In the opening minutes of the 2006 AFC championship game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh Steelers, Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer hurled a 66-yard pass to wide receiver Chris Henry. As Palmer released the ball, 299-pound Steelers tackle Kimo von Oelhoffen corralled Palmer’s left leg with his right arm, . The instant replay revealed a nausea-stirring inward collapse of the knee, which tore Palmer’s ACL.Ìę

In the off-season, Dustin Grooms, an intern trainer with the Bengals, watched as the team frantically tried to rehab Palmer’s shredded ligaments and cartilage. Grooms was baffled by their approach, which included ice, elevation, soft­-tissue treatment, and strength work. They had millions of dollars at their disposal, yet the techniques they were using, says Grooms, “weren’t any different than what I’d seen done with college soccer players.” What’s more, the standard rehab protocol rarely seemed to restore complete stability to the knee. Reinjury was common. Palmer, for instance, .Ìę

Over the past few years, Grooms, now a 32-year-old , has published a series of studies suggesting that for all joint injuries, standard physical therapy isn’t enough because it fails to address neuroplasticity, the process by which the brain rewires damaged neural connections. If rehabilitation doesn’t address weak spots left by that rewiring process, returning to the field can be risky. Following typical therapy, the best many athletes can hope for is a joint that’s weaker than it was before the injury; at worst, it will eventually require more time under the knife—.

The key to smooth and effective rewiring, says Grooms, is to apply a stress to brain pathways, which can improve a patient’s biomechanics. This involves things like sight-restricted lunges and targeted foam rolling, treatments you’re unlikely to get from most physical therapists.

“We’ve become tissue-ists,” says , a physical therapist whose clientele includes the New Orleans Saints, the U.S. Army’s Special Forces, Tour de France cyclists, and the San Francisco Ballet. “We’re really good at knee surgery and managing tissues after surgery.” Addressing motor patterns, Starrett argues, is just as important, but “insurance doesn’t incentivize a physical therapist to look at that.” The result, he says, is that the bad mechanics of healing tissues are never corrected, and they remain that way despite rehabilitation, degrading per­formance and making another injury likely.

There are a few clinical early adopters of the neuroplastic approach. Brad Cox heads the clinic outside Boston and works with runners, triathletes, and Spartan Race competitors. This year, Cox used a custom foam roller to fix the running mechanics of after a back injury. “In the science literature it’s called neuromuscular repatterning,” Cox says. This involves stunningly painful exercises in which you tense up your quadriceps while plunging a lacrosse ball deep into a hip flexor. “It increases tension in larger muscle groups and along fascial lines,” Cox says. The upside is that smaller, unused muscles get reactivated. The downside is enduring a program that can feel like torture.

Grooms is experimenting with less painful approaches, including disrupting vision to reactivate latent sensory pathways. In an article in the Journal of Orthopedic and Sports Performance Therapy, Grooms and his colleagues elaborate on how the brain inefficiently relies on eyesight to stabilize an injured joint and how the process of confusing this loop with strobe glasses while rehabbing with drills, jumps, and exercises forces adaptation. “Your brain lets go of using vision to stabilize the joint and ramps up input from the remaining sensors,” Grooms says. As a result, the body relearns how to use muscles and tendons for stability.

It’s unlikely that insurance companies will cover this sort of rehab regimen anytime soon; the science on neuroplasticity is too new. But there’s interest from athletes—Grooms’s calendar is filling up with presentations at sports-medicine conferences, and Starrett’s book, , is a bestseller. Perhaps clinics like Acumobility will eventually lead physical therapy out of the RICE dark ages. Below are some tools to aid your recovery.Ìę

Foam Roller 

ŽĄłŠłÜłŸŽÇČúŸ±±ôŸ±łÙČâ’sÌę begins the rewiring process by assessing where the restriction is. In the case of a torn ACL, this could mean foam-rolling quads with full body weight. From that rather uncomfortable position, a patient flexes and extends the leg for two minutes with the surrounding muscles tensed. Sounds easy, but this is where you enter the pain cave. After two minutes, pay attention to any differences in how it feels to move and any range of motion you may have recovered.

Strobe Glasses 

 and his colleagues have produced good results by compounding movement therapies, such as multiplanar lunges, with the use of strobe glasses like those sold by  ($325). The intermittent visuals can decrease feedback to the nervous system, forcing the brain to “upregulate” the joint’s remaining mechanoreceptors, essentially bringing the nerve endings back online.

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 advocates a lower-tech approach. As soon as healing allows, he recommends daily body-weight squats, with a focus on perfect technique. “You can disrupt your vision’s involvement by doing one-legged squats with your eyes closed,” he says. “Or do them while you wash dishes.”

The post Everything We Know About Treating ACL and Tendon Injuries Is Wrong appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

CrossFit advocates are known for their borderline masochistic approach to fitness. Chains, tires, and loaded barbells are all part of a grueling training process in which athletes are constantly asked to push their physical and mental limits. But to many, it might seem like the constant quest for CrossFit greatness neglects a focus on fundamentals.

