May 2005

ISSUE THIRTY-THREE

May 2005

CrossFit and
Powerlifting
- Jason Bagwell
page 4

Working Wounded
- Greg Glassman
Being dealt a bad hand (or leg) is
only as bad as you play it.
Injury, like illness, is an ineluctable
fact of life. In sport, elite
performers are more marked
by the attitude and manner
with which they deal with injury
than by their elected course of
treatment or by the severity or
frequency of their injuries.

Killer Workouts
- Eugene Allen

Rhabdomyolysis was first described in the victims of crush injury during the 19401941 London, England, bombing raids of World War II - and more recently in
Eugenes garage.
A rugby player performs intense sets of squat jumps on a hot day, collapses,
and is rushed to the hospital, where he spends two days in intensive care.
Doctors notice that his heart is beating abnormally and that he has unusually
high levels of potassium in his blood. A soccer player runs a series of 100meter sprints at near maximum intensity. After his eighth sprint he collapses
to the ground; when he gets to the hospital he is found to have high levels of
potassium and myoglobin in his bloodstream. He spends several days in the
hospital and is unable to train for several weeks. A highly fit marathoner holds
a 6:30 pace for 26 miles but collapses only a few feet short of the finish line.
Blood tests reveal a potassium concentration three or four times the normal
level and he dies.

Whereas
treatment
and
rehabilitation receive considerable
attention and focus in discussing
injury, compensatory strategies
for maintaining or improving
fitness while recovering from
injury are generally given short
shrift.
This month we reveal the
CrossFit approach to training with
injury through the hypothetical
case of an athlete medically
restricted from all weight bearing
movements for eight weeks
following surgical repair of the
continued page ... 7

continued page ... 2

May 2005

Killer Workouts
Eugene Allen
...continued from page 1

What does all this mean to you?

A condition called rhabdomyolysis,
brought on by intense athletic activity
is what brought these athletes down.
Intense athletic activity... Does that
sound familiar? Apparently, one of the
three CrossFit pillars (functionality,
intensity, and variance) done, in
extremis, can introduce a character
to the scene whom we have dubbed
Uncle Rhabdo. Uncle Rhabdo is a
close relative of Pukie the vomiting
clown. While Pukie represents a light
hearted approach to the discomforts of
training with intensity, his uncle depicts
the dark, potentially deadly results of
the inappropriate use of intensity. The
purpose of this article is to make you
aware of the potential pitfalls of intense
physical training so that you can reap
the benefits while remaining cognizant
of a small, but not inconsequential
possibility of catastrophic physical
trauma.
Exercise intensity is like
nuclear energy--deployed without
certain controls the result can literally
be meltdown.
So what do we do that opens the
door to rhabdo? Rhabdomyolysis is a
breakdown of muscle cell contents that
results in the release of muscle fiber
contents into the bloodstream. Eccentric
muscle contractions, in which muscles
attempt to shorten while they are being
stretched, seem to significantly increase
tension on muscle cell membranes, and
it is this tension that appears to break
them down. When the membranes
are compromised, stuff that is normally
enclosed inside the wrapper seeps out
into the circulation, where it gums up
the works. Potassium is normally in
high concentrations inside muscles;
when it is found in high concentrations
in the blood, it is a good indicator of
rhabdo. Sodium and calcium also move
from outside the muscles inward and
start building up inside the muscle cells,
causing very painful swelling that can
lead to compartment syndrome, which

