In this quick conversation, we want to learn all about you, your fitness goals and how we can help you reach them.
WOD:
Cash in – 400m Plate Carry
Then 5 rounds
Cash out – 400m plate carry
THE MASTERS ATHLETE
Warm Up and Mobility
Over time everyone’s body ages, there’s just no stopping it! You start to notice your stiffer than you used to be. Getting out of bed in the morning, stiff after sitting too long or stiff after standing too long. We all know stretching and mobility help slow the process, but too often it gets left on the back burner for later.
In order to continue working on your fitness goals, your flexibility and mobility need to be maintained or better yet improved!
Muscle tightness results in an increase in tension from an either passive or active mechanism. Passively, muscles will shorten through postural adaptation. For example, you may have tight hip flexors or ankle stiffness because your job involves sitting for long periods. Actively muscles can shorten through spasm or contraction.
This can be caused by being fatigued, being dehydrated or medication. An example would be a sudden hamstring cramp or “charley horse”. Whatever the cause, tightness limits range of motion and may create muscle imbalances.
Types of Stretching
Static Stretching
Static stretching increases flexibility by putting light tension on a muscle and holding that position 30-90 secs, 3-4 times. It’s best to warm up before this king of stretching.
Isometric Stretching
In this type of stretching, you get into the static position, then gently contract the stretch muscle, then hold for 5 to 15 secs, then relax. Repeat 2-3 times. For example, do a standing hamstring stretch, then press your heel down to create resistance through the hamstring.
Dynamic Stretching
Dynamic stretching is actively taking the joint through it’s full range of motion. Examples would be air squats, walking lunges or arm windmills. These movements should be smooth and consistent.
What ever method of stretching you do is completely an individual choice. Studies have not really shown that one method is better than the other. Try a few different combinations with your warmup and after a workout and see what works best for you. You may also need to spend more time on one area over another just based on your body. So try and get into stretch routine more regularly and you should see the rewards!
Every :30 x 5 sets
-Rest 1 minute & increase load-
Every :30 x 5 sets
Every 3:00 for 4 sets
6-4-2-6-4-2
Workout:
5 Sets
-1:30 rest between sets-
*Start light and end moderate-heavy, increase weight each set.
Let’s make an action plan to Shed Body Fat Fast. This article should serve as a base of knowledge to work from.
Shedding extra body fat is a goal of many Americans. CrossFit Jungle Gym uses proven methods to help get you there! So let’s outline the changes you should be making in order to shed the body fat. Your extra body fat may be holding you back from living the life you want. Whether it’s getting more pull ups, feeling confident at work, running faster or keeping you from going to the beach. We are going to focus on 3 key objectives: higher activity level, increase muscle mass and improving nutrition inputs. These 3 things are going to make losing that extra body fat simple and improve your fitness!
The first thing we want to achieve is a higher activity level. Doing so is going to expend more of our energy leaving less to become stored as fat. This will help keep us from attaining more fat and begin the process of slimming down.
Increasing your activity level is quite simple. Do more today than yesterday, more this week than last week, more this month than last month. This change in activity level is needed to break your state of homeostasis (staying the same, plateau). This increase will force your body to burn more energy than it did before. Then we’ll begin tipping the balance towards losing unproductive body weight. There are several ways to do this.
Add more movement to your daily activities. You’ve heard it a million times by now but don’t be afraid to park at the back of the parking lot. Don’t be afraid to take the stairs or to walk, run, jump or skip to where you are going. Don’t be afraid to do a couple push-ups, squats or sit ups when you have a couple minutes. Just take advantage of any time that you have to MOVE. There are so many other benefits to body movement besides increasing you activity level it would be silly not to!
Start by committing to a schedule. If you don’t currently workout, commit yourself to doing two workouts a week and pick the days! Don’t go too crazy at the start. We just need to do more than we were doing before we don’t need to go from 0-60! We have all the details sorted out for you in our First 60 Days program.
Secondly, we are going to want to build more muscle mass. Having more muscle mass is like having a larger engine. It burns more fuel, leaving less to hang around to be stored later. Not to mention it shifts the body composition quickly in the right direction!