Unless you talk to the pros. They’ll tell you that mastering the basic skills and techniques is the key to seeing real success over time (and staying injury-free). We asked five CrossFit diehards to give us the single move they think is most important to hone and perfect. Their advice may surprise you.

The Burpee

, 2008 CrossFit Games Champion and CEO of

What It Burns: This compound blend of a push-up, plank, and squat—performed at high speeds—will quickly humble the best, says Khalipa. The burpee builds endurance and strength all at once. It cranks up your heart rate and targets your entire core, as well as engages major muscles like your quads and glutes.

Why He Chose It: As a former CrossFit Games winner and CEO of global fitness enterprise NC Fit, Khalipa spends most of his time on the road. The burpee can be done anywhere you have a few feet of open space on the floor. In ten minutes, you get a highly efficient workout that ramps up your heart rate and fires up multiple muscle groups.

Pro Tip: “Fast transitions and constant movement are critical,” says Khalipa. At the top of every minute, rep out 15 burpees. Use the remainder of the minute to rest before starting again.

The Air Squat

, 2014 CrossFit Games Champion and CrossFit HQ Seminar Staffer

What It Burns: You’ll get a lung-scorching workout that makes your quads, glutes, hamstrings, and, surprisingly, your core work in overdrive. “The air squat can crush even the best athlete,” says Leblanc-Bazinet.

Why She Chose It: “Everything builds off the air squat,” she says. You’re focusing on your base and zeroing in on the body parts that will drive every other moment. If you build good mechanics here, you’ll be able to ramp up your workouts, performance, and results at a much faster rate.

Pro Tip: Master the move at tempo, and then pair the air squat with a weighted lift—like a dumbbell thruster—to up your calorie burn and target even more muscles.

The Snatch

, Two-Time Qualifier for CrossFit Games Elite Division and 13 Years as a CrossFit Coach

What It Burns: This is a total-body exercise, calling on everything from your calf muscles to your delts and traps to move the weight up and over your head.

Why She Chose It: For starters, it looks hardcore. You explosively move a loaded barbell from the ground to overhead in full extension. Second, “the neurological and physical demands are second to none, in my opinion,” says Sakamoto. “Strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, balance, accuracy—you need it all to execute.”

Pro Tip: Form is critical. Consult a coach if you aren’t totally comfortable with the movement, and don’t be afraid to start with lighter weights or dumbbells to perfect your technique.

Barefoot Jump Rope

, 2008 and 2012 Olympic Gold Medalist in Rowing and Coach

What It Burns: This will make your feet and lower legs stronger, faster, and more agile, says Cafaro-MacKenzie.

Why She Chose It: Cafaro-MacKenzie adopted a CrossFit Endurance conditioning platform to help her grab Olympic gold. She continually relies on the barefoot jump rope to learn how to “be dynamic and feel connection with the feet.” It’s the perfect cross-training for endurance athletes.

Pro Tip: Start on a softer surface like grass, soil, or a padded mat. It will lessen the impact absorbed by your ankle joints and feet.

Muscle-Up

, CrossFitter Since 2001 and Author of

What It Burns: Everything. It takes the sport’s highest pull-up and combines it with the sport’s lowest dip, so it requires huge range of motion, coordination, and strength to power you through the effort.

Why He Chose It: “The muscle-up is a compound multijoint skill,” says Amundson. “Once you master it, you can quickly and potently introduce larger changes to the body and mind so that every other gym exercise or athletic sport comes to life.”

Pro Tip: Prepare to be frustrated at the start as you struggle to string together two moves that you might be able to do as standalones. That’s normal.

The post Pro CrossFit Coaches Want You to Learn These Moves appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Even if you’ve never stepped foot inside a , you’ve likely heard of the CrossFit Games, the sport’s annual contest to find the “world’s fittest athlete.” Every summer, 40 men and 40 women put themselves through the ringer to test “true fitness,” using functional movements that aren’t announced beforehand and can’t be practiced.

Qualifying for the games is more or less a pipe dream for anyone unwilling or unable to make the sport their full-time career, according to , a five-time CrossFit Games competitor and CrossFit HQ coach who has watched the level of competition soar during his eight years in the global-fitness movement-slash-sport. “It’s statistically impossible,” he says.

According to Malleolo, the intensity of competitors has transformed them into full-time professional athletes rather than highly skilled or conditioned amateurs. “The ferocity of experienced talent has driven up the bar of entry so that you’d need three years of obsessive training committed solely to CrossFit in order to reach a deep- and broad-enough level of fitness to theoretically make the cut,” he explains. Examples of the fitness levels showcased at the games include a sub-5:30 mile, 70 unbroken pull-ups, and 275-pound snatches.

