Again Faster

2007-07-28T17:51:00.000+01:00

The New Again Faster

Again Faster has moved! Please visit our brand-new site at www.againfaster.squarespace.com. Be sure to update your bookmarks with our new address, and check out the retail store. We stock everything you need to outfit your home gym or CrossFit facility at prices that won't break your wallet.

Of course, we've still got the blog going. You can access it by clicking the "Articles" link on the main page of the new site.

If you have feedback on the new site, I'd love to hear it! Just drop me a line at jon@againfaster.com.

Thanks for reading Again Faster!

2007-07-19T13:55:00.000+01:00

A Hierarchy of Functional Movement

One of the basic tenets of the CrossFit method is a reliance on functional movement. Simply, this means that movements with limited real-world application have no place in our programming.

For this reason, we eschew biceps curls, triceps kickbacks, leg extensions, and almost any movement that requires you to put your butt in contact with anything. These movements have little bearing on reality. When fate calls on you to sprint down the block, pick up a fallen pedestrian, and hump a mile to the emergency room, you’ll find that all the “arm days” in the world won’t make you equal to the task. On the other hand, a strong deadlift, a decent squat, and a large dose of metabolic capacity would let you pass this hero test with flying colors.

Those of us who’ve been thoroughly exposed to CrossFit have a strong intuitive concept of functional movement. We know it when we see it. Our reality-based acid test begins and ends with an instantaneous assessment. If a movement is quick, powerful, and performed over a long range of motion, it’s probably functional. If it’s slow, weak, and truncated, it’s probably not.

As useful as this black and white characterization of movement may be, it is entirely too limited to apply to serious athletic training. After all, most athletes begin their careers performing slow, weak movements over a limited range of motion. Only through years of coaching, practice, and hard training do they become quick and powerful. It would be unfair to assume that our beginners are engaging in non-functional movement simply because they’re slow or temporarily limited.

The evolution from beginner to athletic stud follows a predictable path—a hierarchy of functional movement. Here, I’m going to describe that the hierarchy, using the barbell movements as a framework for explanation. Barbell movements lend themselves to easy description, and serve as great examples of the progressions inherent in functional movement. Nonetheless, the concepts presented here are not limited to barbell exercises—with a little creativity, they can be applied to nearly any type of movement as a gauge of athletic progress.

On the first tier of functional movement, we find two example exercises: the press and the back squat. Both are full-body, multi-joint movements, criteria that must be satisfied before I’m willing to call anything “functional”. Further, they are performed while standing. This third criterion may or may not be necessary to call a movement “functional” (depending on the person you ask and their fondness for the bench press), but I lean toward its inclusion.

The press begins with the barbell resting across the front deltoids and the athlete’s hands just outside shoulder width. Using only the elbow and shoulder joints (and the attendant muscles, of course), the athlete presses the bar overhead to full lockout, followed by a return to starting position along the same path. This movement has several features salient to our discussion. It is performed slowly, it involves two comparatively minor joints, and it covers a small range of motion. These features place it at the bottom of our hierarchy. Taken together, they indicate relatively low power output, a measure that I put forth as the ultimate arbiter of functionality.

Power output is equal to force multiplied by distance divided by time. For the sake of a good visual, it looks like this:

Power = (Force x Distance)/Time

We know that the press is performed slowly, so time is a large number in our power equation. Conversely, distance is small, as the press only covers a few feet. Force is also small, as the muscles and joints employed in the movement are relatively small, compromising the amount of force that can be generated. When time is large and force and distance are small, the resulting power output is also small.

Contrast this with the back squat. Like the press, this movement is performed slowly and involves two joints. It covers a similar distance in a similar amount of time. Unlike the press, the joints involved—the hip and the knee—are prime movers. These are major joints surrounded by large muscles capable of moving tremendous amounts of weight.

This changes the dynamic of our power equation substantially. Because the muscles surrounding the hip and the knee have a large cross-section, they’re capable of generating a lot of force, substantially increasing power output when compared to the press. For this reason, the squat is more functional than the press, although it belongs to the same two-joint, slow-moving family. As a reality check, we squat and stand dozens of times every day, but we’re less often called upon to push heavy objects overhead. This colloquial check of “functionality” meshes nicely with our theoretical definition.

The second tier of the hierarchy brings the push press and the squat clean. Like our first tier movements, both are full-body multi-joint movements performed from standing. The push press is exactly like the press, except the movement is initiated with the hip and the knee rather than with the shoulder and the elbow. The athlete holds the barbell across the front deltoids, dipping and driving with the lower body. Momentum from this motion is transferred through the torso into the barbell, sending it skyward. As the barbell elevates, the athlete presses upward, locking out the bar overhead. Upon completion, the barbell is returned to the starting position.

Note the features of the push press: it is performed quickly and involves four joints—the hip, the knee, the shoulder, and the elbow. It also covers a slightly larger distance than the press. Referring back to the power equation, we see that these factors indicate a higher power output than the press—time is reduced, and force and distance are increased. Therefore, the push press is theoretically more functional than its first-tier cousin. Again, a quick reality test confirms our findings: a movement that allows you to boost comparatively more weight overhead is certainly more useful in day-to–day life than its less-loaded counterpart.

Like the push press, the squat clean is a quick movement involving four joints. The barbell starts on the floor with the athlete in a quasi-crouch behind it, hands just outside shoulder width. The athlete deadlifts the bar to mid-thigh and explodes violently upward, simultaneously extending the knees and hips while shrugging the shoulders. She then pulls under the barbell, landing in a full squat with the bar racked across the shoulders, and returns to standing.

The squat clean covers a large distance very quickly. The bar moves from the ground to shoulder height in scarcely more time than it takes to complete a push press, and the dynamic nature of the movement allows the athlete to lift absurdly large loads. This combination of speed, distance, and load indicates a very high power output and a correspondingly high degree of functionality. The real life utility of the movement supports this contention—the squat clean allows otherwise unmanageable loads to be shouldered and carried, a benefit with nearly limitless applications.

The third and final tier of our hierarchy represents the highest level of functional movement, containing the snatch and the clean and jerk. Like the preceding exercises, these are full-body, multi-joint movements performed from standing. They take the critical traits of the second tier exercises—quickness, load, and range of motion—and push them to the limits of human capability. Each uses the hip and knee to transfer the load to the shoulder and elbow, and moves the barbell through the entire range of motion available to the athlete.

The snatch is very similar to the squat clean, but the barbell does not stop at the shoulders. Instead, it is brought overhead in one swift movement. Taking a wide grip, the athlete deadlifts the bar to hip height, explodes upward, and pulls herself under, catching the bar in the bottom position of the overhead squat. She then returns to standing with the bar overhead.

The speed of the movement is comparable to that of the squat clean, but the barbell covers a much larger distance. The load lifted is smaller, amounting to 70-80% of that of the squat clean. Greater distance and lesser load combine to put the snatch on par or slightly ahead of the squat clean in terms of power output, indicating greater or equal theoretical functionality according to our hierarchy. A quick reality check throws this finding into doubt—would anyone snatch something from the ground to overhead when given an alternative? An examination of the final movement in the hierarchy, the clean and jerk, answers this question with a resounding “No!”

The clean and jerk begins with a squat clean, bringing the barbell from the floor to the shoulders. The athlete then pauses before launching the bar upward using a dip and drive. As the bar travels vertically, the feet are split fore and aft, and the athlete pushes under the barbell, catching it at arms’ length overhead. The athlete then recovers, bringing the feet side-by-side with the barbell at full extension.

The clean and jerk is slower than the snatch due to the mid-movement pause. Taken out of context, this might indicate a lower power output for the former movement. In actuality, the pause allows the athlete to handle a much larger load, overcoming the power-robbing effect of the delay. The effect of the larger load, combined with the fact that the barbell travels further due to the shoulder width grip, results in a higher overall power output than the snatch and indicates higher theoretical functionality. Using a reality-based definition, the functionality of the clean and jerk is undeniable. It allows an athlete to take a tremendous load—as much as three times bodyweight—and boost it overhead. Again, the applications are only as limited as your imagination.

Throughout the hierarchy, I’ve been hammering three core concepts: speed, load, and range of motion. In general, high-speed movements performed under heavy loads over a complete range of motion represent the apex of functionality, and should be held up as the end goal of athletic development. Getting to this point requires a measured progression through the hierarchy, gradually increasing speed, load, and range of motion according to the readiness of the individual athlete. Exercises should always be chosen that maximize these variables—multi-joint over single-joint, large joint over small joint, fast over slow.

CrossFit has taken most of the guesswork out of proper exercise selection. Indeed, “functional movement” is a watchword within the programming, and the majority of our exercises exhibit qualities indicative of high power output. Not surprisingly, these movements are easily transferable from the gym to the street, passing our final test of functionality. It isn’t hard to imagine a scenario in which ability to lift, throw, run, climb, and jump powerfully might be desirable or even necessary. In fact, some of CrossFit’s most demanding adherents live this reality every day. They pass the hero test regularly,
serving as living proof that non-functional movement has no place in a results-driven program.

EC Synkowski of CrossFit Boston drives under a split jerk.

2007-07-13T22:50:00.001+01:00

How to Use Chalk

Chalk is a very valuable thing in the gym. It allows us to grip the ungrippable. Despite management’s unmitigated understanding of this fact, CrossFit Boston has been without chalk for two weeks.

Imagine an industrial accident at the Johnson & Johnson baby powder factory, and you’ll have a good idea of what the gym looked like after our run-in with “Murph” a few weeks back. Ghostly white palm prints covered the floor is dozens of places, made of that singularly goopy combination of chalk and sweat that requires sandblasting to remove. A nice radius of ultra-fine chalk granules completed the effect.

Imagine cleaning that mess with a half-destroyed sponge mop, and you’ll understand my motives for non-replacement.

Resentment aside, it was a stupid idea. In fact, it was the kind of idea that tort lawyers love. Two nights ago, a good friend and fellow CrossFitter landed on his head after slipping off the pullup bar, going skull-to-irrigation box before crying quietly in the corner. Feeling thankful for his lack of a concussion and the negligence clause in our membership waivers, I spent a whopping $10.50 on a pound of chalk. After removing a used band-aid and a discarded mouthpiece from the repurposed buckets, I added a few blocks of Bison Magnesium Carbonate.

We now have chalk.

What we don’t have is a decent understanding of how to use it. Unlike sex, money, and good friends, it is possible to overdo chalk. The propensity to dip both hands in the bucket, coat them like soon-to-be-fried chicken, and throw them at some fitness apparatus seems like a club sport here at CrossFit Boston.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to save you from yourselves. A little bit of chalk goes a long way, and there is a proper way to use it. Chalking your entire hand, from the wrist to the fingertips, is not it. Have you ever gripped anything with the heel of your hand? If so, you’ve overcome the nuisance of the opposable thumb, and I’d like to have a few words with you about an endorsement deal with Again Faster.

The only part of your hand that requires chalk is the part that contacts the bar. This area starts just below the base of the fingers and continues up to the third knuckle. Take a block of chalk, put it on your calluses, swipe upward until you hit your fingertips, and stop. Put the block of chalk down. Now, take your non-chalked hand, rub it against the chalked one, and go about your workout.

You will now be able to grip the ungrippable, and my homicidal tendencies will remain in check for the duration of your training session. Maybe.

Picture of CrossFit Boston after the chalk incident, courtesy of www.iir.com. Okay, it might be a picture of a meth lab with inadequate safety protocols, but who's counting?

2007-07-11T18:10:00.001+01:00

Don’t Suck

I have a very annoying tendency, as does the rest of the gym-going, supplement-taking, hard-charging public. When I find something that works, I quit doing it.

I can’t claim the credit for recognizing this phenomenon, but I may be the all-time supreme practitioner. In the last month, I’ve managed to stop every habit that leads to good athletic performance. I’m not eating well, I’m sleeping six hours a night, I haven’t stretched a lick, my masseuse doesn’t remember my name, and I train twice a week. In other words, I’ve taken everything that works and turned it on its head.

What’s worse, my excuse for doing so is lame. Please hold the sympathy cards—I’m spending twelve hours a day running a CrossFit gym. The weirdness of this phenomenon deserves some mention. I’m spending sixty-plus hours a week in the gym and getting less fit. Seems odd, doesn’t it?

They say the first step to recovery is recognizing that you have a problem. For me, recognition came in the form of a missed 155-pound power clean. Not only did I miss it, it hit me in the chin on the way up. Luckily, Sam was the only other person in the gym, and she wasn’t watching at the time.

I knew things were getting bad, so I decided to do what any rational person would do. I strapped on a 20-pound vest and had a go at “Murph”. Running two miles and performing one hundred pull-ups, two hundred pushups, and three hundred squats in an hour is not a good idea. I don’t care what they told you.

Fast forward a week, and you’ll find me lying on a foam roller with a look on my face that would be right at home on the mug of a wounded bullfighter. The knots in my legs have literally pulled my left hip out of the socket, and I’m walking like a duck with vertigo.

The lesson is simple: there are a few things that lead to fitness, and a whole bunch of things that will turn you into a big pile of useless. If you stumble upon those things that work, keep doing them. Eating right, sleeping nine hours a night, stretching regularly, training on a schedule, and getting the occasional deep tissue massage are all on that list. Drinking coffee like there's a shortage, sleeping like a PTSD victim, and eating 200 calories a day are not.

There are other things that work. In fact, there’s a whole bunch of them, but they’ll usually be variations on a theme that can be boiled down to a few words. Practice squats, snatches, cleans, sprinting, and gymnastics, and follow up with rest, nutrition, and a healthy social life. You will not suck. Guaranteed.

If you continue these practices indefinitely, you might even qualify to run a CrossFit gym. Anyone looking for an internship?

Picture is me on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, shortly before I started to suck. For a look at the evil that is "Murph" with a 20-pound vest, check out Sammy and the CF Boston Crew grinding it out. Needless to say, Sam has none of my fitness problems.

2007-06-11T14:31:00.001+01:00

Welcome to the OTC

I recently spent four days and three nights at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, where I was fortunate enough to observe the Resident Weightlifters in action. They are awesome. Their overwhelming athleticism is irrefutable evidence of the value of Olympic weightlifting, and provides instant incentive for any coach to include it in his or her programming.

Successful performance of the Olympic movements requires a large load to be moved over a long distance very quickly. High levels of strength, speed, and skill are brought to bear on a barbell, a controlled explosion that results in otherworldly amounts of weight being locked out overhead.

I thought I knew what this looked like. I've watched hundreds of videos of elite weightlifters at all levels of international competition, but pixels cannot to justice to the speed with which these guys move under the bar.

Natalie Woolfork, a 63-kilo lifter with more than a few American Records under her belt, gave an unscheduled clinic in the clean and jerk. She moved 105 kilos like she was throwing around a training bar, exhibiting great balance and timing through all of her lifts. To say I was impressed would be a criminal understatement.

I've read myriad criticisms of the US Team, including implications that they don't train hard enough to shine on the world stage. I'm calling bullshit. The sessions I observed on Friday were absolutely electric, and most of the athletes were only lifting around 80%. These guys spent the a.m. session power cleaning, squatting, jerking, and high pulling, and came back six hours later to perform the competition lifts. There were 100-pound women in that room working harder than any 200-pound firebreather I've ever seen. Casey Burgener was jerking 220 kilos like you and I do 95-pound thrusters. These guys are not taking it easy.

Inspired, Dave Picardy and I hit the platforms on Saturday morning for some technique work. We worked through our three-position snatches and three-position cleans, hammering good extension and a hard pull-under over and over again. We never even touched a bumper, and I was sweating my ass off.

Over the last three weeks, I've worked with four Oly coaches, ranging from a Club Coach to an Olympic Team Coach, and not a single one of them was worried about how much weight I had on the bar. It all boiled down to perfect technique executed with flawless consistency.

Removing the ego from weightlifting is a hard thing to do. Your worth as a lifter is indelibly connected to your total. Taking the necessary steps to ensure that technique is perfect before piling on the weight requires a heavy dose of humility. Nonetheless, I have no doubt that my totals will go up as my technique gets dialed in.

I can't get you in the OTC, and I can't give you the inspiration that the residents gave me, but I can impart two lessons: humility and speed. Don't worry about how much weight you're moving, and get under that bar as fast as humanly possible. The latter involves the rapid firing of the hip flexors in conjunction with a hard pull on the barbell. If you're letting gravity win the race to the floor, you're not going to make your lifts. Go faster!

Here's a quick look at Casey Burgener, Natalie Woolfolk, and a whole bunch of OTC Residents. If this doesn't make you want to grab a barbell, I don't know what will.

All photos and video by the author, courtesy of the fine people of USA Weightlifting. If you'd like to get involved, give the National Office a call at (719) 866-4508 or find your local club at www.usaweightlifting.org.

2007-05-18T17:07:00.000+01:00

A Few Truths

The following list stems from my recent successes and failures as an athlete and a coach, and I hope you find it useful. Because it is my list, it is more for me than it is for you, but there is no harm in sharing.

1.) It is always possible to work harder. Not necessarily longer or more often—just harder.

2.) If you try to accomplish everything, you won’t accomplish anything. Pick a single goal, and dedicate yourself to achieving that goal.

3.) The further you go from your home gym, the more likely you are to run into someone who is faster, stronger, and more powerful than you. Travel, and bring your humility.

4.) You must surround yourself with those who share and support your goals. If your friends scoff when you leave for the gym at 5 a.m., get new friends.

5.) You cannot coach yourself. “Coaching by mirror” is a great way to know what a movement looks like and a horrible way to know what a movement feels like.

6.) You need to analyze your training, qualitatively and quantitatively. If you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing, stop doing it.

7.) On a related note, human beings are capable of rationalizing anything. If you go looking for proof that you’re on the right track, you’ll find it.

8.) Easy fixes are few and far between. If it’s easy, chances are it’s incorrect, incomplete, or both.

9.) It is human nature to get where you want to be and immediately stop doing the things that got you there. This is a fantastic way to stay right where you are.

All lessons can’t be bright and cheery. Get rid of the crap that’s holding you back, and have the courage to realize that a healthy dose of self-criticism can go a long way toward making you a better athlete. We all need a kick in the ass once in a while.

Go faster!

Picture of a confident lifter in free fall, courtesy of dynamic-eleiko.com.

2007-05-15T00:13:00.000+01:00

A True Maximum

Successful barbell training has several components. In addition to intelligent program design and raw strength, it requires mastery of technique. Without proper technique, force is not used optimally, and an artificial performance ceiling is imposed on the trainee.

All decent coaches know this, and thus spend countless hours drilling proper movement patterns into their athletes. CrossFit is no different. “Chest up, butt back, heels down” is a refrain that I repeat dozens of times every day at CrossFit Boston, whether teaching the squat, the push press, or the thruster. My athletes are equally likely to hear “knees out” and “track the toes” as they are to breathe heavy or need a drink of water.

These cues are directed at everyone, even the most advanced trainees. Proper movement requires constant repetition and reinforcement. In this cycle of correction and reinforcement, I sometimes lose sight of the next step—teaching the proper way to express maximal strength.

Once technique is sufficiently mastered, the athlete must learn to incorporate bodily tension into the lifts. A mechanically sound lift without ample tension is necessarily sub-maximal, as tension has a synergistic effect and will allow the athlete to move a relatively greater amount of weight. This happens due to some simple physical laws.

Force is produced through muscular contraction, moving from the core to the extremities. It must travel through the body before it reaches the source of external resistance—in this case, the barbell. Some of this force is lost as it dissipates into within the body, absorbed by lax muscles and non-contributing tissue. The remaining force travels through its primary pathway, the skeletal system, finally arriving at the barbell and causing movement. Obviously, we’d like to direct as much of the original force as possible to the barbell, minimizing the amount lost within the body and maximizing the amount of weight we can lift. This is achieved through hardening the tissue around the skeletal system through tension generation. When tension is maximized, the trainee is able to express the full limits of his or her strength.

Teaching athletes to create tension is relatively simple. We focus on five areas—the lungs, the abdomen, the butt, the hands, and the feet.

The first priority is creating a rigid torso, as all barbell movements depend on the torso in one way or another. The trainee is instructed to inflate the lungs while pulling the chest upward and outward in an exaggerated display of manliness. This is a practice the old-time bodybuilders refer to as “chest expansion”, and we can be thankful that they got one thing right. It turns the heretofore non-contributing lungs into an internal brace, replacing the liability of empty space with an asset capable of transmitting force. It also serves to retract the upper back, the usefulness of which becomes obvious after completing the subsequent step. The trainee then contracts the abdominal wall and the obliques as if anticipating a blow to the stomach. This completes the hardening of the torso, as the retracted upper back will now spontaneously fire off in concert with the lats, creating a rigid structure throughout the entirety of the upper body.

Next, the trainee contracts the glutes. Tension in the glutes will simultaneously cause the lower back and the hamstrings to contract, effectively creating a bridge between the torso and the legs and turning the body into a single unit. Note that this is only done with movements that begin with concentric loading, such as the deadlift and the press. It is self-defeating to contract the glutes prior to eccentric movements such as the squat or the dip portion of the push press, as a “tight butt” will prevent the hip flexors from doing their job and pulling the trainee downward.

The final piece of the puzzle is the limbs. They represent the last opportunity for force to be lost, and must be made as rigid as possible. This is easy. Simply crush the barbell with the hands and grip the floor with the toes. The arms, shoulders, and lower legs will all contract, surrounding the limb bones with fully hardened muscle.

This sequence of events, from inflating the lungs to gripping the floor, should only take a few seconds. At this point, the trainee is burning brain cells by the moment, inflated lungs depriving the brain of precious oxygen and contracted muscles causing blood pressure to shoot through the roof. It is imperative that the lift be completed as quickly as possible. Once past the sticking point, muscular tension should be held while the inflated lungs are slowly allowed to deflate, restoring the flow of oxygen to the body. This invariably happens toward the end of the lift, as leverages become more advantageous to the trainee, and the weight becomes easier to support.

For higher repetition efforts, it is necessary to generate and release tension in a cycle, so that maximum tension occurs at the same time as maximum exertion. This is fairly intuitive once the trainee is competent at creating and maintaining tension. Inevitably, those most skilled in this practice will have the best chance of performing multi-repetition efforts at a high percentage of one-rep maximum.

