Stability

    

keep it together.

     Your body is an amazing system of systems.  Your muscles, tissues, and tendons work to keep your bones and organs together.  So every time you move your body searches for tension and stability in order to ‘hold it all together’.  When we see people with broken bones, torn ligaments or muscles, this is an indication of body parts being loaded incorrectly with tremendous amounts of force or excessive amounts of repetitions. 

     Now with that, there are things we can do help load our musculature in a more stability and safe position.  This is the basis for all of the cues we use while working out.  We can translate these cues to everything you do in life by understanding a few simple concepts. 

     One joint rule.  Kstar (Kelly Starret of Mobilitywod.com), aka the guy who has given the Crossfit world all the torture techniques you see in the gym, developed the concept of the one joint rule.  The idea is that we can look at our Shoulders and Hips as the primary engines for movement in our body.  They work similarly enough that if you can understand one, you understand the other.  Additionally, the supporting engines associated with each joint, or primary engine, are successive through the limbs.  This means that we can look at our upper arm the same way we look at our femur.  The elbow is the knee, the forearm is the shin, ankles are your wrists, and your hands are the same as your feet.  As with the bones, the musculature is similarly associated. 

     Because our primary engines are joints, their stability is founded by internal and external rotation as it relates to extension and flexion.  The hip works opposite of the shoulders.

Hip Stability = Flexion + external rotation, and Extension + Internal Rotation

 The leopard. On the left, no bueno. On the right, flexion and external rotation at the hip.

 

Split Jerk.  Right leg is extended and internally rotated.  lookin' cool.

Shoulder Stability = Flexion + internal Rotation, and Extension + external rotation. 

 



The guy on the left has legit external rotation and extension of the shoulder.  Guy on the right has some mobility issues.

Internal rotation and flexion at the shoulder is good, but she needs to rotate her hands more forward at the top position to achieve full external rotation while her arms are extended.

 



     So if we can understand how to stabilize our hips and shoulders, we can develop movement patterns that put us in an optimal position.  The movements you see in crossfit already have these mapped out, and with that, we have developed cues to get you into those positions without having to understand why.  For example, saying ‘knees out’ when you are squatting is a lot easier to say and understand than ‘externally rotate your femur as you flex your hip to descend your torso towards the floor’.  (the knees out cue has been beat to death, I know.  When your knee starts to wobble inward on a squat, the cue knees out is meant to bring the athlete's knee back to neutral and in line with the shin)

     Now let’s tie in what you know about the one joint rule with stability.  When I put my hip into flexion (squat), I know that I need to maintain as vertical a shin as possible.  Similarly, I can conclude that when I put my shoulder into flexion (pushup), my forearm needs to remain as vertical as possible as well.  I also want my feet generally straight during the squat (generally meaning pointing slightly outward), so I want my hands generally straight during the pushup.  Because I understand that my knees are like my elbows, and I also understand the rotation and stability of each joint, I know that I need to press my knees out during the squat and my elbows in as I decend into the pushup in order to keep the joints in line with the shin and forearm, respectively.

     Like I said earlier, its important to understand this concept because your coaches can only make you drink the water while you are in the gym.  The more we translate these movement patterns into everyday life activities, the better chance you have of internalizing and performing them without even thinking.  So when you pick up your granddaughter, your movement pattern should look like a dead lift.  When you go to sit in a chair, it should look the same as beginning a squat.  When you shoot a basketball, it should look like a wall ball/push press.  We can also use these concepts to develop stable positions when we are challenged with an unfamiliar movement.  So if I want to go surfing for example, before I catch my first wave I already know how to make myself as stable as possible.  Paddling out looks like internal rotation of the shoulder.  Going from paddling a board to standing up looks like a burpee.  When I bend at the hip, I need to prevent my knees from collapsing in in order to stay balanced.

 

 



Bench Marks

no rep, bro.