But the counterbalance to the newfound exclusivity of the CrossFit Games is the unbound openness of the , accessible to any CrossFit athlete from around the world. The games season starts with the open, a five-week test in which anyone who participates—more than 330,000 athletes this year—is theoretically eligible to qualify for the games later that summer. From there, top performers move on to 17 different regional contests. Finally, the invitation-only CrossFit Games whittles down this massive pool to a field of just 40 women and 40 men to compete in the final test.

For the everyday CrossFitter—already more serious than many amateur athletes—successfully finishing the open is a major goal, says Malleolo. It’s a sign that the body has been effectively conditioned to reach a high level of fitness and is capable of enduring tests that challenge every modality rather than just allowing you develop one area of expertise. Malleolo often gets asked what skills you need to gamely jump into the open.

To start, the open demands CrossFit experience by way of testing the sport-specific . Think a muscle-up, handstand push-up, double under, and basic competency in Olympic lifting. Yes, being super-fit will help, but the skills show off your body’s ability to move dynamically and functionally, a major goal of the method. The early stage CrossFit Open workouts to measure things like the number of burpees you can complete in seven minutes. As the weeks progress, the program requires more technical ability, especially if you want to find a place on the virtual scoreboard in your box, city, or region.

The next critical component needed to truly compete in the CrossFit Open, and maybe even place in your locality, is your conditioning. It needs to be at a high level for you to make it past your first clean and jerk. Malleolo suggests trying these benchmark workouts before signing up to see where you stand.

Cindy

Cindy is a 20-minute AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) workout. Shoot for 15 to 20 rounds of the following exercises without stopping.

What You Need: A bar for pull-ups.

Exercises

• 5 pull-ups
• 10 push-ups
• 15 air squats

Helen

Helen is a “for time” workout, which means you’re judged based on how quickly you can complete each round. Consider yourself “open ready” if you can perform three rounds of the exercises below in eight to ten minutes.

What You Need: A 24-kilogram kettlebell and a measured 400-meter running route or treadmill.

Exercises

• 400-meter run
• 21 kettlebell swings
• 12 pull-ups

Jackie

Jackie is also a “for time” workout. A single thruster is composed of a front squat and a push-press. Aim to complete the following moves in seven to ten minutes.

What You Need: A rowing machine and a 45-pound barbell.

Exercises

• 1,000-meter row
• 45-pound thruster, 50 reps
• 30 pull-ups

The post Do You Have What It Takes to Compete in the CrossFit Open? appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Periodization is fundamental to exercise physiology and coaching. The concept is simple on its face: pick a single day sometime in the future, like the day of your big race or event, then devise a long-term training plan, consisting of various phases of emphasis, that gets you in prime physical condition by the time you reach the starting line.ÌęThe strategy has been around for a century, but classic periodization science is chiefly credited to researchers who ran the Soviet Union's sports schools in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, many coaches and athletes use the technique, whether training to qualify for the Boston Marathon or win an Olympic medal.Ìę

When Greg Glassman founded CrossFit in 2000, the training philosophy behind the now-popular workout was essentially the polar opposite of periodization. Imagine you’re a cop, sipping coffee on foot patrol one minute and breaking up a street brawl the next. In that scenario, there’s no date circled on the calendar to allow you to prepare. There’s no forecast as to what mix of skills and endurance you’ll need to be ready. There’s no time to study your opponent, which means there’s no telling what mix of strength, speed, and metabolic pathways you’ll need to tap into. “The CrossFit ideal,” Glassman wrote in 2003 on the CrossFit blog, “is to train for any contingency.” As a cop remarked in the early days of CrossFit, one workout reminded him of the anaerobic turbulence of a “fight gone bad,” a phrase that became a benchmark “workout of the day” (WOD).Ìę

Until the creation and corresponding rise of the , now held annually in July in Carson, California, CrossFit methodology was tuned more for the unexpected—“unknown and the unknowable” is a popular mantra within CrossFit.Ìę

Yet one of the interesting effects of the CrossFit Games is that an unknown has been stripped out of the equation. Those who qualify to compete might not know exactly what they have to do during the week of the games, but they do know it’s going to happen in July. As a result, many of them have begun to use periodization, just as traditional athletes have used it for decades.Ìę

When asked in 2011 if he periodized his training to peak for the CrossFit Games, Rich Froning, the reigning champion with four consecutive “Fittest Man on Earth” titles to his name, said no, but then tripped into saying maybe.Ìę

“CrossFit prepares you for real life,” Froning replied. “You have to be ready for everything. There are different opinions on the whole peaking thing, but doesn’t that go against what we teach?” Then Froning shifted gears. “The games are a great test of fitness at that time,” he added. “Not a great test of fitness throughout the year or throughout life.” He blinked for an instant, as if trying to sort out what he’d just said, then added, “You know what I mean.” 

Even if Froning doesn’t use a yearly periodization plan to prepare for the games, plenty of others do. Jami Tikkanen, coach of two-time CrossFit Games champion Annie Thorisdottir, believes the practice is common in the elite ranks.

