I continue to do CrossFit at 55 years old because it’s a fun way to challenge myself, stay fit, and if I had to run a mile at full speed, I want to be able to do it. We don’t think about the unknown and unknowable until it happens, for many not having the strength to lift their own body weight or run away from danger is the reality they face physically. As a CrossFitter you are putting in the time and effort and that is enough to get you into the next decade of life with vitality and avidity. Southie Showdown 2013 There is another aspect of aging much murkier to understand. It’s probably not something you will want to talk about, because you may think it’s out of your control. Our cognitive health is important to our overall health. If you experience cognitive decline as you age you...Read more

To live a long healthy life, strength training must be part of the process. We start to lose muscle mass in our 30s and for the sedentary person this happens in their 20s. There is no way around the loss of muscle as we age but to better understand why we must start and continue weight lifting (or what is referred to as resistance training), you must first understand just what exactly you are losing. If you do not do any kind of weight lifting you will lose muscle in 3 ways: Muscle Mass, Muscle Strength and Power. Muscle strength is very important to our independence and we lose muscle strength at a rate of 2-3 times more than muscle mass. Lost strength means we start to head towards frailty sooner in life. Without strength training our muscles will also also lose the ability to generate POWER. These are referred to as...Read more

“Exercise…I consider to be by far the most potent domain in terms of its impact on both lifespan and health-span.”  Dr. Peter Attia The CrossFit methodology has evolved over the past 13 years since I first took the Level 1 exam. The experience we offer in the gym I believe has grown to include the lifespan and health-span long view. The old CrossFit mantra of “Go Hard, Go Heavy or Go Home” we have finally accepted is not a way to help our members and a sure way to send many down the path of injury and sickness. What has not changed is the theory on energy systems (what CrossFit calls metabolic pathways). Let’s start by relabeling “exercise” with a term that better captures the purpose behind our programming here at Iron & Grit — TRAINING. Why training? Our goal is to train the metabolic pathways that maintain our metabolic...Read more

“To Be American Is to drink. To be American is to worry about drinking.” Elva Ramirez When our Dietician Caitlin and I started talking in 2020 about how to best help people during the pandemic shutdown we decided gut health had to be at the center of the conversation. The goal at the time was to keep people engaged during an incredibly difficult and uncertain time.  We decided on an old challenge I had already created in 2012 that had 8 basic daily tasks. However, unlike the old days of CrossFit Paleo challenges, this one only asked for the elimination of 2 foods: alcohol and added sugar. At the time, appropriately so, we wanted to help people with their immune system, thus we had to start with the microbiome health of the gut. In other words, while the rest of America was drinking their way through the pandemic, we were...Read more

“Lack of sleep is like a broken water pipe in your home. It will leak down into every nook and cranny of your physiology.” —Matthew Walker Our health is determined by our physiology which is tied to our evolution as a human species. We cannot detach this part of our being even in today’s modern society with all the cures and elixirs that promise to “fix” our alignments. SLEEP is so fundamental to our existence and yet, it is the most overlooked aspect of our health. Forty years ago, the average American slept an extra 2 hours each night. The average American today sleeps 6 hours a night. This missing 2 hours is wrecking more havoc in our lives than most people understand. The research shows that this missing 2 hours is affecting us at the macro level, you may experience this as depression, poor decision making and binge eating. But...Read more