Friday 120210

Skill

Complete 3 sets of max rep double unders. If you trip up before hitting 10, it doesn't count so start over! If you're still working on double unders, continue with that today!

WOD

Complete as many rounds as possible in 12 minutes of:

10 wall balls, 20#/14#

10 box jumps, 24"/18"

10 burpees

A triplet with classic movements today. No heavy load to contend with. Get after it!

Photo Jan 07, 9 40 30 AM
Mama Marie getting those knees high!!

I always like it when something we try to instill in you guys as coaches shows up from a variety of sources. It makes us happy because it helps reinforce what we're telling you. For those of you who were in the morning WODs on Thursday, you've heard some of this already, but I think it's important for everyone to hear so here we go!

On Tuesday on the mainsite there was an CrossFit Journal article by Pat Sherwood titled Lessons Learned. I'm a big fan of Mr. Sherwood, from hearing him speak to reading a write-uplike this. In this article, which I hope you take the time to read, he talks about the things he's learned over his CrossFit career. Lesson Number 1? To learn CF and it's movements, start with mechanics, gain consistency, and then and only then add intensity (load or speed or both). Pat talks about how he, just like Gino, myself, and probably some of you, started trying WODs as prescribed with no coaching, no technique, no skill, just going for it. Things progressed for a little while until, at least in my case, muscling loads with crappy form prevented the gains from coming. At that point, it was time to start over, shed some load (and some ego), and do things right. Throughout this article, Pat constantly refers to Lesson Number 1. Hmmmm.

2 weeks ago, we had Billy and Breyen from Strength Specific Seminars come in and they gave a fantastic day-long oly seminar. One of the things they spoke about was the progression of the olympic lifts. They weren't talking CF, they were talking about the sport of olympic weightlifting. They drew a pyramid on the board, and talked about the hierarchy of learning the lifts. The base of the pyramid – in other words, the thing that comes first and sets the foundation – is positioning (setting up). The next step is movement – getting your cues down and getting the bar where it needs to be. Next comes speed. When your positioning is right and your movement pattern is correct, now you can bring a little speed to it. Finally, when all those things are right, you add load. You bring the weight up, making sure all the other things are in place, but not before. That sounds familiar, doesn't it.

Finally, there's the sign hanging on the wall in the gym. If you've been through 101s (or if you're old-school and went through foundations) we've recited the words on that sign to you: Range of Motion, Technique, Intensity. First comes the range of motion – making sure the body is in the right position for the movement. Then comes technique. Not just muscling the load, but doing it right. Then, finally, comes intensity – going fast, adding load, or both. I sense a theme here, do you?

Your coaches fightevery day to instill this in you. Right now as they read this, they're nodding their heads. I'm going to call out the guys here. Why? Because we're the worst! Anytime we have a movement on the board for a WOD that calls for 135# or more, every single dude in the place grabs the 45# bumpers. Weguys might warm up with the bar, then a couple reps with 25s, and regardless of how that goes, we're grabbing the heavy plates. It doesn't matter if we've done the movement a dozen times, 3 times, or even never, we're going big! It get's even worse if one of the veteran bad ass ladies is on the platform next to you and they have the same load on the bar. At that point, us guys will usually walk over to the plates and grab a couple of 2.5s and throw them on for good measure. As the WOD starts, things will usually come apart rather quickly. As the coach walks over and suggests lightening the load, it usally happens without a fight. But sometimes there's still resistance to shedding the weight and getting the pattern right.

So here we've referenced the article by Pat. Guy knows what he's talking about. We referenced Breyen and Billy. Those guys know what they're talking about. Finally we gave you our take on it. We know what we're talking about. With that, the next time a movement comes up that you're not familiar with, that you don't feel proficient in, or you know you're not doing correctly, put the ego aside, pull off some load, and let us coach you to make you better. We promise – as we have learned from coaching for a while and doing CF for even longer – that this will get you to where you want to go much faster than loading it up and doing it wrong!

 

23 thoughts on “Friday 120210”

  1. Class today was really good, I learned a lot about the movement (but I guess with me being a total newbie, that’s not saying much? haha). Now I really wish I had taken the Oly Seminar! I thought it was for really experienced folks who wanted to get into Olympic Lifting (I also had a misconception about what that term meant), but clearly I should have just asked more about it rather than assume 🙂 So I signed up for the Tuesday night class. Thank you for continually offering the opportunities to learn more.

  2. YEAH! Do Tuesday (or whatever nights they end up being on the specific week) nights Anne, they are awesome. Sometimes you’ll feel like crap and like you are getting worse, but each week you get something new until it the pieces come together and it clicks and improvement. 🙂 It’s like that little curve graph Jon and Ryan both drew. Improvement, dip, improvement surpassing the previous.

  3. Breyen - Strength Specific Seminars

    The first thing I noticed when I looked around the Evolve Box was the sign up on the wall saying: “Range of Motion, Technique, Intensity” and it immediately reminded me of the pyramid we were going to have on the board the next day during the Oly seminar. I just wanted to pop in and say when Jeff and Gino speak, they do know what they’re talking about. The same can’t be said for all CF boxes, so count yourselves lucky Evolvers. And listen up!

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