Saturday 3rd December 2011

The dead lift has to be king of the strength movements up there with the back squat. I was watching a friend of mine coach one of his boxers through a strength program. Not one dead lift, back squat and shoulder presses performed sitting down.  If you want to build strength why not hit the whole body with a massive compound movement.  The response from the body will pay dividends. Sooooooo…take the deadlift and add a twist.  3 reps at 80% of 3RM on the minute every minute for ten minutes.  Limiting your recovery adds another dimension to your strength training.

WOD

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1  of over head squats 50kg/30kg and pull ups.

The OHS is a massive core conditioner.  If you do it right. It has to be heavy enough to challenge your core stability and you have to get organised and lock everything down and keep it tight. Active shoulders pushing up tearing the bar apart, big chest, planted feet, weight in heels, squeeze those abs and glutes’.

Thanks to everyone who donated to the Movember cause. I really enjoyed being called a 70′s porn star, gay biker and er creepy.  Well any attention is good attention?

Thursday 18 August

Mobility: personalised

Strength: CrossFit Total – back squat 1RM, overhead press 1RM and deadlift 1RM

I’m sure I’ve said it before but I love doing Total – who doesn’t want to know how heavy they can lift? I set the guys off with their own mobility asking: what do you need to work on? Mostly the athletes went for perfect air squats preparing their inner depth-meters for the first lift.

Since we’ve embarked upon a more regimented strength programme in the name of greater progression – the back squat and overhead press were new to some of the group so we used the session to hammer out some practice on 5′s and 3′s.

So in the excitement of it all I didn’t manage to get some of the 7am totals so please post to comments. The rest were as follows:

Rita: BS 55kg, OHP 28kg, DL 80kg = 163kg/359lbs

Ruairi: BS 130kg, OHP tbc, DL tbc = tbc

Mel: all tbc

Lindsey: all tbc

Helen: total = 175kg/386lbs

Sally: total = 202.5kg/446lbs … get the ol’ girl’s musings on the session here

James: BS 80kg, OHP 45kg, DL 110kg = 235kg/518lbs

Alex: BS 110kg, OHP 57.5kg, DL 145kg = 312.5kg/689lbs

Jenny: BS 77.5kg, OHP 25kg, DL 90kg = 192.5kg/424lbs

Patricia: BS 85kg, OHP 35kg, DL 100kg = 220kg/485lbs

Trev: BS 160kg, OHP 55kg, DL170kg = 385kg/848lbs

Go TEAM indeed!

Tuesday’s photos (the workout was overhead squats followed by hero workout ‘Holbrook’ – 10 Rounds of 5 thrusters, 10 pull ups, 100m run, 1 min rest with 20 min cut off – most got 6 to 7 rounds)

Thursday’s session…

Mobility: Samson stretches and scorpions

Strength: deadlift 1×5 and weighted chins 2×6-8

Skill: turkish get-ups with dumbells, kettlebells, plates and barbells

Finisher: squat clinic – plate squats

Didn’t manage to post on Tuesday but catch Sally’s account of the session here. It was dynamic effort on the deadlift and a kettlebell snatch and ring dip metcon combo. Pictures below. Go TEAM!

From Tuesday…

Crossfit London is so in favour of heavy lifting, it’s almost a cult trait!

Everyone lifts: be it a one rep max, 21 reps of a thruster in Fran or 70 reps of an overhead squat in a shocker work out like Nancy. It’s part of life, here. Bodyweight is great, and an equal part of our system: it’s just that most real crises seems to demand that you carry stuff.

Most non-Crossfit women revolt at the thought of lifting weights: they may bulk up! But, being a bit sexist (ask any mother) if their house was on fire, would they like to be able to lift up their unconscious children/partner /dog and carry (drag) them to safety? (The cat always makes it own way out!).

Well, that’s weight lifting, that is!

But we need to do it safely. Unlike most gyms who hide their injury records, we wash our dirty laundry in public. To be sure it gets really clean!

What follows began life as an email to our trainers!

