As CrossFit has grown the level of competition has increased and the challenges put forth by these have increased in difficulty as well. It is not uncommon for athletes to have accumulate large amount of gymnastic skill movements in a chopper style or rounds for time workout.
At first many athletes posses the skills to perform the movement but lack the capacity to do it for high volumes especially when it is mixed with other movements The best way I have found to increase this capacity is by performing multiple low rep scheme intervals with incomplete rest. It is efficient because you are getting in a lot of high quality gymnastic reps while also getting a conditioning effect.
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Energy system training has gained quite a bit of popularity in the CrossFit world over the last few years. It is apparent when you watch the best athletes compete at the games, they are all more well rounded than they have ever been before.
Energy system still really hasn’t made its way into the CrossFit class setting though because they are based off entertaining people not helping them reach elite levels of performance. Most general population client would best off spending a few days a week performing aerobic capacity work (long steady state). The progressing to something more aerobic power based like above. When writing programming for the clean & jerk, I rarely have the two movements performed in combination for CrossFit athlete or general population.
- the main reason is most people are much confident with end position of the bar on their shoulder versus overhead. This allows to unconsciously push the intensity more on the clean - it’s not common for individuals to be able to jerk as much as they clean, so always adding a jerk after the clean will stunt progress - the mobility and timing required to perform an effective/safe jerk is a much more tedious process to learn than the clean * all these opinions are based 7 years of coaching. There is definitely a time and place to train them together - if your a weightlifter - it’s required in a competition your prepping for - if C&j is a movement you tend to struggle with cycling efficiently in a Metcon Diane is one of the classic CrossFit girl workout, also one of the best short time domain ones as well because of how the muscle groups needed for each of the two movements are completely opposite.
This the perfect recipe for jacking up somebody’s heart rate because different parts of the body are being used, especially with relatively low rep schemes. The heart is what is challenged most because it needs to pump blood everywhere. Over the year I have programmed quite a few different variations of Diane. A few examples is the one above, three others either contained wall balls, t2b, or pull up. All these additions did was change the workout from a cardiac demanding sprint to a more enduring upper or lower body “sprint”. I use that loosely because it is likely that most will not be able to perform the whole workout unbroken with the addition of the other movements. Programming for Olympic lift within a CrossFit class is not an easy task. Many gyms avoid it all together now because of the risk with the snatch involved.
I think most members Olympic lifters plateau after awhile for two main reasons. 1. they were not taught proper technique to begin with and have “crafted” their own technique to be good enough to to hang with other class members. Once they realize this and decide they want to become competitive they don’t take the time to rebuild their movement pattern 2. They are not strong enough, many people who love the weightlifting aspect of CrossFit think they need to be doing it year around to improve, when in reality most of them would be better taking a step back from and developing raw strength in their squats, press, hinging and pulling. This is especially true for CrossFit females that have no bodybuilding background. Sprint workouts, sub 3 minutes, I find are required hardest to write for CrossFit gyms because of the wide range of skills, strength, and conditioning the members of a gym may contain. It is even more difficult if it is a couplet workout because if one movement is not up to par for an individual, then it’s likely.
The sprint couplet above worked out well for general population for a few reason. Both movements are low skill and the barbell was at a lowish intensity. Also the combo of movements together worked out really well to not overly tax any specific muscle group. Burpee: hip flexion & upper horizontal pressing Clean & Jerk: hip extension $ upper body vertical pressing 8/26/2021 WORKOUT
Gymnastics is most CrossFit athletes biggest weakness in their abilities, this especially true when high volumes are required. There are two main reasons why people struggle with them so much, either a strength issue or coordination issue. I think most people who struggle with gymnastics fall under both categories, but until they are strong there really isn’t any reason in addressing the coordination of the movement to much because the feel of it will change as you get stronger. Rarely do program gymnastics practice portions into classes because I think every Metcon someone does with a gymnastics in it serves as practice opportunities. I’d rather just focus on strength the patterns and muscles used the differs gymnastics movements. The Seven is one most well written CrossFit hero workouts, that can be prescribed to general population class and be performed with minimal issues as far as scaling goes for everyone.
The part of this workout that is my favorite is how it’s switching with body parts/movement patterns it’s using from the frost exercise to the last. This in itself even when not done at high intensity creates a great training effect because the body has to work extra hard to pump the blood to the working muscle. Hspu: upper pressing Thruster: lower pushing K2E: hip flexion DL: lower pull Burpee: hip flexion Kbs: hip extension Pull up: upper pull 8/24/2011
Regularly including high skill gymnastics like ring/bar muscle ups and handstand walks is a difficult test because at most gyms only 5-10% of the population can perform them. My goal is to include them on a bi-weekly basis, because it’s more than likely the higher level athletes who can do them are doin extra workouts on their own already. This workout is a great example of how I like to write triplets. The three pieces are a weightlifting movement, gymnastics movements, and monostructural or grunt (low skill) movements.
If the athlete has adequate strength for snatch and decent T2b capacity, this is definitely a burpee workout if you compare the amount of time it takes to perform a single rep on all 3 of them. To make it more balanced you could do 3 rounds: 21 T2b, 18 snatch, 15 burpee. The way you spend more close a third of the workout on each movement. |
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November 2021
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