requires urgent surgery to slice open

the membranes to relieve the pressure.
But wait, theres more. When
everything is working properly, the
extra potassium would probably be
filtered out of the blood by the kidneys.
But with the onset of rhabdo the
amount of potassium is overwhelming
and that extra volume is complicated
by yet another player called myoglobin.
Myoglobin is another resident inside the
muscle cells that acts as a warehouse
for oxygen. When myoglobin leaks out
with the potassium and makes its way
to the kidneys, it breaks down into a
toxic chemical called ferrihemate, which
damages kidney cells. This damage
prevents the kidneys from working
properly and can be permanent. The
extra potassium can peak at such high
levels in the blood that heart function
is altered; arrhythmia is a common
consequence, and eventually the heart
may fail completely if the potassium
levels are not controlled.
It is likely that you dont know anyone
who has had rhabdo, but the truth is
that many athletes suffer from a mild
case of it from time to time. Dr. Marc
Rogers, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist
at the University of Maryland, goes so
far as to say, If youve ever had stiff
and tender muscles after exercising,
youve probably had a slight case of
rhabdomyolysis. Novice exercisers
can develop the problem, but so can
the most highly trained, accomplished
athletes. Moderate cases of rhabdo can
sometimes be found in competitors
after triathlons. In a test of 25 triathletes
who had just completed a half-Ironman
triathlon (1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike
ride, and a 13.1-mile run), it was found
that most of the 25 participants in
the study had unusually high levels of
myoglobin in their blood. This suggests
that some amount of muscle membrane
leakage had occurred.
My interest in this topic peaked when
a very close friend of mine spent a
2

week in the hospital after I put him

through his very first CrossFit workout.
Brian was no couch potato who
suddenly jumped into exercise, but
he did have a long layoff from intense
exercise for nearly two years before
that fateful afternoon with me. He
was a state champion wrestler from
Iowa, an Army Ranger, and a pretty
serious weightlifter and member of our
departments SWAT team. Although he
was not working out hard he had not
degenerated to full-blown spudhood.
He was running and staying in shape,
as he said, but he did nothing that could
be described as intense. Until he came
to my house.
Our workout was nothing crazy hard,
but the thing that did him in was the
swings. His second set of 50 swings (an
eccentric contraction to be sure) was
difficult for him and proved to be his
undoing. Afterward, he was unable to
kneel in my driveway to change from
shoes to boots and had to sit. He could
barely do that and had to use all the
force of his will to get on his Harley
and ride home. No pain to speak of
during this time, just complete muscle
weakness. Brian thought his muscles
were tightening up (in fact they were
dying) so he put on a heat pad to
loosen things up. Instead of relaxing
the muscles, the heat released even
more fluid and within two minutes
the pain started. Excruciating pain.
Pain is frequently quantified in the
medical community on a scale from
1 to 10. Brian said the pain was way
past 10. Once he was at the hospital,
our SWAT team doc, who works at
the emergency room Brian went to,
worked his morphine dose up to 16
mg every two hours, and Brian said that
only dulled the pain enough that he
didnt scream.
The primary diagnostic indicator of
rhabdomyolysis is elevated serum
creatine phosphokinase or CPK. The
continued page ... 3

May 2005

Killer Workouts
Eugene Allen
...continued from page 2

normal value runs below 200; rhabdo

brings the CPK level to at least five times
this level. When Brian was admitted
to the hospital his CPK level was at
22,000. Within two days it peaked at
98,000. He was pumped full of fluids to
help flush the kidneys and he puffed up
like the Michelin man. His head looked
like a big fat white pumpkin from all
the fluid and the medical staff was very
concerned about mineral imbalances,
which could cause heart problems. Any
movement brought suppressed screams
of pain through gritted teeth. He was
out of the hospital after six days but
was off from work for two months.
The muscles in his lower back had been
destroyed and no longer functioned.
He was unable to sit or stand without
leaning backwards or he would fall
over. He brought an empty cereal bowl
to the sink one morning and when he
reached slightly forward with his arms
to put the bowl in the sink he started
to fall and would have gone straight to
the ground had he not had the edge of
the sink to stop his fall.
Brian is now back to normal and
works out in true CrossFit fashion,
tempting a Pukie visit nearly every time
we train. Our resumption of training
was a gradual build rather than a jump
into the deep end. We ramped up the
intensity of the training week by week
and made sure he never did anything
with great intensity unless he had done
it moderately at least one time before.
Now he can hammer whatever
workout I throw at him.
There is a silver lining to the rhabdo
story. A small dose of rhabdo might
actually have a positive effect on your
development as an athlete. Some
scientists have speculated that the
build-up of calcium inside muscle cells
during rhabdo can stimulate increased
protein synthesis inside the cells, which
might produce some of the beneficial