Like proper biomechanical technique, tension generation is a skill that must be learned, refined, and reinforced. Repeated practice will result in ever-increasing efficiency, allowing larger loads to be lifted. Trainees are often surprised by the difference that five minutes of attention to this matter can make. Formerly latent strength manifests itself in a rash of new personal records, and I’m decried for not giving up this “secret” sooner. Now you know. Next time, take a deep breath and ride it all the way to true maximum effort.

Go faster!

2007-05-02T19:52:00.000+01:00

Tracking School

Keeping a workout log is not sexy. It’s not as much fun as a heavy deadlift or a smartly executed jerk, so most of my athletes refuse to do it. This is my fault.

I beg and cajole and make a complete mockery of any man, woman, or child who is unable to quote their one-rep maxes or previous personal records from memory, but I never actually force anyone to record their workouts, a process that would speed up recollection significantly.

As a result, I often have athletes spinning their wheels while we try to figure out reasonable loads and modifications for any given workout. Clearly, this is unacceptable.

In leiu of purchasing a cattle prod, I’m going to try to reason with them—and by extension—you. There are at least a few dozen good reasons to complete a log, and you’re going to learn about a few of them today.

Even if you are diligently recording every squat, pull-up, thruster, and sprint, you’re not doing it right. Data in and of itself is useless. It must be qualified and analyzed if it’s going to do you (and your instructor) any good. For this reason, I’m going to share a few metrics that will make your log a lot more useful.

The first step to keeping an effective log is to get rid of your computer. The internet has given us blogs and websites and forums, all of which allow an athlete to store workouts and times in digital format. Many of you have undoubtedly embraced this technology and all the attendant bells and whistles that come along with it, like calorie counters and food logs. Good for you!

Now turn that damn thing off.

When was the last time you had your laptop next to the platform? Ever try to check a personal record online while your hands are covered in chalk and the sweat is pouring off your forehead? I didn't think so.

A good notebook and a pen will do just fine. Start by recording the movements, repetitions, loads, and times for your workouts. Record all four of these metrics, regardless of the type of workout you complete. This data is the raw material for later analysis, and must be kept religiously. A word of caution: do this immediately after your workout. A hastily completed entry, written four days after the fact, won’t do you a lick of good. Your notoriously inaccurate mind will betray you at its earliest possible convenience, typically about a half-hour after you leave the gym. This applies to strength workouts as well. Even if you’re flinging around some iron (or in our case, rubber), start a stopwatch and note the time to completion (as well as movements, repetitions, and loads) before you hit the showers.

If you’re one of the folks who read the first paragraph of this article and figured it wouldn’t apply to you, listen up. Your workout log is nothing but a glorified paperweight unless you do something with your data, and it’s only marginally useful with the data you have so far.

In addition to movements, reps, loads, and times, we need three additional pieces of information—subjective intensity, time since last workout, and bodyweight.

Subjective intensity is a personal measure of how difficult the workout was to complete. For our purposes, “today kicked my ass” is inadequate. We need to attach a number to a feeling, and we’ll do this using a Likert scale. You’ve undoubtedly seen these, although you probably didn’t know they had a name. Hospitals use them to assess patient pain levels, and psychologists use them to propagate half-truths and dubious correlations upon the world.

The Likert Scale looks like this:

All you do is pick the number that corresponds with your immediate feelings regarding the workout, and write it down.

Time since last workout should be measured in hours, not days. Given that most serious athletes are working out six or seven times a week, a day-based data set isn’t worth spilling ink over. On the other hand, knowing the number of hours since your last workout provides you with a great way to determine the relationship between subjective intensity, recovery time, and performance. I’ll show you how in a few moments.

Bodyweight is easy. Step on the scale, step off the scale, and write down your weight. You don’t need to do this very often, provided that you are not trying to diet down or bulk up. A rough estimation will do nicely, as long as it’s consistent.

If you’ve followed me this far, you now have seven pieces of information that you’re recording each and every time you set foot in the gym:

1.) Movements
2.) Repetitions
3.) Loads
4.) Time to Completion
5.) Subjective Intensity
6.) Time Since Last Workout
7.) Bodyweight

A typical entry for me might look like this:

5/02/07

Completed: 1 hr, 5 min
Intensity: 6
Time Since Last: 22 hours
BW: 165

Clean and Jerk
5 x 3 x 70% (135)
4 x 3 x 80% (155)
3 x 3 x 90% (170)
1 x 3 x 95% (180)

Given this information, I can calculate a few things right off the bat which allow me to determine the objective intensity of the workout. (I stole this calculation straight off the pages of Coach Rip’s new book “Practical Programming”, if anyone is looking for references and not finding them.)

The first calculation is total volume, or how much weight I moved. Total volume is an aggregate of sets multiplied by reps multiplied by weight.

Set 1: 5 x 3 x 135 = 2025 pounds
Set 2: 4 x 3 x 155 = 1860 pounds
Set 3: 3 x 3 x 170 = 1530 pounds
Set 4: 1 x 3 x 180 = 540 pounds
Total Volume = 5955 pounds

Next, I calculate an average weight per repetition:

5955 pounds/39 reps = 153 pounds/rep

Then, I simply divide average weight per repetition by my 1 rep max, multiply by 100, and come up with an objective measure of the intensity of my workout.

[153 pounds/190 pounds] * 100 = 81%

This little number is incredibly useful when I’m trying to plan my next workout or write a full-out training program, especially when used in conjunction with my subjective intensity measure, my bodyweight, my recovery level, and time to completion.

The key to using these numbers effectively is to have a large data set. You’ll need to accumulate a month or so of data before it will be of any use, and more data is better than less. Follow along with me here.

Let’s say that my above entry was Day One of my training program (it wouldn’t be, but forget that for a minute). Let’s say that the next day, Day Two, I go again hard, and move 6200 pounds in 40 repetitions, coming up with an average weight per rep of 155 pounds and an objective intensity of 82%. My subjective intensity is a 10, and the time since my last workout is 22 hours.

Looking at the relationship between Day One and Day Two, I can see that very little has changed. My objective intensity and average weight per rep is constant, and my rest period hasn’t changed. The only meaningful change is my subjective intensity, which skyrocketed from a 6 to a 10. Referring back to my Likert scale, I’ve moved into the realm of “Ridiculous”.

Being the smart trainer/athlete that I am, I now know that I cannot handle two back-to-back days at ~80% 1RM without a huge jump in subjective intensity. Taking it one step further, I can theorize that my rest period was inadequate. This theory would be bolstered if it took significantly longer to perform the Day Two workout, say an hour and a half rather than 65 minutes. If the larger pattern warranted it, I might even conclude that my program is inappropriate for my experience level, and a less intense program might be necessary.

This is an awfully convenient example. I constructed it out of thin air, so it should be. In reality, you’ll be looking for patterns in the numbers over time that will allow you to evaluate your training status and avoid overtraining, and these patterns might not always be obvious. My example offers a clear indication of too much work in too little time, unless of course, the larger pattern indicates that this amount of stress drives improvement.

If you wanted to take it one step further, you could use this method to evaluate how appropriate any prewritten program is for your skill level. Simply calculate the objective intensity for each workout, the prescribed rest periods between workouts, and see how they relate to your current program. If the Again Faster Workout from Hell operates at an average objective intensity of 85% with 24 hour breaks between workouts, and your current program has an objective intensity of 70% with 36 hour breaks (and is producing results!), the AFWFH is not something you should be doing.

The key to effective training is to keep objective intensity as high as possible while maintaining subjective intensity at manageable levels, simultaneously observing constant increases in one-rep max. Whew. That’s a loaded sentence, and entire books have been written about it (like Rip’s). Keeping a decent log is the first step toward achieving this effective training.

I could interject a whole bunch of platitudes here, but I’ll spare you. Suffice to say that knowing your training history is a prerequisite to effective training, and you’re not going to remember everything you need to know. Write it down, and stop spinning your wheels. If you’re ready for it, do a little math, and think of new ways to evaluate your training using numbers. You won't waste expensive training time with ineffective programs, and your gym time will become exponentially more productive.

Go faster!

Picture courtesy of kemeri.gov.lv. “Practical Programming for Strength Training” by Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore is available though the Aasgaard Company. It is the best $22.00 I've spent in a long time, and I wholeheartedly recommend picking up a copy.

2007-04-25T18:14:00.000+01:00

Thirty Days to Freedom

When I’m in front of a group of athletes, teaching basic barbell movements, the nuances of the sprint, or proper kipping technique, I’m an expert. I tell them what I know, and I hold it out there as gospel. They usually become better athletes for it, and it makes me very happy.

Still, it turns out that I don’t know a damn thing. When I hit the platform to clean and jerk or throw up a few snatches, I feel like an utter and complete novice. When I set my back on the bench for a few presses, I feel as weak as the first time I set foot in a gym. I attempted a one-legged squat the other day, and I would’ve fallen on my ass if I wasn’t holding onto the pull-up bar uprights.

I get a similar feeling when I read the works of the masters. I’m not talking about Milton, Moliere, and Shakespeare. I’m talking about the guys who have been slinging iron and pounding plywood longer than I’ve been alive—Mark Rippetoe, Glenn Pendlay, John Drewes, and Bill Starr make me feel downright slow.

These men have accumulated decades of training wisdom, the type borne of witnessing tens of thousands of attempts, and they have the wherewithal to get their observations down on paper. When I read these treatises on lifting, I hope to absorb a tenth of what’s there, knowing that I’ll probably have to settle for less. Without tens of thousands of observations of my own, I can’t fully assimilate their knowledge.

These men made a commitment to strength training that I cannot match while working a nine to five.

So be it. In the name of progress, I’ve handed in my resignation. I’m trading a 401(k) and dental coverage for financial uncertainty and a shot at becoming a veteran of the iron game. Starting June 1st, I will be a full-time trainer, author, equipment vendor, and business manager, taking up a station in the back offices of Crossfit Boston.

With the blessing of my girlfriend, a $400 plane ticket, and a pair of lifting shoes, I’ll spend my first week on the job at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, taking the preliminary steps toward a USAW Club Coach Certification. It seems like as decent a start as any.

I don't have decades of time under the bar, but I’m working on it. In twenty years, I may stand in front of a group of athletes and actually know what I’m talking about. That’ll be a good day.

Go faster!

Picture of Coach Rip with Nicole Carroll, courtesy of Crossfit Eastside.

2007-04-16T20:57:00.000+01:00

Putting on the Pounds

Back in January, I started running off at the mouth about snatching bodyweight within six months. Further, I made this my only goal, and said that I would forsake all other pursuits until June.

Needless to say, my ADD-addled brain wouldn't allow me the type of laser-like focus this required, and my body had it's own mini-rebellion after a few weeks of training. My calves rolled themselves up into little knots and my shoulders hurt to the touch.

It took me a good month to realize my snatch grip was too wide and my chest/back were tremendously imbalanced. After a cycle of benching, a slight grip modification, and a few trips to the massage table, my body stopped its Olympic lifting-induced hissy fit.

Now I've got two months left, and I'm a full thirty pounds short of my goal.

The good news is that I can pull the requisite weight (165 on my last weigh-in) to my eyebrows, so it's just a matter of getting the third pull dialed in. Toward that end, I'm employing Dan John's "Big 21" program for the next three weeks.

The premise is simple: 21 reps of three separate exercises (clean and press, snatch, clean and jerk) performed three times a week.

This program has been beat to death all over the Interwebs, but I thought I'd post a spreadsheet for anyone who'd like to know exactly what I'll be doing for the next three weeks. If you'd like to join me, just plug your numbers into the yellow boxes.

Don't give up on me yet, kids. A 165-pound snatch may be close by.

Go faster!

Picture of Thanh Nguyen courtesy of IronMind. IronMind rocks.

2007-04-12T18:08:00.000+01:00

Overhauling the Engine

Here at Again Faster, my preoccupation with power is well documented. I’m not talking Napoleon-marches-on-Russia power, but rather power in the classical physics sense.

Power is equal to work over time, and is variously measured using watts, horsepower, foot-pounds per minute, joules, or any derivation thereof.

Power = work/time

This metric serves as a brilliant conceptual umbrella for explaining Crossfit. During any given workout, we’re trying to maximize power, either by increasing work, reducing time, or both. In a workout such as “Cindy” (as many rounds as possible in twenty minutes, five pullups, ten pushups, and fifteen squats), we’re holding time constant while we attempt to increase the amount of work performed, thereby increasing power. In a workout such as “Fran” (21-15-9, thrusters and pullups), we’re holding work constant while we attempt to minimize the amount of time it takes to complete—again, increasing power.

The power equation is simple, but deviously so. Before any athlete can maximize work or minimize time, he or she must maximize a third variable—strength.

When you begin Crossfitting, your strength base is the equivalent of a four-cylinder engine. Over time, you become more adept at recruiting this strength base to move external objects and your own bodyweight, and your power output goes up. You’ve tuned your engine.

Still, you’re driving a four-banger, and you’ll quickly reach the apex of your output potential. After all, you can only tune that bugger so much.

If you want to up your output further, you’ll need to get a bigger engine. This is where dedicated strength training comes into play. Heavy deadlifts, squats, presses, and Olympic lifts, practiced regularly and to the exclusion of metabolic conditioning, will give you this bigger engine. There are many programs that are effective in this arena. The Hatch Squat Program and the Performance Menu Mass Gain Program have both worked well for me in the past. I guarantee that six weeks of dedicated strength training will turn your four-banger into a V-6, and you’ll have whole new powerblock to tune.

If you’ve recently failed to set a personal record on any of the benchmark workouts, go get yourself a bigger engine through strength training. After six weeks, stop back by the Crossfit performance shop. There, you can tune your bigger engine to new levels of power output, expressing your increased strength through decreased WOD times and increased metabolic capacity.

Don’t be surprised if the first few weeks back from the squat rack are difficult. Your body will need some time to readapt to the wallop that is Crossfit. After a month of rebuilding your metabolic base, try those benchmarks again. If you don’t set a PR, I’ll sell this site to those fitness wizards over at Men’s Journal.

Go faster!

Picture courtesy of moparpowerclub.com. Hatch Squat Program courtesy of Coach Mike Burgener over at Mike's Gym. Performance Menu Mass Gain Template, created by Greg Everett and Robb Wolf and translated to Excel by Jeff Dale, courtesy of The Performance Menu.

2007-04-08T01:16:00.000+01:00

Unilateral Support

This is one of my favorite AF Articles from last year. I published it in the first days of Again Faster, and I'm pretty sure nobody read it. For the sake of your lifting prowess and my ego, let's try this again, shall we?

When was the last time you picked something up with one hand? Probably about two minutes ago. We do it all the time, yet our training is typically done with both hands.

The last time you pressed, cleaned, snatched, or deadlifted, you did it bilaterally. You gripped an loaded barbell with both hands, and did the movement. This pattern is not innate.

We're not programmed to do things with both hands. You are right- or left-side dominant. You use your dominant arm/hand/leg/foot for writing, throwing, kicking, pulling, and pushing.

This predilection toward one side carries over into bilateral movements.

When you do these movements, your dominant side does more work than your non-dominant side. This happens because the human body craves efficiency. Why push harder with the left arm, if the right arm can get the job done?

This efficiency of movement is self-reinforcing. Your right arm does more work than your left, receiving more of the strength gains from training. Because it gets more relative benefit from training, it continues to dominate your left.

The fix is simple. Unilateral movements.

If you're a Crossfitter, you've had some exposure to the one-arm overhead squat, split jerk, walking lunge, and snatch. These exercises require you to move an unbalanced load through a significant range of motion. They only utilize one side of the body at a time, forcing that side of the body to do the vast majority of the work. This precludes any help from the other side, dominant or not.

The weapon of choice for these exercises is either a dumbbell or a kettlebell. The kettlebell will slightly increase your lever length (distance from your shoulder to the center of mass of the external object) in the pull portion of the snatch and the clean, requiring you to do relatively more work than a dumbbell.

This relationship is reversed in during the jerk portion of the C&J, the overhead squat, and the walking lunge, where the kettlebell handle decreases lever length by placing the center of mass closer to your shoulder.

You should work with both of the dumbbell and the kettlebell--constant variety ensures adaptation and keeps things from getting stale.

In practice, you should always perform unilateral movements with both sides of your body. Do your reps with the non-dominant side first, and move to the dominant side later.

Fatigue builds when you're doing any exercise. By using your non-dominant side first, you ensure that fatigue will not prevent you from completing your prescribed reps.

Use a challenging weight. After you've mastered the mechanics of the movement, make sure you're using enough resistance on the non-dominant side to develop strength and power. If you're doing 10 reps per side, use a weight that represents your 12-15 repetition maximum for your dominant side. This will keep the non-dominant side working hard.

Gear your unilateral training toward closing the load gap, so that your repetition maximum is equal for each side.

In addition to helping correct dominance-related imbalances, unilateral movements will help you develop balanced rotational strength.

Rotational strength is called into play whenever we throw, kick, swing, or twist in any way. Nearly every sport I can think of requires its athletes to exhibit power while rotating through the sagittal plane.

When you have a weight extended overhead, using only one arm, a significant amount of the load is borne by your core on the side away from the load. If your right arm is extended overhead, your left-side obliques bear more load than your right-side obliques.

Grab a dumbbell, and do a one-armed overhead squat. Press your "up" shoulder to your ear, look at the weight, and rotate inward slightly as you descend into the squat. Concentrate on your torso. Which side is contracted more?

By overloading the obliques/lats on one side or the other, we develop the ability to use those muscles more effectively for rotation and stabilization. This ability transfers directly to sport.

Just as you're side-dominant, you also have a predilection toward rotating either clockwise or counter-clockwise. Early commentators in snowboarding, skateboarding, and rollerblading dubbed these rotations "natural" and "unnatural".

Working on eliminating the general dominance of one side of your body aids the elimination of rotational dominance. Elite athletes can rotate in either direction with ease. This skill differentiates truly great competitors in baseball, football, soccer, board sports, and gymnastics. It is the foundation of agility.

Unilateral training has obvious merit. We incorporate it into our workouts all the time.

A few weeks ago, we did a WOD geared toward unilateral development at Crossfit Topsfield. It's a barnburner.

For time:

10 kettlebell swings
20 one-armed overhead squats (10 left, 10 right)
30 one-armed split jerks (15 left, 15 right)
40 one-armed walking lunges (20 left, 20 right)
30 one-armed split jerks (15 left, 15 right)
20 one-armed overhead squats (10 left, 10 right)
10 kettlebell swings

Remember to start with your non-dominant side first. If you need an explanation of any of these exercises, shoot me an email using the link in the right sidebar.

If you want to get crazy with it, try a one-armed snatch, squat, clean, or press with the AF bar. It requires tremendous stabilization. I did a one-armed snatch with it yesterday during "Again Faster in Chains", and it almost knocked me on my ass.

That would've been embarrassing.

Go faster!

2007-03-28T18:29:00.001+01:00

Embrace the Pain

With Crossfit, physical proficiency comes quickly. A year into the program, an athlete who was overweight, weak, and deconditioned can expect to be lean, strong, and resilient.

Hesitancy and doubt are replaced by confidence and competency, and novel challenges become opportunities rather than obstacles. Somewhere along that path, the athlete realizes that progress is not limited by bodily capability—it is limited by mental capacity.

Becoming a top-tier athlete requires one to balance on the precarious edge between self-preservation and self-annihilation. The intelligent athlete leans toward preservation, as this ensures progress rather than injury. The problem comes when that athlete shies too far from the edge, forgetting that the body is a very hard thing to break.

This leads to the dreaded “sandbagging”—performing below maximum capacity in the name of self-preservation. I’m often faced with experienced athletes who give ninety percent rather than one-hundred percent. This is not a conscious act, but rather a syndrome that comes from two sources: the brain telling the body to stop and the athlete’s inability to override that signal.

Your brain is responsible for keeping you alive, and tends to overreact to external and internal stimuli. It sends pain signals to your conscious mind long before your body reaches mortal danger, and it does so for a very good reason: it doesn’t want you anywhere near death. The larger the margin (and the sooner you quit), the less likely it is that you’ll approach this point.

To reach the upper echelons of athletic performance, you must ignore this signal. Most athletes are nowhere near their breaking point, and can afford to do this.

Instructing your brain to shut up is as simple as short-circuiting the pain process. During intense exercise, your mind is blank and receptive. There is a virtual absence of conscious thought, allowing pain signals to come through like ambulance sirens. You have to add to the noise, dulling the incoming signals. You have to think.

Count your repetitions out loud. This will occupy your thought processes and prevent the wailing from shutting you down. Similarly, count your breaths during rest breaks. When fatigue forces you to put the weight down, give yourself five breaths and get back to it. The counting process will achieve two aims—it will drown out the pain signals and limit your mid-workout downtime.

This combination will inevitably lead to better WOD times.

I experimented with this process during a workout involving 150 repetitions of the most painful exercise on Earth—the dumbbell thruster. The athletes using a five-breath rest period and continuous counting decimated the times posted by an earlier group, exhibiting decisively superior power output. The better-performing athletes were less experienced than their competitiors, and by all accounts should have handed in less impressive performances.

Elite performances are predicated on pain tolerance. Discomfort must be embraced and overcome, and the brain must be retrained to send pain signals at higher and higher thresholds. As your body evolves, your mind must keep pace. If you can achieve this synergy, the mind and body will continually drive each other to new heights of athleticism.

Go faster!

Sisyphus charcoal courtesy of jillgeorgegallery.co.uk. Image edited by Again Faster.

2007-03-20T17:34:00.000Z

Mastering the Split Jerk

Few exercises possess the beauty and violence of action inherent in the split jerk. Executed correctly, this lift allows superhuman loads to be boosted overhead, placing it in the upper echelon of effective speed and power movements.

Like the snatch and the clean, it is incredibly difficult. Proper execution demands incessant practice and an unreasonable willingness to drop under hundreds of pounds of earthbound iron. At Crossfit Boston, we dedicate hours each week to practicing the split jerk, helping athletes overcome their counterproductive inclinations toward self-preservation.