1) Safe weights and scaling

Looking through the accident statistics, it would appear our most common training related injury is related to moderate-heavy weighted barbell movements.

I would like to reinforce the need for you as coaches to keep a close (and often cautious) eye of what people are loading on to their bars.

We seem to be using a number of different procedures for determining loading:

• Set/prescribed weight e.g. Diane, 100kg
• Percentage of body weight
• Percentage of 1RM

By all means use these guidelines, but they need to be consolidated or amended by your view of the individual client’s performance on the day. I normally need 10 minutes to check form, watch clients pick the weight up several times, ask the famous questions, “that’s a great lift: can you do it 50 times?” before I start a WOD.

During weighted workouts you need to highly vigilant. People rarely go straight from perfect to crap form. It’s a series of 3 to 5 bad lifts first. Keep a very close eye on backs as they fatigue quickly.

With some exceptions, our clients are prepared to work themselves to death. Our job is to make sure they get right to the edge…not jump over it. Their ego’s and complacency could be their biggest danger.

You need to actively intervene in their weight selection. If someone wishes to use too much weight, or have no focus on form, they can leave. Better to reduce the weight and challenge them to finish the workout faster if they are concerned about ‘intensity’

2) High rep/complex weighted moves

The advantage of being part of Crossfit.com is that we have 10 years worth of tested workouts to draw on. Beware of self-designed workouts, or those with poor provenance that have multiple weighted moves. By poor provenance I mean a workout lifted from another Crossfit affiliate without adequate research. Every Crossfit.com workout has hundred of comments about performance levels, subs, observations that could be produced in court if necessary. Many affiliates set “tough” workouts. We cannot be sure if that WOD was properly tested.

I suspect high rep cleans and deadlifts in particular are things to watch for.

As a reference point, the most people are are allowed to lift on a building site is 25kg. If you know you military history, the most people can wave about in battle seems to be 40kg (pack, gun, armour… quite a recurring historical number).

So watch the multiple weighted moves and don’t risk going past 45 reps in a session without good reason or a supporting crossfit.com WOD as reference.

Final note on selection of weights in general: Do remember that crossfit.com quotes weights and times for the fittest men/women on earth; probably young, big and skilled. Make sure you amend accordingly for our clients, and don’t let people’s ego get in the way!

Many of you will be familiar with the “shooting test” that, on a superficial reading seems to justify poor form. Genuine Crossfit trainers are obsessed by good form, and good mechanics. Sure we want to pressure test the ability of our clients. This does not justify poor form!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2eAa2eaM-c

That’s the thing about the CrossFit Total. Since it’s your max effort it’s going to be a bit ugly – by definition it’s the maximum you can lift for just one rep so it’s going to be hard.

A shock to the likes of Jenny who commented ‘I’m not used to things being this hard for me’. A sure sign she’s in the postcode for her 1RM. So whilst the rep is going to be a big ugly, there are still rules and standards to be adhered to, which I marked out from the start:

I was a bit sceptical whether I should programme a CrossFit Total, only because I know Stephen and Andrew have recently done them but what the hey, I know that Helen has been chomping at the bit for another crack at some PRs.

And there were lots of PR’s to be had, as you can see:

BACK SQUAT

127.5kg – Ruairi

75kg – Jenny

120kg – Edd

67.5kg – Rosie

80kg – Naim

75kg – Ben

50kg – Erin (working the depth today, she’s previously got more but not as deep)

55kg – Helen (as with Erin, she has hit 65kg before but not nearly as deep as this time)

OVERHEAD PRESS

35kg – Jenny

35kg – Rosie

42.5kg – Naim

37.5kg – Ben

Alex also matched his previous best of 67.5kg (I think this is right, please correct Alex if it was a new PR)

DEADLIFT

150kg – Ruairi

Jenny: Work hard? Oh ok, if I have to

100kg – Jenny

90kg – Rosie

110kg – Naim

A very well done to Naim, Jenny and Rosie who upped all THREE 1RMs. Lots of good lifting today – go TEAM!

