Bailey, exhibiting extreme cuteness prowess

My three-part ‘How much?’ series on CHO, Pro and Fat will continue next week. Don’t forget that this week is the last week to turn in any food logs, measurements, and get ‘after’ pics taken for the Paleo Challenge. Look out for the Paleo Challenge WODs and make them up this week if you can’t make it that day.

Like Forrest, the CrossFit Gymnastics Cert for me was a serving of humble pie. I don’t think of myself as having ‘prowess’ in much of anything outside of maybe cooking, board games, and perhaps studying, creating PowerPoint decks, and process flows in Visio. The latter three could be said to account for the ‘sucky strength prowess’ or why I don’t have the same base of strength as lifelong gymnasts or Olympic lifters (if I could only go back and do it all over again right?). Doing and learning to teach true gymnastics skill work for the first time since I was 11 years old was definitely a good reality check.

Many of you were confused by ‘sucky strength prowess’. The ‘sucky’ part we added as a joke, but ‘strength prowess’ is a term that was used a lot by our Cert coach Jeff Tucker to explain how gymnastics movements and most CrossFit movements are strength-based. When we learned most of the progressions to key gymnastics skills this weekend, to get past the first few steps required a significant strength foundation. Failing beyond a certain point elucidated the lack of ‘strength prowess’ or body control for example in that area. Most of the movement progression steps almost none of the participants at the Cert were able to fully complete. One area where I was surprised to find strength prowess to be an issue was in my kipping pull-up. Like most skills, the kipping pull-up requires mastery of the progression to it, and to my surprise, I developed a habit that compensated (in the past, and maybe presently) for a lack of upper body strength which now inhibits the efficiency of my pull-up. Ask me about it in person and I’ll show you, or take note of the change in the way we teach it the next time we teach it in a skill set.

More importantly, what was elucidated from the Cert this weekend was all the tools we have at our disposal to work on our weaknesses and build up our strength and gymnastics base. The “How-to” on the CrossFit main site emphasizes mastering the basics of gymnastics (along with the major lifts and other functional movements) to achieve the highest level of fitness – that is, CrossFit fitness. The founder of CrossFit, Greg Glassman, was himself a gymnast. A quick glance at the definition of CrossFit’s fitness and a quick wiki of ‘Gymnastics’ makes it clear that improved mastery of all areas of fitness looks a lot like mastery of gymnastics.

Creating a good hollow (pictured drill) position is an essential part of midline stability

In CrossFit we see a somewhat bastardized version of what gymnastics is traditionally as a sport and art. And ‘bastardized’ is not meant as a pejorative. CrossFit’s methodology makes the fittest men and women and it uses gymnastics as one of its foundations to do so. The most common way gymnastics appears in CrossFit is when gymnastics skills and drills are done (taught and scaled if necessary) at high intensity in a workout usually mixed with other functional movements.

What is meant by gymnastics skills and drills? We’re doing movements that are skills that are practiced either as part of a progression to do gymnastics movements or to improve upon a gymnastics movement. The gymnastics skills, drills, and scaling for each that most of us have become familiar with only scratch the surface. The bag of gymnastics goodies that have direct transference to the rest of our CrossFit game is enormous. Consider the progress made with the small handful of gymnastics skills and drills we use, and what stands to be gained from incorporating even more. It’s powerful stuff.

The crossfit.com programming incorporates some gymnastics skills and drills, but the emphasis and importance of gymnastics skill-building is left to the individual and affiliate to execute. The CrossFit Gymnastics Certification is perhaps the only effective way to improve gymnastics skills through programming (WODs) unless an affiliate coach happens to have a deep gymnastics background. This certification is taught by Jeff Tucker, a renowned gymnastics and CrossFit coach. Tucker is kind of CrossFit’s gymnastics programming spokesperson and makes the case that gymnastics skill work needs to be a larger part of our regular warm-ups and skill work. The gymnastics certification gave us the technical and safety skills to begin going to work on this.