The split jerk has three phases: the dip and drive, the catch, and the recovery. Problems can arise in any or all of these phases, and must be dealt with for the full potential of the movement to be realized.

The dip and drive phase is crucial to imparting momentum and elevation on the bar. Without this momentum, the catch could not occur.

With the barbell in the rack position, the athlete bends the knees to a quarter-squat, keeping the torso vertical. Quickly reversing direction, he snaps the hips open and drives upward on the barbell. This sends the barbell skyward, the distance it travels inversely related to its weight. At its apex, the barbell is momentarily weightless.

During this first phase, there are several critical points. The torso must be oriented vertically the entire time, and the feet should be directly under the hips. Any deviation from these positions will reduce the force transmitted to the barbell, and may invite injury. It is very rare that a trainee will be unable to achieve either of these positions, as the newbie’s ever-present lack of hamstring flexibility has little bearing on torso orientation during a quarter-squat. Simply coach the correct positions, and move on.

The most pervasive flaw among beginning split jerkers is a slow dip, especially when the weight starts to get heavy. They’ll descend at a rate that makes molasses look fast, and then attempt to drive the weight from a near standstill. This kills the stretch reflex coming out of the bottom, and unnecessarily limits the amount of weight that can be lifted. The stretch reflex should be harnessed and utilized through a rapid descent and reversal.

I typically coach my athletes to execute the dip and the drive at the same speed, and then I tell them they’re doing it too slow, regardless of the outcome. I want it in their heads that speed is paramount.

Full execution of the drive can be a problem, especially if an athlete becomes preoccupied with the subsequent descent into the catch. This is relatively rare, but hard to remedy. If you see this occurring in your own performance, use a light weight and eliminate the post-drive descent until you’re confident that you’re reaching full extension on the drive.

Without a solid catch, the lift is over. As the barbell moves upward from the drive, the athlete reverses direction, taking advantage of the momentary weightlessness of the load to push himself under the barbell. Simultaneously, his legs split front and back into a modified lunge, and the arms come to full extension. The head and chest thrust through the arms, and the athlete lands, weight locked out overhead.

The typical mechanical flaws that present during the catch are easy to correct. Most often, an athlete will fail to thrust the head and chest forward, causing a misalignment between his center of gravity and that of the barbell, making the weight very hard to control. I cue the correct movement by telling the athlete to push his chin toward the wall.

He may also fail to lockout the rear leg, introducing unnecessary slack into the system, or place the rear foot flat on the platform, compromising the depth of the lunge and therefore the amount of weight that can be successfully locked out. Correcting these flaws will take some drilling. Instruct the athlete to lock out the back knee and keep the heel off the platform. Also, coach him into the deepest lunge possible with correct mechanics. As a general rule, the lower he goes, the more weight he’ll be able to jerk. Ensure that the feet are at a tenable width—twelve and six are not good positions for stability.

Crossfit’s legendary Olympic Weightlifting Coach Mike Burgener has a simple correction for this flaw: place a piece of PVC pipe between the athlete’s feet at the outset. No one wants to land on a round pipe, and proper width will result.

The majority of difficulties with the catch phase are mental rather than physical. Understandably, beginning split jerkers have difficulty accepting the dangers of dropping underneath a heavy barbell. Surrendering their connection with the platform and splitting the feet fore and aft is alien and seemingly suicidal, and no amount of talking will overcome this fear. Beginners must learn to feel the movement in a penalty-free environment. Grab a broomstick and practice until the catch is automatic, and gradually add weight over the course of a few weeks.

The recovery is the final phase of the split jerk. The athlete must return to standing, feet side-by-side, with the weight locked out overhead. Anything else and the entire lift is red-lighted—dip, drive, catch and all.

During the recovery, the barbell stays in one place. The front foot slides to a position directly below the barbell, followed by the rear foot doing the same. This sequence is imperative to success. Excessive movement of either foot will irreparably change the combined center of gravity of the athlete and the barbell, support will fail, and the weight will come crashing down. The precariousness of the recovery is amplified by heavier weights, where the slightest misstep will result in failure.

Unfortunately for the coach, lighter weights will allow the athlete make the recovery with terrible mechanics. The rear leg may move first, sometimes all the way to the final recovery position, without a fatal loss of control. This is only possible under light weight, where the athlete’s strength is sufficient to overcome the rapidly changing combined center of gravity. More than any other cue, I find myself repeating, “Front foot, back foot” over and over again. Improper recovery should be quashed early on before it becomes habit, and you find yourself with an athlete who can’t stand up without dropping the bar.

The split jerk is an incredibly fast movement—all three phases are over within a few seconds, and success demands speed. Correct mechanics are the foundation on which this speed is built, and should be drilled to perfection.

One last thought: Sometimes everything goes wrong. Make your lift anyway!

Go faster!

Picture of Coach and Sage Burgener, mid-split jerk, courtesy of Crossfit.com.

2007-02-27T13:06:00.000Z

One Foot to the Toeboard

Here at Again Faster, we have a preoccupation with power. We measure our times, our repetitions, and our loads in an effort to calculate our athletic output to the nearest watt.

In the shot put, these calculations are unnecessary. Power output is evidenced by the farthest throw, an immediate visual measure that requires no pencils, paper, or formulas. The best athlete bombs the shot down the sector, and the gasp of the crowd is the only measure that matters.

Yesterday afternoon, I witnessed some of the best throwers in the world compete at the 2007 AT&T USA Indoor Track and Field Championships. The field was loaded, including two-time Olympic medalist John Godina, World Indoor Champion and #1 ranked Reese Hoffa, 2004 NCAA Indoor Champion Dan Taylor, and 2004 World Indoor Champion Christian Cantwell.

These guys are large, and they move fast. The massive indoor shot resembles a golf ball in the hands of these giants, and 65-foot throws are par for the course.

Reese Hoffa throws 69-plus.

The intricate footwork of world-class throwing puts incredible momentum on the shot, culminating in a drive and extension that sends the implement arcing outward at high speed. The violence of the throw is reminiscent of the third pull of the Olympic lifts, embodying the same devastating combination of speed and skill.

Cantwell continued his pursuit of the 75’10” world record with a Round One put of 71’3.5”, a throw that was unmatched for the rest of the competition. It was enough to secure him the men’s Visa Championship and a giant credit card worth $25,000, an enviable payday in the under-funded sport of professional track and field.

Hoffa took second with a 69’7” throw, and Taylor third with a 66’8” throw, neither man threatening Cantwell’s position at the top.

The final throw of the day belonged to Christian Cantwell. With the competition wrapped up, Cantwell stood in the ring, the shot extended overhead. The stands were shaking with the clapping of hundreds of spectators, the din reaching a crescendo as he lowered the shot to his neck and sank into his starting stance, beginning a blinding spin that culminated in the longest throw of the day.

Cantwell throws a bomb.

We screamed as the shot clanged off the backboards, only to see the official raise the red flag. The foul meant the throw would not be measured, despite the fact that it was easily over the 72’ mark. Cantwell would have to settle for his season-best mark of 71’9” and his gigantic check.

The applicability of throwing to elite fitness is obvious. Along with hip flexion and extension, throwing requires the athlete to harness rotational force to send an object as far as possible. Generating and maintaining rotational force requires tremendous strength throughout the torso, as the athlete must keep the body moving as a single unit throughout the throw. Any weak link severely compromises the end distance achieved.

We do not train the throws in the current Crossfit curriculum, perhaps to our own disadvantage. After witnessing the power and grace of the shot put, I believe that derivatives of the event could be useful in enhancing core strength, midline stabilization, and power expression, qualities that are perpetually lacking in our novice athletes.

John Godina in the ring.

Like every worthwhile athletic activity, power generation in the throws starts at the core and emanates outward, employing the largest muscles of the body in a multi-joint compound movement. We know from experience that this type of movement results in increased muscle mass, decreased body fat, and positive hormonal effects.

Given its similarities with our existing practices, incorporating throwing into the Crossfit training regimen is no-brainer. In fact, our preoccupation with power demands it.

Next time you wander in the door at Crossfit Boston, you may want to look to the sky—taking a shot to the head is never pleasant.

Go faster!

Lead picture of Dan Taylor.

2007-02-17T01:03:00.000Z

The Keys to the Kingdom

On the wall, directly over the lifting platform, a three-foot by three-foot piece of whiteboard records the accomplishments of the members of Crossfit Boston. The four best times for any given feat are recorded on that Board.

Last night, I got booted off the Board. I was number five.

It bugged the hell out of me, and it still does. Fortunately, I know exactly what went wrong, and I can fix it.

As a trainer, it’s my job to know the keys to elite fitness. I know them—back and forth and up and down and sideways. I just don’t follow them all that well. That changes now, today, right this minute. As far as I’m concerned, knowledge and action are the same damn thing, and I’m on the wagon.

The keys to elite fitness:

Consistency: Show up, whether you like it or not. Work out on a regular schedule. If it hurts, suck it up. If you can’t do it, learn.

Effort: When you can’t do the next rep, do it anyway.

Sleep: Nine-plus hours every night. Kill your subwoofer-owning-militant-whore-neighbor if you have to.

Diet: Zone with five times fat. No excuses. Weighing food is easy compared with the everlasting pain of a dead-f*cking-last performance.

Recovery: Roll it out, ice it down, tape it up, stretch it hard. You say you don’t do it because it takes too much time. You don’t do it because it hurts.

I’m not getting booted off that Board anymore. If you’re going to beat me, you’re going to have to experience cardiogenic asthma, hallucinatory states, and mild bouts of suicidal desire to get there. We’ll see who’s where when the smoke clears.

Go faster!

Picture courtesy of bclkeys.com.

2007-02-15T18:59:00.000Z

The Tactical Strength Challenge

Again Faster and Crossfit Boston are hosting a venue for the 2007 Tactical Strength Challenge. The competition begins at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, March 3rd, immediately following the 9:45 a.m. weigh-in.

The TSC tests absolute strength, strength-to-bodyweight, and strength endurance using three events: the deadlift, deadhang pull-ups, and the kettlebell snatch. The competition will be refereed by myself and RKC Lynne Pitts of Crossfit fame.

The rules are as follows, posted directly from the Tactical Strength Challenge Website. They're not complicated, but we will be following them to the letter, and we expect all competitors to arrive with a basic knowledge of the event layout.

To register for the Tactical Strength Challenge, please complete a waiver and bring it with you on the day of the competition. Day-of-competition entries are at the referees' discretion.

The Rules:

Contest: The contest must be held on a single day. The events consist of a three-attempt powerlifting deadlift, pullups for max reps, and kettlebell snatches for max reps in a 5:00 time period. There are three competition classes: Men's Division, Men's Elite Division, and Women's Division. There may be separate awards for Masters (competitors over 50, same as the RKC, not the more common over 40) at the organizers' discretion; however, Masters lifters should lift in the same flights as other competitors. The weights used for pullups and snatches vary by competition class as described below.

The events must be contested in the order of deadlift, pullups, snatches. Each competitor must be allowed at least 15 minutes of rest between events but 30-60 minutes is recommended.

Scoring: In the deadlift, the winner is the competitor that successfully lifts the most weight. In the pullups and snatches, the winner is the competitor that successfully performs the most repetitions. The winner is determined by combined placement in the three events. For example:

If Lifter A finishes third in the deadlift, fifth in pullups, and second in snatches, his score is 10 (3+5+2).
If Lifter B finishes first in the deadlift; third in pullups, and third in snatches, his score is 7 (1+3+3).
The lowest combined score wins. In the above example, Lifter B would finish higher than Lifter A (7 is lower score than 10).

In the event of a deadlift tie, the lighter competitor places higher. In the event of a pullup tie, the heavier competitor places higher. In the event of a snatch tie, the tie stands. In the event of an overall tie (two or more lifters get same combined score), the tie stands.

Equipment: The equipment consists of a standard Olympic bar and plates, a 16kg, 24kg, or 32kg kettlebell, a pullup bar, a weight belt with a chain, and a timer. The pullup bar should be high enough so that tall competitors can use it without excessively bending their legs. It should also be sturdy enough to handle heavier competitors and kettlebells.

The weight belt with a chain is for weighted pullups in the Men's Elite Division. Competitors may use their own weightlifting or powerlifting belts for the deadlift event, but not for other events.

Deadlift: For the deadlift, the bar will be loaded to the weight the competitor specifies and placed on the ground. The competitor will approach the bar and lift it in one continuous motion. When the weight is fully locked out (knees and back fully straightened), the referee will give the "Down" command and the competitor will drop the bar or lower it under control.

The competitor has three attempts and may specify the same weight or a heavier weight in each successive attempt. The competitor may not request a lighter weight after missing with a heavier weight.

Pullups: In the Men's/Masters division and the Women's Division, bodyweight pullups are performed. A chinup grip, with the palms facing the lifter, is not allowed; the palms must face away. The grip may be thumbless or not, but most competitors find they do best with a thumbless grip.

In the Men's Elite division, pullups are performed with 22 lbs (10kg) attached to the competitor using a weight belt and chain. The total assembly (weight belt and plates) should weigh between 21 and 23 lbs and should be weighed before the competition. Any assembly of belt and plates in this weight range is official and will count for competition purposes or for TSC records.

For pullups, the competitor will approach the bar, grasp it with both hands, and settle into a dead hang with both arms fully straightened. (Competitors may initially stand on a block or box in order to reach the bar.) After settling into a dead hang, the competitor will pull with both arms, using no kipping or swinging, and pull up until the neck or the chest cleanly touches the bar. The competitor will then lower back to a dead hang and do another rep.

For each successful rep, the referee will count 1, 2, 3, and so on. The set is terminated when the competitor quits or fails to make three successive attempts.

Kettlebell snatches: In the Men's/Masters division, a 24kg kettlebell is used. In the Men's Elite division, a 32kg kettlebell is used. In the Women's Division, a 16kg kettlebell is used. Competitors may use chalk to improve their grip.

A snatch is defined as swinging a single kettlebell between the legs with one arm, bringing the kettlebell overhead in a single motion, and locking it out overhead with a straight arm. After each rep, the competitor will let the kettlebell fall in a single motion (without dropping the kettlebell to the chest or shoulder) and perform another rep. The knees must be locked out at the completion of the lift for the rep to count. The competitor may not use the non-lifting arm to assist the lift in any way - the lift does not count if the free arm or some other part of body touches the platform, the kettlebell, the working arm, the legs, or the torso.

The competitor has 5:00 to perform as many repetitions as possible. The referee will use a timer and tell the competitor when to begin. Once the timer starts, the competitor can snatch with either arm and switch arms as many times as he/she prefers. The competitor can also set the kettlebell down on the ground, rest, or pace on or around the platform (without disturbing other competitors). The set is terminated when the competitor quits or the 5:00 time limit expires. If the competitor violates another technical rule during performance of the set (for example, lowers the kettlebell to the shoulder), the set is not terminated, but the rep preceding the violation does not count. The competitor may resume performing repetitions provided that he/she complies with all relevant rules.

Referee's discretion: The rules of the TSC are basic and straightforward. A brief rules meetings should precede each event but should be brief and not legalistic. The referee may, at his/her discretion, disallow any unorthodox equipment or practice that he/she feels provides a competitor with an unfair advantage. The exact equipment or practice does not have to be disallowed specifically by these rules.

Now that that's out of the way, we hope you can make it! Lynne promises not to beat you--too badly. Crossfit Boston is located at 123 Terrace St., Roxbury Crossing, MA. We'll start the lifting at 10:00 a.m. sharp!

Go faster!

All pictures courtesy of www.tacticalstrengthchallenge.com.

2007-02-09T16:10:00.000Z

Caught Flat-Footed

Last night, I was watching the World Class Coaching DVD on the clean. I made it through the first hour before I had to shut it off.

My brain couldn’t assimilate the wealth of knowledge contained in the first sixty minutes of the video, let alone the following forty. Watching Shane Hamman clean four hundred pounds with the same dexterity as a ten-pound training bar was absolutely surreal. Cut-aways to Pyrros Dimas and Marc Huster at the 1991 World Championships only added to the effect.

Then the real bombshell. About twenty-five minutes in, the narrator said something like this:

“It is our opinion that the ankles should not extend during the second pull. Despite the fact that many world-class athletes employ ankle extension, we don’t believe it embodies the most efficient technique. Rising up on the toes shifts the center of gravity forward, making the clean more difficult. As the clean is refined, and heavier weights are lifted, we believe this movement will be discarded.”

Holy sh*t. What did he just say?

The video cut back to Hamman, throwing around four hundred pounds like he was warming up for jog in the park. Sure enough, the soles of his shoes remained parallel to the platform for the entire lift. Suddenly back at the World Championships, my eyes were glued to Dimas’ feet. Not a hint of ankle extension.

Watch Hamman at The 2000 North America, Central America and Caribbean Islands Weightlifting Championships:

The evidence was right there in front of me. The best lifters on the Planet employ a double-extension technique. The knees and hips extend, with the ankles continually dorsiflexed at ninety degrees.

The narrator didn’t do me the favor of explaining further, and I was left to rationalize this one on my own.

My bewilderment cleared up as I thought back to my USA Track and Field certification. The O-lifters were keeping their ankles rigid, much like sprinters and high jumpers. These track athletes maintain dorsiflexion because force transmission is compromised if the ankle is extended, and sprinting and jumping at an elite level requires maximal force transmission. They cannot afford a weak link.

Our Olympic lifters are doing the same thing. Any shock absorbing link between the platform and the barbell will compromise the amount of force the athlete can put on the bar, thereby limiting the amount of weight he can clean. Flexing the ankle to ninety degrees maximizes force transmission.

Coming up on the toes compromises another important attribute—balance. This action shifts the center of gravity forward and upward, away from the desired direction of travel. The bar path for a properly executed clean is upward and backward, with about four inches of rearward horizontal displacement. Any forward displacement of the body could compromise the athlete’s ability to rack the bar, as it would cause the barbell to move forward rather than backward.

I’ve had trouble with this myself, my cleans landing forward of their optimal racking position. Lincoln Brigham, a USA Weightlifting Coach out of Sedona, Arizona, theorized that my second pull wasn’t close enough to my body, and my elbow whip wasn’t fast enough, causing me to rack too far behind the bar.

Although these observations are undoubtedly true, I now believe that my extreme ankle extension is exacerbating the problem.

Fighting ankle extension is difficult, and requires an acute awareness of body position throughout the lift. Nonetheless, I've witnessed it in action with my own eyes, so it can't be sworn off as impossible. From this day forward, I’m abandoning triple extension in favor of a flat-footed approach to the clean.

If it's good enough for Shane, it's good enough for me.

Go faster!

Hamman profile picture courtesy of realsolutionsmag.com. Video of Hamman at the 2000 North America, Central America and Caribbean Islands Weightlifting Championships courtesy of Ticket2Sports.com via YouTube.

2007-02-04T15:03:00.001Z

Child's Play

There is a video of Pyrros Dimas floating around the internet. I’ve had it linked to Again Faster since our inception, because it’s absolutely beautiful. Among other things, it shows him power cleaning around 400 pounds.

Not power cleaning as in his femur didn’t make parallel. Power cleaning as in his knees barely bend.

I’ve watched this video upwards of twenty times, and it never ceases to amaze me. I’m no longer surprised at what he does—he’s a three-time Olympic Champion, after all—but rather what he does it with. This man only weighs 185 pounds. It’s predominantly muscle, but there’s only so much muscle you can pack onto a 185-pound guy and still have room left for organs and such.

One of the other assistant instructors at Crossfit Boston asked me to post the video in question to our WOD Blog on Friday morning. I tacked it up there, and barely gave it a second thought. The human brain has a wonderful ability to seek novelty and ignore banality, and I’d seen this video more often than I’d repeated lines from Fight Club.

Late on Friday afternoon, when the incoming email slowed to a trickle, I remembered the wonder that overcame me the first time I watched Dimas throw a barbell around. I shut down the various pieces of financial software that rule my 9 to 5, and I loaded up the video.

He’s only 185 pounds! This piece of trivia had bounced around in my head, unanalyzed and unacknowledged for over a year. This time, it slammed me upside the head.

There are two basic ways to get stronger. An athlete can develop larger muscles, or he can utilize more of the muscle mass he already has. The former process is known as hypertrophy, while the latter process is known as innervation. Either way, contractile force goes up, and the athlete brings more force to bear on the world around him.

Until Friday afternoon, I believed that innervation had a very limited scope. Like every other male on the planet, I thought I’d need to get bigger to get stronger. My daily observations seemed to prove it. Linebackers are stronger than wide receivers, bouncers are stronger than their patrons, and Vin Diesel could clearly kick the crap out of Paul Walker.

Then there’s Pyrros. He could probably fling a 260-pound man a pretty good distance and still have the pluck to pick the guy up and dust him off.

Using our traditional paradigm of lifter size and weight lifted, it would stand to reason that Pyrros would weigh something north of 225. He doesn’t, and the question becomes, “Why not?”

It’s accepted within lifting circles that high intensity/low volume sets lead to innervation without appreciable hypertrophy. An athlete lifting above 90% of his one-rep max is teaching his nervous system to fire his muscles in the exact order and duration necessary to complete the lift without signaling his body to grow.

The number of repetitions an athlete can perform at this intensity is necessarily limited, and the attendant damage to existing muscle fibers is limited as a result. When damage is limited, hypertrophy is limited.

Fortunately, the body’s ability to make additional neural connections with existing motor units is not. The athlete continues to get stronger through innervation.

Along with a few other elite Olympic Weightlifters, Dimas has taken this process to its logical end. These athletes have the ability to contract every ounce of muscle fiber in their possession, with such ferocity and completeness that power cleaning 400 pounds becomes child’s play.

They serve as a striking counterpoint to the idea that bigger is stronger. Next time you feel the urge to buy six bottles of Mass Gain 3000 or call me with complaints that your twelve-part bulking program isn’t working, remember that there are other ways to skin a cat. Load up the bar to 90% and bang out three reps. Repeat a couple more times, and call it a day. Someday, you might find yourself power cleaning 400 pounds.

Go faster!

Picture courtesy of abc.net.au. I believe the video is from Ironmind. If it is subject to any copyright, I sincerely apologize to Dr. Strossen for my role in its dissemination, and I encourage all of you to go subscribe to MILO right now!

