Chasing Capacity

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• Jenny Labaw Rocks: First things first – I want to say congratulations to my friend, Jenny Labaw, for finishing 6th in her first Crossfit games.  Jenny is a true inspiration and I am so proud of all her hard work! Obviously the many that doubted you were very, very wrong.

• Amazing Competitors: The elite athletes continue to impress as they improve each year.  Their relative well-roundedness, desire to compete, and willingness to suffer is nothing short of amazing!

• This Is Healthy?: To say that this type of event is for health is complete idiocy – no one claims that any other sport played at a high level is being done for health!  There are those in the Crossfit community tracking health metrics on various competitors and it will be interesting to see how those markers change over time.  I don’t think this means that you shouldn’t compete, but if you do just know there may be additional things that you will need to do to try to buffer that type of workload.  I still remember stories of the early marathoners who were convinced they wouldn’t die because of their training.

• All Training Is Cumulative: Some of the events reminded me that training is always cumulative and your background will have a huge impact on how you handle unknown events.  A former Navy Seal or Triathlete will likely always feel more comfortable with an ocean swim or running on sand than say a former competitive strongman.  Someone that played ball sports (baseball, softball etc.) will likely be better throwing a softball than a former gymnast or competitive 400 meter runner.  I don’t think this invalidates this tests. It just serves as a reminder than your training is more than the last 12 months you spent preparing.  It started long ago.

• The Hopper Is Always Different: I believe the Games have gotten better each year, but the focus of the games has also changed each year.  I think it is unlikely that you will ever see someone that  wins several in a row.  It is more likely that there will be a handful of folks that finish near the top year over year, but the winner will be different because the bias is always changing.  I think this actually makes the sport more entertaining to watch.

• Effective Training Should Improve Your Ability to Respond: I believe really effective training should teach you about your body and better prepare you to adapt to unknown situations.  It is always fun to watch the smart athletes create new techniques on the fly as they solve movement problems that they haven’t faced before.

• How Many People Will Watch This?: I’m not sure how large the potential viewing audience is for this type of event, but the ever-growing Crossfit community provides a built in audience for this sport.  Sure strongman competitions are great to watch, but most folks can’t actually appreciate how hard that stuff is to complete.  Everyone who trains at a Crossfit gym knows how hard those workouts are and can appreciate them.

• Practice Your Skills: The Skills tests weren’t perfect, but they were a great way to test some basic skills without a ton of metabolic demand.  I believe it is critical to test some skills each year if Crossfitters continue to say they are important.  I also think that the difficulty of some of the moves will need to increase both in the workouts and in separate skills tests. I’m really not impressed by watching someone do a bunch of wallballs or kip weighted pull-ups.  Bring on the 1 arm chin-ups!

• More Equipment?: There is some irony in the fact that more equipment keeps showing at the Games.  The Crossfit  movement was once considered minimalist and now has athletes basically spinning during a workout.

• Bring Out The Eliminator: The monkey bars were cool and I thought provided a challenge that is hard to train for, but I was hopping for an Eliminator-type obstacle course where athletes would have to solve new movement problems under metabolic duress.  Maybe next year!

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Last weekend I had the chance to spend 3 days watching the NorCal Regionals for the Crossfit Games.  Crossfit has provided a short video on the spectator experience at the NorCal Regionals, but as always I came home with a bunch of random thoughts so I thought I would put them out into the universe.  Hopefully some of these will be insightful, but some are certainly just silly!

Random thoughts (in no particular order):

• Crossfit as Sport: Attending these events reminds me that for some folks Crossfit is their sport.  This is very different from how I believe the average person should view Crossfit.  A competitive component to one’s training can be beneficial, but training for sport and training to improve your life are two very different things.  Never lose sight of the purpose of your program.

• Olympics of Exercising: I am consistently surprised at how entertaining and engaging it can be to watch people compete in exercising despite the intuitive ridiculousness of the idea.  It is not much different than watching any other sport for me: there is strategy, there is skill, there are some really good athletes, there is suffering and there is a human interest piece to each of those athletes.  I will never buy into the idea that being an elite games competitor is healthy, but watching them is a damn fun way to spend a weekend.