“For the very elite CrossFit athletes, we know that they essentially need to be at their best two times a year: once for the regionals and once for the games,” Tikkanen told me. “This gives us a time frame of when to develop and improve physical qualities and when to transform these qualities into sports specific applications.” 

I put the question to two CrossFit coaches in San Diego who have been serious students of CrossFit programming methods: Leon Chang and Paul Estrada, co-owners of CrossFit Elysium. “Given a games-level athlete knows well in advance when game day is, they can plan out their training accordingly to peak at the right times,” Chang said. “Since they can, they most definitely should and are.” Estrada agreed, adding that the periodization models differ. He says there’s a lot of experimentation happening within various schemes. Programs like the Outlaw Way focus on strength but never cut out metabolic conditioning—structured work and rest periods that elicit some desired response from the body.ÌęWhereas CrossFit New England’s Ben Bergeron omits metabolic conditioning at certain times of the year while heavily increasing it in other times of the year.Ìę

Considering that the CrossFit brand is composed of more than 11,000 affiliate gyms around the world, and that the CrossFit Games are the brand’s public face, this brings up a legitimate question about the brand’s methodology: Do the best CrossFitters in the world actually adhere to true CrossFit training? 

This question has stoked heated arguments between CrossFitters and their detractors. Glassman’s words from 2003 were used in an online thread about whether periodization should have any part in CrossFit at all: “Variances in effort, intensity, enthusiasm, and performance are an inescapable part of life. The belief that these natural variances can be planned for months in advance in order to optimize performance at a later date is hogwash.”

But critics like Mark Rippetoe, formerly a CrossFit HQ specialty seminar instructor and author of the book , says CrossFit’s signature weakness is that lack of periodized structure that zeroes in on a big target.Ìę

“CrossFit is not training,” Rippetoe wrote in an essay attacking what he believes is a fatal flaw that prevents improvement over the long haul. “It is exercise. And exercise—even poorly programmed random flailing around in the floor for time—causes progress to occur, for a while.” Rippetoe argues that once CrossFitters pass through the beginner stage, they’re in danger of stagnation unless they start striving for hard-to-reach, specific targets. “Once the low-hanging fruit have been picked, you have to get a ladder, and then you might need a helicopter,” he wrote. “Once a person has adapted beyond the ability of random stress applied frequently under time constraints to cause further improvement, progress stalls.”

Another former CrossFit HQ instructor-turned-critic is Greg Everett, author of . Everett agrees with Rippetoe with undiluted words: “If you have no plan with regard to your training, you’re an idiot.”

“We’re no longer CrossFitters,” Ben Bergeron said at a talk several years ago on how to train for the CrossFit Games. (Bergeron uses periodization.) 

Bergeron was specifically addressing the months of April and May, when his athletes prepare for the second qualifying round, the CrossFit Regionals. Unlike the CrossFit Games, all of the regional competition workouts are announced ahead of time. “We specialize in those workouts,” Bergeron said. “We know them inside and outside.”

“The advanced athletes who win and place at the CrossFit Games do not use CrossFit website programming to achieve advanced levels of the strength and conditioning necessary to perform at that level,” Rippetoe wrote.Ìę“None of them.”

Bergeron’s periodization cycle starts with resting post-games recovery where it’s “okay to have a beer or two on the weekends.” Then the training begins with a two-month strength focus where athletes favor packing on muscle and power and let their metabolic conditioning slide. They then cycle through a speed-strength phase, and in the middle of winter start attacking weaknesses. If you suck at rope climbing or muscle-ups, you drill them into strengths. Then comes the metabolic conditioning period—lots of hard, long stamina workouts to finish off the base of preparation. Lastly, sharpening for the CrossFit Regionals in May and the final ascent to a competitive peak for July.

The director of the CrossFit Games is Dave Castro, a former Navy SEAL who staged the first games in 2007 at his family’s ranch in Aromas, California.Ìę

When asked if the periodization techniques being used are antithetical to CrossFit methodology, he said absolutely not. But Castro also believes that periodization “in the traditional sense” has been adopted by relatively few elites. Rather, they bias their training on occasion to stamp out weaknesses that may trip them up in the games.

“What is happening here is that they are identifying weakness and want to strengthen those areas.” Castro firmly believes that periodization isn’t necessary to compete well at the games. “But some do it, so oh well. They just really like to have more structure to their CrossFit workouts. It’s still CrossFit.” 

Jon Gilson, a former CrossFit HQ instructor and the CEO of Again Faster, a company that sells CrossFit equipment, believes the argument being waged has to do with semantics, not substance.

“Of course the games athletes want to be at their best in July,” he told me. “It would be absurd not to want that.” But Gilson, like Castro, argues that long-term planning and goals are congruent with the foundations of CrossFit training. From his perspective, the kind of periodization being used for the games is more aligned with Glassman’s methodology then critics are acknowledging.