adaptations we associate with training

such as more aerobic enzymes,
more contractile proteins, and more
mitochondria. But the line between
these positive adaptations and the
onset of full-blown rhabdo is a fairly
thin one. Tread softly; here there be
dragons.
There are things you can do to
minimize the risk of rhabdomyolysis.
The studies in this area a somewhat
thin (imagine the protocoltake some
people who never exercise, break them
down into groups, and have some of
them exercise until they die), but they
suggest that as fitness improves and
an athletes training program becomes
more challenging and of longer duration,
the likelihood of rhabdo declines.
While high-volume, highly fit athletes
are not immune to rhabdo, fitness is an
excellent prophylactic measure.
The warning label for CrossFit, then,
counsels gradual introduction to
CrossFit at its highest intensity levels.
Other rhabdo invitations are heavy
alcohol consumption, cocaine usage,
and the use of a cholesterol-lowering
drug called Mevacor (lovastatin is the
generic name). Intense exercise after a
recent infection raises the risk as well
because certain viral infections can
inflame muscle membranes and make
their deterioration more likely during
exertion. Exercise when it is very
hotespecially if it is also humidcan
exacerbate the onset of rhabdomyolysis
so you must acclimate to increases in
temperature before you train hard. The
lack of fluid in the body under these
conditions increases the risk of heat
stress and dehydration, which places
strain on the muscles and the kidneys.
The Camelbak tag line Hydrate or
die is more meaningful in light of some
understanding of rhabdo.
Interestingly, only two species of
animalshumans and horsesare
known to develop rhabdomyolysis,
3

and only male humans appear to be

susceptible. The exact reasons for this
are not completely understood, but
some experts speculate that decreased
total muscle mass and more efficient
heat regulation in females may protect
against full-blown rhabdo. Key female
sex hormones such as estrogen may
also have a soothing and stabilizing
effect on muscle membranes, making
it hard to mortally wound them during
strenuous exercise.
Unfortunately
rhabdomyolysis
is
pretty sneaky and does not make an
announcement prior to showing up on
your doorstep. But if your urine looks
just like Coca-Cola, thats a sign that
you have myoglobin in your kidneys
and you need to get to the hospital
immediately. Brians initial complaint
was not of pain but rather of complete
muscle weakness in his back, so be
mindful of that. Also, no heat pads
after workouts; use ice. Train hard, but
pay attention to what you are doing.
Practice mindful exercise, thoughtful
intensity.

end.

May 2005

CrossFit and Powerlifting

Jason Bagwell
Last year (March 04 CFJ) we learned of
Mark Twights successful application of
CrossFit to endurance efforts. This month
Calhoun High Schools Coach Jason
Bagwell shares how injecting CrossFit into
his powerlifting program produced record
lifts.

for the past six years has been based on the Russian style of training of the 1970s
and 1980s. Much of the theory of this style of training can be found in the writings of
Tsatsouline, Sheiko, Smolov, Medvedyev, and Roman. In a nutshell, it involves low reps
(never more than 5 and usually 3 or less) and moderate to high sets with moderate to
high intensity. We use the same definition of intensity as the Russians (percentage of
maximum) and classify our lifts in 5 different zones of intensity.
Zone

My name is Jason Bagwell and I

have been the coach of the Calhoun
High School (Port Lavaca, Texas)
powerlifting team for the past six years.
I am also a certified (National Council
on Strength and Fitness) trainer, and I
do a little personal training off and on,
usually for friends. I have participated
in various types of athletic events,
from competing on a relay team in the
grueling Canadian Death Race on three
occasions to competing at the state
level in powerlifting. I consider myself a
balanced and well-rounded athlete, and
I try to develop these same qualities in
all my athletes.
Over the past six years our schools
powerlifting team has been quite
successful. We have had about thirty
athletes advance to state championship
contests and eight have won first or
second place. Three have gone on to
win national championships, and two
of those have made this years U.S.
World Team and will represent the
United States at the IPF Sub-Junior (18
years or less) World Championships in
September.
Several months ago I came across a
link to CrossFit.com, and, after sifting
through the site for a while, I was
hooked. As someone who appreciates
the value of hard work, I knew I had to
find a way to incorporate this type of
training and conditioning into my teams
regimen. I will first describe our existing
strength training system and then show
how we have incorporated CrossFit
methodologies to take the program to
an even higher level.