• Event Quality was Great: The overall quality of these events keeps improving from a spectator’s perspective.  Everything from the parking, seating, timing, food options and even the DJ were handled really well.  It turns out that having a DJ at an event like this makes everything better (yes I’m being serious).

• My New Favorite T-shirt: I came across this t-shirt by Rogue and just to had have one (sadly they aren’t available online yet).

• Judging Was Much Improved: I believe the judging was much better overall compared to years past.  Let me be clear that there is still significant room for improvement, but huge strides have been made.  The majority of errors I saw were focused on nuances of movements (ring turn out on muscle-ups or the finish position on the kettlebell swing) and I don’t believe they significantly impacted the final standings in the NorCal region. As always there were a few hiccups as evidenced by Freddy C’s now famous “Am I Being A Whiny B*****?” post and “The Case of AJ Moore“.  I do believe Freddy is whining a bit, but I appreciate the fact that he is willing to put his honest opinion out there.  I think the rules need to be clarified, but for my money if someone in a future event finishes first in every event and wants to sit out the last one I’m cool with that (Full disclosure – I was at the Regionals to cheer on Jenny Labaw so my opinion is clearly as biased as Freddy’s).  I don’t have an opinion on AJ’s situation because I wasn’t there and haven’t seen the video, but I sincerely feel for the guy.  I don’t see an easy remedy to the situation and sadly realize that like many other sports judging will always have a bigger impact on the standings than we would like especially when there is such a high degree of technical competency being judged.
  

• Jack Daniels Burgers: Putting Jack Daniels in your burgers is amazing (as suggested by the culinary geniuses at Epic Meal Time)!

• Athlete Preparation Keeps Improving: The first time I attended one of these events I was honestly shocked at how poorly prepared some of the athletes were for the intensity, volume, and actual exercises there were being asked to perform.  I still have nightmares about watching a young woman’s left knee collapse on all 50 box jumps she performed (both her landing on the box and the return to the ground).  I kept waiting for her knee to explode. Clearly no one ever taught her or her coach what good landing mechanics looked like.   Most athletes movement was pretty good and clearly the message is getting out that proper mechanics are not only faster and more efficient, but safer.
  

• Nike ACG Shoes: Attending a Reebok sponsored event seemed like the perfect opportunity to break out some Nike All-Condition Gear Shoes circa 2000. Classic!

• Exercises Done Poorly: In spite of my overall feeling about the general improvement of athlete preparation and movement quality I have a bone to pick with the performance of 2 particular movements: the american kettlebell swing and 2 DB to overhead anyhow.  These exercises were often performed so poorly that it hurt my soul.  I saw so many examples of poor biomechanics that many athletes appear to have forgotten everything they have learned about proper movement. I’m hopeful that these athletes will go back to the drawing board on these exercises.

• Always Be Mobilizing: What is funnier than capturing the Supple Leopard himself mobilizing while watching the action?

• Twitter friends become real people: It is always nice to meet folks in person that you interact with virtually.  I had a chance to finally meet Badier from The Lazy Caveman.  Badier is a good dude whose writing I enjoy so it was great to be able to chat live and in color.

• Jenny Labaw Rocks!: The primary reason I attended the event was to cheer on my friend, Jenny LaBaw, in her first official Crossfit competition.  Jenny is a hell of a person, coach, and athlete.  Jenny put on an amazing performance and I was honored to be there to cheer for her. Jenny finished second overall and earned a spot at the big show in July.

• Movement is Life: I really enjoy watching athletes and analzying how they move.  This experience is always enhanced when I can watch athletes with folks who have very different backgrounds than mine.  I watched several events with Carl Paoli, the infamous pocket gymnast, from GymnasticsWod. I really enjoyed his feedback on the events from a gymnast’s perspective.  There is always so much to be learned when you see things through another’s eyes.
  