Finally, we need to take note of our nutrition. This will ensure it aligns with our goals of losing body fat. It will also allow us to maintain more muscle mass, the good stuff.
Find a coach or a personal trainer. There are good coaches and trainers all over the country. Finding one is going to help you improve all 3 objectives. Here’s how…
Having an appointment or paid session is another commitment that you make that will force you to go.
A good coach is also going to help you be more productive with your time and efforts. Experienced coaches will know the best movements, rep schemes and be fluent in modifying for your needs. Shorting the time to your desired results.
Meet with a CFJG coach and building your plan to shed body fat fast!
If it’s time for you to shed body fat fast start here! Increase your activity level, building more muscle mass and changing your nutrition. This will lead to a fitter and healthier you for years to come. You will be able to enjoy more physical activities and reap the benefits of your newly found active lifestyle!
We started Jungle Gym Fitness in 2011 with a couple bucks and early morning training sessions in the park… our own personal stories started even more humble than that. What our gym looks like today is much different than it was then but we’ve continued everyday refining our approach down to 4 Areas of Excellence. Specifically by improving the lives of our community through training and nutrition. CFJG has and will continue to train the using the best possible methods to achieve our clients goals… we will not sacrifice our values in the pursuit of changing the world.
At CFJG we genuinely believe that making a meaningful impact in a few is more valuable, more critical and certainly more rewarding than making a minor impact on many. We’ve doubled down on this approach many times over the years and we continue today to push forward in providing a superior service by focusing in on our 4 Areas of Excellence. We’ve never felt we had “competitors” so to say because what we do is different than what any gym in a 30 mile radius of us is doing. We believe that these Areas of Excellence make our training experience superior… it doesn’t make us the right gym for everyone but it does make us the BEST gym in the world for some.
At Jungle Gym we aim to provide an ever increasing value of service to the Hamilton area by providing solutions to all of the major hurdles in accomplishing fitness goals. There may be other gyms that are better at different things but none stands next to us in more than one of our Areas of Excellence… these are the parts of our service that are uniquely CFJG and are different from our “competitors”. For some, these 4 traits of our service are 100% necessary for fitness success. Some may be less important to you or not important at all. If none of them are important to you, you’d probably prefer a service somewhere else.
Programs: The way our programs are put together… is a step by step progression: No Sweat Intro, First 60 Days program, Next 90 Days programs. Each stage is there to make sure you only need to focus on one thing.
Coaching progressions are designed to keep you from doing no more than one thing at a time. When we teach you to squat… hips back, practice 5 reps. After you send your hips back, sink down as low as you can, practice 5 reps and so on. Our sessions are broken into step by step progress to ensure your long term success… the greeting, the warm up, teaching new skills, the workout of the day and finally the debrief.
Step by step planning. We have quarterly Goal Setting Sessions (included with membership) in which we work with you, your budget, your schedule, your obstacles, stresses and any other contributing factors you have, to ensure YOU have the BEST POSSIBLE plan to achieve YOUR goals.
Step by step guidance is by it’s very nature what COACHING is all about and that is the essence of what we do.
Do you need individualized prescription? if you’ve ever felt like the program you were doing wasn’t working for you… YES. Which also makes us the top choice. If the program you’re doing is working for you… keep on it! If you’re getting the results you want, that means: you either have enough knowledge to decide which program is right for you, go through the process of elimination or be happy without ever getting results (it’s totally up to you!).
Every gym I’ve ever been to has laid claim to fun or community. Every gym has it’s right to claim it too. We understand that not everyone will fit in with us and we’re OK with that. I can say with certainty, there are people out there who may enjoy another gym more. The difference is we know and rely on specific traits to make sure our gym is an amazing environment, consistently. If there’s an outlier we are sure to let them know and point them in the right direction. Here are the specific actions we take to make training enjoyable.
Do you need training to be enjoyable? If yes… you’ll fit in an environment that suits YOU, that may not be with us and that’s ok. But does any other gym take specific steps to make sure you’ve had every chance? (I’ll wait while you ask… the answer is no).
