Master Your Fitness Game: In-Depth Gear Guides and Workout Tips by TuffWraps

Last time I talked (briefly) about the importance of water for proper physiological functioning, how and why we lose water, and what happens when we enter a dehydrated state. This post will pick up where we left off and take a more in depth look at dehydration in athletes, what can happen when it becomes serious and some preventative steps we can take.

The Human body is made up of approximately 60% water* (by weight); water is involved in numerous functions within the body, which are vital for proper physiological functioning. Therefore it should come as no surprise that  losses in body water - aka dehydration - can have significant negative effects on our performance (both physical and mental).

Now well into the month of December, it seems as though the holidays are in full swing. Perhaps you’ve been to a holiday party or two and maybe skipped a workout or two, and as you’ve gotten busier and busier and as you get busier and busier, you relish in the idea that in just a few weeks, you’ll be jetting off to a relaxing vacation away from the your everyday stressors.

’Tis the season…to get busy and go on vacation, skip workouts and eat unhealthily until you’ve nearly completely undone nearly everything that you’ve done over the past year. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The next several weeks will constitute a 3 part series detailing how to keep up on your workouts and healthy habits over the holiday season. We’ll cover everything from working out away from home to working out at home, as well as keeping your eating in check over this upcoming holiday season.

In today’s world, it seems as though everything and anything can be done successfully at home. Computers and the Internet have allowed us to bring our work to our beds, education to our living rooms and now, fitness to our garage.

Somewhere in the back of your gym, behind the jump ropes you love and the rowers you hate and way beyond your beloved steel, chrome, custom Rogue Olympic lifting bar lies a miscellany of odd (and sometimes not so odd) objects, rarely touched by the calloused hand of even the most experienced crossfitter.

So something went awry at the gym today. Maybe you deterred ever so slightly from your form on your deadlift and felt something tweak. Or maybe you woke up this morning and something is feeling just a little more than “sore” from yesterday’s squat session.

In the beginning, CrossFit was fairly simple. Simply show up, do the work and see the results. The mere factor of walking half-heartedly through the door on a Friday evening only to lace up your nanos and put in even a minimal effort would bring about results. You probably PR’d at least once a week in some area or another and the mere completion of a workout was an achievement in itself. Fast forward 6-12 months and the results have started to slow. PR’s have become more spread out and less frequent. Just “showing up” for class has no longer become enough.

Often times, we become so wrapped up in the score on the board, that we forget that sometimes our scores and weights come not just from what we’ve done in the moment, but also what we’ve done in the hours and days leading up to the workout. But, post workout recovery can get complicated. If you’re not careful, you can quickly become entangled in a complicated web of protein shakes and mobility.

Everyone has their own reasons for skipping a workout. Whether you changed careers, got injured, or your personal life went through major changes, you may have missed a WOD or two (or ten) because of it. Though life may get in the way, do your best not to fall into the trap of avoiding the gym because you "can't make it."

Since its founding in 2000 and the inaugural CrossFit Games of 2007, the “Sport of Fitness” has taken the world by storm like no other fitness program has ever done before. From desk jockey to at-home mom to professional athlete, CrossFit has enabled its members to become dramatically more capable in physical feats and athletic prowess through what it preaches as “constantly varied and functional movement.” Executed, of course, at “high intensity” which every CrossFitter has found to be profoundly true and profoundly effective as they lie gasping for breath after notorious workouts like “Fran,” “Grace” or “Helen.”