• I Like Rainbows: Deal with it!

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Back with Part 4 of the series on My Love / Hate Relationship with Crossfit.

Standard CYA Language:

Make no mistake that I have benefited tremendously from the Crossfit concept and it has forever changed the way I view fitness, but I also have some bones to pick with the overall system and its common implementation.  This post is general by nature and is not calling out any specific coaches.   I know that the good coaches out there aren’t beholden to one system.  They pick and choose from their toolbox based on the specific needs of their clients.  Crossfit is a heck of tool and can be a powerful asset in any well-designed S&C system, but it is not magic and is not the answer for every situation no matter what they teach you at your Level 1 Certification. The purpose of this series is not necessarily to provide final answers, but to get you to think about how your training may be improved.

The 2nd thing I Hate About Crossfit – Lack of Periodization

In basic terms, periodization is simply another word for planning.  So to be more clear I commonly see very little short-term and long-term planning in most crossfitters’ programs.  I think folks get wrapped up in the “Constantly varied, functional movements executed at high intensity” and lose sight of the bigger picture.  Workouts then tend to turn into random combinations of exercises performed at blistering intensity without much thought for what they are trying to accomplish.  Periodization is a big box to open so I’m just going to touch on a few dimensions I that see folks dropping the ball on:

1. Intensity
2. Frequency
3. Goals

Intensity

The average fitness enthusiast basically trains with the same level of average intensity.  This is one of the many reasons most trainees at your favorite neighborhood globogym look exactly the same year after year.  The average crossfitter trains balls to the wall everyday they are in the gym.  Both of these strategies have significant problems.  The average gym goer doesn’t see much improvement over time; The average crossfitter sees stunning improvement in the short term.  In addition to the high intensity that most Crossfitters train at I believe some of these initial adaptations are due to being exposed to exercise variants and modalities that they have never seen before (aka “The Novice Effect”).  Over time most Crossfitters experience stagnation and many end up overtrained (and often with adrenal issues).  The only community I see more adrenal issues in is the endurance community which I believe is due to their extreme volume of training and generally poor diet.

The broader strength & conditioning community understands that you can’t push the redline forever without athletes breaking down or actually regressing. Intensity is magic but too much too often is bad news for pretty much everybody.  Smart periods of rest and lower intensity must be programmed throughout the training cycles to achieve optimal results.  I find that many crossfitters chase the white buffalo in the sky as the end rather than a means to their goals.  Elite athletes do not unnecessarily chase fatigue or soreness – they chase progress as that is the only goal that really matters.

From a practical standpoint there are a ton of ways to handle the intensity piece: skill work, deload weeks, WODs done at RPEs.  Elite athletes often need complicated periodization schemes, but I find that the average trainee does not.  An eye just needs to kept on how they are recovering.  For most folks I often find that less is more when training at a high intensity and both the trainer and coach must realize you can’t always be pushing for PRs.

Frequency of Training

The earliest Crossfit Journal articles discuss a theoretical template of 3 days on and 1 day off.  Additional discussion is made of a 5 days on 2 days off program as an alternative that has worked well based on additional lifestyle factors such as employment and family status.  Is it possible that this type of structure would work? Absolutely especially when you consider the earliest templates laid out training days that cycled between conditioning, gymnastics, and weightlifting (and various combinations).  In the early days of the WOD you would often see workouts that were monostrucutural in nature and focused more on skill building (like practice your handstands for 20 minutes).  Depending on your ability workouts like this would often serve primarily as active recovery while improving a host of physical attributes.  Slickly implemented these did an excellent job of getting you ready to train again.  I guess the masses didn’t like these or didn’t think these were important and they largely fell out of favor as Crossfit has grown.  They have largely been replaced with high volumes of metabolic work that take more than they give over the long haul.