If you care about making fitness gains at all… I mean AT ALL, you have to start with an quality objective measurement. We have the tools to measure the specific goals you have… BF%, skeletal muscle mass, weight, girth, over 15 categories of general performance metrics (with 32 sub levels for EACH of those 15 categories), infinite # of specialized metrics… AND WE ARE GOING TO MEASURE YOUR METRICS AT GOAL SETTING SESSIONS EVERY 3 MONTHS. You’ll never be on the wrong training plan again (unless you don’t do your goal setting sessions, lie to us about your goals… but why would you ever do that?). If your goals change… we change your plan. Which means you’re never wasting time or energy doing the wrong things. All you have to do is tell us what you want to accomplish.
The answer is: YES!
In our experiences, all individuals (male or female, ages ranging from 5 – 89 years old) have the ability to improve your physique in some measurable way. Whether you are looking to get stronger, add lean body mass, and/or decrease body fat percentage your age is not a limiting factor.
Here at CrossFit Jungle Gym we can utilize tools, such as an In-Body Scanner, to provide objective measures that allow us to develop a specific plan to assist you in reaching your goals and improving your physique. We’re not asking you to take our word for it. We will provide data to show you that you are getting Unlimited Gains and not Plateaus and Stagnation! This idea of data driven fitness is not new. It is at the root of what CrossFit, and by extension our training, is all about.
More on this idea in a CrossFit Journal article, “Understanding CrossFit”. Described is the methodology that drives CrossFit.
With coaching there’s no age limit on who can continue to improve. It’s not too late to make a big difference! We’re going to be able to help you improve your physique by adding lean body mass, getting more fit, and reaching your goals!
Read, watch and listen to over 100 Client Success Stories!
If you want to get 6 pack abs fast you need to dedicate your efforts into 2 primary areas: Nutrition and Exercise. Each realm of getting to 6 pack abs is important what you need to focus on more as an individual can vary greatly from other individuals. Either way, getting 6 pack abs quickly will likely take work on both right away.
You should start your 6 pack abs journey with a measurement of body fat percentage. This will most accurately depict where you’re starting from and improvements in body composition (even if you can’t see abs yet) will be the stepping stones on the way to 6 pack abs. Setting your expectations… some folks can see their abs at 17% body fat… some can’t until they are in the single digits… which will depend greatly on where you carry most of your extra body weight. We recommend hopping on an Inbody scanner as it will read this and some other helpful data that we’ll talk about later in this article.
This is going to be the key metric we’re trying to change. Overall decreases in body fat percentage will drive you toward ab definition you’re looking for. What keeps the abs from appearing? Body fat that is sitting on top of those muscles
Gains in muscle mass increase the amount of passive caloric output known as basal metabolic rate. This is the amount of calories you output without doing anything. You can get on our InBody Scanner (and get a whole load of other biometrics too!) or get an estimated BMR.
The single most important area of focus for getting amazing 6 pack abs starts with your nutrition plan. A lot of people say “abs are made in the kitchen”, good news you don’t have to go in the kitchen if you don’t want! Here are the nutrition factors that matter: Caloric Intake, Macronutrient Balance, Nutrient Quality and to a lesser degree Nutrient Timing.
Generally… those looking to get 6 pack abs need to lower caloric intake. You should get started by paying closer attention to the foods you consume… processed foods contain far more calories than natural whole foods so it’s easy to over consume them.
Know what your current balance of Protein, Carbs and Fat are… we recommend 40/30/40 as a good starting point. Check out this article about balancing them.
Quality is a big factor in satiety… because you and eat endless volumes of vegetables and it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever consume more calories that your goals allow for.
Exercising burns energy, but you want to make gains not just burn energy and that is important.
In order to shift the tide in our favor quickly we want to be burning more stored energy while we’re in a resting state. The best way to do that is to have as much muscle as possible. Muscle requires energy to be maintained, which means it’s constantly burning off available energy. The more you have the more of that, that happens on automatic. Improvements in BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) will come from good strength training.
Exercise selection and programming will be important to gaining 6 pack abs quickly.
Functional Movements are the most effective for a variety of reasons but ultimately they create the most power burn the most calories in addition to improving your physical skills.
