If Your Muscles Say No

Hi Folks

In this article I'm going to talk about the fatigue of the central nervous system and it's effect on your performance.

   Whenever you feel like your muscles don't obey to your brain there's a great chance that you've fried your central nervous system.

So the cause why your muscles may not be "responding" properly from time to time can't only be found in your muscles but in your nervous system where the brain is connected with the different parts of your body and electric impulses are running back and forth.

The fatigue of the central nervous system can't only occur because the great amount of workouts that you may do but also sleepless nights, taking too much stimulants(caffeine, taurine...), long flights or bustrips and injury or surgery also has a negative effect on the ability of your brain to "send messages" to your muscles.

The reason behind this is the changed ratio of the neurotransmitters in your body.

Often times the concentration of the neurotransmitter called Serotonin drops or raises and this can cause changes in the mood and in general wellbeing.

For example depression, premenstrual syndrome, general sleepiness and every disease that's symptom is tiredness.

Hope that was informative and helpful, Please Share and if you have any questions feel free to ask 'em. 
Thanks for reading! Peace Out

Rob Kiss

follow me on Twitter @theRobKiss

How To Get Your 1st Pullup

Hi Folks

In this article I'm going to discuss how to get your chin over the bar with overhand grip from a dead hang position for the first time without any kipping.

No matter if you are young, old, male, female, crossfitter or just a regular guy, you need to be able to pull your own body up.

There are variations of the pullup where you vary your hand placement or you help yourself up with your legs and your hip but I think for a beginner it's very beneficial to master this basic upper body movement because it's a good indicator of relative body strength

So let's get right into it. I wont name specifically how long and how often should you practice these moves because it's gonna be different for every individual and of course you probably know that the more you practice the quicker the result will come.

These exercises gonna be mentioned in the order of difficulty. The one who can't even hold his/her body at the top position of a pullup going to start with exercise number 1.

#1 Eccentric Descents

      With the very first step of achieving a pullup what you need to do is stepping onto a box or some elevated surface you your chin is right above the bar. From then you grab onto the bar around shoulder with apart with your palms facing away from you. Then you step off the box and start lowering yourself as slow as you can. It's very important to have total control over your body and try not to fall down but get down as slowly and as controlled as possible. Then immediately step right back up and repeat. 

      Do 5 sets of 5 descents of your slowest possible.

#2 Isometric Holds

      If you feel that you can lower your self comfortably and you have total control of your body on the way down now you can move onto the next exercise which is holding your body at the top part of a pullup with your arms bent and chin over the bar. First, just as before step on an elevated surface so you can get your chin over the bar, but this time when you step off the box try not the start going down but holding yourself in that upper position as long as possible. Then if you feel like losing it start slowly lowering yourself a just like in the previous exercise.

      Do 5 sets of 5 of holding as long as you can then lowering as slowly as you can.

#3 Assisted Pullups

   After you reached a point where you can comfortably hold yourself for around 10-20 seconds you can move on to the next progression exercise which is assisted pullups. The way you gonna perform these is just as before you place a box below the bar but now you're grabbing onto the bar and in a deadhang position you place one of your foot on the box, the other leg is still hanging. Then you're going to pull yourself up while you are helping yourself up with your foot on the box. The goal here is to help as little with your leg as possible but still being able to get your chin over the bar. After you pulled yourself up you get your foot off the box and slowly lower yourself again just like in the first exercise. Then place one of your foot back onto the box and repeat.

Try to rely on your leg less and less.

   Do 5 sets of 5 assisted pullups with slow lowering.

#4 Partial Pullups

      Now it's time to try performing a pullup. Probably you won't be able to pull yourself all the way up but let's say you can do 1/3 of a pullup. It's all good. Your next progression exercise gonna be the partial pullups where you are trying to increase the range of motion in which you are already capable of doing pullups.

Your job is to try to go higher and closer to get your chin over the bar every time and eventually you gonna be there.

      Do 5 sets of 5 max effort partial pullup.

Thats it folks I hope that helped to get your very first strict pullup. Please Share and if you have any questions feel free to comment.

Thanks for reading! Peace Out

Rob Kiss

follow me on Twitter @theRobKiss

Overtraining In A Pool

Hi Folks

Nowadays everyone in the fitness community talks about overtraining and how just a couple more sets added to you workout are going to ruin your life.