Most facilities that I have interacted with run their classes in 1 hour blocks.  Those blocks are used differently at different facilities, but usually include a warm-up and cool down along with WOD.  Some facilities have become a bit more sophisticated and are including strength and skill work.  The problem is that most facilities spend a ton of that time working on the WOD.  I’m unsure if this is due to business pressures (my clients need to the WOD to feel like they got a workout) or a belief that the WOD and its generally blistering intensity will solve all problems.  If the average facility is spending the largest percentage of their training time doing long beatdown metcons and folks start showing up 3 on 1 off or 5 days a week I generally see huge issues on almost all occasions (yes there are exceptions to this just like some folks can smoke until they are 80, but I’m not using that as argument to encourage smoking in my clients).  If you run a facility that allows folks to show up as often as they would like you will eventually see athletes that will basically run themselves into the mountainside.  There is nothing inherently wrong with allowing folks to show up everyday, but you will need to implement some controls to prevent your clients from doing more harm than good long-term.

On an individual level it is really hard to make broad sweeping suggestions on the optimal training frequency because it can vary widely, but let me suggest that you give some thought to how your current volume of training is impacting your level of improvement and the general quality of your life.  Athletes will often need a higher training volume than your average housewife, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that anyone’s recovery ability is infinite.  There is obviously a relationship between training intensity and training frequency.  Many folks would benefit from deleting a day of hard training a week rather than adding one as counter-intuitive as it may seem.

Goals

I often see a huge inconsistency in how crossfitters are training versus their personal goals.  There is usually very little thought to aligning the training program to the individual’s goals  Many have come to believe that crossfit is the silver bullet for every goal under the sun.  This is just nonsense if your implementation always looks the same.  Now you can obviously modify a “standard Crossfit program” to achieve a variety of goals, but I most often hear things like “I just want to be really strong” and then I see clients beating themselves into a pulp with huge volumes of metabolic and strength endurance work.  That doesn’t seem like a real efficient way to just get strong to me.  Irrespective to what type of program you choose to do make sure that it is getting you closer to the goals that are important to you.  There is not one program that solves all problems and anyone that believes that program exists is an idiot.

Any good training program should include a fair amount of planning to make sure that a client’s needs are met.  Ensure that you consider intensity, training frequency, and goal setting as part of this process.  Eventually just doing random things over and over will lead to subpar results.

To Be Continued….

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Been thinking a lot about this lately and have had some frustrating conversations regarding this with some of my athletes.

The Stopwatch is NOT Absolute. It only provides context.  If you compete in a sport where form is not measured, but is dictated by some simple rules like running or swimming then it is an absolute measure on game day.

It does not provide a final measurement in exercise and I would argue we have become too focused on the watch as a measure of progress. I’ve seen athletes that have improved their form and efficiency, but the stopwatch showed otherwise in the short term.  The smart ones understand that the long term process involves improved form and efficiency, but that won’t always immediately manifest itself in a faster time.  The smartest ones realize that always chasing the clock is a loser’s gambit.

I think the stopwatch can be a helpful tool – just be realistic about what information it provides.

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Here is the next edition in what seems like will be a never ending series of posts on my Love/Hate relationship with Crossfit.  In part 1 I talked about the things I loved most about Crossfit and in part 2 I listed the things I hated most about it. This series will probably end up being 13 total posts because I want to do a post for each of the 10 items I listed in part 2 and then wrap-up with a summary post.

Make no mistake that I have benefited tremendously from the Crossfit concept and it has forever changed the way I view fitness, but I also have some bones to pick with the overall system and its common implementation.  This post is general by nature and is not calling out any specific coaches.   I know that the good coaches out there aren’t beholden to one system.  They pick and choose from their toolbox based on the specific needs of their clients.  Crossfit is a heck of tool and can be a powerful asset in any well-designed S&C system, but it is not magic and is not the answer for every situation no matter what they teach you at your Level 1 Certification.