2007-01-29T15:39:00.000Z

Interview with an Operator

The fitness needs of Special Operations personnel are extensive. For these folks, optimum physical fitness can mean the difference between life and death. Many have latched onto Crossfit as a means of attaining and maintaining this level of fitness.

I recently got the opportunity to sit down with a good friend and an eight-year veteran of Crossfit who serves our country in this capacity. He shared his take on fitness in the field, covert operations, and the rigors of Crossfit.

AF: You serve in the U.S. Navy as a Corpsman, and you’re also a Crossfitter. What kind of job do you do?

Op: I am a U.S. Navy Corpsman, a medic basically. I work with Marines. This last deployment I was with the MSPF element, which is the Maritime Special Purpose Force element that does VBSS, which is visit, board, search, and seizure of vessels in the ocean. We do hostage takedowns, and reconnaissance and surveillance of enemy personnel.

AF: How long have you been doing that?

Op: About the last year or so.

AF: Give me some background. What happens between the time when the mission comes down and you hit the ground?

Op: You get a warning order. You have this five-paragraph order. It basically states the commander’s intent, what he wants of you, your unit to accomplish on this mission. Approximate dates, times, probably get a photo of a high-value target you need to capture. You get routes. If you’re walking on foot, sometimes you get dropped off 5, 6, 7 kilometers away in the middle of a jungle, you need to walk to the area. You get walking routes, topographical maps, satellite imagery—you get all kinds of stuff as far as mission planning is concerned.

Then everybody gets together, all the key personnel in the unit get together, the platoon commanders, you got your element commander, the element executive officer, squad leaders, team leaders, and the Corpsmen also sit in. They need to know, if something goes wrong medically, where they need to rendezvous with you, how long is evac time, so you can pack your gear accordingly. You’re not going to walk out there with a hospital on your back.

AF: How much gear are you usually packing?

Op: I usually pack between 20 and 30 pounds of gear. Most of it’s water weight, because it’s IV bags, intubation kits.

AF: So hopefully you’re coming back as heavy as you went in?

Op: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I spread load the stuff, too. I spin up most of my guys with how to administer IV solution, all that stuff, hypervolemic shock and all that stuff, so they know how to recognize it. At least, I think they do, I hope they do. When they recognize it, hey I’ve got this IV bag, let’s stick it and bring them to the Doc.

As far as basis, if you put it together, all the medical gear that’s out there, it’s probably seventy or eighty pounds, but I spread load it. One Marine will have some of the stuff, another Marine will…I spread load it within the Squads. You have three Squads in a platoon. If we’re rolling heavy, you’ve got 37 guys out there, you have seventy or eighty pounds of total gear, but they’ll be carrying 1 or 2 IV bags.

AF: So you’ve got this spread loaded, you’re on the helo, you have your mission, you know where you’re going. You’re five minutes to target. Tell me what’s going on physically, what’s going on in your head.

Op: Your mind is running like crazy. This is my first deployment, so you’re running though all the scenarios, what could happen, what couldn’t, is everybody going to be all right? Are you going to bring everybody home safely? Not you, in general, but is your commander going to bring you home safely? You’re just amped up. You’re ready to roll.

Everybody’s quiet. You can’t spit. You’re nervous as all shit. No matter how much water you drink, you still feel dehydrated. That’s just half of it right there. You’re shaking, you’re shaking a little bit.

AF: Okay. You’re over your drop zone. What goes on?

Op: After that, it goes into you do what you’re trained for. You execute. Once your feet are on the ground, you don’t have time to worry about what’s going to happen.

AF: Are you guys always fast roping out? Are you hover landing?

Op: Most of the time we’re fast roping. If you can find a clear LZ far enough away form the objective point, we’ll land, if it’s clear. Helos don’t land if there’s certain criteria. The helos will take off and we’ll start our op.

AF: Most Crossfitters have never fast roped. What exactly is getting out of that helicopter like?

Op: There are two ways to get out of the helicopter. There’s this thing called a “hellhole”, about the size of this table, a little bigger than this table. 3.5 foot by 3 foot hole you swing out of, you fast rope down. That’s the center of the bird, right in the belly of the bird. Then they have a tower that hangs off the back of the helo. You can swing out of that, too. That’s a lot easier to get out of, because there’s no restrictions. Your backside’s away from the bird, you’re looking at the bird as you’re going down. That’s a fun time. Fast roping’s good stuff. It’s a good way to put a lot of guys on the ground without touching down.

AF: Have you ever been in a combat situation where you had to throw somebody on your shoulder?

Op: Yes. We were in -------, and we were operating with Reconnaissance [Marines]. Those guys went through the house, and I was on the outside of the house. One of their guys went down. Their Corpsman inside the house, the Recon Corpsman, their own Corpsman, treated him, but being a Recon Corpsman, they have to push through, they have to operate more, so they called me up.

I had to do my secondary assessment, and I put him over my shoulder and carry him out. The LZ was 1.5 clicks away, so I carried him about 1.5 clicks.

AF: How far is 1.5 clicks?

Op: About a kilometer, 1500 meters.

AF: How much would you say this guy weighed?

Op: About 270, 260 pounds with all his gear.

AF: You carried a 270-pound man a kilometer. What are the ramifications of you not being able to do that?

Op: Basically, when that Corpsman did the turnover to me, here’s your patient, this is your patient; you’ve got to take care of him. If I can’t carry him, I can’t take care of him. The reason we’re there is to take care of the guys who are in need of medical attention. So if I have to dump him with some Marine who doesn’t know any medical, doesn’t have any advanced trauma and life support training, who can’t do any monitoring, even on his shoulder—he wasn’t wounded that bad, but bad enough to where he couldn’t walk—you always want to be able to monitor the patient. Me being able to carry the guy made it that much easier for me to monitor him.

Also, I’m doing my job, I’m sharing my load. I’m not dumping my load on someone else. So it makes the team that much more efficient.

AF: As far as the psychological necessity of being in the field, I’m sure you need to be focused and on-target and unemotional. I don’t want to put words in your mouth. What is it like out there for you psychologically?

Op: You have to be ready and focused all the time, especially in that situation. Stuff goes downhill very quickly. For it not to go downhill on you, you need to be focused. That Crossfit stuff comes into play big-time. That physical duress you go through, even if it’s twenty minutes, it builds the mental toughness, the focus. You don’t have to worry about huffing and puffing up a hill.

AF: You obviously have to undergo some job-specific training, not only medical, but you need to be proficient with your gear. What kind of physical training do you undergo in the U.S. Navy, and how do you blend that training with Crossfit?

Op: The Navy sends me to medical schools, all the medical training we can get. A Corpsman on the “green side”, with the Marines, we start with Corps School, we go to FMSS, which is Field Medical Service School, and from there, they go to their unit. Their unit, after that, can either send them to EMT school or OEMS, a live tissue school. It’s a two-and-a-half week long school where they teach you all the ATLS stuff. They take the biggest points out of 18-Delta, which is the special operations medic school that all the special operations medic guys go through. We do a pig lab after that, a live tissue lab. You get to see firsthand what bullet wounds do to flesh, what cuts do to flesh. Sutures and stuff like that. Funny thing is, when you go to that course, you’ll be about 150, 200 yards away from the pig, and they’ll shoot it, and they’ll call for a Corpsman Up, Medic Up, and you have to go running to it. Assess it while you’re huffing and puffing, put it on a stretcher, and bring it back to your table. It’s an all or nothing type thing.

Crossfit teaches you to be like that. One second you’ll be standing there, and the next second, you’re going as fast and hard as you can.

AF: Are you just picking it up?

Op: You’re running to your patient or your pig—it doesn’t matter—and as you’re running there, all these scenarios are going through your head. That’s where physical fitness is huge. Is huge. If you’re not fit, one, you can’t get there quick enough, and number two, being fit allows you to think on the move. Thinking on the move is the big thing.

Just like if you were doing a “Diane”. If you know you can’t lift a 225 twenty-one times, if you’re thinking on the move, if I just divvy this up seven times, rest a little bit, seven times, rest a little bit. If you can’t do the handstand pushups 21 times in a row, it’s the same way. You build that focus.

AF: You started Crossfitting before you were serving in a covert capacity. What were the fitness requirements you had to meet to get into your Spec Ops Program?

Op: Basically, there isn’t a [stated] requirement. Physical fitness is paramount in that community. If one guy can’t keep his weight or pull his weight, the next guy has to pull his weight, and there’s a trickledown effect. If you’re operating with only twelve or fifteen guys in a house, it’s very hard to be efficient.

That’s where physical fitness comes into play, where Crossfit comes along. You should be able to carry a 250-pound guy a substantial distance if you need to. You also need to be able to deadlift a 250 pound guy, because if he’s on a litter, and you’re sharing it with another guy, you should be able to lift at least 150 pounds, maybe 200 pounds—him, all his gear, and maybe sometimes you need to put your gear on him as well.

AF: We were talking earlier about first responding, about policemen and firefighters, about the need to be out in the field and have your physical capacity about you to be able to do your job. Obviously, that’s very important. How do you fit in working out and being recovered enough to do your job, and is it an issue for you in your job?

Op: Policemen don’t carry sixty pounds of gear. First responders, same thing. EMTs, paramedics, those guys. Firefighters do, they have to wear all their protective gear. But those guys are immediate action. They get a call, they have to go right away.

In the military, it’s not like that. It’s more you get a mission base, you get your mission planning, and then your execution. That timeframe is usually 48-72 hours. So let’s say I do a Crossfit workout, a real hard one, like we did today, where you know you’re going to be sore tomorrow. You’re still good. Before your feet hit the deck, you’re going to be fully recovered. Let’s say you get the word tonight—you know you’re not going to hit the deck for at least another 48 hours. That’s the very minimum. Usually they push it further.

AF: How do you do WODs on deployment? You’re out for months at a time; you obviously can’t pack an entire gym with you. You guys are operating in pretty austere environments. What do you have?

Op: One of our guys in our platoon bought a bunch of kettlebells, so we bring those with us. We spread load those as well. If we’re making a campsite for the night, if we’re working in clandestine operations, we obviously don’t bring them, because we know we’ll be back within the day. But if we’re just out in the field we bring kettlebells with us. We also take from the old Crossfit Journal, where you can fill up sandbags and old ammo cans with sand. We guesstimate distances as far as running and stuff like that. I have a pair of rings I bring with me every time we go to the field. That’s how we Crossfit.

AF: How often do you get at it?

Op: Every time we go out. When I’m in garrison, I do it every day. When we’re in the field, it all depends whether or not we have time or not. Because in the morning—mornings are early—six o’clock, six thirty they get you up and you have to do your training. That training usually lasts until sundown. But if you’ve got enough time you do it, if not, you live to fight another day.

AF: Where do you get your workouts?

Op: When I go to the field, if I know I’m going to the field for five days, I write down five days worth of workouts, just random ones, ones I know I like. Ones that I know the guys I workout with like.

AF: Do you guys do exclusively Crossfit-style workouts? Is there anything else in there? Are you lifting?

Op: We’re running a lot and swimming a lot. So what we usually do in garrison, back in the rear, we’ll Crossfit in the morning at six, and at the end of the workday, we run or swim. That keeps us in pretty good shape. Actually, keeps us in really good shape.

AF: Is there total buy-in in your unit? Is everybody Crossfitting? Are there some guys that look at you like you’re nuts?

Op: There’s a lot of guys that look at us like we’re nuts. I’ve got to say, 85% of the guys look at us like we’re nuts. But the results speak for themselves. When I’m the first one done with a combat o-course, or I’m the first one done with a run, or the first one done with a swim, or the first one done with a run-swim-run, it’s all “who’s this guy?” Who’s this Navy guy? They talk shit about the Corpsmen, because you’re not a Marine. But I didn’t join the Marines Corps. It’s good to kick some ass every once in a while, put them in their place.

AF: How many guys are we talking about?

Op: The platoon is 35 deep, and about ten guys are Crossfitting. I know there’s five of us doing it on a consistent basis. You know ------‘s one of the guys in my platoon, and there’s two other guys that do it on a consistent basis. Four or five of us on a consistent basis. The other guys, they kind of do it, sometimes maybe not, depending on their mood.

AF: You guys ever try to spread the Gospel, so to speak, or is it hands-off?

Op: I tried. I tried when I first checked into the unit, and it didn’t work.

AF: What are these other 30 guys doing for fitness?

Op: The old school Marine Corps shit. They’re doing a lot of running. I told them, “A lot of running’s not going to make you combat effective.” They do a lot of the isolated muscle thing, the muscle-head, biceps curl shit.

AF: Is there a difference in results from the guys doing Crossfit? You’ve got a third of the guys doing Crossfit. Do you see a difference in run times?

Op: Hell yeah. -----, when he first started Crossfitting, his PFT… In the Military, everything is a PFT. What was your last PFT score? Which is not an accurate measure of fitness.

AF: For those that don’t know, what is the PFT?

Op: The PFT for the Marine Corps is sit-ups in two minutes—a hundred is a perfect score—pull-ups, no time limit, twenty is a perfect score, and a three-mile run. Eighteen minutes is a perfect score.

AF: Let’s talk about range of motion. Are these full sit-ups?

Op: No. Not at all. It’s arms crossed, touch your thighs. The pull-ups are dead hang. You can’t kip, but you can get a rhythm. If it doesn’t look like you’re kipping, they’ll count them.

AF: What’s your PFT score?

Op: My last PFT score was 295 out of 300.

AF: Where did you fall short?

Op: I was a little slow on the run.

AF: So you couldn’t string together three consecutive 6:00 miles? That’s okay, man, not too many people can. (Laughter).

Op: It’s ridiculous.

AF: These guys that you’ve got out there running every day?

Op: Even the guys that are out there running every day aren’t scoring 300 PFTs. A lot of them are falling short on the calisthenics, especially the pull-ups. A lot of guys can’t do twenty pull-ups. It’s kind of embarrassing for them when the Corpsman comes along and does twenty pull-ups like it was nothing.

Going back to ------, when he first started Crossfitting, his PFT was like a 255, 265, something like that. It’s middle first-class. High first-class would be a 285, 290, 295. He started Crossfit, and two months later, he had a PFT, and he went from a 265 to a 285, 290. In just two months. And he still maintains it today. And he’s gotten heavier as far as muscle mass. He’s got even more muscle.

AF: What other situations do you find yourself in where your fitness needs to be exhibited, not in a combat situation, but in o-courses, etcetera?

Op: O-course too. The Marine Corps o-course. It’s a short course, about 200 meters long. Not even two hundred meters. It’s a hundred and fifty meters long. You got a bar you have to vault, you got monkey bars, you have a thing called the “Dirty Name “ where you jump off a log and catch it on your stomach, and then low walls, you got low log vaults, and a rope climb at the end. My time, it’s hard for me to gauge it, because I didn’t start Crossfit in the military—I started on the outside. Which is good, but for a bigger guy, I’m not small, I can keep up with the best of them. I attribute it to Crossfit.

AF: How long does it take you to get through that hundred and fifty meters?

Op: Last time, it was like 3:40 over twelve, thirteen obstacles. You get to the rope, you’re smoked. There’s no doubt about it. It’s a short, quick workout. Sometimes you run it two, three times for PT. I like it. It’s very Crossfit-like. It’s functional, throw-your-body-somewhere stuff.

AF: We know Crossfit is superior to a bodybuilding/cardio split. I don’t think that’s worth rehashing too much. Does it actually make a difference in the field? Are your bodybuilding/cardio guys keeping up with you anyway? Is it really not a problem?

Op: They can keep up, but they get gassed a lot easier. They definitely can’t carry a two hundred and sixty pound guy for one and a half kilometers. But they can keep up. They wouldn’t be there if they couldn’t. They were hand-selected by our battalion to go to this unit. They can, but I think they could do better. That’s just my opinion, from what I’ve seen.

AF: All right. Thanks. I really appreciate you sending me this stuff and taking the time to talk with me. I’m sure everyone out at Crossfit will appreciate it too. Thanks very much.

Op: No worries.

My thanks to the men of the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps, and my friend, the outstanding Crossfitter who made this possible. Thank you for your service. All pictures courtesy of an anonymous serviceman known simply as "Combat Camera".

2007-01-26T19:19:00.000Z

Killing Fran

You think your "Fran" time is good? John Velandra of Crossfit Cape Fear took this video of Greg Amundson and Kelly Moore banging out everyone's favorite WOD in under four minutes at the 2006 Boston Crossfit Certification.

Everytime my ego gets too big, I turn this on. Three and a half minutes of humble pie.

Go faster!

2007-01-25T15:01:00.000Z

Bringing Out The Dead

We've got a lot of new athletes at Crossfit Boston, and with the influx comes a whole bunch of newbie questions about deadlifting, including the corker I got last night: "What's a deadlift?"

Here's my take on the best slow lift in existence, originally published in May of last year. Not much has changed since I wrote this article, but I have managed to add 40 pounds to my deadlift. Also, it turns out I'm not as bitterly sarcastic as I used to be. Thanks, Sammy!

I love deadlifting. There aren't too many things I like better than ripping a sh*tload of weight off the ground. I love that moment when you're pulling, and the bar is bending, and nothing is moving. At that moment, I know that I have to be stronger than the gravitational pull of the Earth. Beating an entire planet? It doesn't get any better than that.

The deadlift is a relatively simple movement. Grab the bar, and get it above your knees. Go to full extension. That's it. No double scoop, no "getting tall", no explosion. The deadlift is a slow grind of man versus metal.

Like everything else, the details are important. I'm not an expert on the movement, but I've been coached through a pull or two, and I'm damn close to a 2.5x bodyweight lift.

The first detail--own the f*cking bar. Walk up to that thing like it stole your wallet after it slept with your sister. Grab it, using a hook grip or a mixed grip, and strangle the ever-living sh*t out of it. Treat every pull like a battle.

You're William Wallace, and the bar is the English. It doesn't stand a chance.

Once you've got a good grip on the bar, drop the hips and get your chest up. The bar should be on your shins or damn close. Unlike a snatch or a clean and jerk, your shoulders should be behind the bar.

Retract your upper back. Your lower lumbar curve should be pronounced. A rounded back is going to result in injury. You'll notice a tendency toward rounding as your reps go on, especially during high-rep efforts. Make a conscious to effort avoid rounding.

As you're addressing the bar, take a deep breath, and tense every god-forsaken muscle in your body. All of them. Say it with me now..."I am one piece. I AM ONE PIECE!"

Now, don't think. Don't wait. Don't breathe. Don't worry about how much weight is on the bar. Rip that motherf*cker off the ground.

Your hips and your shoulders should move at the same rate. Do not extend the hips and then the back. The movements should be simultaneous. If you do them independently, you'll get no pull out of your legs and all the strain will be on your lower back. This will severely limit the amount of weight you can move. Romanian Deadlifts are wonderful and all, but that's not what we're doing here.

Pull through the heels. This is important. You wouldn't engage in a tug-of-war on your toes. Human beings are built to pull from the heels. We do it instinctually in every pulling effort we engage in. Unlike last Saturday night, now is not the time to resist your instincts.

Even though the bar may be moving slowly in reality, pull fast. This is a mindset. The "faster" you attempt to pull, the more power you'll develop. Power output is a direct result of a high rate of force development, or RFD. The sooner get to your maximum force output, the sooner the lift will be over--you'll lift quick and spend less time fighting the bar.

Do not quit. Just because the bar doesn't move at first doesn't mean it won't move. The barbell is flexible--at high weights, it actually bends before the weight comes off the ground. You have to work through this point. If you feel stuck, pull harder! DO NOT QUIT!

This lift is close to my heart. I'd do it all day long if I could. Screw Crossfit. Screw density training, sprinting, and gymnastics. I want to move enough weight to qualify as a human bulldozer.

Take some advice from a man who has already achieved machine-hood. Dave Tate has pulled 740 off the ground. His deadlifting advice doesn't always vibe with mine--he advocates rounding of the upper back and keeping the bar away from the shins. Of course, he's been lifting since I was in diapers, so what the f*ck do I know. Check out this article, courtesy of Dave Tate and T-Nation.

Go faster!

I don't know where the picture of Mel Gibson came from. It might be a mug shot. The skinny screaming guy is me, back at the old CFB Facility.

2007-01-23T16:12:00.000Z

Exercising Caution

As a trainer, I have a mandate. I’m charged with increasing my clients’ speed, strength, and power, and with those qualities, their overall fitness.

I’m also charged with keeping my clients injury-free. An athlete who is unable to run, jump, pull, push, and throw is not going to make any gains. I always err on the side of caution in this respect. If a client reports persistent pain beyond the level of simple discomfort for any movement, we don’t do that movement.

I also refuse to expose my athletes to any movement that I deem unsafe. There are very few exercises that fall into this category. Most exercises that conventional wisdom has declared “unsafe” are absolutely necessary for elite athletic development—the squat and the deadlift come to mind. These exercises are perfectly safe with proper spinal alignment and range-of-motion. Without these sound mechanics, they can result in injury.

The weighted good morning is one of the few exercises my athletes don’t perform. While this movement is perfectly suitable for veterans of posterior chain work, it exposes novice and intermediate athletes to an unacceptable risk of injury. Further, a viable substitute exists that reduces this risk substantially.

In the weighted good morning, the athlete holds a barbell across the trapeziums, much like the starting position of the back squat. With a slight bend in the knees, he then leans forward at the waist while pushing the hips back, keeping the chest up and the shoulders retracted, until reaching parallel. Upon completion, he returns to the upright position.

Like the squat and the deadlift, performing this movement safely requires good spinal alignment. The chest is “up”, the shoulders are retracted, and the lower back is arched.

For novice athletes, maintaining this spinal alignment is a challenge. This group typically presents poor hamstring flexibility, making it nearly impossible for them to retain an arched lower back throughout the prerequisite range of motion during the good morning. Without this arch, a tremendous shearing force is placed on the spine. The lack of proper spinal alignment is further exacerbated by the placement of the resistance.

Using classical mechanics, the dangerous nature of the good morning due to the placement of resistance becomes blindingly obvious. The barbell is across the shoulders, a full torso-length from the hips. In essence we have a lever system, where the spine serves as the lever and the hips serve as the fulcrum.