“Someone could watch some of the events at the CrossFit Games and assess that it’s all just randomly selected workouts, that they’re just doing a bunch of random shit, and from there they extrapolate that Glassman’s methodology is based on randomness.” Gilson mentions that the CrossFit Level One certificate course underscores the difference between randomness and variance, a CrossFit-approved practice of constantly changing workouts.Ìę“I know it’s there because of how many times I’ve given the programming lecture,” he says. “Constant variation is not randomness. Constant variation is a way to attack weaknesses.”

A good coach identifies those weaknesses in the athletes, and then creates a training plan that systematically attacks them. In other words, whatever you want to call it, quality CrossFit programming involves a long-term calendar.Ìę

“You can pursue metabolic conditioning—the building of the engine—while you try to shore up your weaknesses,” Gilson says. “So don’t get caught up on a word like periodization.ÌęIt’s a 13-letter word that has become a four-letter word.” He wanted me to know that the pursuit of excellence at the CrossFit Games is not as unnatural to the foundations of CrossFit as some try to make it out to be. In his mind, any CrossFit affiliate that isn’t having a dialogue with their clients about training targets—be it weight loss, or preparing for boot camp, or getting ready to play in an adult soccer league—isn’t deploying the CrossFit method.

As for Castro, he thinks there's nothing behind the periodization debate. “The CrossFit Games athletes are the minority, not the majority. The CrossFit community is made up of millions of normal, everyday people who practice CrossFit to be healthier, to go from being obese to fit. The games athletes are .005 percent of us. So they are not the sole representation of CrossFit. The millions doing CrossFit are CrossFit.”

T.J. Murphy is the author of , a book about CrossFit. Follow him on Twitter .

The post The Secret to Winning the CrossFit Games appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

I was a multisport burnout, searching for a new challenge, when a Web trawl served up a fitness program I’d never heard of: , a civilian version of the infamous that the Navy uses as a grueling test of the men who hope to serve as SEALs. Kokoro is run by coaches working for a company called , based in Encinitas, California. Most of them are active or former Navy SEALs, and for $1,595 they put you through a rugged training regimen that’s spread out over three days. In exchange for your effort and money, you’re promised a painful, supremely difficult, and ultimately transformative experience.

“Kokoro Camp is designed to help you discover the deep power of your resilient spirit over your mind, and your mind’s control over your body,” the Sealfit site explains. “You’ll be pushed to your limits, because that’s where the biggest breakthroughs happen. That’s also why this is not ‘something you try.’ 
 You must have a deep and powerful reason for ‹attending this camp, and be ready to pay the price for the ultimate freedom you’ll gain by the end.”

It sounded menacing, if a little out there. Later I learned that a friend who lives near my hometown of Palo Alto, California, , had done a Kokoro in 2011. Amundson is locally revered as a CrossFit god, but he’s also a former SWAT team member and a retired officer with the Drug Enforcement Administration. He told me, emphatically, that Kokoro is for real. “Brother,” he said, shaking his head, “it’s legit.”

I’d been drawn to the camp because, after a quarter-century of running marathons and triathlons as an amateur, I was bored. My last triathlon had been Ironman France, which I did in 2005 when I was 43. Climbing into the mountains and pedaling through the medieval villages of the Cîte d’Azur was a treat, but the 26.2-mile run consisted, in part, of a series of three-mile out-and-backs on the Nice promenade—a treadmill next to the Mediterranean. With a gimpy foot and a bad sunburn, I lurched over the finish line of my fifth Ironman. I shrugged and considered what, if anything, was next.

Over the past ten years, two divergent offerings have been added to the menu of come-one-come-all endurance events. The first is a rebranding of traditional road races into mobile parties and moveable feasts. The Rock and Roll marathon series features live bands at every mile and luxurious VIP tents. Then there are the Hot Chocolate races—fondue awaits you at the finish line!—and the so-called happiest 5K on the planet, the Color Run series. Every half-mile or so, you’re doused with Hippie Powder.

In the other direction are the sufferfests: obstacle-course events, all barbed wire and blood, like Spartan Race and Tough Mudder. Roughest of all is a brand of extreme endurance challenges that aren’t races at all, modeled instead on rigorous military training. , created by a former Green Beret named Jason McCarthy, is a nonstop, two-day beatdown that involves heavy load-carrying and endless rounds of calisthenics. Kokoro Camp, created by a former SEAL, 51-year-old , is a similar composite: intense physical and psychological torment compounded by exciting extras like sleep deprivation and full immersion in ice-water baths.

As I realized when I learned more about Divine, pain and sacrifice had definitely been transformative for him. In the 1980s, he was a mild-mannered Wall Street accountant with soaring career prospects. But he wasn’t happy with his life, so he took up Seido karate to stave off the drudgery, earning his black belt. His teacher used a memorable phrase during a class—“One day, one lifetime”—and that was it. In 1989, Divine chucked his job to try out for the SEALs. The move shocked his family and his boss, but Divine was never happier. He served six years of active duty as a SEAL, then downshifted to the reserves. In 1996, he opened a brewpub near the SEAL training base in Coronado, California. In 1997, he bought the URL and started an e-commerce business selling tactical clothing and gear.

