noscrolls.com blog

Exercises and the Inverted Hang

MB — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:35:00 +0000

Today's WOD at crossfit.com prescribes an unusual workout involving lowering yourself from an inverted hang with a straight body, and then ring push-ups. We have traditionally tried to make sure that Noscrolls had all the exercises necessary to record almost all of the crossfit.com workouts. We currently do not have "controlled descent from inverted hang" in our exercise list. The question is, should we add it to the list?

We have always been very careful about adding exercises to our list for every small variation that comes along. Our goal has been to create a somewhat standardized list of movements that provides a level playing field for our users to use in comparing themselves against their friends. We have also wanted to keep the movement list as small as possible, avoiding clutter. But at the same time we recognize that we are ultimately here to serve you, our users. So we thought we'd solicit your thoughts on this issue. Should we add "controlled descent from invert hang" to our movement list?

Our gut feeling is to leave it out. This particular workout does not have any kind of score, so there are no hard numbers there for Noscrolls to track except that you did the workout. We'd love to hear your thoughts. So post comments here, or send us email.

New Exercises

MB — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:09:00 +0000

We added several exercises for different manmaker variations. For the purposes of Noscrolls, we define a manmaker as a pushup with your hands on dumbbells, followed by a dumbbell row with one arm, then another push-up, and another row with the other arm. There are three variations. A plain manmaker is what we just described and nothing more. A manmaker-burpee is a manmaker, then jump your feet to your hands as if you were doing a burpee, then clean the two dumbbells. A manmaker-burpee-lunge, adds a lunge to the end of this. There are a lot of small variations on each of these, but in order to keep the exercise list to a manageable size, we decided to standardize on these three variations.

We also added one-arm thrusters to accomodate today's crossfit.com WOD. We have not added a one-arm pull-up exercise for this because the workout does not prescribe real one-arm pull-ups. The pull-ups prescribed for this workout are much much easier than a true one-arm pull-up. Try it and see. :)

Technique: Swimming vs Olympic Lifting

MB — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:17:00 +0000

I have a little detour from our normal Noscrolls workout logging content. Over at this post , I recently voiced my opinion that swimming should not be an event in the CrossFit Games. Fras asked if the olympic lifts have the same problem. My response grew so long that I decided it would be better to make it a self-contained blog post. What follows is my response. If you have any comments, feel free to reply either at the CrossFit Games link above or here.

Fras,

You certainly do have a point. If Josh Everett had made it to day 2 of the 2009 Games, he would have had a significant advantage on the snatch event. I could try to compare exactly how technique-dependent swimming is relative to olympic lifting, but anything I say would just be a biased opinion and not very supportable.

I will say that I think the olympic lifts are a good measure of power (one of the ten physical skills). The clean and jerk is also the most efficient way to lift things--it is fundamental to human activity on land. What would a swimming event be measuring? I think in practice that, other than technique, it mostly measures cardiorespiratory endurance. You could argue that it also measures stamina, and coordination, but it only measures these with respect to a small set of muscles moving with a very small load in a manner that applies well to virtually nothing else we do.

(This goes back to Coach's statement that cardio does not carry over well across domains. I know this first-hand because I could swim at 80-90% of my capacity for as much as 20-40 minutes at a time...but when I went out to run on a track, I was winded almost immediately.)

Endurance is better measured maybe on a rowing machine (which is much less technique-dependent and uses more muscles), or with a chipper-style workout like we saw at the Games (which tests endurance across many different modal domains). Stamina, and coordination are much better measured in a way that isn't so technique-dependent.

Now if we go back to olympic lifting, we might ask if there is a better way to measure power. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is something like a vertical leap. Frankly, I think a vertical leap would be a great candidate for a CrossFit Games event. But it doesn't measure explosiveness farther out in the strength spectrum. Maybe you could do a weighted vertical leap, but that still won't get near the weights that are possible with olympic lifts. If you substitute vertical leap for olympic lifts, you also lose out on the agility, balance, and coordination aspects that olympic lifts test.

But maybe there is a way to leverage swimming as a different mode of testing endurance. Maybe in the games they could have a swimming event where the athletes have to swim for a fixed amount of time instead of swimming for a fixed distance. This would reduce the importance of technique since better technique primarily serves to increase your speed. In my opinion this is an attractive idea that has some promise. (My original objection to swimming was regarding a traditional fixed-distance format.) But alas, this too has some problems. It would degenerate to the athletes swimming as slow as possible for the entire time limit, and essentially be like prescribed rest. And even here, a non-swimmer would still get tired much more easily than a swimmer. There's no good way of ensuring that the athletes will use the same level of intensity in something like this.