      Last week we talked about how CrossFit defines fitness.  Today we'll take a look at quantifying those fitness standards to see how we rack and stack against the rest of the CrossFit community.  Remember that fitness should be measurable, observable, and repeatable; meaning that we can test ourselves, see the changes we have made, and retest to see if we have gotten better. 
     The standards presented below are by no means all inclusive.  They do not reflect the opinion of CrossFit, INC, CrossFit Huachuca, or any other group or organizations opinion other than myself.  To reach these conclusions, I borrowed a template seen commonly across many other CrossFit gyms that you can find on the internet.  From there, I modified the criteria based off of my experience as well as results seen during the CrossFit Games. 
     You'll notice that the standards don't take into account age or years of experience doing CrossFit.  Based on what your background is in fitness or sports, it's not really applicable.  Over the age of 40, a case can be made that weights and times might not be feasible for standards quite as listed.  This is the reason there is a Master's division for the CrossFit games.  However, fitness is still fitness, whether you are 15 or 50, if you strive for these standards you'll be considered fit.  You can also tailor the criteria to your own opinion, and set your own goals.  The idea is to get you thinking about what is fit and how that is measured. 
     In order to identify where you fall on the chart in terms of fitness, you should be able to meet or exceed the criteria in that column to about 90% of the movements listed.  Understand that everyone has goats (things that we really really suck at), but as stated last week - we are as fit as we are competent in the 10 General Physical Skills.  The aim of this chart is to help guide the blind in developing some goals to work towards.  So if you are the person in the gym whose goal is to "be more fit" then this is a good place to gain some focus.  If you are ready for anything, then you are ready for everything.  When you finally find your calling, you'll be physically ready to run a marathon, climb Denali, rock climb Joshua Tree, or catch the perfect wave in Hawaii (you get the idea). 
     With that said, you'll see four categories that the movements are broken up into.  These categories are what CrossFit is built behind.  It's called the heirarchy of fitness:

      CrossFit finds that like all pyramids, a structure is only as sound as the foundation laid beneath it.  This means that if we have crappy nutrition, it's going to effect our fitness overall.  Additionally, if we are stupid strong, but run like a turtle, the zombies will kill you.  But also you won't be too awesome when you apply your strength to sports. 
     As you are testing yourself against these standards, think about the top picture.  Make sure your reps count and that you are doing the movements correctly.  If you don't have an accurate representation of your current level of fitness, you'll never get to where you want to be.  So don't count that wall ball that was just a little too low, or that ring dip that you didn't quite lock out on. 

Click here for the standards------->>CrossFit Standards Chart<<--------- p="">
Post questions comments or suggetions below. 

 

What is Fit?

Patrick Makau
World Record Marathoner



                                   

               Žydrūnas Savickas
                 Strongman World Champion

Rich Froning
Crossfit's Fittest Man on Earth

     




In a Zombie Apocolypse who would you pick to be on your team?

       What does it mean to be fit these days?  This question is likely to be a hot topic within the fitness community.  From marathon runners, to gymnasts, and strongmen, the definition becomes quite varied.  CrossFit defines this as a person’s work capacity across broad time and modal domains.  As you might have heard before, CrossFit specializes in not specializing.  That is to mean that a CrossFitter strives to be good at many things – Neither the best or the worst at any skill or event.  CrossFit identifies 3 fitness standards to define fitness; 10 General Physical Skills, The hopper model, and competency in metabolic pathways.

Crossfit's First Fitness Standard

 

     The 10 General Physical Skills listed above are what the programming we follow strives to achieve.  We are as fit as we are competent in these skills.

First annual Crossfit Games - The Hopper was used to dictate the workouts

     The hopper model suggests that your fitness can be measured by your capacity to perform a task in relation to other people.  A fit person is able to perform well at any task, even unfamiliar tasks, in multiple varying combinations. 

