Challenge Accepted.

I am going to challenge you right now.  I might offend you at some point while you read this, but I feel like it needs to be said.  If you are getting offended by this, you are probably the type of person I am trying to get through to.  If you aren't offended by this, you probably don't realize how bad you are at exercise.

Lets start with the basics.  You can't squat:

I can say this with confidence because a solid 90% of the people I work with do not have an acceptable squat.   When you first start at a gym it is okay to not have a good squat.  In fact it is okay to have a horrible squat.  That is why you are going to a new gym, to fix your old bad habits.  You will see someone with good form and want to be able to do that one day.  Over a period of several weeks or even months, you will slowly but surely become more and more flexible.  You will become stronger.  You will do everything it takes to put your body in that full deep squat position.  And eventually your hard work will pay off.  You can sit there with your chest held high, your knees outside of your feet, and your heels firmly planted on the ground.....

At least that is how it is supposed to be.  In reality most of you keep showing up for months and months and in some cases years and don't put in the work to actually achieve a good squat position.  People tell me all the time they can't squat correctly because of this or that.  But they actually haven't put in a single minute towards mobility/stretching/squatting.  They haven't tried to even sit in a chair with their spine in a good neutral position.  Go ahead right now and sit up in the chair you are reading this from with good posture.  I'll wait.  It was hard wasn't it?  This should be a natural position and you probably can't even sit like that for more than 1 minute.  This is a problem that needs to be fixed.  So fix it..... today.... start now..... Go to www.Mobilitywod.com a start from episode one and work your way back.  You can't just want to do it.  You have to actually put some work in.  Just because you show up to a CrossFit gym some some regularity and beat the shit out of your body doesn't mean it will make your squat form acceptable. 

The Solution: You have to consciously make an effort to Increase your proper range of motion.  If you can't squat past a certain point without rounding your back, do not go below that point.  Find the muscle that is stopping you from squatting and work on mobilizing it.    It will be uncomfortable.  I don't care.  Do it.  Muscles are much stronger than joints/tendons/ligaments.  If you don't loosen up the muscle, then the joint is having to support loads in awkward ways.  This is where injury comes from.  Crossfit isn't dangerous.  Moving incorrectly is.

I bet this guy complains to his coach that cleans make his wrists hurt.  But is isn't his fault.

Next, The gym warriors:

I know that part of the big draw to crossfit is the competitive nature.  Our ancestors had to fight to pass their genes on and now crossfit offers us an outlet to feel like we are competing.  It satisfies a primal urge.  I know this.  I have felt it.  There isn't a better way to motivate someone than seeing a peer ahead of you in a WOD. 
This motivation however comes with a price.  In that desperate moment when you are about to lose, you start cheating Range of Motion (ROM), or you might fudge one or two reps (after all what is the difference between 29 and 30 reps), or you might push your body past the point where it is safe to continue working out. 
For some reason we think we are all elite athletes. We are not.  You are not.  Let me say that again in case you didn't quite get it.  You are not an elite athlete.  Your job is not to push your body past what is thought to be possible. You joined crossfit because you wanted a better body, a healthy life, and a more capable body and mind.  There is NO advantage to pushing yourself into an injury and far far worse pushing yourself through an injury.  An injury will only set your progress back.  It will discourage you.  It can be a very frustrating experience.  You must do every rep with proper body mechanics.  EVERY SINGLE WORKOUT.  EVERY SINGLE REP.  If you can't complete the workout with proper form, the weight is too heavy.  You must swallow your pride and do the workout with proper form and full ROM.  No exceptions.  I personally have much more respect for the man that squats 95# with perfect form through a work out than someone who half squats 135# for the duration.  Your back has much more respect for you too. 



If only most of you realized this is not an exaggerated picture of how you squat.

 If you want to become a better, stronger, more healthy athlete, you must have proper mechanics, must have full range of motion, you MUST TAKE REST DAYS, and you must eat a lot of quality foods and drink more water than you thought possible.  Many times we forget to take rest days.  These are far more important than we give credit for.  You will not lose any strength or cardio gains if you take 2 or 3 days off in a row.  I promise.  In fact most of the times you will come back stronger. You spent 3 days beating yourself into the ground, please take at least 24 hours to let the muscles build themselves back up.  Please take rest days seriously. 