So that's the difference I see between olympic lifting and swimming as it relates to the CrossFit Games. My one-sentence summary might be that olympic lifting is more fundamental to human life than swimming. But I still love swimming. It can pack a pretty good cardiorespiratory punch, especially since it adds a breath control dimension that most activities don't naturally have. I think it's a great exercise to add to your CrossFit workouts. I think it can be used effectively to improve overall fitness. But the CrossFit Games is about finding the fittest person on earth according (using a clearly-stated definition of fitness), and I don't think swimming is a useful component of that measurement.

Names

MB — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:05:00 +0000

Noscrolls can now store your full name. Some users mentioned that they don't always know the people in their group by their username. So now you can put your real name in your user profile. To do this, just click on "profile", type your name, and click "Update Profile". Then your full name will appear in your group's pages instead of your username. We hope this helps to improve the group communities.

Groups

MB — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:25:00 +0000

Since it's been awhile since we've posted here it may seem that not much has been happening with Noscrolls. But we've been busy and I'm pleased to announce that we're rolling out the features that have been in development.

First the body stats page has been changed a little. We broke height, weight, and body fat into separate sections, so you can remove them individually instead of a whole entry at a time. There's also a section at the top that gives you your current measurements at a glance.

There's also a link on the "body" page that says "Switch to body measurements". This takes you to a page where you can record detailed data about your body geometry. We have identified a set of measurements that allows us to calculate your range of motion for all the major CrossFit movements. This information will allow us to automatically calculate work capacity and power output for the workouts you do. We are still working on this part, but if you get someone to help you carefully measure all the distances on that page, you'll be ready to take advantage of the power output calculations when we deploy them.

And finally, the part we are most excited about is the new groups features. This feature allows a group of people to track their workout results together. This is obviously beneficial to CrossFit gyms and trainers, but it's not restricted to just that audience. Any group of people who work out together or want to share fitness data can use these features.

The "List All Groups" menu option takes you to a list of all the groups in the site. Groups can be public or private. Anyone can join a public group, but private groups require an invitation. To create a group, click the "Create new group" link in the group list page. You choose whether the group is public or private and you can enter usernames to send invitations to. If someone has invited you to a group, an invitation will show up at the top of the page allowing you to accept or decline the invitation.

When you join a group, your name will show up in the group page, and your workout results will be visible to all the other members of the group. You can get to the group page from the "My Groups" link in the menu. This page shows all the groups that you own or are a member of. It allows owners to manage or destroy groups and provides links for group members to go to the group page, or leave the group. When you click on the name of a group, you are taken to the group home page.

The group home page is the heart of the group system. One of the first things you'll notice is that we even created a way for you to make the group home your personal home page on Noscrolls. If you do this, then you will be taken straight to your group's page when you log in, or when you click the "home" link in the top menu. Workouts recorded by the group owner appear on the group home page. This allows each group to maintain their own WODs and keep them somewhat separated from the rest of the site. The group home page also shows a graph of the group members workout results for the current day. The chart shows workout results on the horizontal axis and body weight on the vertical axis.

The links above the WOD give you different ways of looking at group workout information. We'll talk more about these later, but they should be fairly self-explanatory. Keep on eye on this area of your group page, because this is most likely where you'll find new features. We've got many exciting new features coming. If you train at a CrossFit gym, get them to try it out. And as always, let us know how what you think.

Improved Workout Search

MB — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:08:00 +0000

We just released a new workout search. It improves on the previous one in two ways. First, you can choose whether to search only your workouts, or all the workouts on the site. Second, you can select multiple exercises to be a part of your search. This allows you to search for more specific combinations of exercises and find your results and how other people have constructed workouts.

Workout Form Name Change

MB — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:12:00 +0000

We recently changed the name of the "Custom Workout" form to better reflect its purpose. We noticed that too many people were using it instead of more appropriate forms. We also added a short explanation of the form's purpose at the top of the page. Be sure to check it out. We want to have all our users on the same page regarding the intended use of workout forms. This will maximize our ability to leverage the treasure trove of data Noscrolls has available.