CrossFit's Third Fitness Standard

     Finally, a fit athlete is competent in all metabolic pathways.  A marathon runner is probably excellent at the oxidative, average at the glycolytic, and terrible in the phosphagen pathway.  Meaning he can run long and far, but probably has a hard time squatting his bodyweight for reps.  Conversely, a strongman competitor can lift enormous amounts of weight, but his capacity to run long distance and be efficient in the oxidative pathway is probably terrible.  CrossFitters strive to be good at all of these pathways, while excelling at neither.  So while Crossfitter's won’t win a marathon or a strongman competition, we probably won’t be embarrassed at the end of events either. 

      Regardless of what you believe, the important aspect of defining fitness is applying standards to your definition.  In CrossFit, this is addressed in 1 rep maxes and benchmark workouts.  They are designed to test a person's competency in each of the 10 General Physical Skills.  Next week’s post will identify some hard numbers so you guys can get an idea of just how fit you are and hopefully develop some new goals as a result. 

My friends say Crossfitters don't do real pullups

      “Crossfitters don’t do real pull ups”.  I hear this all the time.  A quick google search on the interwebs will show that this is a current theme among crossfit critics.  I find that these critics are under the impression that crossfit only does kipping or butterfly pullups.

     At our gym, this is certainly not the case.  Strict pullups, or real pullups as the haters will say, are incorporated into many warm ups.  Additionally, it is not uncommon to expect weighted strict pullups to show up as a WOD or focus.  Strict pullups are a foundational strength builder to being able to handle the kipping and butterfly pullup safely.  A good general rule of thumb is that you should be able to do between 5-10 pullups before moving on to kipping pullups.  If you move too early, there is a higher risk of injury by putting too much strain on an undeveloped muscle group.

     So what is a pullup?  A pullup is a gymnastic movement defined by starting from a fully extended position with palms facing away from the body, followed by movement of the body that brings the chin over the bar, and movement back down to a fully extended position. 

The Pullup...Crossing your legs doesn't make you cool.  It puts you in an over-extended position, so point your toes and keep your feet together kids.

     Before we get into kipping and butterfly pullups, let’s talk about some principles of fitness.  We agree that Power is good, yes?  We can also agree that intensity is a good thing.  Now let’s define what is what.

Physics equation for power.

      That’s physics folks.  Work is equal to force generated multiplied by the distance that force was moved.  So in a pull up, your body weight is the force and the distance moved is the length between the bar and your shoulder at the bottom position.  So for example, let’s say I weigh 185 lbs, have a length of 2 feet, and I can do 30 kipping pullups in 1 minute.  Now let’s calculate my power output.  P = (185*2*30)/60 = 185 ft lbs/sec.   Now let’s calculate my power output given that it would take me about 2 minutes to perform 30 strict pullups. P=(185*2*30)/120 = 92.5 ft lbs/sec. 

   

Getting nerdy.  Also, this is not an over-extended position.  This is global extension, which is completely safe and cool. 

     As you can see from the math above, kipping pullups allow us to create more power than a strict pullup.  Power can be measured by how heavy a load is, how far we move it, and how fast we move it.  In a pullup, by simply increasing the speed at which we perform the movement, we are increasing the power output of the workout.  The same is true of butterfly pullups.  They are faster and more efficient, making the movement less costly on the muscles over time.  Crossfit defines intensity as the result of power.  The more power we generate, the more intense the workout becomes.  This is one reason why scaling becomes important - check out the scaling post below if you haven't yet.

     In addition to the math, kipping pullups are more functional and transferable to other skills than the strict pullup.  In its simpliest form, a kipping pullup is a violent opening and closing of the hips.  We do this in muscle ups, squats, oly lifts - you name it, our hips are the primary engine for energy transfer and power production.   

     To reiterate, strict pullups are useful and have their time and place in a workout program.  However, if intensity and power output are your goals (like crossfit believes they should be), a strict pullup is not going to make sense in a WOD. 

    

 

No Bueno, newbie.