Intensity

51 to 60%

61 to 70%

71 to 80%

81 to 90%

91 to 100%

The most important piece of the whole strength training system is the number of
barbell lifts (NBL) in each zone, which determines the intensity of a training week or
month or other period of time. Here is an example:
Squat:

Week 4 has the highest total number of lifts (95), but week 3 has the highest
intensity since it has more Zone 5 lifts than the other weeks. Russian research has
demonstrated that the number of lifts above 90% of maximum correlates highly with
a lifters overall improvement. However, there is a fine line that has to be observed.
One cannot simply say, Then we will always use weights of 90% and above to train.
Constant training with Zone 5 lifts would quickly lead to physical and nervous-system
overtraining. The crux of our entire system, then, is careful planning of the number
and timing of Zone 5 lifts. As a general rule, during the preparatory and off-season
periods there are very few Zone 5 lifts and much of the athletes training focus is on
achieving high volume. During the competitive season, Zone 5 lifts increase and overall

Our principal strength training system

continued page ... 5

May 2005

CrossFit and Powerlifting

Jason Bagwell
...continued from page 4

volume decreases as the athlete peaks

for competition..
I think this strength training system is
one of the best at the current time.
Most of the powerlifting teams that
we compete against use systems
that are based on outdated training
principles. A typical routine would be
two weeks of 5 sets of 8 reps, two
weeks of 4 sets of 6, two weeks of 3
sets of 4, and then repeat the cycle.
While these types of routines will
certainly make people stronger and
have developed thousands of athletes,
I feel that they are extremely outdated;
the Russians stopped using these types
of routines in the early 1960s. Russians,
Bulgarians, and others using similar
techniques have dominated the sports
of weightlifting and powerlifting for the
past thirty years. Their systems have
clearly developed the strongest people
in the world.
When I initially discovered CrossFit,
my first thought was that it would
be an excellent way to improve an
athletes work capacity. For example,
one standard workout that we perform
quite often is 8 sets of 4 reps at 85%
of maximum on the squat and bench.
Doing these exercises back to back
with that intensity level can be quite
a strenuous workout. An athlete who
is not well conditioned is likely to
have a hard time completing this type
of workout as fatigue sets in and his
cardiovascular system becomes more
and more taxed. CrossFit has eliminated
this problem for us. The conditioning
that we have achieved allows our
athletes to work harder in the weight
roomand a harder working athlete is
a stronger athlete.
The first step I took to incorporate
CrossFit into our program was to search
through the archives for workouts that
our equipment would support and

that would allow all athletes to exercise at the same time. For example, since we
have no rower, all workouts with rowing were eliminated or another exercise was
substituted. Next I looked for workouts that include running. While we use all the
various types of workouts that CrossFit comprises, we tend to like workouts that
involve running, as they are usually more intense. I also looked for workouts that
could generally be completed in 15 minutes or less. Since the athletes still perform
a strength training workout before or after the CrossFit session, shorter CrossFit
workouts help keep the total training time to about an hour. After compiling a
database of several hundred workouts that fit these criteria, I began formulating how
to plug them into the training process. I came up with two variants that have worked
extremely well for us in preparatory and competition phases of training.
Variant 1: Preparatory Weeks

Helen

7 rounds for time:

10 power cleans
15 pushups

Helen

7 rounds for time:

10 power cleans
15 pushups

In non-competition training, each of the three powerlifting events is trained twice

a week and a CrossFit workout is completed daily. Mondays workout starts with
CrossFit before the specific powerlifting training; on Wednesday the order is reversed,
with the same CrossFit workout following the strength training. Tuesday and Thursday
follow a similar
pattern, except with
a different CrossFit
workout. This is
fatigue cycling, a
Russian technique
wherein
you
alternate
training
heavy lifts either
early or late in a
workout, some days
hitting them when
fresh and some
days when already
fatigued. The first
six weeks of our
training
season
continued page ... 6

