Why the ‘strength bias’ at CFD?

 

Part 2

 

In Part 1 of this blog, I wanted to mainly address the audience of people who chose, in one way or another, that training at CFD wasn’t for them basically because of an aversion to weight training.  Part 2 is directed more towards existing CrossFit athletes and coaches, and I wanted to go over some things that I think need to be addressed—a bit of quality-control, if you will.  CrossFit keeps growing, and if we’re going to beat the stigma and find success, we need to be policing our own.  There are plenty of poorly-run affiliates out there that give plenty of ammo to people who don’t like CrossFit.  I have a whole page of my website dedicated to that topic.  So here’s my concern:

 

I have a serious problem with facilities NOT focusing on developing absolute strength in their members.  I’m well aware of the 10 general physical skills, and I understand very much the idea of a balanced fitness profile.  However, not focusing a LOT on strength in your newer athletes is a mistake.  I’ve been accused of being a ‘strength-biased’ gym for years.  I disagree.  I think a more appropriate label would be that I am a ‘function-biased’ gym.  For the sake of trying to not be redundant, see my example given in Part 1 of this blog to understand more of what I mean by that.

 

A common mindset bred amongst CrossFitters is that new movements are developed through practice and tech work.  While definitely not untrue, typically a huge limiting factor in having a particular benchmark movement that newer CrossFitters are always striving to check off the list (pullups, handstand pushups, muscle ups) is simply not being strong enough!  We live in a world of immediate gratification, and anything not had is hoped to be gained immediately with a new technique or a ‘trick’ that can be passed down from coach to athlete in a matter of minutes.  This is, in many cases, faulty logic and sets people up for frustration, failure, and injury.

 

Take this example that is a very common occurrence in CrossFit facilities worldwide:

 

When it comes to ‘getting’ a movement that requires strength (ex:  the pullups), and the athlete doesn’t have enough raw, absolute strength to do the movement, what factor has to be introduced in order to achieve the movement standards?  Typically it’s momentum, or some form of power transfer (in this case, a gymnastics kip).  If someone is strong and stable, and the absolute strength requirements can be met (the strict pull-up), a minimal, tight, efficient kip is all that’s needed to complete the movement, and the risk for injury is very minimal.

 

HOWEVER…

 

What happens to an athlete’s already-underdeveloped position (using the above example where he or she is unable to do the movement without momentum) when a large amount of momentum is applied?  The athlete’s already unstable position becomes compromised even further, and the athlete—while perhaps barely meeting the movement standard for a given movement—is at such a higher risk for injury.  Add to that the fact that this rarely results in the athlete being able to develop the much-needed strength that he or she may be so lacking in order to do the movement in the first place!  (i.e.:  kipping pull-ups tend to do a very poor job of developing absolute upper-body pulling strength).

 

Does the risk in this case outweigh the reward?  NO. WAY.

 

I’ve met a lot of seasoned CrossFit athletes locally and globally who can knock out tens of kipping pullups but couldn’t do more than a few (and in some cases, none) strict; who will do tens of kipping handstand pushups in a workout, crashing down on top of their heads multiple times in a handful of minutes, but couldn’t strict press barely half of their bodyweight or even do a few dips at a controlled tempo.  NONE OF THESE SCENARIOS DEFINE A SAFE OR BALANCED ATHLETIC PROFILE, and the answer to fixing them all is absolute strength development.  Sometimes the prescription isn’t exciting, creative, or sexy.  Sometimes you don’t end your day in a pool of sweat and tears because you just finished some brutal metcon.  Sometimes, MANY times, the key to becoming a better athlete is simply to get stronger!

 

• Don’t have pullups yet?  The solution isn’t to learn how to throw your hips more violently.  The fix is almost entirely two parts:  Get stronger, and fix body composition.

 

• Don’t have handstand pushups?  Get a bigger press (strict, push, bench).  Get better at pushups, and eventually progress to dips.  You get your handstand pushups by respecting the progression and developing absolute upper body pushing strength.  It’s not tech work you need AT THIS STAGE, and it’s not learning how to throw your legs violently to make yourself momentarily weightless…it’s strength.  A premature jump to handstand pushups in October can lead to an injury in November.  Hey, congrats, you ‘got’ your HSPU’s.  You’re also part of a statistic of what happens when you don’t respect the appropriate order of things, and the reason many (with good reason) make fun of the sport and methodology of CrossFit.

 

• Don’t have Muscle ups?  Guess what the best solution is that applies to almost everyone who doesn’t have them?  GET STRONGER!  Believe it or not, strict muscle ups are actually a thing.  There are people out there who can do multiples of them…and they might even weigh more than you do.  Believe it or not, the 223 pound CrossFit coach who is typing this blog right now can pull his fat ass through multiple strict muscle ups.  It’s not because I know a trick, and it sure as hell isn’t because I have a gymnastics background, it’s because I spent a lot of time and effort developing the absolute strength necessary to do it.  Period.