Exercise Wiki

MB — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:21:00 +0000

Today noscrolls launched an exercise wiki containing instructional material for helping you learn the exercises used in CrossFit workouts. We made it a wiki so anyone who has a registered noscrolls.com account can contribute to the content. Our goal is to create a resource that will save you time searching the internet for relevant instructional materials. We'll describe the basics here, and for more complicated movements, we'll provide links to the best materials provided by CrossFit and other authorities. So check it out, and be sure to give us your feedback.

Now Twittering

MB — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:58:00 +0000

You can now follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/noscrolls.

New Feature: Health Tracking

MB — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:49:00 +0000

Today we added the ability to track your body composition: height, weight, and body fat. It's the "body" option in the top menu bar.

New Exercise

MB — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:11:00 +0000

We've added four new exercises: Bear Complex, Muscle-up (scaled), Farmer's Carry, and Waiter's Walk. The scaled muscle-up is intended to reflect any kind of muscle-up scaling not described by the others that we already have.

The bear complex is a sequence of power clean, front squat, push press, back squat, push press. It is demonstrated in this video. To record the workout shown in the video, you would use a Max Weight workout with 5 sets (each set is a separate line) of 7-rep bear complex. This allows you to record each of the different weights. If you were keeping the same weight each round and doing a bear complex for time, you could use a Time Score workout instead.

Trying Affiliate Ads

MB — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:37:00 +0000

As you probably noticed, we're trying out some affiliate ads to help offset our operating costs. To start with we're putting them in as unobtrusive a spot as possible. Let us know what you think. If you have other ideas for how we might be able to cover our costs or for products that we could promote in our affiliate ads, let us know. We can be reached by email or in the comments here.

New Feature: Text Messaging

MB — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:07:00 +0000

Today we released a new feature on Noscrolls: SMS text message support. Have you ever forgotten to write down your workout results before you left the gym? Or you wrote it down, but you forgot to take the piece of paper with you? Now, you can save your workout results on Noscrolls by simply sending a text message. Sound interesting? Read on for more.

To take advantage of this feature, you need a Facebook account that is linked with your Noscrolls account. Once your Facebook account is set up with Noscrolls, you must tell Facebook to allow text messages with Noscrolls. To do this, go to your Noscrolls user profile (click "profile" in the menu bar at the top of the page) and click the link "Enable SMS Messages". And that's all there is to it.

Now you can send workout data to Noscrolls by texting 32665. Your text message must begin with the word "noscrolls". Everything after that will get sent to the website and stored so you can copy and paste that information into a new workout later. You'll see the data displayed at the top of the workout entry forms. Noscrolls will store your five most recent text messages. After that, the oldest ones will disappear. If you want to clear all of your text message history, go to "profile" and click "Clear SMS message list".

As usual, we'd love to hear your questions and comments. Will this feature be useful to you?

Cleaning Up Your Logs

MB — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:03:00 +0000

So the other day I made a mistake. On June 3, the day with the running and pull-ups workout, I entered the workout wrong. On the first run I put 800 meters, but on the second two runs I put 800 *reps*. Obviously it doesn't make sense to use reps for running. (I should have something that automatically checks for senseless units and warns you, but right now it doesn't.) The problem is that most of you probably didn't create this workout yourself from the "Time Score" page. You probably just clicked "Post my results" (used to be "Duplicate this workout") link from the "Today's Workouts" page. That means that almost everyone has the same mistake in their log. I fixed it in my log, but that doesn't fix it in your log. So I would recommend fixing it.

This brings up the topic of clean and uniform workout logs. We've made a significant effort to make the workout forms as clear and unambiguous as possible. But I have noticed some places where fields have been misinterpreted. We would like everyone's usage patterns to be as consistent as possible to allow everyone to compare their results with other people. Here are a couple mistakes I have noticed thus far.

The weight field should be left blank for bodyweight movements. I noticed someone put a weight of 174 lbs for pull-ups in a metcon workout. The site thinks that this means you were doing weighted pull-ups with 174 pounds extra! The reason we asked for your bodyweight in your user profile when you registered was so you wouldn't have to enter your bodyweight in each workout. So don't include bodyweight in the weight field.

The height field is intended for the small number of movements that have a variable distance. At least one person put 70-some inches for the height field on cleans. I assume they either thought that field was for their height, or they were trying to capture the range of motion with their body for the clean. Again, your height is in your profile, so you don't need to put that in each workout. You should only use the height field for exercises like box jumps, rope climbs, wall ball, etc. Leave it blank for any movement that has a fixed range of motion.