The further the fulcrum is from the load, the greater the force that must be applied to the lever to move the load. In this case, the fulcrum is as far from the load as possible, and the athlete must apply a great deal of force to the spine in order to return to standing. The chance of the back rounding and spinal alignment failing is huge.

The majority of the benefit of the good morning lies in the return to standing. The athlete recruits the hamstrings, the glutes, and the erectors to move the resistance through a 90-degree arc, ostensibly building strength and power in that muscle group. Make no mistake—this is a worthwhile goal. The ham/glute/erector complex is the engine that drives all athletic movement. It must be developed thoroughly in order to achieve maximum performance.

There is an alternative to the good morning that creates the same speed and power benefits. The Romanian Deadlift (RDL) recruits the same muscles as the good morning while allowing the novice athlete to achieve proper spinal alignment, despite a lack of hamstring flexibility. Most importantly, the load is placed very close to the hips, reducing the load on the spine, and therefore reducing the risk of rounding.

The RDL is often lumped into the mix of dangerous exercises. Like anything else, it can be devastating without proper mechanics. The knees are slightly bent, the chest is “up”, the shoulders are retracted, and the lower back is arched. The barbell is against the shins, placing the load close to the hips and within the base of support. Keeping the knees bent and the spine in proper position, the athlete moves through a 90-degree arc to vertical.

There are several similarities between the RDL and the good morning. The glute/ham/erector complex is activated in each instance, and proper performance requires good spinal alignment. The range-of-motion is nearly identical. The difference lies in the placement of the load in relation to the hips and the base of support. When we take these factors into consideration, the proper choice of exercise becomes obvious.

With equal efficacy, and a lower risk of injury, the RDL is superior to the good morning for targeted posterior chain development.

Go faster!

Pictures courtesy of the Maryland Spine Center, Bullz-eye.com, and Purekracht.nl. The crappy lever illustration is all mine.

2007-01-19T21:11:00.000Z

The Truth

Everyone has their caveats. This is the warning reasonably intelligent people deliver after every definitive statement in an attempt to cover their ass.

“Yeah, fasted cardio is the only way to get your body fat below 8%. But, you know, that’s only true for most guys. It might not work for you.”

The caveat absolves the speaker of any responsibility for the effectiveness of their advice, shifting the blame for failure to the listener. In the world of athletic training these cop-out statements are often necessary—there’s not a whole lot out there that’s strictly black and white.

Nonetheless, I was lying in bed last night wondering if there are certain unalienable truths out there, statements about training that require absolutely no caveat. In my mind, every pursuit has an essence that lends itself to description and explanation. Fitness is no exception. Here, I humbly present the truths of training, caveat-free:

1.) You will not get stronger without overload.

This one is simple. Training has two guiding principles—volume and intensity. The first refers to the number of repetitions performed, while the second refers to the relative demand those repetitions place on the body. Over time, you must expose your body to gradually increasing volume in order to reap fitness benefits. You must keep intensity high throughout.

I like to track this in my workout log by recording the total amount of weight lifted in any session divided by the number of repetitions performed in that session. This calculation gives an average weight per repetition. This number must increase over time, or you’re just spinning your wheels.

2.) You will not get bigger without eating more or smaller without increasing energy expenditure.

My buddy Eva Claire loves this one. All the girls want to get smaller and all the boys want to get bigger. Most women try to get smaller by eating less when they would be better served by increasing their energy expenditure. Most men try to get bigger by increasing their energy expenditure, although they’d be better served by eating more.

Each gender should take a page out of the other’s playbook.

Eating less only serves to lower your metabolic rate, meaning your body will attempt to conserve every precious calorie for future use. What goes in stays in, stored as fat. Rather than lower their metabolic rate, women would be better served by lifting heavy to maintain lean muscle mass and exercising with high intensity to ramp up fat-burning.

In the same vein, lifting heavy and often will only increase lean muscle mass if the attendant caloric intake will support the new tissue. The boys need to take in more food, not lift more. Nonetheless, they’ll spend three hours a day in the gym, burning off those stray calories that would’ve turned into new tissue if energy expenditure had been a little lower.

3.) Steady-state cardiovascular work will not lead to fitness.

The body uses three distinct energy pathways, each employed based on the demands placed on the body. Two of these systems (the alactic acid system and the glycolytic system) are called into play when the rate of muscle contraction exceeds the body’s ability to produce contractions using oxygen.

These two systems, collectively known as the anaerobic systems, are not trained during steady-state cardiovascular work. Steady-state work utilizes the aerobic energy system, which is only capable of producing muscle contractions in the presence of oxygen.

Unfortunately, the anaerobic systems are critical for high to moderate power output activities, such as the squat, the clean and jerk, and the 400-meter sprint. If they aren’t properly developed, the corresponding activities suffer.

Road jocks aren’t worth a damn when it comes to performing anaerobic activities, because they haven’t developed the contractile strength that comes with heavy anaerobic training. Primary practitioners of steady-state cardiovascular work are incomplete athletes.

4.) Mental focus is more critical to training success than physical ability.

We are limited by our bodies, but our true limitations exist in the mind. Flat-out lying to an athlete about weight on the bar will often get them to lift a personal best, absence any organic change in the body. I attribute this phenomenon to the power of belief. “Knowing” that you can do something will instantly bring you closer to doing it. Combine an ardent belief with months of training, and you have a recipe for excellence.

On the flip side, God-given ability is easily negated by a poor outlook. I’ve seen otherwise-talented sandbaggers spend a lot of time claiming inability, giving them a ready-made hedge against failure. These folks fail a lot, and they remain in the realm of the novice athlete for years.

5.) There is an inverse relationship between the complexity of a piece of exercise equipment and its effectiveness.

The most effective implements for building lean muscle tissue and shedding fat are heavy, blunt, and simple. They have few or no moving parts, and they don’t plug into the wall. A barbell, some weights, a few dumbbells, and a pull-up bar are all you need to achieve world-class fitness. Everything else just adds variety.

By their nature, these things require effort to use. You’ve got to pick them up off the ground and hoist them around. They don’t give you a place to sit, and they don’t read your heart rate every ten seconds.

If your exercise regimen involves blinking lights, vibrating seats, or imbedded televisions, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Find the stuff that’s cold and heavy and made of metal. It’s the only route to fitness.

There they are—five unalienable truths about training. You could disagree with my assertions, and probably make a good case of it, citing fifteen scientific studies and the extensive knowledge of the over-certified polo shirt-wearing pseudo-trainer down at the local Y.

The problem is you’d have to use an awful lot of caveats.

Go faster!

Picture courtesy of magnetreps.com. Check out our new Gill Athletics site for all the heavy, blunt, cold stuff you could ever need. From now until eternity, we're offering great discounts on all the gear in the Gill Athletics inventory. Email me for details!

2007-01-18T17:03:00.000Z

Impulse Control

Virtually all athletic activities involve maximal force development. This may be directed toward starting, stopping, changing direction, or maintaining a vector at top speed. Likewise, it may be directed at throwing, jumping, and hitting. As a general rule, the more force you’re able to develop, the greater your athletic potential.

The fastest sprinter and highest jumper direct the most force toward the ground with the greatest speed, as does the world record holder in the clean and jerk. Each one of these athletes depends on their ability to move a motionless object into motion.

For the track athlete, this object is themselves, while the weightlifter is moving a barbell. For the aspiring Crossfitter, this object could be themselves, a rower handle, a barbell, a kettlebell, a medicine ball, or any other form of resistance. In each instance, we’re looking to move an object from rest to top speed in the shortest amount of time possible.

Moving an object from rest (or in a new direction) requires an impulse. This quantity is equal to the average force applied to an object multiplied by the duration of that force application.

Impulse = Force (avg.) * duration of force application

The greater the overall impulse, the faster the ensuing acceleration will be, all other things being equal. Therefore, to maximize our sprint start, our first pull, and our rowing stroke, we must maximize impulse.

There are two ways to maximize impulse—increase force or increase the duration of force application. Ideally, we won’t separate these quantities. We’ll generate a ton of force for as long as possible.

Maximizing force is intuitively obvious. We want to push hard and fast. Even beginning athletes know that “harder and faster” increases force output. Tell a little leaguer to hit a baseball as hard as he can, and the little guy will swing the bat as fast as he can.

The problem comes when we automatically associate the speed of an action with its force potential. If you were trying to knock out Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell, you would try to hit him as hard as possible as quickly as possible, but you wouldn’t rabbit punch the guy fifteen times. Intuitively, you know that one strike delivered well is more effective that ten strikes delivered poorly, even if both efforts take the same amount of time.

I constantly observe Crossfit athletes trying to “knock out the Iceman” by going too fast. They attempt to speed up their sprinting by increasing stride frequency, speed up their rowing by increasing stroke rate, and clean more weight by pulling on the bar “faster”.

It doesn’t work.

These athletes are sacrificing impulse generation for speed. By blindly pursuing “faster”, they are maximizing force but inadvertently minimizing the duration of force application. Their feet don’t stay in contact with the ground or the rower pedals long enough to generate a meaningful impulse. As our handy-dandy equation shows, maximal force means nothing if the duration of force application approaches zero.

When accelerating an object—self, barbell, rower handle—the athlete must consciously strive for a maximal period of force application. In practice, this means staying in contact with the ground or the foot pedals for as long as possible while applying maximal force. Rather than row “faster”, we need our athletes to row “harder”.

The same principle applies to sprinting. Those who come out of the blocks the fastest generate the largest impulse. They maximize ground contact time for the first twenty meters of a race, pushing “harder” than the competition. Similarly, our Olympic lifters attempt to keep their feet flat on the platform for as long as possible, maximizing contact time and therefore maximizing the impulse to the barbell. Each reaps the benefit of greater acceleration.

Graphically, impulse generation is a parabolic function. For each athlete, there will be a moment of perfect balance between force generation and duration of force application. After this point, force generation drops.

For each athlete, we must find the point where the amount of force and duration of application result in the greatest impulse. Fortunately for the coach and the individual athlete, most athletes are on the early side of the curve, where duration is insufficient to maximize impulse.

Next time you’re going for that personal record, remember to push harder longer. Contact time is essential. You don’t want the Iceman to realize you’re trying to knock him out.

Go faster!

Picture of Chuck Liddell courtesy of plu.edu. "The Iceman" is a Crossfitter, training under John Hackleman at The Pit. Given his recent victory over Tito Ortiz, it must be working!

2007-01-12T18:31:00.000Z

AF Strongman

This weekend, Again Faster will be at Crossfit Boston for the first-ever Again Faster Strongman Contest.

Patterned after everyone’s favorite late-night program, World’s Strongest Man, we’ll have four events and a whole lot of weight. The only thing missing will be the massive doses of veterinary medication.

I’ve always been partial to the Atlas Stones, an event that requires competitors to lift five successively heavier boulders onto progressively higher platforms. We don’t have any Stones, but we’ve got a whole bunch of barbells.

We’ll load five of them up. Competitors will clean each barbell and place it on a squat rack. The bars get heavier and the racks higher with each attempt. The winner moves the most weight. In the event of a tie, the win goes to the athlete who moves the most weight in the least amount of time.

The second event is the Squat. Competitors will lift a 100-pound (men) or 50-pound (women) sandbag from the floor and squat it as many times as possible in three minutes. The thighs must break parallel with every repetition. The athlete with the most repetitions wins.

The third event is the Crucifix. Competitors will hold dumbbells at arms’ length, parallel to the floor (12 pounds for the guys, 8 pounds for the girls). The athlete who maintains the prescribed position for the longest amount of time wins.

The fourth event is the Overhead Carry. Competitors will lift a loaded barbell from the floor, and put it overhead in a snatch grip. They’ll then walk from one end of the gym to the other and back, maintaining the bar’s overhead position. The winner will be the athlete who goes the furthest or completes the course in the least amount of time.

We’ll meet at Crossfit Boston at 8 a.m. on Sunday morning. You’ll get all the joy of Strongman with none of the inadvertent Eastern Bloc hilarity.

Go faster!

Picture courtesy of dni.mojpiotrkow.pl.

2007-01-09T16:00:00.000Z

Principles of Speed

“The Athlete’s Mission Statement: Generate and apply the greatest amount of force over the greatest range of motion in the least amount of time.”—Dave Kerin, Middlebury College Track & Field

I attended the USATF Coaching Certification for one reason: Crossfitters sprint constantly, and no one seems to get much faster.

Sprinting is not jogging with a higher stride rate. If you ask an athlete with a background in high-mileage running to sprint, their mechanics will remain the same regardless of speed. They will go faster, but the improvement is asymptotic. They’ll soon reach the ends of their ability, limited by form rather than potential.

Speed is not driven by rate of action. It is driven by force of action. Translated to sprinting, this means your speed is based on how much power you apply to the ground, rather than how fast you move your feet.

Most folks get this exactly backward. They assume a higher stride rate produces speed. Rather, a higher rate of force production produces speed. This truism is based on Newton’s Third Law: For each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The more force we put into the ground, the more force it returns to propel us forward. This process is observable as increased stride length—a more powerful foot strike propels the athlete further than a less-powerful foot strike.

Good sprint mechanics start with posture. The body must be relaxed and in balance. The head is aligned with the spine, and the shoulders are aligned with the hips.

Notice that our sprinter is squared to the direction of travel—there is no angular rotation about the spine. This ensures that all of his energy is directed toward propelling him forward.

When the recovering foot hits the ground, it strikes directly under his center of mass. This prevents the braking action that would occur if his foot landed in front of him.

Upon contact, he achieves full hip extension, much like the second pull of the Olympic lifts. During this process, the foot is in full dorsiflexion. The toes are pulled toward the shin, creating a ninety-degree angle at the ankle. This creates a rigid unit with very little give, allowing a majority of the produced force to be transmitted to the ground. 30-50% of the landing energy is transferred to the next stride, preserving forward momentum.

At maximal velocity, the heels recover high. This means the recovering foot passes the lead leg above the knee and below the gluteus maximus.

The foot is then brought as high as possible in front of the athlete. This maximizes foot speed as the leg extends toward the ground, helping to create a powerful foot strike.

Our Instructors continually reminded us to think of the foot as a hammer, striking the ground as hard as possible. Sprint speed is all about force production and amplitude of movement.

Amplitude of movement refers to the vertical travel of the sprinter. With each foot strike and extension, the athlete launches off the ground, the hips traveling upward. As he transitions into the next stride, the hips travel downward. If you were to trace the path of the hip during a sprint, it would look very similar to a sine wave. This oscillation is indicative of good force production.

According to Dan Laufer of the University of Virginia, many athletes lose amplitude of movement when they try to run faster. This is a symptom of rigidity in the hips and overall body tension. Again, relaxation is paramount to speed, and a large range of motion in the hips is necessary for optimal performance.

I plan on applying these principles to the athletes at Again Faster and Crossfit Boston yesterday. No longer will fast jogging suffice when sprinting is called for. We’ll be working on good posture, high knee lift, dorsiflexion, hip extension, and a large range of motion until everyone stops trying to run a mini-marathon when the WOD calls for a 400 meter sprint.

It’s time to go faster.

Picture of Michael Johnson, holder of five Olympic gold medals in the 200m, 400m, and 4x400m, courtesy of texassports.com. Pictures of J.J. Johnson at the 2002 Mt. Sac Relays courtesy of sprintic.com.

2007-01-08T18:43:00.000Z

Principles of Success

This weekend, I attended a USA Track and Field Coaching Certification at the University of Rhode Island.

Under the tutelage of Dan Laufer, Dave Kerin, and Steve Shutt, I got a great look at training theory, physiology, biomechanics, coaching psychology, and every track and field event under the sun.

As you can imagine, twenty-three hours of classroom instruction covers a heck of a lot of material, and I figure that the Again Faster Community might be a little blasé about the intricacies of the steeplechase. In order to keep you awake, I’m going to present you with the takeaways—the commonalities, huge truths, and key points. No hour-by-hour slogfest here.

Some of the salient points are geared towards coaching, others toward athletic performance. No matter which side of the clipboard and whistle you’re on, you’ll find some useful pointers here, and I’ll spare you the lengthy discussion on pole vault mechanics.

1.) “If you’re going to be demanding of your athletes, you’ve got to be demanding of yourself.”

Midway through the course introduction, Dan Laufer came out with this one. Whether you train hard or coach hard, it’s a wonderful maxim. Athletic success demands commitment, sacrifice, and a constant re-examination of goals, strengths, and weaknesses. You can’t expect a high level of dedication from the people around you if you don’t expect it of yourself.

2.) High intensity and high volume don’t go well together.

Our discussion on training theory centered on the proper periodization of workouts over macrocycles, mesocycles, and microcycles. That’s fancy coach-speak for years, months, and weeks. If you’re pushing yourself or your athletes to perform maximal work day in and day out, everything is going to go to sh*t. It might be fine for a while, but eventually the training load will catch up with you, and injury becomes likely. In the world of athletic training, more is not always better.

3.) Train the battery.

All the muscle in the world is useless if you can’t use it. The neuromuscular system must be developed to achieve any sort of athletic success—efficient muscle use relies on it. Toward this end, work with movements and rep schemes that maximize central nervous system development. This means multi-joint exercises executed with both feet on the ground.

4.) Strive for unconscious competence.

During his lecture on training psychology, Dave Karin explained the stages of learning and the hallmarks of athletic progress. When an athlete first learns a skill, they reflect unconscious incompetence. They perform at a sub-par level and they don’t know why.

As they practice, they move into the realm of conscious incompetence, demonstrating an awareness of technical defects but the short-term inability to correct them.

Further coaching leads to conscious competence, the stage where movement becomes mechanically sound.

According to Dave, this is the point where most coaches and athletes stop. Competent performance signals us to stop practicing and move on to the next challenge. This compulsion prevents elite performance. Those who perform at the highest levels of sport possess unconscious competence, the ability to perform flawlessly without a hint of inward focus. Reaching this level requires repetition and continuous effort.

If you’d like to be unconsciously competent, keep practicing long after Coach stops correcting your form. Rather than think “Pull, re-bend, extend, shrug, and drop”, think “Clean!” Until that becomes automatic, you’re not performing at an elite level.

5.) Focus on process instead of outcome.

Coach Shutt does everything he can to prevent his throwers from knowing how far their throws go. This forces them to focus on throwing mechanics rather than distances. As their mechanics become sound, distance is the natural outcome.

This philosophy has immediate applicability to Crossfit. I’ve seen shoddy form in pursuit of better times more often than I care to admit. Focus on doing every movement correctly, and WOD time will take care of itself.

Our first day at the USATF Certification was enormously enlightening, and we didn’t even touch the events. Tune in tomorrow for a discussion on the forces that make you “go”, proper sprinting technique, and the best way to jump high and long. You don’t need to be a track coach to benefit from this stuff.

Go faster!

Picture of Mike Powell courtesy of sportsheroes.net.

2007-01-03T18:10:00.001Z

Stepping Down

Crossfit has an extremely broad curriculum. We incorporate exercises and concepts from gymnastics, weightlifting, sprinting, powerlifting, Parkour, and martial arts in our day-to-day training. This is a tremendous amount of material with a ton of depth.

Wisely, we begin training in the Crossfit Method by learning the basics. We do pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, and squats, adding resistance and complexity as our athletic prowess increases.

Soon, we learn thrusters, presses, ball slams, rowing, snatching, cleaning, deadlifting, and all the attendant variations. We assemble a set of skills for developing elite fitness, and we practice as much as possible.

Progress comes quickly. We turn in lower WOD times and higher weight totals with each passing week, and general physical preparation is on a moon-shot trajectory, doubling or tripling with every passing month.

Because of this immediate, tangible result, Crossfit has a well-deserved reputation for unmatched efficacy. We turn slobs into athletes faster than anyone else on the planet.

The problem comes when we try to turn our generalist athletes into sport-specific stars.

Many folks, myself included, came to Crossfit without a sport. When I arrived, I wasn’t training for a triathlon or recreation league softball—I was training to train.

Crossfit became my sport. With every shot at a first-place finish, I became more and more addicted to the workouts. My only objective was to move a ton of weight really quickly, and it did wonders for my athleticism.

As time wore on, my objective became more sport-specific. I became more enamored with Olympic lifting, dedicating the majority of my training budget to building a platform and seeking out qualified coaching.

Last month I decided my six-month goal is to snatch bodyweight. That’s 165 pounds from the ground to overhead with no local stops.

Unfortunately, meeting this goal is going to require some sacrifices that are incompatible with Crossfit’s general physical preparation programming. Daily torture with thrusters, pull-ups, and wall ball shots is not going to give me the technique I need to throw myself under that barbell. Toward that end, I’ll need to practice snatching on a regular basis.

There is a certain reality about the world--every time I’m practicing my snatch, I’m not doing Crossfit. I can only do so many workouts per week, and one has to take precedent over the other. Because of this fact, I anticipate a gradual decline in WOD performance as I dedicate more time to Olympic lifting.

I’ve learned that at some point in your training career, you have to make sacrifices in order to attain certain goals. This point will not come at the beginning of your training, when everything you do produces a tangible result. Rather, it comes when you’ve decided to improve a skill set beyond the province of general physical preparation.

It’s a hard sacrifice to make.

The question is simple: Can you give up the things you need to give up in order to attain your goals? Can you sacrifice metabolic capacity for a bodyweight lift?

No matter what they tell you, you can’t have everything.

Go faster!

Picture of Chad Vaughn courtesy of GayleHatch.com.

2007-01-02T14:39:00.000Z

Get Cracking

The Again Faster "Win My Sh*t" Contest garnered two entries. Here's the second entry, from Jason Lopez-Ota: Entry Two.

Because of the lack of entries, I've decided to extend the contest until January 15th.

I can do that. I own the joint.

Break out that camcorder and get cracking! We're looking for the most original example of pulling strength and endurance you can commit to video. Don't be afraid to try something original!

Go Faster!

Picture courtesy of mikemasse.com.

2006-12-28T18:12:00.000Z

Taking the Long View

Yesterday, I was looking though my workout log and laughing at my goals from last March. In Lilliputian black scrawl, it looks like this:

“Goals: Sub-8:00 Fran w/ 65#, move up to 95# as soon as achieved. Sub-21:00 three mile run, need to add distance to current runs—1 day/week. 425# deadlift = 2.5x bodyweight. C&J 135#. Snatch like a pro w/ 45# bar.”