"You're mine 110kg... you're effing MINE!"

"TA DA!" (Sorry Helen... couldn't resist)

It’s a bish bash bosh post today…

Warm up for this morning was Samson stretch and Burgener warm-up drills.

The strength component was deadlift 5-5-5-5-5. I’m hanging around the 5 rep range for January as I’m looking to clean up some technique on movements that can breakdown on lower reps and heavier weights. As your friendly neighbourhood technique stalwart, expect lots more nit-picking for the rest of the month.

The met-con made sense of the warm-up. Four rounds of 15 hang power snatches and 30 sit ups. There were few smiles for the camera this morning. Funny that. Go TEAM!

WOD: January 4th. Baby Steps

There was nothing especially Christmasy about the kipping we did today. Or the deadlift speed work. Or the rope climbs. Or, in fact, the kettlebell swing finisher. But I felt a need to shoehorn a Christmas reference in there just to stay festive.

My last session before the big day and just in case you want more detail, looked like this:

Speed work on the deadlift - Jennie and Alex blurring it up

Mobility warm up.

Deadlift – dynamic effort – (50% 1RM): 2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2 (that’s 14 btw) – 45-60 second rest

Kipping technique and practice

Rope climb technique and practice

Finisher of 3 mins maximum Russian kettlebell swings

The strength component was speed work today, improve sticking points and force production. The skills was all about giving the class some kipping practice – a popular choice since most people either want to clean up or finally attain a pull up. This was followed by more hand misery in the form of rope climbs and progressions.

This was all finished off with a quick kettlebell competition of max work in 3 mins. Congratulations to Jennie who emerged champion with over a 100 swings with the 16kg and a close second of Alex with 100 with the 32kg!

So a final note on my music policy in the classes. I tend to select a number of different funky house podcasts to entertain my early risers with. It is NOT my fault if the podcast happens to have a remix of the latest Cher song on there! Thanks to Ruairi for pointing this out, after this and you making fun of my (manly) ear muffs some weeks ago I feel the need to spend the festive period getting tattoos and swearing a lot. I shall return with my head held high. Go TEAM.

WOD: December 14th The Terrible Two’s
As any trainer will tell you, it’s important to meet the needs of your athletes.

Today they were all freezing, so as a thoughtful and caring trainer, I had them work on some quick base skills of Overhead Squats, Chest to bar pull ups and Double Unders before going straight to the WOD.
Because I care.
WOD
5 rounds. 15 Min cap.
7 Deadlifts (70% 1RM)
21 Double Unders.
This is a mainsite WOD that I really love. When done with the right weight, the deadlifts are heavy enough that they can’t be banged out smoothly. Double Unders are always a fun way to induce stress and tax the system, and combining the two has a way of making people who are normally good at both exercises suddenly lose the ability to do either.

It’s a great way to show athletes how well they operate under stress and how quickly they can recover their concentration.

After the WOD we moved on to Kipping and Muscle up practice with quite a bit of progress having been made in both. Big congrates to Joe for getting his first muscle up!
A note for Sunday: Let it never be said that I wasn’t a fair tyrant. I know it’s the christmas party the night before, that the class is early, etc etc. I also don’t really care. Class will be given as usual. Anyone trying caught trying to elicit either slack and/or sympathy from me on the basis of the crazy party they went to last night (that I will be going to as well mind you.) will be dealt with a disproportionately large amount of ridicule and soul crushing. (Remember, I want the best for you.) Consider yourself adequately warned and see you all Saturday night.

Arbitrary Awards:

“Human Torch”: To Colm, who beat out Edd as the athlete who generates more steam then any human should be capable of.

“Bill Nye”: To Simon, for the (almost) most scientific sounding plausible explanation for why he can’t do pull ups quickly.

“Zen Master”: To Katarina, for maintaining a great poker face during her very long negative pull up.

“Survivalist”: To Kate, who showed true grit for the entire WOD off of her new deadlift PR.

“Houdini” To Stefan, who magically strung together more double unders then ever during this WOD. Well done.