[quote]The guy below me was worse off, groaning as if he was being crushed. Cerrillo paused for a beat and listened to the pain, then leaned into his megaphone. “This is what you paid for, you idiots!”[/quote]

A crucial moment for Divine occurred in 2004. He was studying yoga in Encinitas—while pursuing a Ph.D. in leadership studies—when he was called up and sent to Iraq. During a C-130 flight into a combat zone, Divine felt nervous. He found space next to a cargo net and started doing sun salutations and deep-breathing exercises, provoking odd glances from a Marine general who was also on board.

While stationed in Baghdad, Divine would often set aside his M4 and perform 90-minute workouts of yoga, squats, and kettlebell swings—all while the occasional mortar shell whistled overhead. The routine purged the stress of wartime, focused his mind, and drenched him in sweat. He knew he was on to something.

Divine went into the fitness business in 2006, leasing an office building in Encinitas that featured, in a central plaza, what he calls the grinder—a small, old parking lot that he uses to grind athletes down with brutal calisthenics. Divine began playing with the mind-body ideas that eventually became Sealfit, and that same year he put on his first intensive camp. The idea was to create a setting where people can experience kokoro, a Japanese word meaning, roughly, “the merging of heart and mind into spirit.”

The Navy’s Hell Week happens early during a SEAL’s training and lasts five and a half days, with round-the-clock physical exertion. Candidates are permitted only four hours of sleep the entire week. The purpose is twofold: to wash out all but the most committed men and to build strong loyalty to the team among those who survive it.

“Kokoro Camp is different than what the Navy does,” Divine told me. “Navy training is designed to find the few who already have the mental toughness needed to become a SEAL. The purpose of Kokoro is to help you reach a psychological benchmark of what is possible.”

As with SEAL training, Divine says, chances are good that you won’t make it. But if you do, you’ll have passed into a different mental and physical realm. Or, as he puts it: “Life after Kokoro just gets easier.”

Kokoro campers are expected to have met rigorous fitness standards before signing up—for example, you need to be able to march 20 miles with a loaded pack in under six hours. Even if you exceed these, Divine says, his coaches will find a way to push you to the point of breakdown. Every attendee is forced to rely on teammates. “No one gets through Kokoro alone,” he says.

Derek Price, a former Detroit Lion who started doing Ironmans after he retired from the NFL, did a Kokoro in 2010. “I couldn’t believe what they were putting us through in the first hour,” he recalls. “I thought for sure it had to let up. It never did.” I ask Price if the camp was as hard as playing pro football. “Kokoro was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he says.

“We had eight people enter our first camp in 2007,” Divine says. “Most were special-ops candidates.” The original camp was downright wimpy compared with the show he puts on today. “I didn’t know how far we could push the envelope,” he says. “Every camp, we turned the dial up a bit more and pushed harder and harder.”

Word of the camp spread beyond the armed forces. People with no military aspirations began to trickle in, and Divine started offering five Kokoros a year. As the participants kept coming, with roughly 40 men and women per camp, the ratio tilted toward civilians. These days, only one in five campers is from the military. The rest are CrossFitters, business people, and endurance freaks in search of something else.

For me, identifying that something else was a puzzle. Divine emphasizes that if you’re going to do a Kokoro, you have to have your “why” squared away. Obviously, I had no plans to become a SEAL—at 50 I was two decades over the age limit. Bragging rights can be a motivator for doing a marathon or an Ironman, but nobody I knew had even heard of Kokoro. As Price would later tell me: “Do Kokoro and no one is going to care. What happens inside you is the only thing that matters.”

[quote]Derek Price, a former Detroit Lion who started doing Ironmans after he retired from the NFL, did a Kokoro in 2011. It was “the hardest thing I've ever done,” he told me.[/quote]

In more than 30 editions of the camp, not once has everybody in a group made it through, and I was told that only a handful of 50-year-olds had managed to succeed. So I had plenty of fearful motivation as I trained in advance of my Kokoro, which happened last June.

I put together a regimen combining CrossFit, distance runs, and what SEALs call grinder P.T.—long sessions of push-ups, sit-ups, burpees, leg lifts, and the like. I also started doing ruck marches—carrying a full pack uphill at a fast pace, with a 35-pound plate thrown in to make it even heavier. I used to find new workout ideas, like the Fat Angie Sandwich: 25 burpees, 100 pull-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 push-ups, 100 squats, and another 25 burpees, all with a loaded rucksack on my back.

Over a period of 20 weeks, I burned off about 15 pounds and was feeling strong. In the nineties, I had been fit and fast as a runner—I’d done a 2:38 marathon and a 15-minute 5K—but now I felt like I was in better all-around shape than I’d been since I was a teen.

The thirty-second Kokoro Camp began on a vintage SoCal day: dry and hot, under a cloudless sky the color of faded jeans. I was standing in the middle of Divine’s training compound with 16 other people—14 men and two women—in a two-line formation.