 

If you’re a coach who allows for this kind of disregard for appropriate strength and conditioning protocol, you’re part of the problem.  If you’re an athlete who is anxious to progress—your energy is appreciated, believe me!  We’ve all been there and we all started there.  But channel that work ethic in a direction that will keep you safe and is worth your time and energy investment.

 

Achieving a higher level of fitness is a journey, not a sprint.

 

No good things come from trying to rush progression or substitute strength development with erratic momentum. 

 

Coaches:  Get your athletes strong first, and teach them technical proficiency along the way.  You’ll be amazed at how people—once they develop adequate strength and beyond—stop getting injured, stay healthy, maintain their membership, and find success in the program.  And as an added bonus:  It’ll take the ammo away from the haters who run their mouths.  You’ll know you’re being part of the solution and not part of the problem.

 

Athletes:  Respect the appropriate progression and find a facility that understands these concepts to train at.  It won’t be easy, and it will take time–REAL time, not just a few weeks.  Becoming a better athlete doesn’t happen in a boot camp or in a crash course.  Be patient!

 

Disclaimer:  As mentioned in Part 1 of this blog, there are other important factors that I am not purposefully ignoring or trying to oversimplify the concept of appropriate strength training and everything that goes into it.  I am making these statements and observations based on experience, and I understand full well that I am making generalizations.  If an powerlifter wanted to pursue CrossFit, then absolute strength development would likely not be a deficiency in that person’s athletic profile!

 

Now it’s your turn.  I’d like to hear some examples from you!  Anything from not needing two trips carrying things into the house to saving a life, having adequate strength comes into play every day of our lives.  How has improving your strength positively impacted your life?

 

RLTW <1>

 

—Coach Phil

Why the ‘strength bias’ at CFD?

 

Part 1

 

 

This is Part 1 in a two-part series, and in this first part, I want to address the people who have decided that training at CFD is not something they want to do because of the prevalence of weight training.  I’ve come face-to-face with this objection before, in the form of  ‘I don’t like lifting weights,’ or ‘I just like to run,’ or ‘I do other things for my fitness.’  In the following paragraphs, I’m going to do my best to articulate why I think this line of thought is a mistake.

 

I focus a lot on developing strength with my members at CFD.  I don’t do it because I’m ‘naturally strong,’ or for other personal or selfish reasons.  Anyone who knew me growing up would attest to the fact that I was an awkward, skinny kid.  I had to work really hard to get as strong as I am today—I did NOT have a genetic predisposition to it.  I have a heavy focus on developing strength in my athletes for a few reasons:

 

1.  It’s what most people are the most deficient at.  (Granted, there are always exceptions to the rule, but my observation is that we live in a cardio-dominant society where the masses pursue a training modality that reinforces a catabolic state, and then simultaneously wonder why injuries are frequent, body composition is poor, and health markers are failing.  This is a topic for another discussion.)

 

2.  It is necessary to meet a vast majority of goals people tell me when they walk through my doors.  To do my best to avoid redundancy, I’ve blogged about this before.

 

3.  I would argue that it’s the most functionally useful general physical skill to have.  It is literally useful to be strong multiple times a day, every single day, for the rest of your life.  Having muscle is healthy.  Being strong keeps you from getting injured easily.  Having a good strength base is just simply great to have, period.

 

Let me give you an example—this is an avatar of a person I have met dozens of times over the last (almost) 4 years.  Let’s say a female walks through the door:  She’s spent countless hours on cardio, but has very little strength development at all.  She can’t clean 55 pounds (move a weight from the floor to her shoulders), nor can she even deadlift over 100 pounds safely.  Mobility and/or stability in a squat leaves a lot to be desired, let alone the ability to be absolutely strong throughout a good range of motion.  The implications of this suggest that explosive movements are precarious and largely inappropriate–something as simple as jumping and landing safely isn’t yet developed and leaves the person at a higher risk for injury because of this deficiency.

Think for a moment the real-life limitations this individual has because of her lack of strength development.  Not just limitations within the walls of the gym; lots of things weigh over 50 pounds in the real world.  Things you might want to move on your own without the aid of someone else.  Things you may NEED to move, and move QUICKLY, in an emergency situation, that may weight close to or over 100 pounds.  Are you limited by your physical capabilities if a situation demands you perform such a task?