While two bodybuilders are slippin on their purple glowing mass-gainer and arguing about a the effects of a couple more added sets of calf raises and how it's going to make them smaller and how the whole workout loses it's point if you are above an imaginary golden line of x amount of sets in one workout, there's a crossfitter doing his Chipper, sweating, using momentum as much as he can not worrying about what part of his biceps and lats is he targeting with the 100 kipping pullups. Despite all the stupid and ridiculous handstands and the pointless MetCons, our crossfitter guy still has muscle on his frame and able to Clean n Jerk 225. How is it possible?

Let me tell you how overtraining works:

First of all there's no magic formula to define a general truth for overtraining that suits for every human on earth. It's different for everyone and it changes with your age, fitness, mental, emotional and spiritual state.

  When you are "overtrained" what it really is, is just another term for being "overstressed". Now, stress can come from many different ways and forms.

The most common forms of stress that you might be experiencing are:

Neurological, Psychological, Physiological... easier they're factors like Bad nutrition, Not getting enough sleep, Drinking alcohol, Not getting along with people (bitchy gf, stupid boss...),  Having financial problems... the list goes on and on... what you have to realize is that working out is just one of them. You can not look at training as the only factor of overstressing yourself. In fact in most of our lives it plays a much smaller role than all the other causes of stress.

  You can imagine overtraining as a pool what's being filled with all kind of water such as: one bucket is bitchy gf, the second is bad eating habits another bucket pouring into the pool is not getting enough sleep... training too much is just a couple drops of rain. As everyone has different sizes of pools we can bear different amount of stresses in our lives, but once the pool is filled with water it starts to spill out in the forms of Sickness, Weakness, Cancer, Depression, Low libido...

  You can also make little holes, taps into your pool by just letting go from time to time in the form of Meditation, Relaxing, Active recovery (light jogging, play sports with friends) that doesn't require effort.

--> After all probably the two most important and most effective forms of stress relieve are Sex and Sleeping.

  So keep in mind if you wanna change your body or you wanna improve your performance you've got to make adjustments in your whole life approach...

I highly recommend you to all check out this video about Coping With Stress

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BbHW3H_xmo&feature=g-u-u

Please Share and if you have any questions feel free to ask them in the comment section!

Thanks for reading! Peace Out

      Rob Kiss

Who Am I

  Hi Folks my name is Rob Kiss I was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1994.

My main reason for staring this blog is that I want to track my development as a CrossFit athlete: measure my progress and interact with like-minded people from all over the world and bounce ideas off each other. 

  About me: Sports have always been a great part of my life even from the very beginning. I started swimming at the age of 4 and I was a competitive swimmer for around 8 years when I decided to move towards waterpolo as I always wanted to do a team sport since my father was one of the best basketball players in the history of Hungary. After my 4th year of playing in one of the best waterpolo teams of Hungary but never playing a major role I decided to switch to basketball.

It was a hard for me "getting out of the pool" and also after around 12 years of 10 hours of training a week having like 3 weekly workouts didn't satisfy my hunger of working out. That time I started to develop serious knee problems because of the sudden stress on my knees due to basketball. That was the time when I first started to go the gym to do physiotherapy and rehab my knee.
  In 2011 I got the book "Convict Conditioning" from my grandfather. It's a book about bodyweight training and it helped me a lot figuring out how to deal with my excessive energies. After my physiotherapy sessions I started to incorporate Calisthenics in my daily routine and I improved fast because I've already had a good enough athletic background. I started to gain interest in Strength and Conditioning, Healthy Lifestyle, Nutrition and different training methods. I read books started to read blogs and watch youtube videos on the topic. 

 In the Summer of 2012 I've been introduced to CrossFit, a whole new interpretation of the whole Fitness world. I've been always a fan of functional and performance based workouts against the shopwindow dummy bodybuilders who can barely lift their hands above their head without the need of surgery. 

So in the Septermber of 2012 I joined a CrossFit gym here in Budapest. My goal is to perform and compete at my highest level possible and besides that work in the crossfit, fitness, health field after finishing school and help children, adults, elders, pro athletes, recreational athletes with their own personal goals and overall lifestyles.