Aside from the “snatching like a pro” thing, I’ve decimated these goals. Without a doubt, the reason is increased power output over time. This invariably correlates to increased fitness, as we’ve demonstrated again and again.

Let’s take a look. I’m going to compare the power outputs of a typical three workout cycle in March with those of a similar cycle in December. (I haven’t performed these calculations beforehand, so the results will be a surprise.)

We’ll take three workouts from each month, selected to make the calculations relatively easy.

Using a “Fran” time of 8:35, a “Grace” time of 16:00 (using a 65 and 95 pound barbell, respectively), and an “Angie” time of 28:38, we get an average of 34.80 ft-lbs/second for the month of March.

In December, a 20 minute AMRAP (5 press/5 push press/5 push jerk) with a 75-pound barbell, a 5:56 “Fran”, and a 9-round “Chelsea” yield an average output of 77.50 ft-lbs/second.

Clearly, my power output has increased dramatically in nine months. This wasn’t entirely intentional. Rather, it’s the product of following the Crossfit Method and incorporating all kinds of strength movements, a la the ME Black Box.

I encourage you use a similar long-term perspective when examining your performance. Day-to-day, we get caught up in the psychology of fitness. Single performances suck, and our body image can dictate our attitude toward fitness. Nonetheless, training is not accomplished over days and weeks, but rather over months and years. Individual efforts add up to something more in the long run.

There is an assumption underlying this principal—you’ve got to keep training. This requires you to remain injury-free. If you’re feeling it everywhere, take some time off. Remember that one day without training is better than two months in rehabilitation.

Take your training log, wander over to the Performance Menu Power Output Calculator, and do some number crunching of your own. Hopefully, your results will encourage you to take the long view.

Go faster!

2006-12-27T13:45:00.000Z

The First Entry

Matt Mendonza, climber and all-around good guy, submitted the first entry in the Again Faster "Win My Sh*t" Contest. Here it is, sans audio. What ever you were saying, Matt, I'm sure it was funny:

You have five short days to film your own entry and upload it to YouTube. We're looking for the most spectacular, innovative, and original example of pulling strength and endurance you can commit to video.

The winner will be announced on January 2nd.

Go faster!

P.S. I got this email from Matt today in reference to Friday's post, "It Still Doesn't Count". I laughed my ass off.

My roommate and I read againfaster and crossfit and gym jones regularly, and as a general rule for working out any time someone doesn't give everything they have, or they don't use full range on exercises, we always refer to Twight throwing an ice axe in their chest or head depending on the seriousness of the offense. Most people assume we are crazy, but it was mind blowing to load up againfaster and see this quote at the bottom.

"Picture courtesy of Gym Jones. Twight would be livid at the sh*t form I saw this morning, and he carries ice axes."

It has basically affirmed the fact that mark twight is like the santa claus of crossfit, he knows when you have been naughty or nice, and he carries ice axes to deal with the slackers.

Matt

2006-12-22T20:13:00.000Z

It Still Doesn't Count

This morning, I witnessed one of the most piss-poor examples of virtuousity ever exhibited during a Crossfit Boston session. My exhortations to use a complete range of motion fell on (mostly) deaf ears as my colleagues pushed for "Chelsea" PRs, and it reminded me of a little article I wrote back in May. Rather than rephrasing an old truth, I thought I'd give you the original. Chest to deck, maggot!

"Doesn't count."
"Doesn't count."
"Doesn't count."

"F*CK YOU!"

The competitive atmosphere of the Crossfit gym encourages speed. You want to win. You want to beat every other person in the room and post some outrageously low time, proving that you are (as if it wasn't obvious) the best athlete.

The problem comes when we sacrifice form for speed. Evidently, we've been doing a lot of this lately. Neal came back from Crossfit HQ with a newfound emphasis on form. Somewhere between ring dip 30 and ring dip 40, I started hearing this:

"Didn't go deep enough. Doesn't count."
"Didn't lock out. Doesn't count."
"Hahahahaha. Doesn't count."

The last one might have been in my head.

I came in dead last. Five other Crossfitters, subjected to the same scrutiny I was experiencing, beat me to the finish line. Humiliating.

Despite my overwhelming urge to see if I could pile-drive a 250 pound man, I think I learned a thing or two. When you're working with near-perfect form, everything gets a hell of a lot harder. The difficulty ramps up quickly toward the end. Form degrades as fatigue sets in, and you have to try twice as hard to maintain the integrity of the exercise.

This level of effort is hard to self-enforce. When you're working out alone, it's easy to give yourself credit for a less-than-perfect rep. It's an ego check to realize that your poundages fall and your times increase when you strive for perfect form. Odds are you're not going to set a Cindy PR if your pullups are full-extension, your pushups are chest-to-deck, and your squats are ass-to-the-grass.

You know when you're striving for perfection and when you're just going through the motions. Don't let your ego get in the way of progress. Time doesn't mean sh*t if you've got the form of Kermit the Frog on valium.

I'm going to make sure I hear "doesn't count" a little less in the future. I'm also making sure I don't spend any more time in last place. Last place sucks.

Picture courtesy of Gym Jones. Twight would be livid at the sh*t form I saw this morning, and he carries ice axes.

2006-12-20T15:48:00.000Z

Thank You

Christmas is a few days away, and 2006 is almost in the books.

It’s been a fabulous year, and Crossfit has given me opportunities that I never would’ve envisioned in April. Back then, I was a month outside of a two-year Peace Corps stint, with no intention of staying in Boston. South America was a likely destination.

As fate would have it, a simple website and a beautiful girl changed all that. I started ranting, and pretty soon we had group workouts going. A few months later we printed some t-shirts, built some pull-up bars, and had more group workouts. I met Dave and Tara Picardy and Dawn-Adam Brown of Crossfit Topsfield, and we got together every week to kill ourselves with fitness.

In May, Sam dragged me to the crag and strapped an old harness and some rock shoes on my beaten body. She introduced me to a sport I’ll probably do for the rest of my life, and gave me a wonderful mentor in Mr. John Knight.

July was filled with concerts and celebrations and more workouts, and I went to my actual job for all of 10 minutes that month. My brother and I climbed and drank and went to Fenway, and exercised our right to feel invincible in each others’ presence.

In September, Neal Thompson invited me to start teaching classes at Crossfit Boston, and I haven’t looked back. The people at that Facility are some of the most giving, determined, and all-around quality folks that I’ve ever met, and they’re the reason I get out of bed every morning at 4:30. We moved from a small yoga studio in Brookline Village to a huge box in Roxbury, picking up new friends, Mandla Nkosi, and a whole slew of Krav Maga students.

October brought the Crossfit Certification to Boston, where I was fortunate enough to meet Greg Glassman and Company. John, Heidi, and Shad of Crossfit Cape Fear crashed in my living room for three days, and we had the time of our lives.

I met Lynne Pitts and Kelly Moore, two of the most gracious people I’ve ever had the opportunity to get to know. I marveled at Kelly and Greg’s sub-4:00 “Fran”, and fought the urge to puke after the world’s loudest rendition of “Fight Gone Bad”.

November was filled with PRs, new pull-up bar orders, and even more trainees, and it just keeps getting better.

2006 has been phenomenal, and nearly every moment was recorded here at Again Faster. Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to read my drivel. I appreciate your support more than you’ll ever know.

Without you, my friends and readers, I might be in Venezuela right now.

Go Faster!

2006-12-19T17:37:00.001Z

First Aid

I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to master the Olympic lifts for the last month.

My total and utter lack of God-given coordination, combined with the fact that the lifts are technically demanding, has left me donkey-kicking, under-extending, and hitching my way through rep after rep.

Several people have watched me flail at weightlifting glory. Each and every one, regardless of coaching experience, says the same thing:

“You stop in the middle.”

This vague assertion refers to the transition between the first and second pulls, where the barbell is lifted above the knee and the hip scoops under it in preparation for the ensuing jump and land sequence.

Given this feedback, I always ask, “How do I fix it?”

Unfortunately, the answer is either speed up, slow down, shrug harder, jump higher, get new shoes, or give up, depending on the identity of the critic-of-the-moment. In other words, nobody in my immediate vicinity has the expertise to know what’s wrong with my shitty pull.

Luckily, someone in Australia does.

Last Friday, I was reading through the Performance Menu forum when I came across an aptly named thread called “Pulling Mechanics Article”. Within this diatribe, Greg Everett linked an article by Leo Isaac of the Queensland Weightlifting Association, entitled “Acceleration and Deceleration Phases in the Pull”.

I printed it out. It had a graph, a section on “system velocity”, and looked like it would put me to sleep if I read it. I took one look and stuffed it in my briefcase. I was eager to get to the gym and practice my ugly snatch, and I didn’t have time to be bored.

An entire weekend and several hours of coaching later, I was on the subway, finally reading through Mr. Isaac’s four-page dissertation on the pull.

His point was simple: Athletes are told to pull hard off the floor, but the transition phase scrubs most of the resulting velocity off the bar. The bar only reaches maximum velocity on the second pull, long after the transition. Therefore, the best way to lift is to accelerate constantly from the ground through the second pull, minimizing any loss of velocity during the transition phase.

He notes that the best lifters do this naturally. I noted that I do not. My transition is like a sports car hitting a jersey barrier at 120 miles an hour. Everything stops, and then the wheels come off.

Thankfully, Mr. Isaac goes on to describe how one would actually fix this problem. He posits that the dramatic pause during the transition phase is caused by an overly-horizontal back position, leading to a prolonged scoop as the back travels to vertical for the subsequent jump.

He nailed it. You could hold a tea party on my back in the starting position, and empires have crumbled in the time it takes me to get vertical. I smiled maniacally at the bum sitting across the aisle from me, thrilled to have a solution within my grasp.

The bum smiled back.

I went to the gym, grabbed a PVC pipe, and spent a half-hour working on my transition. I started with my back as vertical as possible without my shoulders being behind the bar, and I pulled again and again.

The hitch was gone, and I yelled for Neal to come check it out. He looked at my pull, paused thoughtfully, and said:

“You’re still donkey-kicking.”

Go faster!

Picture of Shane Hamman courtesy of www.gamesinfo.com.au. For a cool look at system velocity and some really strong women, have a look at this video from Tracey Fober and Iron Maven.

2006-12-13T17:32:00.000Z

Advanced Medicine

Crossfit hurts. Almost every day someone approaches me pre-workout, complaining of pain, silently hoping for relief in the form of less weight or reduced volume.

Most of the time, I give it to them. We’re not in the business of destroying bodies. If an athlete has the experience to differentiate between muscle soreness and pain, I’ll always defer to their judgment.

The plaintive wailings are always accompanied by requests for advice. My standard answer: take a day off, spend it on the foam roller, stay hydrated, and come back later.

For better or worse, some athletes are absolutely incapable of accepting this advice. They want to train. Blasting through workouts is like breathing for these folks—my words go in one ear and out the other. They’re going to work out eight days a week, whether I say so or not.

When this urge competes with pain, the most obvious answer is pills. Ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and naproxen sodium are packed away like candy at Christmas, and our little superhero shows up for Crossfit, bouncing around like an ADD-ridden toddler.

Unfortunately, my pill-popping uber-athlete is killing his athletic development.

NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) reduce post-workout protein synthesis, impairing your ability to develop muscle mass and severely limiting the beneficial effects of resistance exercise.

The proof is easy to come by:

A 1982 experiment showed that prescription-strength doses of NSAIDs reduce protein synthesis in-vitro. This interesting but inconclusive Petri dish project was substantiated in 2001, when an in-vivo study found that post-workout protein synthesis increased 76% in the absence of NSAIDs, while it did not increase at all in the presence of NSAIDs.*

A 2003 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research gives us another reason to decry the pills, as if killing protein synthesis wasn’t enough.

Using 19 freshman guys, a bottle of Advil, and a leg curl machine, researchers at Democritus University of Thrace found that ibuprofen reduced the perception of delayed-onset muscle soreness but did nothing to restore muscle function. The subjects couldn’t produce more force under the influence of ibuprofen, despite the fact that they felt recovered.

Super. Where do I sign up?

Because this argument clearly needs more support, let’s talk about most insidious consequence of chronic pain reliever use. NSAIDs blunt your pain response, preventing you from knowing when soreness turns into injury. This exposes you to the possibility of endless bouts of painful rehabilitation, trading daily training sessions for visits to the physical therapist.

On balance, pain relievers hinder athletic development and increase your chance of injury. They may allow you to train more often, but they won’t allow you to train smarter.

Save the Advil for your hangovers.

Go faster!

*This summary was paraphrased from Pinnacle Fitness. You can find the original article here. Picture courtesy of cancerworld.org.

2006-12-11T17:45:00.000Z

What Are You Looking At?

Despite a total lack of scientific credentials, I’ve got a part-time gig editing a biotechnology page at toptensources.com.

While working on the page, Sam and I came across some interesting research regarding mirror neurons. These neurons fire when a skilled individual performs a physical feat.

They also fire when that same individual witnesses the feat, even if he or she doesn't move.

A couple of Italian researcher-types discovered these neurons through a fortunate accident. They happened to have a monkey hooked up to an EEG when it witnessed one of the investigators reach for a banana. The portion of the monkey’s brain responsible for reaching lit up, although the monkey hadn’t budged. After ruling out a defective EEG, the investigators verified their finding—subsequent actions provoked neurological activity in the absence of movement.

This finding has some profound implications for athletics.

When you learn a skill, neural networks form in your brain. These networks get stronger with practice and repetition—the more you utilize a skill, the stronger the link between the synapses becomes.

If we were to hook you up to an EEG and make you perform a clean and jerk, the portions of your brain responsible for that action would light up. If you then witnessed Dimas do the same thing, we’d see a similar response. In both instances, the "clean and jerk" network is active, improving inter-neuron connection strength.

The implication: You can reinforce and improve a skill through two separate pathways—repetition and observation!

Anecdotally, I can testify to the effects of observation on physical performance. After months of instructing others on the finer points of the Olympic lifts, my own lifts showed a substantial increase in technique. During this period my practice was sporadic at best, but I’d spent hundreds of hours observing and correcting others.

Of course, you won’t develop world-class skills watching tapes of the 2004 Summer Games. You’re actually going to have to go to the gym once in a while.

Many coaches are strong proponents of pre-competition visualization, whereby an athlete envisions an upcoming performance in order to improve that performance. I suspect this practice elicits mirror neuron activity, much like witnessing a live event. I’d love to see an EEG study examining this phenomenon.

Until then, check out this video of Pyrros. I figure you'll all be gold medalists if you watch it enough.

Get cracking.

Picture courtesy of pbs.org. Check out the inspiration for this article, Daniel Glaser's recent study on mirror neuron activity in capoeria practitioners.

2006-12-08T14:57:00.000Z

New Gear

Due to significant demand, we're putting out a new sweatshirt for 2007! The logo above will appear on the back, while our "motion cross" logo will appear on the front left chest.

The design will be printed on black Champion hooded sweatshirts by the best apparel folks in Boston. These hoodies are crazy comfortable and warm. I've been rocking the original Again Faster Sweatshirt for almost a year now, and it's as good as the day I got it.

I'm only accepting pre-orders for this item--you've got to pay to play. If you'd like to purchase one, shoot me an email. The sweatshirts will retail for right around $50.00, and will be available in January.

Go faster!

2006-12-06T16:28:00.000Z

Evolution

Within the framework of Crossfit, we progress from less- to more-difficult exercises, placing a premium on skill-based movements. These movements tend to pay greater fitness dividends than their simpler brethren.

For instance, the push jerk allows you to move a greater load than the push press over a similar distance, translating into increased work load and intensity. This leads to greater fitness.

Unfortunately, the push jerk is more difficult than the push press, requiring more coordination, balance, and agility. Instead of a simple dip and drive, the harder movement requires a dip, drive, dip sequence, demanding greater athletic skill.

Developing the harder movements is clearly to the athlete’s benefit. Success in this endeavour is contingent on practice through constant repetition. Given the immense size of the Crossfit curriculum, consistent practice on a variety of difficult skills becomes nearly impossible, leaving the athlete to practice these movements if and when they come up in the WOD.

The solution is simple. Evolve the warm-up.

At Crossfit Boston, we go through a rote warm-up, running through push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, squats, hip flexor stretches, and good mornings. None of these movements require a tremendous amount of skill, making them possible for nearly any athlete. While this sequence is highly beneficial to the novice/intermediate practitioner, it can be improved for a more advanced population.

Our advanced athletes have a good strength base and spectacular metabolic conditioning. They are typically reaching a plateau of organic improvement, where basic bodyweight exercises are not driving muscle growth or increased neurological capacity.

For these folks, the skill-based compound exercises are the next logical step in their training. The Olympic lifts, ring work, isometric strength movements, and plyometrics all beg for increased exposure. These exercises will drive athletic improvement much faster than their simpler cousins.

As we know, frequent, low-volume repetition develops increased capacity and proficiency. This principal, known as “greasing the groove”, has proven its efficacy again and again. By placing difficult exercises in the warm-up, we are engaging in this practice.

A sample warm-up:
Row 500 meters, followed by three rounds of:
5 Full Squat Cleans (75 pounds)
5 Snatches (75 pounds)
3 Muscle-ups
3 Skin-the-cats
1 Back Lever
1 L-sit (15 seconds)

In the preceding example, we engage the entire body in vigorous compound movement while preserving metabolic reserves for the upcoming workout of the day. Difficult skills are reviewed and reinforced. Ideally, this warm-up would be trainer supervised, giving the athlete constant feedback regarding proper execution.

Developing proficiency in the more-difficult movements is critical for the athletic development of the advanced Crossfitter. Toward this end, the warm-up period can be a fantastic resource, allowing frequent practice and increased exposure.

Go faster!

Check out Leo, warming up with some picture perfect snatches. Picture from the Again Faster Library.

2006-12-02T14:53:00.000Z

The Again Faster “Win My Sh*t” Contest

Okay, so you’re a Crossfitter. You think you’re pretty bad, huh? We’ll tough guy, let’s see it.

Just in time for a cold New England winter, we’re giving away a brand-new AF Pull-up Bar. Of course, there’s a catch. You’ve got to earn it.

I want to see the most original, captivating, holy-hell-did-they-just-do-that video demonstrating your awesome pulling strength and endurance.

I’d give you some examples, but I don’t want to limit your thinking. Pretty much anything involving vertical movement is fair game.

Here’s the skinny. Upload your video to YouTube and email me the link. I’ll check out the video and confirm your submission by posting it on www.againfaster.com. You’ll be internet-famous in no time.

The judging will be totally subjective, so don’t whine when somebody else wins doing something you could clearly do, if only we’d given you a chance to match it. The winner will be announced on January 1, 2007, so get cracking!

Send all entries to jon@againfaster.com no later than December 31, 2006.

Go faster!

2006-12-01T17:07:00.000Z

Colonel Pitts

I spent last Saturday at Lynne Pitts’ house. After pulling out the GPS locator and consulting several satellite maps, I managed to find her cabin.

It only took two tries.

She put me and Sam through a wicked combination of pulling, heaving, tugging, lifting, lunging, and jumping, and I’d like to express my gratitude. This Sunday, we’ll be doing “Colonel Pitts”, a fine piece of programming dedicated to my buddy Lynne.

5 rounds for time:

50 One-Armed Snatches (25 left, 25 right)
One-Armed Overhead Walking Lunge (100 feet)

We’ll be at the Pond at 8 a.m., ready to embrace the pain.

Go faster!

2006-11-28T16:22:00.000Z

Adventure Journalism

I’ve been reading a lot of “adventure journalism” lately. This is the type of real-life story where the protagonist engages in an activity where the most likely outcome is death or severe injury. The author goes to great pains to embellish the difficulty of whatever stunt is undertaken, and to describe how successful completion will establish the immortality of the participants for the next ten thousand years or so.

This stuff sticks in your head.

I’ll sit at my desk at work, really a glorified cubicle with gold-plated trim and painted-on wood grain, and wonder where I went wrong. Clearly I should be standing atop a mountain in some unpronounceable location rather than opening checking accounts for Boston’s upper crust. This pointless daydreaming combined with endless readings of rock climbing’s grand liars only leads in one direction—calculated stupidity.

To date I’ve engaged in the simplest, safest, and most popular variety of rock climbing—top-roping. This is the go-fish of climbing; two minutes of training, and anyone can do it. The simplicity of the affair is what got me in trouble.

You scramble to the top of some cliff, bypassing anything close to vertical, and set an anchor. The anchor consists of webbing, rope, and carabiners thrown together with just enough forethought to keep the climber from plummeting off the pitch. A climbing rope is passed through the anchor, and both ends are sent to the ground. The soon-to-be climber ties into one end, and the belayer takes the other end, passing it through a friction device and gathering the excess rope as the climber ascends.

None of this is complicated—the party doesn’t need much specialized equipment, and falls have the same drama as visiting your great-grandmother for milk and cookies. It’s easy to get complacent in this kind of scenario, assuming that anything that can go wrong begins and ends with the anchor.

After two days of Thanksgiving excess, things get kind of boring for the ADD set. My brother and I decided that we had to do something, and eating the rest of the apple pie wasn’t going to cut it.

Western New Hampshire isn’t exactly a hotbed of adventure activity—we’re far from the excitement of the White Mountains, and the whitewater of the Connecticut River runs like a cold shower. Lack of snow precluded any form of downhill schussing, and you can only shoot so many inanimate objects. Nonetheless, an enterprising team can always find some form of semi-legal entertainment.

We found ourselves tramping under the power lines just off of Interstate 89, trekking toward an abandoned gravel quarry we usually pass at eighty miles an hour.

This quarry is really a pit, three walls of overhung shale and talus and other forms of geologic refuse. Nearly every inch of rock is covered with flowing water and chunks of fragile ice, the seasonal byproduct of the sun never reaching the steep walls.

We found one section of more-or-less dry rock, and proceeded to set an anchor over it. The constant drip of water combined with the roar of the Interstate makes it impossible to hear anything save your own panting, and our attempts to establish the location of the route from above were absurdly comical.

