Wine Country CrossFit

Many of you may know JC from around the gym, and if you don’t then here is your formal introduction! She has been a coaching intern for quite awhile, and is starting to teach classes. She brings a background of sports, and strong knowledge of anatomy to her work as a coach, in addition to her gregarious personality. She is also a powerful body worker. Body worker? What the heck does that mean?! That means that when I’m tight and bound up and lacking function, I spend some time on her table and under her hands, and she helps me move a LOT better. She treats people in the massage room at the gym, and you can set up a time with her by texting or emailing. 707.637.6358 or jc@winecountrycrossfit.com. Please read her own words below for a better understanding of how her body work will help you be a better CrossFitter.

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Hi! My name is JC Carter, and I am a Structural Integration Therapist and Bodyworker… also known as; Massage Therapist.  Often when people ask me what I do, my answer is not: “Massage Therapy.”  After eight years of practicing Structural Integration, Russian Sports Massage, and Trigger Point Therapy, I have found that the word ‘massage’ is just down right misleading.  Working in Spas in the Napa Valley, I discovered that my style often was too interactive for the calm environment of the spa.  My frame of mind about bodywork is to discover imbalance and correct it… but my clients were on vacation and just wanted to relax.

… then I found Crossfit.

Crossfit is where my work belongs.  Let me tell you a little bit about the type of work that I do. Structural integration is a form of bodywork that reorganizes the connective tissues, called facia.  Facial tissues surround, support, and penetrate all of the muscles, bones, nerves and organs.

As a Structural Integration Therapist, I work on this web-like complex of connective tissues to release, realign, and balance the whole body.  Essentially, the process enables the body to regain the natural integrity of its form, thus enhancing postural efficiency and freedom of movement.

As a Crossfit Coach, my job is to assist athletes in becoming better at the movements and lifts in the gym. As a Bodyworker, my job is to assist the athlete’s body in allowing for proper movement to take place, by eliminating postural misalignment that can develop from habit, injury, and life in general.  Assessment of each client’s movement is crucial, and is something clients can expect during a session.

When the body is able to move freely, it can translate into speedy progression in the gym.  For example, being able to commit to the bottom of your squat in the Snatch because your hamstrings are lengthened, your chest is able to open, your shoulders move fluidly, and each muscle fires in the proper sequence is what you can expect from regular Structural Integration Sessions.

Structural Integration focuses on balance. The balanced body includes the CNS (Central Nervous System), which allows for the communication from your brain to your muscle to take place. A healthy CNS can assist you in developing the confidence to make improvements by knowing that your body will perform the movement you ask it to perform.

Sound like something you could use?  We all get to a point where we need bodywork.  All of us have imbalance, muscle tension, restriction, etc.  Muscle is in constant need, whether it is in need of building, lengthening, or rest. Holistic care of your body not only includes exercise and healthy eating, but healthy rest and attention to keeping the muscle and connective tissue free of restrictions and issues.

Now, for those of you who like to geek out on anatomy…. Here’s some stuff to help you understand more about why Structural Integration, and Sports Massage Therapy is beneficial to the Crossfit athlete:

Postural homeostatic lessons are learned early in life by the central nervous system (CNS). However, structural or functional body stressors (tension, trauma, genetics, etc.), may prevent achievement of optimum posture. Faulty posture from physical occurrences such as leg length discrepancies, cranial imbalances, etc., alters the body’s center of gravity which requires the body to develop compensations leading to muscle, fascial and bone adaptations.

If a joint’s mechanical behavior is altered, flexibility and range of motion suffers. The increase in mechano-receptor stimulation from chronically locked joints results in neuro-reflexive muscular changes, such as protective muscle guarding. Long-standing over-activation of abnormal joint reflexes causes changes in spinal cord memory that eventually “burns a groove” in the CNS as the brain and cord are unknowingly saturated with a constant stream of inappropriate proprioceptive information. The brain comes to rely on this faulty information about where it is in space to determine how to establish perfect posture. The brain simply ‘forgets’ what its alignment should be.

