Cache Valley Strength & Conditioning

Established in 2008, CVSC is Cache Valley’s premier training facility with services ranging from personal training, program design, athletic team conditioning, HyperFit group classes and more.

840 N 50 W Logan United States

435-760-0024

Constantly Varied or Random?

April 15, 2015  /  Emily Bunnell

At CVSC we pride ourselves in thoughtful, progressive programming that is meant to enable athletes to have meaningful exercise and measurable progress. This means that sometimes you'll see a workout you've done recently pop up again or movements vary in weight or intensity over a course of time. These are tell-tell signs of programming. As in, planning daily workouts around a long-term goal. Not just picking what sounds fun or brutal for the occasion. As an athlete that means that if you follow the programming & show up consistently, you can expect to see the progress intended. Keeping a log book and following the workouts are great ways to see progress. Here's an excerpt from a Breaking Muscle on the danger of poorly programmed gyms and cherry-picking athletes.  Cherry-Picking and Birthday WODs: How to Stop the Madness

Cherry-Picking and Birthday WODs: How to Stop the Madness | Breaking Muscle

"Any time you cherry-pick your workouts, you are engaging in random, rather than constantly varied training. When you pull up tomorrow’s WOD on the gym website, see “5K run,” and opt to go down to a competing box to get a better ass-kicker, you are subverting your own progress. Presumably, the run is programmed by your coach for a reason, and if you opt out because you can’t stand running and would rather do something fun, your training has just become less effective.

When programmed correctly, you should be able to pull back to a bird’s-eye view and see a logical progression of like-kind and quality training sessions. Today may be a 5km run, but over the course of twelve weeks, you may notice that every Tuesday, there is some work toward better endurance.

What you see is a slow, but intentional upward progression. This should be supplemented by short aerobic power pieces, lactic endurance pieces, and other training during your week. But imagine if you look at the workout every Tuesday and think ,“Meh! Running again!” and just head on down to a competitors gym for “Double Grace.” Two things are happening:

  1. You are taking one piece of your own box’s puzzle and discarding it.
  2. You are taking a piece from a completely different puzzle and trying to jam it into your own."

 Read the Full Article HERE

categories / Resources, Training

From Paleo To Doughnuts

February 24, 2015  /  Emily Bunnell

Excerpt from Dynamic Nutrition's post:From Paleo To Doughnuts, & the Truth In The Middle

"When I first started noticing the CrossFit craze about 4-5 years ago, it seemed like everyone in the community was eating “Paleo.”  Time went on, and it seemed that more and more athletes were switching from Paleo to Zone, or even better – they were “zoning paleo.”

Today, a few years later – it seems like I rarely hear of or see pictures of meats and nuts, seeds, fruits or vegetables. Instead, I can’t help but notice that common nutritional practices have taken a sharp turn, so far that doughnuts are now recommended as “proper fuel.”
Wow – from paleo to doughnuts – talk about confusing!  This begs the question, how should YOU be eating?
While flexible dieting is new to the CrossFit culture, it is not at all a new concept. In large part it can be explained as follows:  “eat whatever foods you want, as long as you hit your prescribed number of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats for the day.”
1. First and foremost, if you are even considering flexible dieting, you must be prepared to track your macros.
2.Second, understand that not all of your calories will be coming from the “fun” foods like pizza and doughnuts.
If you know your macros, and eat with an emphasis on quality during the critical times (pre workout, post workout, etc..), you should have some wiggle room for a treat or two here or there.  Maybe its at night, or maybe its on an off day, or maybe you have to wait until your refeed day – this will vary from individual from individual.
What I do NOT recommend is using 60 of your 100 grams of carbs on a doughnut preworkout, then using your other 40 on ice cream post workout."
Read the entirety of the article on Flexible Dieting here.
If you are interested in reading more about what exactly Flexible Dieting is, check out this article http://healthyeater.com/flexible-dieting
categories / Nutrition

Why Barbells Are Better Than Machines | The Art of Manliness

February 09, 2015  /  Emily Bunnell

Why Barbells Are Better Than Machines | The Art of Manliness.

Here's a guest post on The Art of Manliness by Mark Rippetoe (if you are unaware he is an American strength training coach and author of Starting Strength, among several other fitness-related pieces).

"When a man walks into a gym, he may be confused about where to spend his time — in the section full of gleaming, easy-to-figure-out machines, or over by the barbells, where he might be more intimidated both by how to use them, and the kind of guys who are gathered there.

Let’s just clear it up right here: barbell training is the best way to train for strength. Bar none. Nothing else even comes close to the effectiveness of barbell squats, presses, deadlifts, and the Olympic lifts for the development of strength, power, and muscular size. The reason barbells are so very valuable is that they are the most ergonomically-friendly load-handling tool in existence – they allow very heavy weights to be gripped in the hands and moved directly over the center of the foot. Their extremely adjustable nature allows small increases in stress to be applied to the whole body over the full range of motion of all your major leverage systems; these small increases accumulate into amazing gains in size and strength for many uninterrupted years of progress.

A long time ago, gyms were equipped with barbells. And that was pretty much what you went to a gym to use – a steel bar and iron plates that were added to increase the weight. "

But then something happened just a few decades ago that changes the way a typical gym worked.

"An alternative to this perfectly logical approach to getting stronger was developed from some odds and ends that were floating around in gyms owned by guys who could weld: exercise machines that worked a few isolated muscles at a time. Simple versions have been in use for decades, and old photos of leg extension and leg curl machines can be found in magazines from the 50s and 60s.

In the middle 1970s, Arthur Jones began marketing his line of Nautilus machines to health clubs, sports teams, high schools, colleges and universities, and everybody else on the planet. Within a couple of years, he’d sold about $300 quadrillion dollars worth of the beautifully welded, beautifully designed electric-blue machines, 12 pieces at a time. Nautilus revolutionized the health club industry, establishing the concept of the modern gym, like the one you’re probably a member of with sales offices in the front, a huge roomful of shiny machines in the back, and several employees roaming the floor."

But this revolution didn't work. Despite all the promises, marketing and ease-of-use, machines couldn't replace the barbell.

"When one is “strong” one’s entire body is strong, not just one's quadriceps, or biceps, or triceps. Machines have never formed the basis of the competitive strength athlete's program, because they lack the barbell's capacity for long-term progress: you cannot increase the weight on a leg extension for years, like you can a deadlift, because muscles do not normally work in isolation from all the other muscles in the area.

Since your body as a whole can move heavier loads than individual muscles, strength training using barbells applies much more stress to the system — in a good way — than a machine which is only working one isolated muscle group at a time. "

In short, machines can strengthen and build isolated muscles, but for strength gains, the ultimate goal of all training, they cannot surpass the effectiveness that come with barbell training, especially in compound lifts (deadlifts, squats, olympic lifts, etc).

Click here to read the full article. 

or here to read more Barbell training at Starting Strength 

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categories / Training

 CACHE VALLEY STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING  |  840 N 50 W LOGAN, UT  |  435.760.0024