May 2005

CrossFit and Powerlifting

Jason Bagwell
...continued from page 5

Variant 2: Competition Weeks

Fran

5 rounds for time:

Run 400 meters
50 wall ball shots
30 push-ups

follow this format. As you can imagine, this week would be pretty brutal and would
definitely be too much for a beginning athlete. Easier or scaled-down CrossFit workouts
can be chosen to lessen the intensity of a given week. This variant has given our team the
greatest improvement over the past year.
In competition weeks, we still use fatigue cycling, but the number of training days per
week decreases from four to three, and the number of CrossFit days decreases from four
to two. This type of format is used for 10 to 14 weeks during our competitive season.
In both preparatory and competition phases of training, we scale the intensity and
demands of the CrossFit conditioning, like the focused lifting work, to the abilities of
individual athletes. Those in the heavier weight classes obviously will have trouble with
some exercises such as pull-ups. This problem can be solved by substituting a similar and
simpler exercise for the more difficult version (such as pull-downs for pull-ups). The same
holds true for the running workouts. A heavier athlete may run laps
of only 200 meters instead of 400 meters. With a little thought and
creativity, all the workouts can be scaled to fit the abilities and needs
of the athletes involved.
Overall I have noticed at least three improvements that the inclusion
of CrossFit workouts has brought to our program:
1.
Increased work capacity. A better-conditioned athlete can work
harder, and an athlete who works harder will get stronger. Nothing
compares to CrossFit when it comes to developing work capacity.
2.
Increased mental toughness. The first time I completed
Helen, I was about to puke. This level of effort has a way of bringing
a persons concentration into sharp focus. A person who works this
hard develops a never-quit attitude and a desire to do well all the
time. When our athletes are doing a CrossFit workout, they are going
at max speed; they have met Pukie on several occasions, and all will
tell you that this intensity has helped them become better athletes.
6

3.
Decreased body fat and increased
flexibility.
Full-range,
high-repetition
exercises such as wall ball and squat cleans
have helped our athletes increase flexibility
and range of motion, and the high intensity
workouts have dramatically improved
body composition. I estimate that all our
athletes below the 220-pound weight
category have single-digit bodyfat levels.
I would like to encourage everyone
involved in the strength community
to implement CrossFit workouts and
principles into your training programs.
Regardless of your sport or endeavor, it
will take your program to the next level.
This year we had a 97-pound female
athlete squat 260 pounds, a superheavyweight female athlete squat 540, and
a 181-pound male athlete squat 600. This
represents at least a 10% improvement
for each of these three athletes during
the past year, when the only change made
to our program has been the inclusion of
CrossFit workouts and principles.

end.

May 2005

Working Wounded
Greg Glassman
...continued from page 1

meniscus in his right knee.

Remember, our concern here is not how
to rehab the knee specifically but how
to keep the athlete training to ensure
that he continues to develop while he
is injured and unable to use the affected
limb.
Our hypothetical case of a disabled
right leg is somewhat arbitrary but
represents considerable complication
for any CrossFitter in that the legs are
used in virtually every CrossFit workout.
However, similar strategies and mindset
can be applied successfully to nearly any
orthopedic injury. And while our case is
hypothetical, we are intimate personally
and professionally with extremity injury
and with successful application of the
approach we describe.
In traditional rehabilitation the goal
is to bring the afflicted body part, and
eventually the athlete, back to preinjury capacity. This, though frequently
a formidable challenge, is not by itself
adequate to the aims of CrossFit rehab.
For CrossFitters, rehabilitation is complete
and successful when the athlete has
acquired total physical capacity not just
equal to but beyond the pre-injury state.
The overwhelming majority of recovery
from injury is performed by nature.
Surgery,
hydrotherapy,
ultrasound,
exercise, and other treatment modalities,
while being useful or even essential, are
not going to take the athletes fitness
beyond his pre-injury stateour stated
rehab goal.
The essence of our approach to
working wounded is to divert the focus
and purpose of the athletes workout
away from the injured limb. We want
the athlete to work with intensity,
variance, and functionality but just, in our
hypothetical case, not with the right leg.
Restricted from load bearing for eight