If you have made any of these mistakes (or any others), I strongly recommend that you try to find them and fix them. This will allow the site to have the most accurate information and ultimately make the site more useful for you. As usual, you can post comments/questions in the comments here, in the discussion forums on Facebook, or email them to me at mb@noscrolls.com.

Forgotten Passwords

MB — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:31:00 +0000

There is now a way to reset your password if you forgot it. The only catch is that you have to have your correct email address in your profile. The email address is not required to create an account, but if you didn't put one, it won't be possible to reset your password. You have been warned. :)

Launch

MB — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:00:00 +0000

I announced the site on crossfit.com this morning. Since then I've made some bug fixes and added a "Remove Last Item" button to the workout forms. You can post feedback in the comments here or in the Facebook discussion forums. The more feedback we get, the better we'll be able to make the site.

Facebook Support

MB — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:05:00 +0000

Noscrolls now has Facebook support. Once you connect your Facebook account, you can log in without a password, invite your friends to try Noscrolls, and post workout results to your Facebook wall. If you use Facebook and Noscrolls, you can use also discuss noscrolls and write reviews from the noscrolls app page.

Update and Named Workouts

MB — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:54:00 +0000

Last night I updated the site. Most of the changes are invisible to the user, but will help me in the future. I added a feature that allows each user to create their own named workouts. To do that, find the workout in your log, then click "View". On the view page you'll see a link at the bottom that says "Name this workout". Click there and type your name. The workout will then show up in the "My Named Workouts" page in the view menu.

I also added help text on several of the workout entry forms. Hopefully this will clarify how to use them. They may seem a little complicated, but I think you'll get use to it and appreciate the flexibility that it gives. If you do main-site WODs, you usually won't have to use these forms. You can just duplicate the WOD from what someone else has entered.

Some User Questions

MB — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 01:14:00 +0000

Here are some questions I received from user and my answers to them.

No Chelsea? I poked around trying to build an every-minute-on-the-minute thing, but didn't really find one.

Chelsea is tricky to do. It didn't seem to fit into any of the templates that I have so far. I don't think I've ever seen that workout come up since I've been doing CrossFit. To some extent this is a balancing act. There are so many possible ways to structure workouts. If you try to support absolutely every possibility you end up with something very complicated and hard to use. That's why I axed Chelsea. I'll have to take a look at it again and see if I can come up with something.

I recommend adding abmat sit-ups to the exercise lists

On the abmat situps, I took the attitude that all non-ghd sit-ups are created equal. I haven't actually used an abmat, but I have used a towel and I can't tell that much difference with or without. Again the simplicity-vs-complexity tradeoff comes up. I've tried to strike a balance with the exercises I have. You haven't convinced me on this one yet. Are abmat situps significantly different from floor or towel situps? I'm going to tend to push back on user requests in this area. But if you make a good case, I'll certainly be willing to add exercises (sandbag exercises, farmer-s carry, and waiter's walk for instance are probably ones I would consider adding right now).

I got an error message about something not being a valid integer... I think it was fixed when I added a 0 to the "seconds" field on the AMRAP workout total time field.

I'm aware that the error messages aren't very informative. That's at the top of our list of things to do after we get a few more important features done.

It might be worth making a special FGB inputter, with the option of entering individual rounds' and events' scores.

There are two ways to add individual rep counts to FGB. If you don't check "Rxd", it will give you an expanded view and you can customize the details of the workout (including adding reps). Instead of leaving "Rxd" unchecked, you can also submit the workout, then go back and edit it to add individual rep counts. You can't add round totals though. That gets difficult to manage. This is one place where I made a compromise for simplicity. The "Reps Score" template was specifically designed for FGB. You just have to add individual rep counts later.

I don't see an immediately obvious way to input the 4x800 run, resting as needed.

There are two ways you could do a 4 x 800m run with variable rest. First, you could do it as a time score workout where you put 4 rounds of two exercises, run and rest. Then just add up your times for the each run and put the total in the total time. If you do this, you might want to make some notes about it in the comments section. The other possibility would be to use a custom workout. Put 4 separate 800m run items and the time for each one. The Custom Workout form is designed to be the place you go when none of the other templates work. It's the ultimate in flexibility, but since it has no round structure it takes longer to enter repetitive information.

Welcome

MB — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:59:00 +0000

This is a blog for developers' comments about noscrolls.com. We'll make announcements for new features and comment on user questions.