Get started on your own or with us and let us know how it goes!
Brian Zimmerman
Owner of CrossFit Jungle Gym
Do you want to join most Americans in learning how to lose extra body fat? CrossFit Jungle Gym is here to help. Your focus in losing body fat needs focus first on objective data, energy consumed, energy expended, remeasurement of objective data, analysis of change, then improvement of the plan. Below we detail some of the strategies and tactics that will drive best results. Whether your extra body fat may is holding you back from getting more pull ups, keeping you from going to the beach or you’re trying to be healthy. We are going to focus on the things that are going to make losing that extra body fat as simple and painless as possible!
In order to get a clear picture of where you are starting from you’re going to want to have a clear picture of: BF %, Lean Body Mass, Basal Metabolic Rate and Inches. Establishing this starting point is essential if we’re hoping to maintain gains, avoid frustration and stagnation later. At CFJG we take this measurements on Day 1, Day 60 and every 90 days for your entire membership (if weight loss is your goal).
BF% is going to tell us what our realistic and ideal body weight goals should be. There’s a healthy level of fat for both men and women.
One the keys to weight loss is that we are consistently not over consuming calories. There are plenty of different strategies for executing this but it’s all going to stem from know your:
There are a couple reasons why quality food is important to body fat loss. One is the primarily revolving around satiety (feeling full). Quality carbohydrates in particular are nearly unlimited in consumption because they are dense in micro nutrients and NOT calorically dense. It makes it VERY difficult to over consume while also ensuring fullness.
The higher your lean body mass or skeletal muscle mass is the more calories you burn at rest (BMR). You can think of more muscle like a bigger engine in a car… it guzzles more gas. The difference is, in the case of body composition, the gas is available or stored energy. Which means when we burn it, we won’t acquire as much fat. LBM is more dense than fat. That is the primary reason we MUST use an accurate BF% reading in addition to weight readings to assess progress.
The next thing we want to achieve when considering how to lose extra body fat is a higher activity level. Doing so is going to expend more of our energy leaving less to become stored as fat. Increasing activity level will help keep us from acquiring more fat and begin the process of slimming down.
Your activity level is important to fat loss no doubt. Small consistent weekly activity “deposits” have a larger value than large inconsistent monthly “deposits”. We need to make a habit of activity. A lot of people try to make a habit of activity on their own. Some succeed to eventually find out they need to refine their activity type. While others find it troublesome just to make activity a habit. We prioritize consistent weekly activity over the quality of activity. If you have the choice to maximize your time though, then there is no reason why you shouldn’t.
There are two groups as described above… those who made habit of regular activity and those who have not. For the person just building a habit of activity, two hours of training is infinitely more than no activity. Two hours weekly is enough to jump start progress for awhile. A daily step goal, is one of the simple way to gamify, daily activity level. At CFJG we focus on weekly activity level first. We start people in our facility with 2 workout sessions a week and we maximize every minute of that training. Almost anyone can adjust their schedule for 2 sessions a week. If they can’t… it’s like they’ve committed accidentally to not losing weight.
If you have already built a daily or weekly activity routine but have plateaued, it’s time to optimize. Method now matters in how to lose extra body fat! Productive use of energy now becomes more important than just using energy. After a couple weeks of optimizing at 2 day week, members graduate to 3 days a week. Where, depending on other individual factors, they can sustain real results for a LONG time.
Yes, you can! We have 100’s of success stories of members who have used a variety of our services to lose extra body fat. Take Heather for example who lost over 15lbs in 5 weeks with our Nutrition Challenge. How about Chris who looks like he could fit two of himself into his old pair of pants? If you’re wondering “I’m overweight can I do CrossFit?” you aren’t the first or last to ask. You also won’t be the first or last to change your life.
Losing your extra body fat is simple in theory. What we specialize in is not only simplifying the theory but implementing in your life. We will walk you step by step to help you succeed once and for all. It’s time for you to be able to enjoy more physical activities, walk tall with confidence and reap the benefits of your new found body!
Meet with a CFJG Coach and start building your plan today!
In this quick conversation, we want to learn all about you, your fitness goals and how we can help you reach them.