Tucker emphasizes gymnastics skill work as essential and necessarily separate from the gymnastics movements we do in WODs. Why? To summarize, untimed skill work in a given movement and in other related movement progressions builds the strength and muscle memory to progress effectively to do a movement in a timed environment, as well as toward other movements (most of the other movements we do in CrossFit) with similar strength, coordination, flexibility, agility requirements of our bodies.

Chief, exhibiting tire prowess

A 2006 article from an issue of the CrossFit Journal on the role Gymnastics concluded with an overview of the state of gymnastics skills incorporation in CrossFit affiliates and garage gyms across the world wasn’t as widespread as Coach Glassman would like to have seen it. As far CFSB goes, much like many other affiliates according to Tucker, programming tends to be biased toward our strengths which tend to be the lifts (Olympic and power), and toward monostructural (rowing, running, etc.).

Gymnastics skills incorporation into affiliate programming worldwide seems to have improved judging from the frequent appearance of gymnastics-like skills and movements in CrossFit competitions as the sport of CrossFit progresses. Several are moving toward gymnastics movements judged with traditional gymnastics range of motion standards as well.

Even if gymnastics skills never appeared in competition WODs their inclusion in training undoubtedly sets those who train them properly way ahead of the pack. The skills progression of gymnastics movements help break through training plateaus because of the universality and transference to other functional movements. Improved flexibility, strength, and midline stabilization acquired through mastering a front lever or even the progression to a front lever for example transfers to improvement in a variety of lifts.

Check out this video Tucker had us watch at our cert of Danny Rodrigues (…human?) performing as part of his routine the “Victorian”, a movement once considered mythical and unachievable on the rings. Talk about humble pie. Danny Rodrigues: Impossible Is Nothing

Scrub prowess - CrossFitters make anything look good

WOD 6/9/2010

“Fight Gone Bad”

Three rounds of:
Wall-ball, 10 ft target (20/16#) (Reps)
Sumo deadlift high-pull (75/55#) (Reps)
Box Jump, (20″) (Reps)
Push-press,( 75/55#) (Reps)
Row (Calories)

In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute.The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. On call of “rotate”, the athletes must move to next station immediately for best score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each calorie is one point.

CFSB is teaming up with CrossFit Thrive in Hermosa Beach to do Fight Gone Bad. The WOD will be during our regularly scheduled Saturday morning class at 9am. There will be no class at CFSB on Saturday September 26th. We will all be at CF Thrive tearing up FGB.

Please RSVP to max@crossfitthrive.com (310-819-2933) or mariessa@crossfitsouthbay.com (714-452-7121) by Thursday September 24th. If possible bring a donation to help the Wounded Warrior Project and the fight against prostate cancer.

WOD – 9.25.09

Grace

30 Clean & Jerk

c/o heavy get ups x 20 (10ea)

In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. We’ve used this in 3 and 5 round versions. The stations are:

1. Wall-ball: 20 pound ball, 10 ft target. (Reps)
2. Sumo deadlift high-pull: 75 pounds (Reps)
3. Box Jump: 20″ box (Reps)
4. Push-press: 75 pounds (Reps)
5. Row: calories (Calories)

The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of “rotate,” the athlete/s must move to next station immediately for good score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each calorie is one point.

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Everybody gave their all during Fight Gone Bad! Not only as athletes but as coaches too! There was overwhelming encouragement going on the whole time. What a team we have!

Prostate Cancer Fundraiser Workout at CrossFit Long Beach

The CrossFit workout was ‘Fight Gone Bad’. In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. This event calls for 3 rounds. The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of ‘rotate,’ the athlete/s must move to next station immediately for good score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each calorie is one point. The stations are:

1. Wall-ball, 10 ft target (Reps)
2. Sumo Deadlift high-pull (Reps)
3. Box jump (Reps)
4. Push-press (Reps)
5. Row (Calories)