceBook to keep you in the loop on happenings at the box. Our hope is that you will visit this site often and that this will become our “go to” method for keeping up with our community’s happenings. Whether that is for the schedule for charity fundraisers, for the CrossFit Open or any event coming up, we want this to be where you get all of the information for those events. CrossFit, Nutrition and Fitness information- We want this site to be your hub for all things CrossFit. We will constantly be updating the site with videos of movements, inspiration and of our box. One of the most important parts of your fitness journey is, of course, nutrition. Again, we want this to be a hub for your nutritional information. This will also be something that we will update often. Functionality- In the coming months, we intend to make the website highly functional for you, the member. We are currently working on providing the ability to log your WODs on our very own site. There are tools like this already available but, we are making sure that we choose the right method for us. This is in the works now and we will let you know when the next step has been taken. We are really fired up about this new feature coming soon. CrossTalk- This will be the blog section of the site. It will act as a “catch all” and will be the center piece of the site itself. So rather than see an article from a coach or a testimonial on the FaceBook page, you will now find it here. We are expecting this to be the area most visited by current members. We hope you enjoy this new Crossfit Combustion medium that will help better serve our members and we would love to hear your feedback!

Rachel Got Her First Pair of Lifting Shoes

We all learn a lot from being involved with CrossFit. One of the things that I used to take for granted was my shoes. Yep, that’s right, shoes. Now, my wife says that I have a shoe fetish these day. She’s probably right. For me, my footwear was something that I just never used to consider much. I just bought what I thought looked good and that was about the extent of it. But, these days my shoes are a big focus for me. They directly affect how I move and feel. Yep! they are THAT important. In CrossFit we really talk about 2 primary types of footwear and I want to focus on one of those two today. One of course is a minimalist shoe that we love so much but, I’ll save that “you should be wearing these” for another day. The second type of shoe is the Olympic weightlifting shoes. Part of the reason the topic came up is Rachel E. got her first pair of lifting shoes (pictured here next to Coach Matt’s shoes, guess which is her’s). Now, if you know Rachel, you know she doesn’t look like a “big time” lifter but, I know different. Is she going to the Olympics to show off her lifting skills? No. But, is she a big time lifter in the sense of realizing the benefits of lifting? You’d better believe it. Lifting has changed how she moves and feels in her every day life. In my book…that’s as BIG TIME as it gets! As coaches, we get to know every athlete’s strengths and weaknesses (and so does the athlete for that matter). For Rachel, she has some ankle flexibility “stuff” going on that will always be a part of her fitness journey. There are lots of flexibility challenges that can be fixed but, some that cannot. For her we found that we could negate her ankle flexibility restrictions by having her put her heals on a small weight. This told us that she is the perfect candidate to wear a lifting shoe. But, then…so are you. EVERYONE will benefit from a weightlifting shoe. Want to know why? Here is a great article on why!  http://www.liftbigeatbig.com/2012/07/you-need-olympic-weightlifting-shoes.html