Ten minutes of incoherent screaming put us at the top of a steep pitch of detritus. The ground atop the cliff was angled toward the chasm at thirty-five degrees, and I wasn’t about to go anywhere near the edge without protection.

As Sam watched from below, Tristan and I rigged up a haphazard belay system, wrapping our rope around a tree, tying one end to the back of my harness and running the other through my friction device. I rappel-slash-lowered to the edge, and scoped out the line.

There wasn’t much in the way of natural anchors, just young, malnourished trees suffering from a half-hour of daily sun exposure. I found two trees that looked slightly overfed, and put together an anchor using our static rope. This process was much like building the Taj Mahal out of Legos or robots from chopsticks, and it took the greater part of an hour.

Sixty minutes gone, Tristan tied in for the first attempt.

Five feet up, the stupidity of our venture became clear. The rock had the integrity of beach sand. Standing on the ground, belay rope in hand, I knew exactly how the fine folks in Dresden felt in February of 1945. Shale crashed all around me, hitting the ground with spectacular thwacks.

Rock climbing convention dictates that the climber yell, “Rock!” whenever something falls from the face, giving ground-dwellers some time to duck and cover. Tristan would’ve gone hoarse if he’d even bothered.

Samantha moved back from the pitch while I cowered behind the largest tree in sight, a six-inch oak tree that afforded the relative protection of a wet paper bag. Formerly a devout atheist, I found God behind that tree. My knuckles were snow-white against the orange belay rope, my crushing grip maintained through a combination of fear and new-found piety.

Fifteen feet off the ground, Tristan ran into an insurmountable obstacle—more shale. All the punching, kicking, and pulling in the world wasn’t going to move him up the rock, the heretofore compliant stone refusing to budge an inch. After an enlightening bit of swearing, I lowered him to the ground.

Having conveniently left my rock shoes in Massachusetts, I continued my role as Head Belay Slave. Samantha tied in for the climb, glad to be moving after an hour of silently observing our collective incompetence. Like Tristan, she moved up to the insurmountable section, alternately casting stone on our heads and traversing across the face in search of a means of elevation. The rope ripped back and forth across a thin ledge as she moved, blanketing the ground with torrents of dirt.

I was contemplating the merits of planting a flower garden in a lightless void when Sam called down to be lowered.

My left hand was incredibly swollen from a wood-splitting mishap the day before, and it was feeling more claw-like with each passing minute. In a moment of intense focus, I’d slammed the handle of my maul into a log, sending earthquake-esque reverberations through my arm and blowing up my hand. Now at risk of dropping the next climber and severely compromising my social life, I dutifully passed on my belay duties.

Water cascaded off the overhanging face, dripping on Tristan’s head as he attempted a new path around the uncooperative section of rock. Rotten slate crumbled in his hand as he attacked the corner, hitting the ground in cacophonous concert with the icicles dropping from the surrounding cliff. I covered my head at the sound of every fall, more and more concerned for the integrity of my skull.

Sam held Tristan in place as the rock disintegrated around him, striking a balance between watching his attempt and subtly inching further away from the face. After fifteen minutes of flailing at the wall, Tristan called it quits, joining us on the ground for a game of dodge-the-debris.

He switched roles with Samantha, taking the belay while I hid in the nearby undergrowth. Sam scrambled up to the crux, clearing the previous high-point. Three meters further, she dropped a softball-sized rock into her lap, giggling at the novelty of a good rock pelting.

Unphased, she reached the summit with the intention of topping out, pulling the anchor, and reclaiming our gear from its roadside perch. I ran up the side of the cliff to untangle my arts-and-crafts style anchor, sure that Sam would be unable to decipher its ridiculous complexity.

Three-quarters of the way up the path, I heard a resounding crash. I yelled down to Sam, receiving garbled screams in reply. Unable to make out the message over the roar of the Interstate but realizing Sam was on the ground, I pulled the top-rope and began ripping down the anchor. Meter after meter of orange cord passed over my shoulders, a shock of white disrupting its otherwise uniform surface.

Twenty feet above the tie-in, the rope was nearly sheared through.

The implications hit me hard. One more fall, one more moment traversing the crux, one more climber, one more anything, and one of my dearest friends would’ve been dead. The blood instantly drained from my face, feelings of elation and terror competing for my attention. We were lucky. The rope hadn’t snapped, and sweet Samantha was on the ground.

Jesus Christ Almighty. The rope hadn’t snapped.

Pictures of the rope zipping back and forth across the thin slate clouded my vision. Why the hell hadn’t I done anything? I'd let Sam and Tristan flip that rope across a sharp ledge upwards of fifteen times, never thinking of the damage. Hell, I’d set up the climb.

At the bottom, Sam and Tristan greeted me with wide eyes. Tristan pointed at a boulder lodged against his belay station while Sam explained its provenance. A few minutes earlier she had reached above the cliff to top out, finding a handhold among the talus. As she pulled, she dislodged several huge rocks.

The crash I’d heard was the debris hitting the earth, sending Tristan diving for cover.

Miraculously, he’d managed to avoid the barrage while maintaining his hold on the belay rope. A single blow would’ve killed them both, Sam’s security dependent on Tristan’s unyielding grip. A foot to the right, and I would've been attending a funeral.

Adventure journalism is the stuff you read in the comfort of your own home, living vicariously through the exploits of some bearded hero-type. It involves daring escapes, life-or-death situations, and skin-of-the-teeth shots at greatness. It doesn’t cover day-long top-roping trips with mundane payoffs. Those are too safe, too simple, and too damn boring to see print.

Western New Hampshire has a new rock climbing route. It’s called “Tempting Fate”. I don’t think we’ll be going back anytime soon, and the guidebook isn’t in line for publication.

Next time I’m sitting at my desk, dreaming of adventure, I’m going to take a minute or two to reflect on our luck. Maybe the top of the mountain isn’t so great after all.

Picture courtesy of interstate-guide.com.

2006-11-23T15:50:00.000Z

Tabata FUBAR

This Sunday, most folks will be sitting on their over-stuffed asses, watching grown men pummel each other for gridiron glory.

While I'm all for the NFL, the games don't start until 1 o'clock. This is way too late for those of us craving an early-morning masochistic fix. Toward that end, Again Faster is putting an evil twist on the classic Tabata workout. We'll take care of your calorie burn for the entire day in 24 short minutes.

Welcome to Tabata FUBAR. Five rounds of Tabatas, using the most metabolically demanding compound movements in our considerable exercise arsenal.

20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated eight times for each exercise:

Burpees
Plyo Push-ups
Squat Jumps
Clapping Pull-ups
Tuck Jumps

Forget the cold turkey. Satisfy your cravings with Again Faster. We'll be at Jamaica Pond at 8 a.m., ready to bring the noise.

Go faster!

Picture of Rodney Harrison cleaning out a Dolphins receiver courtesy of palmbeachpost.com.

2006-11-22T16:11:00.000Z

On Point

The Hero workout was killing me. Movement after movement, my right shoulder felt like it was going to explode.

The pain was a dull ache turned up to ten, a thousand vice grips squeezing in concert. I sucked air through my teeth, doing my damndest to hide my agony, grunts and squeaks betraying my stoic front.

Five days earlier, I’d made a point of playing through the pain. Push presses came up on the calendar and ego overrode good sense, driving me to boost a cumulative load of 1800 pounds over my head. I was so pumped by the effort that I returned later that day, squatting my way through eight sets of Gayle Hatch-prescribed madness.

The next day, I swallowed half a bottle of ibuprofen and went to the Facility. I could’ve stayed in bed, but the siren song of a record attempt got me up at 4:30. 51 push-ups and 31 pull-ups later, I basked in the glow of a second personal record in as many days.

Through three more workouts and a bout of mid-November rock climbing, my shoulder never forgave me.

Monday brought “J.T.”, a Hero workout named for Petty Officer 1st Class Jeff Taylor. J.T. was one of eleven Navy SEALs killed in action during a 2005 engagement in Afghanistan, forever memorialized with an eponymous Crossfit workout.

Twenty-one ring dips, twenty-one push-ups, and twenty-one handstand push-ups, repeated for rounds of fifteen and nine. Pushing, pushing, and more pushing. Every repetition was a salvo at my will to live.

Handstand push-ups turned into barely controlled negatives turned into piked push-ups. I rolled to the floor after the last rep, my cheek smashing into the rubber flooring.

That evening, I attempted self-diagnosis. A PVC pipe in hand, I pressed overhead, waiting for the pain. It came when I shrugged my shoulders into the proper lockout position. Neal, now familiar with my problem due to days of incessant bitching, was across the room.

“Neal! I found the problem. It’s my trap.”

Neal looked at me like I was clearly the dumbest guy on earth and wandered over. Placing his thumb on my right trapezius, he pushed down hard.

“Yeah. That’s it. That fucking hurts.”

The understatement of the year. He might as well have soaked a screwdriver in hydrochloric acid and plunged it into my neck.

I had a classic trigger point—a permanent muscle contraction that manifests itself as pain in a remote site. The knots in my trap were putting tension on my shoulder, leading to a dull ache through my rear deltoid. I silently thanked my stars that the problem wasn’t structural, and conned my girlfriend into massaging the ever-living hell out of my neck.

The first session was agonizing. I was reduced to gritting my teeth and kicking the bed while Sam put all her weight on my trap. She apologized repeatedly for helping me while I loudly cursed her existence, stifling the urge to cry. The treatment brought immediate relief to my shoulder, primarily due to the throbbing pain in my neck.

The next day my symptoms were nearly gone.

Trigger points are non-intuitive. No one thinks, “Hey, my knee hurts. Must be a knot in my quadriceps.” I originally read about trigger points in the September 2005 Crossfit Journal. The idea that pain can be distal from its source meshes with the now-popular conception that all muscles are linked through fascia. Fascia is a network of connective tissue that surrounds muscles, giving support above and beyond that provided by bones and cartilage.

Given that all muscles are connected to one another via fascia, it makes sense that permanent contractions in one area could lead to pain in another. When this is taken as fact, the value of self-myofascial release becomes blindingly obvious.

Although I know very little about treating trigger points, there are a few sources out there that have garnered an enthusiastic following. Thomas Meyers’ Anatomy Trains is an extremely well-received work on the fascial system, recommended to me by Eric Cressey of Excel Sport and Fitness. Cressey knows a few things about shoulders and pain relief, and I have no doubt he’s right on with this recommendation.

Clair Daives’ Trigger Point Therapy Workbook is written for those of us who didn’t attend medical school, providing simplified maps of common trigger points and guides for self-treatment. If you’d rather not part with fifteen dollars, Mr. Davies also maintains a website full of useful information, complete with an index of common trigger points.

I’ll be picking up these books as soon as the next AF Bar order hits my inbox. Davies’ book is less than my co-pay for an office visit, and I won’t have to endure any enthusiastic probing from a misdirected thermometer. Man, I hate the doctor.

Go faster!

Picture courtesy of human-anatomy.net.

2006-11-17T18:06:00.001Z

The Thunderer

I got an anonymous email on Thursday morning. It read:

“@#$#%^&! punish us this Sunday AM.....I'll be in the frame of mind for something brutal, especially for things I suck at (and the range of those options is quite broad). Just don't tell anyone this request originated with me!”

You got it, Thor. I won’t tell a soul.

Per this anonymous request, I came up with this neat little piece of pain:

100 Chin-up Burpees
200m Sprint
100 Plyo Push-ups
200m Sprint
100 Squat Jumps

Just another day at Again Faster. See you at the Pond, 8 a.m. sharp.

Picture courtesy of moonraker.com.au.

2006-11-15T16:30:00.000Z

Pursuing Power

“Speed, Strength, Power, Progress”. It’s a simple motto that represents a complex mission. We want to develop three global physical qualities in an effort to become better athletes, using any and all means at our disposal.

I’ve shown the relevance of power of several occasions. Power is the very core of fitness, a suitable proxy for nearly any objective measure of athletic prowess. As a rule, the fittest athletes are those that generate the most power. Power is equal to force multiplied by displacement divided by time:

Power = (force * displacement)/time

Power takes into account the first two qualities mentioned in our motto—strength and speed. Strength is the ability to generate force, while speed is the total distance covered in a given amount of time:

Strength = force

Speed = displacement/time

Given these definitions, we can reduce power to two components—speed multiplied by strength:

Power = speed * strength

The critical factor in developing power and improving your fitness level is strength. This quality is prerequisite to both power and speed.

Without the ability to generate a significant amount of force, the power equation approaches zero. Similarly, a lack of force severely limits displacement, pushing the speed portion of the equation toward zero.

Given this reality, the beginning athlete must develop a strength base prior to reaching any appreciable level of fitness. This necessity is shown through empirical observation—athletes who come to Crossfit from strength backgrounds—gymnastics, football, wrestling, bodybuilding, etcetera—progress much faster than those who come from endurance backgrounds. They produce relatively greater force and therefore greater power, the end result being greater fitness.

That said, the vast majority of Crossfitters arrive with extensive endurance training and comparatively limited strength training. Their first task, beyond learning our stable of movements, is strength development.

Under the watchful eye of a trainer, this is easy. Show up everyday and do what you’re told.

For those without the good fortune of professional instruction, the process is more difficult. Enterprising athletes will search the Internet for information, typically finding a few million programs, each prescribing a proprietary method of developing strength. Understandably, they walk away confused, paralyzed by millions of choices presented millions of ways.

The industry benefits from the confusion, selling software, books, logs, and articles with the promise that a few hundred dollars is all that separates the novice from the world’s best strength system.

It’s total bullshit. For the beginner, the reverse pyramid double wave periodized triple drop set holds no more benefit than three sets of ten twice a week. The only thing the rank beginner needs to do for the first few months is lift. After this magical “anything works” period, a basic understanding of strength development comes in handy.

Strength is the result of two interrelated factors—neurological development and muscular cross-section.

As the athlete lifts more often, the body recruits more muscle fibers to assist with the movement—it learns to use your existing muscle mass more efficiently. Additional neurological connections develop, and your body reaches its maximum capacity to generate force in its current state.

Muscle size also increases—its cross-section becomes larger. This is known as hypertrophy. Every time the athlete lifts, the employed muscles are traumatized, creating small tears. As these tears heal, additional muscle mass is created. This mass comes in two forms—new muscle fibers and the enlargement of existing muscle fibers.

The nervous system acts on the new muscle as well as the old muscle, producing relatively greater force with each contraction. Strength is the result.

Given our knowledge of strength development, we know it requires two behaviors—lifting frequently enough to create micro-trauma and lifting heavy enough to facilitate neurological development. Even more simply, we have to lift a lot of weight as often as possible.

The limiting factor is healing—we cannot lift maximal loads every day. Our bodies would turn to mush exceedingly quickly. Due to this fact, athletes must periodize their strength training. This is a fancy way of saying they have to take it easy every once in a while—they have to decrease training volume to allow for healing once every few weeks.

The community gives a lot of attention to rep schemes in an effort to find the training “sweet spot”. High repetitions with low weights tend to produce increased muscle mass, while low repetitions with high weights tend to facilitate neurological development. Obviously, trainees want both, and everyone wants the magic bullet--a program that takes care of both qualities simultaneously.

The Crossfit Community has latched onto the 5 by 5 as the solution—five sets of five repetitions using a load of 80-85% of the athlete’s one-repetition maximum. This represents a well-reasoned compromise between hypertrophy and neurological development—the middle ground of strength training.

For the beginning athlete, this is a great place to start. Strength gains come quickly using this method. Nonetheless, don’t get hung up on the 5 by 5 as the only solution to your strength needs.

Working above 90% of your one-repetition maximum is critical to continued neurological improvement, and working below 80% is critical to hypertrophy. Both qualities are required for high absolute strength levels.

I’ve used several strength programs to good effect. The Mass Gain Program, contained in Issue 17 of the Performance Menu gave me great results, although I compromised the hypertrophy portion of the program through excessive metabolic activity.

More recently, I’ve begun the Hatch Squat Program, a hell-worthy combination of back squats and front squats performed twice a week for twelve weeks. My thanks to Mike's Gym for making the program available to the masses.

Looking at these two programs, you’ll see my preference for full-body, compound movements. They are the quickest way to total body strength, and the only way a Crossfit athlete should train.

Remember, we’re pursuing power. Develop your strength base, and you’ll reap the rewards—increased speed, reduced workout times, and monumental power output.

Go faster!

Picture courtesy of weights.eusu.ed.ac.uk. The deadlift stands as the most functional pure strength movement on earth.

2006-11-12T16:41:00.001Z

Suck

I suck at rock climbing.

I’m not sandbagging. I’ve learned a few things, executed a few cool moves, and climbed some stuff that would’ve given me fits last spring. Still, nobody carries my rope bag to the crag or my shoes on a golden pillow. 5.8 routes still leave me hanging off the end of the rope long before the anchor shows up.

I know I’m no good, but I’m not taking up residence in Suck City. I’m on the first outbound train, just as soon as I have the skills to pay for the ticket. It won’t be incredibly hard—dedicated bouldering and some isometric strength work should make me a certified rock jock.

I know it’s possible because I’ve done it in other contexts. Crossfit, for one. Started shitty, worked hard, got better. Karate—same deal. I even learned to do Calculus on the second try. Somewhere along the line, struggling turns into plodding turns into firebreathing ass-kicking. You just have to keep pushing.

There’s a name for this stuff: potential. If you can’t do it now, but you could conceivably do it in the future, you’ve got potential. There are sign-posts for potential—solid work ethic, flashes of brilliance, consistency, and steely-eyed determination are the marks of an up-and-coming champion.

Somewhere along the line, the world has called for the addition of humility to this mix. If you’re not good now, but you know you will be soon, just keep your head down and keep professing super-suckdom.

Fuck that.

False humility pisses me off. It makes me feel like Dennis Leary on methamphetamine holding a cocked shotgun.

Ever compliment someone on a job well done and get the Forrest Gump-aw-shucks-gee-golly it was nothing? You know they’re full of shit and they just want to hear you say it again.

If you’re going to be good and you know it, yell it loud. Stand up on the table in the middle of your performance review, and tell your boss you’re going to be the best damn vacuum cleaner salesman in the world. Or whatever. Investment banker, cashier, cop, artillery gunner, it doesn’t matter.

You’re going to be the best, and you know it.

Humanity hates ego. It also hates self-pity, incompetence, and any form of laziness. Either end of the spectrum, and you’re not getting the time of day. This middle of the road, head down attitude produces mildly self-respecting, moderately competent lumps. You’ll have an ergonomic office chair, a solid pension, a bloated 401k, and absolutely no shot at greatness.

Sounds fabulous.

I’m here to burn humility at the stake. Douse it in kerosene and throw on a match. Men and women who achieve the impossible first have to believe that the feat is not, in fact, impossible. You’ve got to have the cajones to say “Yeah, nobody else could pull it off, but hell, you guys suck”, and walk straight into the battle, ignoring the cries of the doom-sayers.

You’ve got to have ego. With a capital fucking “E”. Ego.

Blasting your designs of greatness over the town loudspeakers has a polarizing effect. Some folks are going to hate you for being so damn full of yourself. Others are going to love you for lobbing hand grenades at convention. Either way, there’s going to be a shitstorm.

If you believe you have the potential to be great, you need to scream it from the rooftops. Nothing creates commitment in the human mind like verbalization. Say it over and over, as loud as you can. Tell your friends. You’ll be hard-pressed to back away from your assertions, and you’ll create a virtuous cycle that ends at the top of the leaderboard.

Don’t cling to the idea that you have to please everyone all the time—you’ll turn into a placating pile of “sure, I’ll wash your dog.”

The potential to be great is counteracted by the potential to crash and burn. These things come in the same container, and you don’t get one without the other. If you’ve got the pluck to declare war on the world, you’re going to take your lumps.

But at least you won’t suck.

Go faster!

Photo of Muhammad Ali towering over Sonny Liston courtesy of en.wikipedia.org.

2006-11-08T15:56:00.000Z

In Memory

Saturday, November 11th is Veterans' Day. Thanks to the sacrifice of our Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen, America remains a free nation, answering only to itself.

I am eternally grateful for this fact.

This week's Again Faster Workout honors our fallen warriors. In tribute, we'll conduct the Marine Corps PFT at Jamaica Pond on Sunday morning.

The test is simple:

Dead-hang Pull-ups for Repetitions/Flexed-arm Hang for Time
As Many Crunches as Possible (2 minutes)
3-Mile Run for Time

Scores range from zero to three hundred. A perfect score meets the following criteria:

Male (3-mile run): 18:00
Female (3-mile run): 21:00
Flexed-arm hang: 70 seconds or Dead-hang pull-ups: 20 reps
Crunches (2 minutes): 100

Please join us for this effort. We'll meet at 8:00 a.m. under the pull-up bars.

Go faster!

Picture of Lt. Gen. Lewis "Chesty" Puller courtesy of www.usmcvta.org. Lt. General Puller is the most decorated Marine in USMC history.

2006-11-06T17:03:00.000Z

Fortitude

Your body will betray you. Neurons will stop firing, muscles won’t contract, and you’ll end up flat on your back. Panting and staring into space, you’ll stagger to your feet, wondering why the hell you started in the first place.

You’ll spit guttural noises with each repetition, but you’ll push on. Amid the pain of a full-body mutiny, you’ll find your zen puddle, a place where nothing hurts.

I’ve been looking for my puddle for two days.

At 8:50 yesterday morning, we were grinding through the last seconds of Painstorm XIX. A nasty little creation, the Painstorm turned my shoulders to mush. Despite the help of my legs, my push presses were stalling out beside my head.

The grass in front of me was ripped and torn, a sad monument to sixty pounds of dropped dumbbell. The thud came every five repetitions toward the end, my right shoulder refusing to bear any burden.

The alarm was sweet relief. All of a sudden, the morning sun made the 30-degree air feel like a Hawaiian heat wave. Euphoric hallucinations crossed my eyeballs, induced by the sudden change in altitude as I crashed to the ground. We’d made it through twenty-plus rounds of Hell, and this was the reward.

Midway through today’s WOD, my legs quit. I was dragging lead down Terrace Street, my stride length reminiscent of a punch-drunk power-walker. I wanted to stop after Round Two.