We were wearing white T-shirts stenciled with our last names, black tactical pants, and lightweight combat boots. We each shouldered a black canvas rucksack and carried a dummy rifle—a length of capped PVC pipe filled with sand. We’d just done a one-mile run to the beach and back. We stood at attention, breathing and sweating under the noontime sun as the coaches circled us, doing a remarkable imitation of hammerhead sharks. I counted seven, including Divine, making a two-to-one camper-to-coach ratio.

It was nerve rattling, for sure. Divine, with his military flattop and diamond-cut features, is built like a decathlete, scorched of body fat and radiating a potentially violent combination of speed and power. He spoke quietly and encouraged us to breathe deep and slow.

I didn’t see him walk away, but suddenly a coach named * stood in his place and started cursing through a megaphone. Cerrillo is a square-shaped former instructor in the Navy’s , the punishing six-month training course that transforms recruits into active-duty SEALs. In SEAL-speak, Kokoro is broken up into segments called evolutions. The first evolution is called a breakout, and it’s meant to create the kind of panic and chaos that combat does.

Cerrillo used his megaphone to share his thoughts about what spoiled candy-asses we were. “You idiots!” he yelled. “You don’t need to buy a new plasma TV! You don’t need a new car! You are stupid sheep that I and others like me have to risk our lives to protect.”

He had us drop on our backs and hold our feet six inches off the ground. Before long I got a bucket of water dumped on my face, and it went into my sinuses. During the foot raise I held out longer than some, but after about four minutes I gave up and my heels hit the ground. A different coach put a megaphone to my ear and whispered, “There’s nowhere to hide. We see everything.”

We were then ordered to build a cabin using our bodies as the logs. I was on the second layer off the ground. As the others climbed on, somebody’s forearm jammed hard into my throat. But the guy below me was worse off, groaning as if he was being crushed. Cerrillo paused for a beat and listened to the pain, then leaned into his megaphone.

“This is what you paid for, you idiots!”

The main lesson from Kokoro is this: teamwork is superior to individualism. That idea is central to the SEAL code of conduct, but it didn’t come naturally to me. Teamwork is contradictory to the time-trial nature of an Ironman, and the very notion of racers helping other racers—by drafting one another during the bike leg, for example—is forbidden by the rules.

Divine thinks the lone-wolf style is too easy. “Training with others makes you accountable to others,” he told me. The ideal mindset is to feel like a member of a team on a mission. You aren’t caught up in your own drama; instead, you’re focused on helping the buddy next to you.

In my preparations for Kokoro, I mostly trained by myself, aside from a few visits to a CrossFit gym in Palo Alto. Looking back, it was a mistake to directly apply what had worked during my preparations for solo races. As Divine warned, I should have found others to train with and arrived with a firmer sense of why I wanted to do a Kokoro. I didn’t, and I got in serious trouble on the first afternoon.

At around two o’clock, we were broken into teams of four and given a 250-pound wooden log to lift, as a group, over our heads. Then we circled a 600-pound tractor tire and lifted it to our chins. The coaches thought our lifts looked sloppy, so they made us do it more than a dozen times. To put more force into my lifts, I was contorting my back like a rabid dog, but I could feel myself fizzling. There was no sign of a break coming soon. A two-word daydream wafted through my mind: Snickers bar.

Later, I found myself alone in the parking lot, lugging 53-pound kettlebells in each hand as several coaches stood side by side, egging me on with abuse. One told me to farmer-carry the bells to the gym; another hollered at me for not bringing them to him. I was running toward the gym when things went black and I passed out, still carrying the weights and going down hard.

I came to moments later and was guided to a bench in the shade. My heart registered 70 beats per minute, apparently a sign of low blood sugar. I downed two cartons of Muscle Milk and rejoined the others on a march to the Encinitas beach. Single-file, we moved down a wooden staircase, passing beach-goers who seemed to wonder why a paramilitary unit was doing drills in a town known for surfing and yoga. Descending the steps, we were teased by a light ocean spray and the sparkling aquamarine waters of one of the area’s prime destinations.

First up for us was “surf torture,” in which you lie down in the shoreline breakers and get whapped in the face. Then we swam out far enough that we had to tread water. After about an hour of this, I was struggling to stay afloat and slurring my words. I was ordered back to the beach.

Sitting under a sandstone bluff, I watched campers come out and fireman-carry each other across the sand. I pondered my status. Kokoro coaches reserve the right to drop a trainee for performance problems, but no one had said anything. They were leaving it up to me. If I decided to quit, I would have to own it all.

So I did quit. I hated to, but I worried that I was taking a serious risk. The only thing the Sealfit doctor offered was sarcasm, suggesting that I hadn’t trained right. On the way back to the compound, one of the campers, Michael Israelitt, tried to talk me into hanging on.