I had more that I want to talk about but this is getting long and standing on a soap box gets tiring.  I'm not sorry if you took any of this personally.  I don't have any single person in mind.  I have just noticed some trends lately in the gym and this is me trying to kick you back in the right direction.  The points I want you to take home are:
-Spend some time specifically making yourself better at air squats.  If you can't squat you can't do 85% of the crossfit movements properly.

- If you push your body to the point of hurting yourself doing this, you are forgetting why you started this program in the first place (also you have bad form.  Good mechaincs doesn't hurt people).

-Nobody cares what your whiteboard time was, if you have to take an extra 2 minutes on the WOD to get full ROM on every rep, then do it.  It will make you exponentially better in the long run.

-Take rest days seriously.  There is no such thing as "active rest".  Running/swimming/rowing are working out.  They are not to be done on rest days.  You CAN mobilize on rest days.

I think that is all. 

JT



Quit missing your lifts.

First off I apologize for it being about a month since my last entry.  When I started this I intended to update about once a week, but I quickly realized that I am not the wealth of information that I thought I was.  I am gonna have to start rationing out my information riches.  After all if I tell you everything I know, then you will know as much as me and quit listening to me.  Then what would be the purpose of this blog.  Anyways, I digress from the issue of the day.

Quit missing your Olympic lifts.  

There is a whole rash of people that love to get in the weight-room and smash their respective private parts into the floor and just lift as heavy as they can.  This might work for the testosterone fueled powerlifting scene (even in powerlifting this is a bad plan).  This however does not work for weightlifting (Snatch and C&J.... what are you new here?).  

This kid comes up if you type in Testosterone fueled.

The competition lifts (Snatch and C&J... try and keep up) are all about precision and power.  You can't have either if you are in bad positions at any point in the lift.  Now that you understand that its time to talk about your programming or work out plan.

If you are reading this, I imagine that one day you would like to snatch more than you can right now.  I have seen most people get a taste of PR's, then every time they are in the weight room, they are trying to get another pr. And for a while this works.  If they just show up, it seems to be good enough for a PR. Unfortunately this will fail you after about 3 months of serious lifting.  These are called beginner gains.  Basically your central nervous system isn't in shock every time you put something heavy over your head any more.  Most people are stronger than they realize, they just need the brain to get on board.  Once the honey moon is over however, this is a very bad plan of attack for getting stronger, and it will set you up to plateau quickly and forever unless you get smarter about your programming.

Just in case you are very busy and need to go somewhere I will give you the magic numbers for programming.
85%
90-95%
80%
Max out

That is it.  Each of the numbers above represents one week.  For that entire week you never go over the % of your 1rm.  It will feel easy and like you aren't truly working out, but it will benefit your far more than loading up a weight you can't do and missing it 10 times in a row.

When are approaching your 1rmax, I will give you this hard and fast rule.  Never miss a weight more than three times.  And if you do, go back down to a reasonably heavy weight hat you know you can do and knock it out with perfect form a few more times.  When you are missing a weight, your body is ending up in a bad position.  Bad position means we aren't creating speed, power, or we are being inaccurate with our bar path.  Either way this is will give us bad habits that we must break before we can make the weight heavier.

The more you miss a weight, the more bad habits you are ingraining into your lifting.

So stop missing, swallow your pride (after all only you truly care about how much you can lift), back the weight down for a while.  Follow the magic number percentages, and BE CONSISTENT.   While following and olympic lifting program you should never miss a lift unless you are maxing out which only comes once a month.  Even then it should only be one or two misses at the very end of the work out.

That is all I have for you today.  If you want more info from a more credible source than myself on beginner Olympic weightlifting, here is a link to Glen Pendlay's website.

http://www.pendlay.com/A-Training-System-for-Beginning-Olympic-Weightlifters_df_90.html

And finally because I didn't have any awesome visuals here is my favorite training video if Ilya Ilin.  He is faster than you or me.

I will leave you with this: Don't walk up to or get under the barbell unless you have every intention on lifting it.  If you think you are gonna fail you will.