 

If you don’t see a problem with willingly submitting to this fitness profile, we can probably end this conversation here.  If you do see a problem with it, please read on…

 

Take that same person, have them train appropriately for a period of time.  Turn that 55 pound clean into a 125 pound clean.  Get them safe and strong enough to pick up over 200 pounds off the floor in a deadlift.  Get them to squat their bodyweight and then beyond.  It doesn’t take steroids to make this happen.  It doesn’t make feminine figures look like juiced-out meathead dudes; I WISH strength came as easily as most women fear it does!  It takes lots of effort, and it takes appropriate training, and it takes time (months that become years, not days that become a handful of weeks).

 

Spoiler alert:  this person is now not only so much more capable of independently performing a task, but capable of doing so without nearly the same risk of injury as before.  This person—my female example I gave earlier—is so much more independent and empowered. 

 

• This woman’s functional application of her fitness just made some things that used to be HARD now EASY. 

 

• Some things that used to be IMPOSSIBLE are now POSSIBLE. 

 

• Coaches:  YOU LITERALLY JUST HELPED CHANGE THIS PERSON’S LIFE.

 

You don’t get there by pounding miles out on the treadmill or pavement.  You get there by putting weights on your skeleton and and working your muscles.

 

I don’t know about you, but when faced with the choice between capability and IN-capability, I will choose the former every time.

 

As a disclaimer, I need to be clear about some other factors:  I’m not saying it’s as simple as ‘hold a weight in your hand’ and everything else falls into place.  You need to be training appropriately.  You need to be fueling appropriately; continuing to fuel like you’re a marathon runner when you have a drastic shift in training modality and become more of a weight lifter will lead to problems (I have written an entire other blog about that topic).  All of these other factors need to be in place as well in order for success to be had.

 

In the second part of this blog, which will be posted 25AUG, I’m going to further address some of these issues, and my points will be more directly geared towards existing CrossFit athletes as well as coaches.

 

RLTW <1>

 

—Coach Phil

Why do we train?

 

Sometimes we may all need a reminder as to why we do what we do—specifically, why we train every day at CFD.  While we train for the sake of General Physical Preparedness (GPP), we sometimes find ourselves asking how it applies, or even if it DOES apply to our daily routines.  Let’s say nothing in your life demands that you lift more than an easily manageable weight, or ever NEED to get out of breath to get something done.  Then why train the way we train at CFD?

I’m about to get a little personal here, but I think it’s an appropriate time to speak of it;  I had recently met with the head pulmonologist at the Iowa City VA because of some ongoing respiratory issues I have been having.  Long story short, it seems very likely that I have a service-related condition known as constrictive bronchiolitis.

Why am I announcing this to the world via blog?  Well, because I think it directly pertains to the topic at hand, and because I’ve always been one to be very transparent about my business, my training, and myself.

Regarding the subject of the blog (finding purpose in WHY we train), the way I see it, there are two alternative realities that could have happened in my life post-military:

 

1.  I could have followed the path that I chose which led me here—among other things, I discovered CrossFit, trained as an athlete, and improved my level of fitness across broad time and modal domains. 

 

OR….

 

2.  I could have neglected my health and fitness post-military and let my body go to hell.  While there is no way of knowing, I strongly suspect that, had I not trained my body appropriately and reached a relatively high level of fitness, this developed condition would be more likely to affect my day-to-day activities.  However, because my lungs were trained well and conditioned, operating at a sub-maximal capacity does NOT, in any way, affect normal, day-to-day activities.  It really only affects me when the throttle gets wound up; it essentially dashed any hopes I would have at being a GREAT athlete, even though I would still argue that I am currently a GOOD athlete even with my ‘excuse.’

 

I don’t regret my decision. I thoroughly value being strong and capable of performing almost any task–far more than the average person–without being hindered by my fitness.

 

Back to the topic of the blog, I would argue that for those of you who are NOT required to be active whatsoever in your profession, it is even MORE important for you to be active recreationally, since you are generally NOT getting the amount of movement the human body needs and craves in order to be healthy.

 

 

So, why do we train?  Ask yourself a few questions…

 

In the long run, is it worth training your mind and your body for the unknown and the unknowable? 

Is it worth creating a ‘buffer’ between your current state (being ‘able’) and that of not being well or healthy (or being ‘DIS-abled’)?

Is it worth spending just a few hours a week in order to maximize your genetic potential of health and work capacity?

Is it worth being adequately healthy and strong so that, in the face of illness or injury, you’ll recover that much faster?

Is it worth being above average for the more-than-reasonable time commitment of 3-5 hours per week (that’s 2-3% of your LIFE)?

I think there are plenty of reasons to value our training, whether your goals are to be competitive in a sport or simply to be healthy and functional in life.  I already know my answers to these questions…do you have yours?

 

RLTW <1>

–Coach Phil