“We’ll get you through,” he implored, and his generosity hit me hard. We’d only met that morning, yet he was pledging to carry me for the rest of the camp, multiplying his own suffering. I thanked him, saying that, unfortunately, my only contribution to the team would be 185 pounds of dead weight.

Mark Divine offered words of genuine compassion, then said, “You’ll have to find a silver lining.” I stuffed my gear into a duffel bag and unceremoniously walked out of the compound into an alley. The final insult: I couldn’t remember where I’d parked.

I went to the hotel, showered, bandaged my cuts, and ate a turkey sandwich. Then, like some fanboy of pain, I went back to Sealfit HQ to watch the rest of the camp unfold. By the end of the first 30 hours, two other people besides me had dropped out. The coaches rotated back and forth as they kept pushing the remaining 13 campers through epic CrossFit workouts, additional surf torture, and a dusk-to-dawn ruck march on Palomar Mountain.

It was inspiring to watch people tough it out. Danielle Gordon, a 35-year-old local CrossFitter who works in marketing, flew through the camp until early Sunday morning, when she tripped and fell during the Palomar descent, slamming her head. She got no sympathy from the coaches—only a warning not to stew in self-pity. She kept going. Garrett Dietrich, a 32-year-old salesman from Pearland, Texas, suffered what felt to him like an asthma attack, compounded when he got severe chills in an ice bath. He finished the camp wrapped in a space blanket. Peter Feer, a 53-year-old executive coach from Basalt, Colorado, injured both legs on the first day but managed to finish.

And in a moment that won’t be soon forgotten, Jon Hofius, a 27-year-old mechanical engineer from San Francisco, was sitting in an ice bath—after being dunked by a coach named Adam Stevenson—when a blob of saliva and mucus started rising in his throat. His dilemma: Do I spit it into the water or onto the pavement? Which will earn me the lesser penalty?

Hofius chose to burst out of the water and cough the blob onto the pavement. Stevenson’s glare surged with menace, and Hofius figured he’d blown it. So, in a Hail Mary to buffer the coming punishment, Hofius snorted the spit off the ground. It was a rare moment in Kokoro history: a trainee went further than even a coach would have asked.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Stevenson said.

On Sunday around noon, the group was getting hammered in a final breakout. They were ordered to do 450 burpees—penalty burpees, imposed on everybody because a few campers had fallen asleep during the van ride back from Palomar. Then they were divided into two groups and assigned physical training using logs. Coaches came out with water hoses and buckets. As the campers hoisted the logs over their heads, they got hosed while Cerrillo laid into them. Divine, with his arms folded across his chest, watched carefully from the perimeter. Then he took over the job of yelling commands.

As I watched campers move around under the logs, it was obvious that a transformation had occurred. In only two days they’d become cohesive—there was fatigue in their eyes, but they were working efficiently and in unison. Divine was satisfied with what he saw. “Class 32,” he said, “you are secured.”

It was over, and the 13 campers who made it all the way whooped and hugged each other in euphoric relief. Nobody seemed to care about all the cuts and abrasions on their arms, legs, and backs, their skin ravaged by crawling through thorns and sand.

Divine had told me that when successful SEAL candidates emerge from Hell Week, there is a new look in their eyes, a gleam of inner knowledge. I could see something like that in my former teammates. At long last, I may have found the answer to my original question. Before, when Divine talked about the Kokoro spirit and his belief in an integrated, holistic training program, I was leery, and in the first few hours after quitting, I bitterly pledged never to return. But now I could see what he was talking about and what had been missing for me at Ironmans. There, if things go bad, you just slow down. No such option exists at Kokoro, forcing you to scour the depths for some hidden, stronger self.

But will I actually go back? My plan is to train to a level where I know I can finish—assuming that’s something I’m still capable of. Then I’ll decide.

*The print version of this story misspelled Dan Cerrillo's mame. șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű regrets the error.

T. J. Murphy () is the author of , about the rise of CrossFit.

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1. A FULL WETSUIT: “Full” meaning complete coverage of your torso, arms, and legs. A more buoyant suit—like 2XU‘s Team 0 Suit—will save you energy in the water ($249; ). If this will be your only tri, a surfing suit will do (but expect a less comfortable swim), or look into Xterra’s rental program (from $39; ).

2. LAYERED SWIM CAPS: Two caps is the standard for keeping your head warm in the Bay, but you’ll get just one in your goodie bag—made of latex or silicone—and you’re required to wear it. Bring two extras—one latex, like Tyr‘s Latex Swim Cap, and one silicone, like the company’s Wrinkle-Free Silicone Cap ($3 and $10; )—so you can wear a second without mixing materials: Latex and silicone slip off each other.

3. TRI SHORTS OR RACE SUIT: Having to change from wetsuit to biking shorts, then biking shorts to running shorts, will cost you time. Instead, start the race with Pearl Izumi‘s Tri Shorts ($55; ) or Zoot Sports’ Tri Racesuit ($100; ) under your wetsuit. Both are quick-drying and provide a chamois for cycling as well as a chafe-free design for running.

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