weeks, our hypothetical athlete (lets call

him Mac) will be unable to perform
the WOD unmodified for nearly three
months and without full gusto for as long
as six months.
Macs rehabilitation begins with the
simple proclamation not that he is injured
but that he is about to begin a sixmonth-long intensive gymnastic program.
For the next six months Mac is going to
be building workouts from the upper
body and left leg. His workout life will be
built around rings, parallettes, dumbbells,
a climbing rope, a glute-ham developer, a
handbike, and the floor.
We will start with a checklist of some
goals for upper body performance. Mac
currently has 20 pull-ups; hes going
to have 40 in six months. Similarly, his
handstand push-ups will increase from 10
to 25, and consecutive muscle-ups from
3 to 15. We might set ten or so goals for
Mac in this way. These goals should be
past what Mac has thought he would ever
be capable of. He will achieve these goals
because fate has dealt him the specialists
hand and he will reap the specialists
rewards.
Additionally, we will make a list of some
movements that have always been out of
Macs reach and start training for them.
He has no front lever now; he will in
six months. Mac has always wanted a
planche; we will put it on the list and plan
for specific drills to develop the planche.
Mac is going to be spending a lot of time
upside down over the next six months.
He will drill handstands and presses to
handstands from the parallettes and floor
constantly. Knees to elbows, crunches, situps, hollow rocks, hollow arches, hug-atwinkies, pass throughs, skin the cats, and
every trunk and core exercise known to
god, man, and CrossFit not involving the
right leg will get the attention that only
the bad luck of a leg injury could provide.
Macs routines are pure CrossFit with a
7

skills and drills component before and/

or after the workout.

Heres an example of
three days programming:
Day 1:
For time:
21-18-15-12-9-6- and 3 rep
rounds of straight arm, straight
leg pull to inverted hang on
rings and low ring push-ups.
Practice L-sits for twenty
minutes.
Day 2:
Complete as many rounds as
you can in twenty minutes of: 35
pound seated dumbbell shoulder
press, 15 reps and 1 ascent of
15 foot rope in L-sit position
up and back.
Log twenty cumulative minutes
in a handstand.
Day 3:
For time:
21-18-15-12-9-6 and 3 rep
rounds of pull-ups and ring dips.
Tabata hug a twinkies.

continued page ... 8

May 2005

Working Wounded
Greg Glassman
...continued from page 7

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Theres really nothing

different
in
the
programming. Mac is
doing what we wanted
him to do before he
got hurt.. Hes still doing
varied, intense workouts
that comprise full-body
functional
movements;
the list of exercises he
draws from is just more
circumscribed.

CrossFit
2851 Research Park Dr
Units B&C
Soquel CA 95073

Theres focus or
specialization where it
may not have made sense
before. Macs injury is a
mixed blessing.
Whatever
potential
development Mac missed
by having to forego the
full range of workouts
following his injury is
going to be replaced
with skills that he was not
likely to have developed
otherwise. The exact
nature of the tradeoff
is necessarily blurred,
as an unknown loss in
potential is exchanged for
a measurable, valuable,
and potent adaptation
attributable directly to
the injurys effect on his
training. Now that is
rehab.
Before Macs leg is 100%
again he will have made gains in upperbody and trunk strength, flexibility (hes
going to stretch regularly for perhaps the
first time in his life), balance, agility, and
coordination that will remain with him for
the rest of his life.
The advantages to recovering CrossFit
style over watching TV and waiting for
the leg to heal are threefold. First the

Please include your

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If you have any questions
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Your input will be greatly
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Advisors:
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Photo: Nancy Meenen

injured leg will heal more quickly and
atrophy less. Second, Mac will acquire
skills and strengths that he wouldnt have
developed otherwise. Third, the mental
anguish that nearly always accompanies
an athletes down time is greatly reduced.
end.

www.crossfit.com