 We always have at least one costume day during the Open. Open the Door of Your TransformationAll year I have been sharing tools, tips, techniques and strategies to help you create your own #tranformationtuesday story. This week, with The Open starting on Friday, I'm sharing an excellent competition prep guide from Working Against Gravity. Working Against Gravity is a nutrition coaching service that works with top level CrossFit athletes and everyday CrossFitters like you and me. They have created this valuable competition guide that will help you get your nutrition dialed in for The Open, tips on staying injury free during the 3 week competition season, creating a winning mindset, and how to approach each week of The Open. The guide is also useful for one day competitions like Festivus Games in April, Tactical Games, Spartan Race, and or the GORUCK evens in June. Even if you're not into doing a fitness competition this year, you'll find the guide helpful in mastering your nutrition. Check it out below and be sure to download it so you can refer back to it throughout the year. Let's get read for The Open!
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 Elisa with a picture perfect front rack Rest and Recovery are ImportantAll of us, at some point, have experienced a few days, or even an entire week, where we feel drained from our workouts. Some of us might be feeling this way now after the Femme Fatale Week.
Rather than feeling energized and revitalized from a session at the gym we feel sore, crabby and weak. While it's easy to attribute these feelings to "Overtraining," what is most likely happening is that we are "Under-recovering." Recovering from our workouts and training sessions consists primarily of three important lifestyle practices: 1. SLEEP 2. NUTRITION 3. STRESS MANAGEMENT If we are not making optimal choices for these three lifestyle practices then we are just not able to recover from the physiological stress of our workouts and training. Many of us are using wearable technology devices like Whoop, Garmin, Oura, Polar, FitBit and others. All of these types of wearable tech can help us learn how to prioritize recovery and customize our training sessions so that we can maximize our fitness gains. Our programming at the gym is constantly varied so that we have longs days, short days, heavy days, and REST DAYS. This variance helps prevent us from going too hard too frequently. However if you're adding lots of volume on non gym days, or doing high intensity double days, you can potentially set yourself up to be in a recovery deficit. If you're using wearable technology, you can use your own biometric data to help guide your training intensity and volume. You can also use it to help you prioritize important recovery practices like sleep, hydration, massage, contrast baths, restorative yoga, foam rolling, and optimal nutrition (like prioritizing protein.) You can read how other Whoop users have developed optimal recovery practices here. Sometimes, hard-charging folks like us CrossFitters find it hard to take rest-days, easy days, and low intensity days. We know we should "listen to our body," yet sometimes we don't heed what it has to say. Give yourself the space to adapt and learn how to be a mature athlete by giving equal measure to recovery as you give to training. 
Nanook is excited about Femme Fatale Week!
Femme Fatale Week Starts in 2 Weeks!
When I was a competitive athlete, no matter the sport, my coaches always put us through a Hell Week. Hell Weeks are increased training sessions where your sessions are longer, more intense or perhaps you do 2 workouts a day. These crucible training cycles were important for developing grit, stamina, endurance and mental toughness.
At True Spirit CrossFit we have our own unique Hell Week, we call it Femme Fatale Week. Femme Fatale Week is a special training cycle of increased intensity and frequency. We challenge you to workout 5 or 6 days. We challenge you to workout 2 or 3 days in a row. We challenge you to try something Rx'd for the first time, or to try something you've never done before. Femme Fatale Week is a crucible and it can teach you a ton about yourself. You've heard me say that you are 20% stronger than you think you are. Everyone who completes Femme Fatale Week learns just how strong they are. You will do workouts you didn't think you could do. You will be inspired by your fellow athletes. You will be motivated to move better. You will be encouraged to try your best. Hell Weeks teach us about our limits and our tolerances. Femme Fatale Week is our Hell Week training cycle that will get you fired up and ready for the next level. Femme Fatale Week will teach you about your mental toughness and offer you a chance to find out just how awesome you really are. Your coaches know that you're a badass. Join us for Femme Fatale Week and learn it for yourself. Registration for Femme Fatale Week is now OPEN! We need 24 brave people to commit to Femme Fatale Week otherwise the 6 seductive, alluring, and irresistible workouts who are ready to show up Feb 10-15 will stay home.  Get ready for some sandbag fun today! Optimum Energy AvailabilityYesterday I explored Low Energy Availability, LEA, a condition that impacts about 47% of female athletes in their 20s & 30s. It is an emerging concern amongst peri- and post-menopausal women (active women over 40) as there is increasing trend amongst our active aging population to not eat enough. Low energy availability can be particularly insidious among perimenopausal women because the signs, which include menstrual cycle disruption, brain fog, muscle loss, decreased bone density, increased risk of injuries, and/or not responding to training as you used to can be confused with some of the issues that can arise during the menopause transition. Men are not exempt! As I explored yesterday, active men can slip into LEA when their optimal energy falls below 25 kcal/kg of lean mass. For us active women, our threshold is higher at 30 kcal/kg of lean mass. Yesterday I shared how to calculate your ideal calories to prevent LEA. Today we'll explore how to tell if your current nutrition program can support your training load and prevent LEA. Remember we need to know our lean mass (also called fat free mass or FFM) in kilograms (kg.) Today we'll also use our wearable tech such as Whoop, Garmin, FitBit, Oura or Apple watch to determine our active calories. Here's a visual of where we're headed.  To determine if your current nutrition program supports your training program you first need to track your food. You can use the Macros tracker in BTWB or other apps like My Fitness Pal, Carbon and others. Once you have tracked your food for about 7 days you'll have enough data to get a solid average of the calories you eat. Second, we need to calculate how many calories we burn during our training session. Your wearable tech will give you a pretty good estimate. None of our fitness trackers are 100% accurate, and that's ok. We're looking for trends. Go back through a typical week and add up all the calories you burn during exercise and divide by 7. Now we're going to use the calories you eat, the calories you burn and your fat free mass to see if you're in LEA. Remember, one day of LEA is fine, but CHRONIC LEA is what we want to avoid. Our bodies are resilient and can bounce back. But, I'd rather not see you go there in the first place. Here is our equation.  Let's do the math! As an example I'll use my data from January 2024 when I thought I needed to be on dietary cut but was feeling SO DAMN TIRED and I just didn't want to train. (This is a HUGE red flag! Fatigue and lack of motivation to exercise are classic LEA symptoms). My daily caloric intake averaged 1745 kcals. My average daily exercise energy expenditure (using my Whoop and getting an average for the same week) was 300 kcals on training days. My fat free mass is 61 kg. Using our Optimal Energy Availability equation my daily average was 23.6. No wonder I was SO DAMN TIRED! Doing the math can be very helpful. However, I also want you to be very aware of how you FEEL. Your feelings are always true and can be signals that something is not quite right. My feelings of fatigue and lack of training motivation were the impetus for me to enroll in the Active Menopause continuing education course I just completed. Sometimes even the Coach needs a Coach:) We are athletes, we need to eat to support our training, and I'm here to help you. Diet culture is a million dollar business and not all recommendations are applicable to our active aging population. As I learned in my CE course: Women have been indoctrinated with the 1,200-calorie-a-day diet. It’s just part of the ocean of diet culture we all swim in. Countless articles, books, and diet platforms, including Noom, Weight Watchers, and even the NIH promote 1,200 to 1,500-calorie diets for women. That sets the stage for chronic LEA for active women. If you would like help determining your Macros, optimal energy, and anything else related to eating to support your training, please book a check-in with me.
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