The main functions of muscle are; Movement, Stabilization, and Heat.  Skeletal muscle is also important for maintaining posture. Our muscles make small adjustments all the time to keep us sitting or standing up straight. Without muscles, our bodies would lose the battle against gravity — a force that is constantly pulling us toward the ground.
Movement can be inhibited by muscles that are under stress from imbalance. Muscles are attached to bone by tendons. So, when the muscle shortens, it pulls the tendon tight and moves the bone. Muscles can only pull on bones to move them, they never push. So in order for the body to move in many directions, muscles must have opposition. When opposing muscles have issues like Trigger Points (“knots”) or other injury, Structural Integration and other Massage modalities assist to rid the muscle of issues that inhibit this function.

Muscles provide for the stabilization of joints, which is where bones meet.  However, the most significant stabilizers are the tendons. Tendons connect bone to muscle, and are held tight by the muscles. The muscles maintain a small amount of contraction, even when resting. This is called muscle tone, which is necessary for holding joints together. When postural habits form in everyday life that interrupts this natural structure, it becomes necessary to realign and balance these issues through Structural Integration to allow proper joint movement.

Here is what one Structural Integration website has to say about the Athlete and posture:

Athletics and Posture

The issues of faulty posture are often magnified in athletic clients. Imbalances such as short-leg syndromes resulting from a tilted innominate or pronated foot can dramatically reduce speed, strength, coordination and endurance. Moreover, an athlete’s joints are often subjected to abnormal mechanical stresses. Alterations in joint function caused by capsular restriction or loss of joint play either inhibit or facilitate muscles that cross the misaligned joint. Muscle imbalances occur as the length-tension relationship surrounding a given joint is disrupted.

Therefore, when treating muscle imbalances in athletes, the primary goal is restoration of length, strength, and control of muscle function. Many of today’s exercise programs address length and strength, but few deal with the issues of motor control. Any successful exercise program must focus on restoring proper central nervous system control. Muscle firing order sequencing is of particular concern to today’s sports therapist. The following myoskeletal approach has proved successful in restoring muscle balance, reducing pain (nociception) and improving proprioception in competing athletes and the general population as well:

• Lengthen short, hypertonic muscles, and their enveloping fascia;
• Strengthen weak, inhibited muscles through specific hands-on spindle techniques and elastic band retraining exercises;
• Correct aberrant hip
• hyperextension, hip abduction, shoulder abduction, and neck flexion firing order patterns;
• Restore proprioceptive
• motor balance (mini trampolines, yoga, etc.); and
• Maintain a good aerobic exercise program.

Studies have repeatedly demonstrated how alterations in the proper sequence of muscle activation (firing order) adversely affect speed and coordination in competing athletes. Clinically, it has been found that in some athletes, inhibition of dynamic extrinsic muscles—commonly due to joint dysfunction— may be so great, that attempting to strengthen the inhibited muscles through resistance training may only serve to further intensify the inhibition.  This is a vital piece of information for the sports therapist. The bottom line is to first create myofascial balance and restore proper joint function before recommending strengthening exercises. Once muscle balance, posture, and pain-free movement have improved, the client can resume resistance retraining and aerobic exercises.

-Erick Dalton, Freedom From Pain Institute

The short of it: Sign up for a session with JC, and see how your performance improves.

-Beth

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Friday’s WOD:

High Bar Back Squat – Find 1rm

After 1rm, if this is your first set of 20 (you have not been here for the last two weeks) reduce weight to 75% and complete a set of 20.  NO RE-RACKING THE WEIGHT.  If you need to rack the weight in the middle, you are finished, and we will reduce to a lower weight next week.

If you completed the heavy set of twenty last week or the week before: add 5lbs to your weight from last week.

As time allows:

Alternate:
8-8-8 RDLs
3 sets of submaximal abdominal work of your choice

See 4/26/13, 4/30/13