wed, oct 6, 2010

Joint Mechanoreceptors
Type 1, (Ruffini)
Type II, (Paciniform)
Type III Interstitial
Type 1V, free nerve endings
Proprioceptors
Golgi Tendon Organ
Golgi Ligament Ending
Exteroceptors (Golgi Mazzoni Corpuscle)
Muscle spindles

weight classes in sport

this article raises a good point in weight classes for running....in everyone's desire to be classified today in some area or another (there is actually now a clinical psychological diagnosis for wanting to be labelled) there are "plus's" and "minus's" and "interesting's" that come with that (PMI for higher order thinking folks out there)

is it possible to establish a correct method so that everyone is happy with where they "stand" in competing against another larger or smaller human for the same task? or are we all better off not knowing how we "stand up" against others and just go about doing it against ourselves?

post your thoughts on how this affects you in your chosen activity

12 comments:

Heavy Evy said...

Growing up I always thought if I could be a few inches taller or 10#s heavier it would help me in hockey.
Ironicly now that I've found Crossfit/weightlifting, being 6'1", and 200#s isn't as advantageous!

Jon Sinclair said...

In my opinion, when I win something I like to consider myself the best, no questions asked. I don't like to consider myself the best.... male between ages of 20-25, between 150-160lbs with brown hair and brown eyes.
It just seems like another excuse to help people be satisfied with their present state, which in reality stops them from the pursuit or excellence.
The egalitarian mindset of crossfit has taught me to never make excuses and always push forward to exceed my expectations.
The day crossfit splits the games into weight categories, is the day the winner can no longer say "I'm the fittest man/woman on the planet"

Coach said...

pt 2 from yesterday

7:16 2k Row PR
93 DU's

@ Jon Sinclair

That is one of the greatest statements I've heard in awhile. I'm quoting you on that

Erik Luber said...

At 5'10" and 138 lbs, I have spent a decent amount of time thinking about weight classes in Crossfit. I think I used to waste a lot energy thinking about the fact that Rx'd weights, independent of bwt always seemed unfair to me. I don't think this helped me in anyway. Given that I am not going to be feeding my family by winning at Crossfit workouts, I find it much more useful to be unattached to the final outcome (ranking/whatever) and simply enjoy the process. Hell, that is the only good reason I can think of doing these workouts. Not surprisingly, once I stopped focusing on the outcome and just did the workouts without complaint or analysis, I started doing better.
Philosphically, that is where I am at. Could go on for a long time about this, but I'll stop here.

Addressing the topic of, establishing some metric so that people know where they "stand" when competing against larger or smaller human beings is...ummm...complicated. Pardon my physicist nerdspeak, but this is really an inverse problem that has a non-unique answer and a large null-space. The issue is that there are only weak correlations (i.e. bigs lift more, small guys are faster runners), but no hard and fast rules. So, when you try do the problem backwards, (if I did X at weight (or whatever paramter) Y, how will I perform at X at weight Z?) there simply isn't a unique answer. However, this doesn't imply that we should just give up, there is still a lot to be said. We just have to give up the idea of a nicely defined comparison scale with unique answers. Instead, we can only really talk about the variance. For example, after scaling scores based on athlete parameters (what these are and how you scale is up to you), athletes can be ranked based on what group they are in, but within a group (i.e. a range of scores) there just isn't enough information to rank people internally within the group.

So, I don't know how satisfying this is to people. Probably more than saying nothing at all, but not sure if it is really worth all the trouble. Lastly I don't think it matters if you just measure the effort instead of the time,weight, whatever. In the words of a wise man we all know, "Full effort is full victory. "

Paul Klein said...

They could always separate things into weight classes, but then also run an "absolute" class that any and all can compete in. I don't know Chris Spealer but I can guess that he wouldn't be happy dominating his weight class, he would want to compete against the best. Grappling tournaments do it that way.

Angelo Fosco said...

I believe there are pro's and con's to everything, whether it's being bigger or being smaller. What matters to me is performing to the best of my ability and not making excuses.

Pete Seguin said...

Here's where I'm at these days

If you always push to be the best that you can personally be, than you win. And if you are meant to win against others, that will take care of itself. In terms of higher order thinking, I think coming to this realization was a major "a ha" moment and felt like I took a step up the understanding ladder.

I guess what I'm saying is that you have to consider the reason you are doing your activity in the first place. I'm a competitive person by nature. My friends and I compete over everything. As stupid as this sounds, I've only recently come to the realization that I probably won't ever win the Games either. I'm not being negative. I'm being realistic. And so now I do it for the love of the sport, for this great community, and for my wellbeing. I still compete, but I'm more aware of where I'm at and I try not to take myself so seriously.

I compete against myself, and against others that I know are in close to me in terms of abilities. In my opinion its a saner approach. And like Erik Luber, my training now feels like its going better because I scale if I need to, and I don't try to accomplish things that are completely beyond my capabilities. I don't think I play it safe, but I don't have unrealistic expectations.

Pete

Pete Seguin said...

Forgot to post part 2 of yesterday's workout.

7:12
100 D-U's.

Rudy Tapalla said...

Yesterdays:

Part 1.
3:42
4:06
5:54 pull ups broke 18/2 started to feel the "headache" on the ghds
6:30 forearms shot. pull ups 7 then broken
6:22 pull ups 10...

Part 2.
7:43.9/86 DUs

Bear said...

Dividing in to weight classes, more divisions, men/women: in the bigger picture, isn´t that mostly to create a broader market? People want to see more, and the organizers recognize this. I guess there´s more to it, but for example I was thinking about the UFC which started out with no weight classes. I think it´s mainly market driven.

Anyway, Speals total score (2nd best) was just 4 points after Matt Chan at the Crossfit/USAW weighing 30 kg less than Chan.

Jakob said...

preparation for the unknown and the unknowable right?
to transfer this though to everyday life, you never know if the competition is going to be more educated, bigger, stronger, healthier or more lucky. I believe that the general public would benefit from not putting so many labels on individuals capacity (genetic etc) but on how well they handle the competition. Not giving up or/and admitting that someone is stronger then you just because they are and trying to learn from that instead of just complaining about this and that is significant in ones development.

sorry for my english, hopefully I made myself somewhat understandable.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Mike D said...

Dividing it into weight classes focusses too much on the outcome, not the process. Part of inspiration is knowing that at 43 years of age, 6'4" and 190 lbs, I'm not an ideal build for crossfit... but I plan to compete anyway. As a society, we are focussed too much on "the prize" (winning), when our real focus should be on the process, working hard, sacrificing, eating right, knowing that although we may not win a competition, we can go and do our best...and crossfit has taught me that it is incredibly difficult to do "my best".