The 1st thing I Hate About Crossfit – Confusing Competition with Training

“It is our observation that men will die for points. Using whiteboards as scoreboards, keeping accurate scores and records, running a clock, and precisely defining the rules and standards for performance, we not only motivate unprecedented output but derive both relative and absolute metrics at every workout; this data has important value well beyond motivation.” – Greg Glassman

The first time I read the sentence  above I was awed by the genius of that statement.  If we measure every workout we can have an incredible data set by which to measure progress and also to push folks to new levels of work output.  Genius idea in theory, but I don’t believe its that good of an idea in practice.  Yes the whiteboard can push even marginally competitive clients to the brink of exhaustion which at times can increase “fitness”, but what I often see is folks chase seconds off of workouts in exchange for nothing other than a few seconds off their workout time.  I guess in theory this drive to go faster should encourage athletes and coaches to spend more time drilling technique, training weak links, and generally setting them up for long-term success.  Instead I see even really sophisticated athletes and coaches getting blinded by this competition and missing the long-term big picture.

Most good strength coaches use some type of competitive environment from time to time to increase intensity and push their athletes, but is not the only technique they employ.  Competition is definitely a good thing and can be used to increase motivation and output, but I tend to see an overemphasis on competition (either with peers or with athletes themselves) above all other aspects of training in way too many Crossfit environments.  I believe that many Crossfitters have become so focused on the competitive aspect that they have become blinded to the fact that some of things they are doing don’t really make that much sense from a good training perspective.

Just a few of the random things I frequently see in Crossfit gyms that make sense in competition, but don’t make any sense in training:

Randomly choosing exercises from a hat is a great competitive idea if you are trying to test various physical qualities that haven’t been announced beforehand, but this is a pretty dumb idea from a training standpoint.  Your training should be designed to improve the physical qualities you care the most about or are most in need of based on your sport / job / life.  Most trainees have limited training time and need to get the most out of their training.  Each component of that time should be carefully considered and not left to chance.  If you are having some type of competition or periodically want to create a workout from a hopper as a change of pace or group challenge then have at, but if you are frequently creating workouts like this or putting together WODs in a manner that indicates that what movements, time domains, or loads don’t matter then you are doing your athletes an enormous disservice.

Good training should fix orthopedic and movement issues.  Many facilities and athletes are still spending way too much time just worrying about the “WOD”.  Not enough training time is being spent helping athletes fix their issues.  If an athlete has a horrible time getting into a good rack position on the front squat it would seem to make sense that a portion of their training should be spent actually working on improving the rack (technique work, range of motion work, tempo work etc.) instead of just practicing front squats.  Obviously practicing front squats in going to help, but I think that is only piece of the big picture and long-term progress will be improved if we focus some of their training on other components of the rack position.

Crossfit workouts often involve range of motion movement standards (Kettlebell swings finish overhead, Pulling the hand off the deck at the bottom of a push-up) that make sense in competition, but not so much in training.  When I’m working with clients I am focused on movement quality and ensuring that the right muscles are doing their jobs before I really worry about things like kettlebell height or pulling the hands off the deck on push-ups.  Initially many clients will have a hard time meeting these standards so focusing on something like kettlebell height first is putting the cart before the horse which often leads to substitution of low back extension instead of hip extension.  Focusing on high quality movement first will improve exercise execution and groove proper movement patterns which will be far more useful to your clients long-term than a bit more work capacity or a few more seconds off their Helen time.

To some it is crazy to think that there are components of fitness that can’t actually be measured by a stopwatch, but when you watch someone like Ido Portal move you realize that despite his high work capacity and unbelievable strength he doesn’t spend much time chasing those as goals.  He is exploring movement and seeking to control and express his body.  This is the opposite of many Crossfitters I work with who are chasing the stopwatch and then wake up one day and ask is this really all there is?  They often have stunning work capacity, but a high volume of wall balls, thrusters, and kipping pull-ups didn’t necessarily improve their movement capability outside of the gym and isn’t really a enjoyable way to train long-term.  I’m not suggesting that everyone should aspire to train like Ido, but everyone should have some outside interests they are training for and then align their training with those goals.

In summary, a competitive dimension to folk’s training is a good thing, but is only one piece of the training puzzle.  Don’t pretend your training is for money or points – you are training to improve your life.