 

      Last thing on pullups, ripping your hands is not cool.  Its a result of not taking care of yourself.  It has probably happened to most of us.  You will develop callouses from pullups and barbell movements.  You need to be shaving the callouses down to prevent them from ripping.  We keep a dremel tool in the gym for this purpose, and you can purchase a regular nail file for less than $3.00 anywhere.  Using chalk, in limited amounts, will help keep your hands dry and prevent ripping as well.   If you are doing a workout that has over 75 pullups I recommend using some athletic tape for insurance.  There are some good ways to tape that will make it stick for the whole WOD, so do some googling, or hit me up in the gym. 

 

Post questions or comments below.

Bracing Sequence

     The bracing sequence one of the most important aspects when lifting weights in order to stay safe.  It is crucial in non-weighted movements as well, but not doing it is likely to do less damage than with weights.  Some of you have probably heard the cues before in the gym (abs tight, squeeze your butt).  What we are talking about is protecting the spine as we conduct all of our movements.  Stability throughout the body stems from the core (your spine/abs) to your extremities (arms and legs).  The heavier the weight, usually the harder it becomes to stabilize (due to the lack of ability to brace) and you end up in a compromised position and possibly miss the lift. 

Here are the steps to bracing -

Squeeze your butt - Stand up and squeeze your butt together as hard as you can.  You should be able to feel and see your pelvis drive forward.  Doing this ensures that your pelvis is neutral when moving.  In between reps, reset at the top by squeezing the butt again.  Your butt should be sore after doing Tabata Squats if you are doing them correctly.   Not doing this is the primary movement pattern fault to causing butt wink (reversal of the spine at the bottom of the squat).  Butt wink is not ok...ever...it creates sheering across your spine which can lead to all sorts of issues in the low back area.  Its like squatting with your knees in, you could probably get away with doing it for thousands and thousands of reps, until you can't and you end up hurt.  Remember, you're designed to live pain free for 110 years. 

To the left - Good Squat.  To the Right - Butt wink.  Butt winking is not attractive and NEVER OK!

Pull Rib Cage Down - This is meant to keep your spine neutral and to create a flat back.  Doing this and squeezing your butt prevent you from over-extending during squatting, Olympic lifting, deadlifts, and anything over head.  So if you are one of those people going into a standing arch rock during the overhead press, we are talking to you. 

Belly Tight - Getting your belly tight involves breathing and squeezing your abs.  It is designed to lock in your pelvis and spine so that they stay neutral throughout the entire movement.  You can't move with your butt squeezed, so the abs take over when you initiate movement.   With your butt squeezed, take a big breath of air and exhale.  As you exhale squeeze your abs tight.  Next, inhale using diaphragm (belly breath).  If you are lifting heavy things while doing this, you need to hold your breath through the movement.  As soon as you breathe you'll lose that spinal position.  You can breath in between reps while you are out of tension.  So for example if you are doing a heavy back squat: Brace, get set, do 1-3 reps.  When you need to breath, do it at the top/start position.  Take time to repeat the bracing sequence before going for more reps.
      When we start to add metabolic conditioning (running/rowing/burpees/jump ropes) in the same workout with weightlifting, we are challenging your ability to brace your spine and breathe.  So maybe you can do 21 KB swings and 12 pullups no problem.  But can you run 400m and do that 3 times?  and how fast and efficient are you?  When you are metabolically taxed you have no choice but to breathe with your chest and neck.  This is why it is important to reset yourself after a cardio movement.  Control your breathing so you can use your diaphragm before lifting weights again.  This will result in you being more efficient which = faster times on the scoreboard.

Head Neutral - For the last step you need to center your head over your shoulders.  Think about aligning your ears with your shoulders, hips, and ankles.  Avoid neck wrinkles.  It turns out that there are a lot of movement sensors that come out of the neck that send messages to your muscles in order for them to move the correct way.  When you bend your neck, you are literally cutting of the messages.  Think about a garden hose on full blast and then your big brother pinches the hose together in the middle.  Some water will still come out the end, but you won't be getting nearly the amount that you should.  Same thing with the neck, when its pinched back, your muscles will still move, but you won't be getting the full amount of effort that you need.

Since all of our movements focus on the efficient transfer of energy/power from your core to your extremities, bracing is foundational to being safe as well as being a rock star in gym.

Scaling

I hope you all enjoyed de-load week as a break from lifting heavy things. We saw a lot of improvement on snatch form this week and you should be patting yourself on the back for the work you’ve done. For those that came on Friday and participated in the trial run of Crossfit for Hope – you guys did a tremendous job pushing yourselves through that gauntlet. There were a few questions about scaling workouts throughout the week so I wanted to talk about When/How/Why to do it as a refresher.
How to Scale Scaling can be done by either:

•Limiting the amount of work to be done - for example only completing 3 rounds of a workout that is prescribed for 5 rounds
•Reducing the weight of the movement – Using bands for pullups/using lighter weights on a barbell
•Substituting a certain movement for another – Substituting toes to bar for knees to elbows.

When and Why to Scale Scaling should be used when:
•Form breaks down as a result of weight/exhaustion – It takes a long time to for athletes to be able to consistently perform perfect repetitions of a movement. Even the professionals make mistakes from time to time. A good rule of thumb to follow is that no more than 10% of your reps should be poor. Anything more than that and you need to consider scaling the movement. Otherwise you are putting yourself at risk for injury.

•Injury or mobility issue hinders good form of a movement – Pain is a lagging indicator that something has gone wrong in the way you move (this is not to mean general muscle soreness). If you are feeling pain during a workout you need to either change the way you a moving, scale the weight, or substitute the movement for something else. If you feel pain – tell a coach right away.

•The amount of rest needed to perform the workout vastly outweighs the amount of work completed - This is called the work-rest ratio. Crossfit workouts are designed to target specific metabolic pathways in order to make you more fit. Take for example a workout like “Fran” (21-15-9 of thrusters and pull ups). The workout is designed to target the Glycolytic pathway. The elite athlete will complete this workout in around 3:00 minutes and your average athlete should be between 6-7:00 minutes. Understanding that not everyone can Rx this workout in that average time frame, we use scaling so that they can. Overtime, we work on reducing the scaling and getting closer to Rx. This is a good reason for why you should be recording your WOD scores and 1 rep maxes every day you workout.

    

     The graph above shows the three metabolic pathways. An example of The Phosphagen pathway (1:3 work rest ratio) is an attempt at a 1x Rep max lift. The Glycolytic Pathway Peaks at about 40 seconds before rest is required and has a 1:2 work/rest ratio. An example of this would be “Fran”. An example of an Oxidative Pathway (1:1 work rest ratio) would be going on a 5K run.

     Crossfit finds that targeting the Glycolytic Pathway most frequently leads to stronger, fitter athletes. Crossfit works because it is measurable, observable, and repeatable. Sound familiar? Step into a 6th grade science class and you’ll learn that this is called scientific method. If you don’t track your workouts, then you aren’t accurately identifying whether or not you are getting better. If you aren’t becoming a better, healthier, stronger person then something needs to change in order to achieve your personal goals. Scaling a workout should not be used as an excuse to skip out on hard work. It should be a mark for you to progress from. If you’ve been doing Crossfit for several months and are still using the same band on pull-ups you used when you first started, you need to test yourself by trying a lighter band – and if you haven’t made progress in months then we need to take a look at why and make a new plan to get back on track to achieving whatever goals you have.
      Lastly, there is no shame in not performing a workout as Rx. Sometimes our competitive nature can push us into doing something we aren't ready for. Strength and skill in these movements and workouts take time, devotion, and hard work. The key is to know your limits and constantly to be testing yourself. Crossfit workouts can be extremely humbling, and its all about finding out what you suck at and trying to suck less at them the next time around. Do these things and you'll be on your way to being stronger and fitter. Feel free to post questions or comments below.

- Coach Rick