Twenty-some-odd minutes later, I was lying on a canted rubber mat, mumbling incoherently and sweating profusely.

Crossfit is based on the physical. Metabolic conditioning, endurance, and limit strength are built through escalating intensity of effort. We're quick to credit the physical for the success of the Program. Ask the average Crossfitter how he attained his capacity, and you’ll hear workouts and rep schemes and recovery methods.

You won’t hear a word about his mind.

In truth, your body isn’t what keeps you floating through five-round death-fests. Unless you’re blasting though every set unbroken, Crossfit workouts are beyond your immediate bodily capacity. Mental fortitude makes up for your shortcomings.

Mental state is the only variable worth considering during truly difficult WODs. The degree to which you can force your recalcitrant body to behave will determine your success or lack thereof.

An athlete in the throes of an epic blaster will regain composure awfully quickly when confronted with a breakdown in form—rep 452 looks exactly like rep 1 after a gentle "DOESN'T COUNT!!!"

This phenomenon is not a product of a sudden change in physiology. The athlete doesn’t magically produce more ATP on command. They focus. They narrow their eyes to thin slits and make their bodies do it right. The lower lumbar arch returns, the knees track the toes, and the wall ball hits its target.

When my shoulders staged a coup during Round Eighteen on Sunday morning, they got a General Patton pep talk. When my legs refused to run this morning, I gave them a bullwhip to the back. Mental power is real, and it’s more important than any rep scheme on Earth.

When your body says no, your form gets sloppy, your knees buckle, and you want to quit, override your slanderous flesh. Find your zen puddle, and reset your expectations as to what pain feels like.

The Crossfit Battle resides in the mind. Embrace this fact, and the Grinders get a whole lot easier.

Go faster!

Photo courtesy of tonyrogers.com. "The test of success is not what you do when you're on top. Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom." --General George S. Patton

2006-11-02T16:38:00.000Z

Painstorm

Sometimes, workouts transcend the physical. They involve such fortitude and inner-will that the effort becomes entirely mental, an exercise in courage.

Quitting is easy. All you have to do is stop and go home. Fortunately, there are a few souls out there who have no desire to go home.

I’m hoping you’re one of them.

Our friends at Brand X and Crossfit Central Scotland have issued a challenge. It’s a bone-crushing test of toughness, dubbed Painstorm XIX:

As Many Rounds As Possible in 40 Minutes:

5 Deadlifts
5 Hang Power Cleans
5 Front Squats
5 Push Presses
5 Back Squats

The prescribed loading is a 70-pound bar—we’ll be using dumbbells for the sake of portability.

Again Faster meets at 8:00 a.m. every Sunday on the shores of Jamaica Pond. This weekend, we’re earning our keep.

Go faster!

2006-10-30T16:01:00.001Z

Peter’s Kill and The Lost City

We woke up at 4:30 on Saturday morning, leaving the sanctuary of home for the biting cold of pre-dawn October.

We loaded ropes, harnesses, and packs into the back of the car. I was headed for paradise, traveling along side John, Marcia, Sam, and Nick.

The caffeine obliterated any thoughts of sleep as I hacked at my laptop, calling up images of our last visit to the Shawangunks. Pictures of gorgeous gray fault-block and a cobalt blue sky flashed across the screen. Sam and I looked through every picture in my library, recalling a summer’s worth of workouts and climbs.

Every click was met with a new image of friends and family. Again Faster suffer-fests, Crossfit Boston’s new digs, outings to the Quincy Quarry—a lifetime’s worth of adventure condensed to six months of photos.

The hard colors of the city melted into reds and browns as we drove west, speeding through a pink dawn toward New York. Unable to concentrate on my writing, I gazed out the window at the emerging day, Sam half-asleep on my right shoulder. The sun was bright and constant, promising everything I’d come to expect from our trips to the Gunks.

We turned off the New York State Thruway just before eight o’clock. The Near Trapps loomed over Route 44, inspiring a sense of majesty and awe. We drove under the access bridge, foregoing the Mohunk Reservation for a path less traveled.

Just southwest of the Trapps, Minnewaska State Park holds Peter’s Kill, a lesser known cliff band buried in the bright deciduous forest. Unloading our gear, we layered thermal underwear under heavy fleece jackets to fight the breeze.

Sunshine erupted from behind gray clouds as we moved into the forest, offering a respite from the cold. By the time we reached the base of the cliff we had shed our outerwear, enjoying the natural windbreak of the dense underbrush.

John had gone ahead to set our anchors, and we scrambled along the base of the cliff looking for signs of our leader. Nick dropped a case of water along the path, forcing him to stop. As I called for him to hurry up, John bellowed from the top of the wall:

“Rope!”

Two gray strands fell from the sky, hitting the ground a few feet from Nick’s location. Fortune had guided us in.

I pulled on my harness and pumped my feet into my rock shoes, smiling at the sound of their vacuum fit making good contact with my heel. The rush of escaping air held the promise of solid footholds all day long.

I tied in at the bottom of “Captain’s Log”, threading the rope through my harness. The 5.4 climb was riddled with horizontal cracks, providing a nice start to the day. My holds were secure as I scaled the face, my movements slow and easy. The anchor came quickly, and I was lowered to the forest floor unscathed.

The second climb of the day was significantly more daunting, a 5.7 route with a tricky crux move. "Kling-On" starts with an irresistible overhanging ledge about six and a half feet off the ground. In a nod to my Crossfit training, I kipped into the ledge, a hard pull catapulting me to support on top of the rock. I stood up and surveyed the remaining face.

Three-quarters of the way up, a block of white rock bulges over the route. It requires the climber to make a non-intuitive move, shifting into the corner to secure a left foothold before going up and over.

I lost my grip three times at the apex of the climb, saving a fall only through some very lucky reach-and-slap attempts at a deep, shelf-like handhold just above the crux. My heart was hammering as Sam brought me down, my nervous system refusing to acknowledge the safety afforded by the top-rope.

On the ground, I watched Marcia tackle “Under Kling-On”, a 5.9 rated route that starts hot and heavy and ends with a whimper. The second move is a contortionist’s nightmare, asking the climber put left knee to chin in order to secure a foothold across the rock. This is a stretchy, physically demanding move, but it comprises the entire challenge of “Under Kling-On”. We each completed the route quickly, a bunch of 5.7-5.8 climbers smoking a 5.9 climb. We wondered, loudly, as to the adequacy of the rating.

Like most gymnastic performances, a climb is remembered (and rated) for its hardest move, the rest of the route cast into obscurity.

While Sam, Nick, and I took turns climbing the Trekkie wall, John had negotiated the use of another party’s gear. “Reach Around” was just around the corner to the climber’s left, a pumpy sixty-foot route replete with two overhangs and a nasty crux move. It's a sustained pitch, and very hard on the arms.

I belayed for Marcia as she moved to the crux, a right-facing overhang with a blind handhold to the inside. Unable to perceive the route, Marcia traversed right to a blank face, frustrated at the lack of holds.

“What the hell are you doing? Get back over there!”

My gentle encouragement did the trick, and Marcia moved left and through the overhang with minimal effort. After some contemplation she made the final move over a smaller roof to the anchor, ending a solid half-hour of climbing.

I tied in for the same climb, confident of my ability to make the top. Ten feet up the book, I realized the climb was not going to be an afternoon stroll. All hands and no feet, I pulled my way to the crux, grabbing a juggy hold just inside the dihedral. Securing my right, I threw my left hand to the top of the overhanging formation. Gripping hard, I cast my other hand up and pulled over the crux.

Standing on the ledge, my arms were shaking uncontrollably. I joked with the climbers on the ground, waiting for the tremors to stop. They did, but I was too spent to continue. After several attempts at the final move, I asked John to bring me back down.

It would be the only climb that beat me, a 5.7 with an obvious finish. The next climber stood in the same spot I had, perplexed by the ending sequence. I told him how it went, teaching a move I’d been unable to complete.

“There’s a left-facing flake with a great thumb. Pull on it and put your right hand in the horizontal crack below the roof. You’ve got to do it fast.”

I’d failed because of hesitation, conducting an impromptu experiment in prolonged isometric holds. Not surprisingly, gravity lasted longer than my grip, and I fell off the wall. The climber made the anchor.

John climbed the face next, moving up and around the overhang with little fuss. Like Olympic lifting, technique is the primary determinant of success in rock climbing. Physical condition takes a back seat to coordination, agility, and accuracy, traits developed through practice. John’s decades of experience on rock have given him these traits.

Abandoning “Reach Around”, we moved east. “TP” and “Genuflect” are perfectly parallel, located on opposite sides of a small box canyon to the right of “Under Kling-On”. The stone forms ninety degree angles everywhere, exhibiting symmetry out of place with the bramble of the surrounding forest.

Both climbs warrant a 5.6 rating, rewarding the patient climber with adequate holds all the way to the top. After a moderately difficult start, “TP” devolves into a ladder of horizontal cracks. It was a nice break from the grip workout of “Reach Around”, and I felt fluid and relaxed for the entire climb.

Genuflect is similarly perfunctory and unmemorable, a thirty foot fault-to-crack climb with no awkward moves. One by one, we polished off the wall, clearing our gear to seek a new challenge.

While Marcia, Sam, and Nick packed up, John and I hiked down the Peter’s Kill Trail, ropes and slings in tow.

We went a quarter mile west, scrambling to the top of a low face to secure two top-ropes. “Left Block” and “Right Block” were aptly named, two cracks in a stack of gray fault block on top of a mound of fallen rock. With “Seams Like Fun”, the three routes ranged from 5.4 to 5.8, progressing in difficulty from left to right. We ran static-to-sling anchors above “Right Block” and “Seams”, leaving “Left Block” unclimbed.

Sundown comes early in the forest. The sun descended through the tree line as we climbed the short routes, bringing a forgotten chill back to the wall. We climbed in the waning light, hands and feet sore from the demands of the day.

Sitting on a large rock, Sam and I ate a Spartan dinner of macadamia nuts and protein powder, our outerwear pulled from our backpacks. The red, green, and gold of the forest took a dull sheen, and the sky turned from bright blue to grey. We moved to leave Peter’s Kill, a monumental day of climbing behind us.

We reclaimed our equipment from the block, cramming ropes and leads into impossibly small bags. Two hundred feet of hiking put us back in the parking lot, face-to-face with the first signs of civilization we’d seen in over eight hours.

Gridlock traffic greeted our trip back to New Paltz, a reminder that our choice of venue was well-informed. Hundreds of cars stretched to the horizon, taillights blinking, yet we had only seen one other group all day.

An hour later we were gathered around a table at Barnaby’s, celebrating Nick’s birthday with steaks and a round of Oktoberfest. Relaxed and thoroughly spent, we made a fateful choice.

“Tomorrow, we can go back where we were, or we can go to another place. You have to hike to get there. The Lost City.”

John’s pronouncement was understated, but we understood the implication right away. Of course we would hike—the mere thought of a place called “The Lost City” smacked of adventure. We decided without dissent, finishing our meal under the soft lights, wondering what The Lost City held in store.

The next morning we hiked toward our destination, no more knowledgeable than we were the night before. The thin, grey cover of dawn had given way to bright sunshine, illuminating the forest in a wave of yellow and brown. The High Peter’s Kill Trail turned to bog, our walk restricted to a twelve-inch wide platform over the muck. We traversed a stream, leaving the lowland water for a thick carpet of leaves.

King’s Lane continued upward into the forest, a wide thoroughfare through the trees. John stopped in the middle of the trail, gesturing off into the woods.
We would hike in without a discernable path—The Lost City was directly North.

The smooth expanse of leaves gave way to large boulders, densely packed on the forest floor. They ranged in size from filing cabinets to buildings, closer and closer together as we moved up the hill.

My pack slowed me significantly, 50-plus pounds of rope and water tugging ceaselessly at my back. The cliff came into view as I crested a huge formation of fallen block, appearing almost white in the intense sunlight.

I dropped my load with relief, waiting for the others to catch up. Reassembled, all five of us headed for the cliff-top, crawling through a cave-like structure to access a thin pass up the side of the face. Wearing rubber-soled Adidas, I checked every foothold before placing my weight, my pulse racing at the thought of a hard fall.

A breathtaking view awaited us at the top, the autumn foliage extending to the horizon without interruption. It was unquestionably gorgeous, the type of sight that makes a man feel totally and utterly insignificant.

We set two anchors as a front blew in from the West. The sun appeared in fits and starts, the temperature alternately climbing and plummeting with each passing cloud. I was glad for my thermal layers as we descended, my fingers growing cold in the morning air.

Our climbs were unnamed, the product of a local desire to keep The Lost City lost. The left-most climb was a combination corner and crack, while the right-most climb was a deep fault that persuaded the climber to move ever-further into its folds.

John, Marcia, and Nick took turns on the corner route while Sam and I scaled the rightward climb. Sam tied into the rope, shedding her jacket in anticipation of a difficult effort.

The first ascent of the day is always taxing, and Samantha moved slowly up the rock. She was intermittently swallowed and released by the yawning gap in the cliff, finding holds anywhere she could.

She made the anchor without a fall, pausing at the top to take in the view behind her. I lowered her hesitantly, giving her time to negotiate the tricky lines of the rappel.

Back on the ground, we switched roles. With Sam belaying, I buried myself in the climb. I wedged further and further into the cliff as I moved upward, relieved at the relative safety of the rock’s embrace. Negotiating the climb required me to shift my weight constantly, seeking hand and foot holds on both sides of the fault. I pumped hard with my arms, pulling against the sharp rock.

The silver glint of the anchor came into view, and I called to be lowered without surveying the scene around me. I immediately regretted my oversight, resolving to bring my camera to the top on the next climb.

Nick was coming off the corner when Sam and I wandered over. The sky was clear and endless above his head, strikingly beautiful against the bright yellow leaves of a nearby tree.

The route was deceptively difficult, hard despite the help provided by the square intersection of two sections of rock. The top of the pitch was slightly past vertical, demanding repeat pull-ups to make the anchor. Despite a year of climbing, I hadn’t yet learned to optimize my footholds, and my arms were paying the price.

Standing on a ledge at the top, I turned to take a picture, pulling my small digital camera from its holster. The trees went forever, dappled with sunlight in a two-hundred degree panorama. My leg vibrated against the rock as I recorded the scene, my muscles refusing to relax on my high perch.

Directly ahead, the backside of the Trapps was silhouetted against the clouds, a small depression indicating the path of Route 44 through the Shawnagunks. We'd left behind every sign of man's influence, save this notch.

John set a new anchor thirty feet left of our second climb.

From ten feet back, the face had a single, lonely crack and no discernable footholds. I walked up to the rock, unbelieving. Sure enough, a climb materialized—a ridge on the right, a skinny foothold on the left, and a long reach to safety.

Sam and I stood at the bottom, choreographing every move, positive that we were looking at the hardest climb of the day.

She pushed her hands into the crack, making her first move toward the top. Ironically, the penalty for a fall is higher when the climber is closer to the ground—due to rope stretch, a three-foot drop could result in a broken ankle.

She fell on her second move, hitting the ground feet-first and unhurt. We went over the sequence again, and Sam climbed. She cleared the second move, planting her right foot on an all-day ledge to the right of the crack. Knuckle-deep, she pulled upward.

Her foot slipped off a tenuous left-foot hold, and gravity took over. Weighting the rope, she leaned back from the face and pressed her back against a tree, relieving the accumulated strain on her arms and legs.

The third move beat her several times, each attempt forcing her to clamor into position for the difficult reach once again. Frustrated, she leaned against the tree, ripping her jacket off and staring intently at the rock.

She cranked through the opening moves on her fourth attempt, finding a new handhold slightly higher than her last elevation. A juggy right hand, the hold boosted her up to the first ledge and a long-awaited rest.

The unnamed route was unrelenting. Sparse holds required Sam to crack-climb, a type of climbing her amorphous slippers weren’t made to handle. Noticing the truncated corner configuration of the rock, I suggested she perform a layback, pinning her feet to the left-hand face with her arms fully extended.

This did the trick. Sam pulled through the rest of the lengthy route, plodding through ten meters of energy-sapping ascent. She grunted as she climbed, her exclamations a product of extreme exertion.

On the ground, she shook her hands out, angry at the difficulty of the climb.

Ten minutes later I attempted it, failing in many of the same spots. The first four moves drained my pulling power as I grabbed for the ledge over and over again. The layback reduced my already-fatigued arms to a mass of quivering tendons, my grip junked by the sharp crystals inside the crack. Groaning and grunting, I made the anchor, five or six falls marring the attempt.

My knuckles bleeding, I proposed we name the route. This honor is typically reserved for the first person to complete a pitch, but I’ve never been one to stand on decorum.

The sequence of events drove the nomenclature—“Tree Lean and Groan” was born. Nine days after the experience, my knuckles still bear the marks of that climb, pink and raw across the back of my hand.

Nick beat the hell out of "Tree Lean". He is enormous for a rock climber, tipping the scales at over 200 pounds. Despite his size, Nick has tons of strength, and the prolonged layback suited his abilities perfectly.

With almost no hesitation, Nick cranked up the route, topping out in half the time it had taken Samantha and I. With a mixture of awe and envy, I cheered Nick's tremendous effort, clapping as John lowered him to the ground.

We finished our adventure in The Lost City with an easy climb, scaling a cold corner of the face with minimal effort, enjoying a respite from the mental and physical trials of the day's earlier climbs.

Sam and I packed our ropes and slings, lingering to watch a young German woman attempt a difficult climb. She moved gracefully up the slick rock, holding onto thin air as she flew upward. Her route was easily a 5.10, far beyond our abilities.

My trance was broken as she fell, her belay rope snapping taut in the cold October dusk. We turned to leave, slinging on our packs for the hike back to civilization.

I concentrated on the boulders as we descended from the cliff, scrambling over and around mountains of fallen rock. It felt wrong to leave such a beautiful place--golden trees and a gorgeous blue sky promised that there would be other days like this, days where everything was perfect.

I moved purposefully but slowly, leaving The Lost City only out of necessity. Eventually the scree gave way to open forest, and we joined Nick, John, and Marcia on King's Lane.

We crossed the rushing stream, marking our passage from the dry highlands to the soggy wetland, stepping quickly across the wet stones. We moved single-file along the man-made catwalk, finally exiting to the parking lot at the base of the High Peter's Kill trail.

The weekend was epic, spanning twelve pitches over two days. I felt out of place as we drove east, the beauty of the Shawangunks giving way to the Berkshires giving way to concrete and gleaming metal. The hills receded as we approached the coast, zipping through the suburban enclaves of Wellesley and Newton, the wild plan of nature turning to the carefully-constructed schematics of man.

Reclining in a state of near-sleep, it struck me that I was fortunate to have such friends, folks who knew about the truly important places, places where time is only as important as your next adventure.

That night I fell asleep with a smile on my face, exhausted and elated from our journey. Crossfit was next on the agenda, and 4:30 promised to come quickly.

Go faster!

Ratings and names from the Peter's Kill area courtesy of "Peter's Kill Climbing Guide" by Robert Wilson and Jennifer Sauer. The Lost City is a figment of my imagination, and does not in fact exist. Looking for it is a waste of time, much like yoga or anything involving a Swiss ball.

2006-10-26T15:35:00.000+01:00

F*ck Gravity

This Sunday, we’re continuing the Again Faster Weekly Workout Series with an all-out assault on the personal record.

After a brief warm-up, we’re going to test your pulling strength and endurance with a max pull-up test. Resistance is the name of the game—we’ll have weighted vests and dumbbells on hand to keep your numbers down.

First, the vests. We’ll test your maximum number of reps with a 20, 30, or 40 pound vest. For the diehards, the AF Bar will be available—a double-pendulum man-maker of a pull-up bar that promises to knock you down a few notches.

Then, the max pull. You’ll have five attempts at a single pull-up with as much resistance as you can handle.

If the thought of multiple PR attempts isn’t enough to send your back into spasms, we’ll follow up with a set of lock-offs and a few hangs for time. I smell contest.

For the pull-up challenged, we’ll have rings set up to help you progress toward your first unassisted reps.

We’ll finish with “Sprint and Strike”, a workout with enough heat to make you forget that it’s October:

5 rounds for time:

100m Sprint
20 Sledge Swings
20 Push-ups

We’re going for a record turnout this weekend—everybody likes a PR attempt with a few screaming fans! As always, we meet at 8:00 a.m. by the pull-up bars at Jamaica Pond. This event is not weather contingent, ladies and gentlemen. I'll bring the chalk.

Go faster!

Picture of Jerry Hill courtesy of fitforcecamp.com.

"Fight one more round. When your arms are so tired that you can hardly lift your hands to press the dumbbells, fight one more round. When your heart pounds and your head spins so fast that you wish you would pass-out or puke, fight one more round - remembering that the person who always fights one more round is never whipped.”—From Jerry Hill, edited from James Corbett.

2006-10-24T18:21:00.000+01:00

Boston Crossfit Certification Seminar: Day One

“We teach people what their ass does for a living.”—Greg Glassman

Walking into the first day of a Crossfit Certification is like walking onto a Hollywood set. You recognize everyone, and no one recognizes you.

The hallucinogenic qualities of the experience are heightened by the familiarity of the terrain. This is the building I train in every day. At least, I think it’s this building.

The equipment had disappeared, and a bunch of Crossfit Rockstars stood in its place. Greg Amundson, Nicole Carroll, Coach. Kelly Moore, Jesse Woody, Lynne Pitts, and Carrie Klumpar.

I felt like a pre-teen girl at an N’Sync concert, except the stage-front security was nowhere to be seen. Disneyland for fitness freaks. A backstage pass to GPP Lollapalooza.

It was on.

Sam and I were ridiculously early, towing our new friends from Crossfit Cape Fear—John, Shad, and Heidi. We signed the “Yep, you’re probably going to die” waiver, and proceeded to hug everyone in the building. I zeroed in on Lynne. I’d failed to convince her that the gangsters in Roxbury are asleep at 7:00 a.m., and I was anxious to hear the horror stories of her journey from New Hampshire.

She didn’t have any, but she did have a new piece of equipment coming her way. I grabbed an AF Bar from the corner, and presented it with all the decorum of a guard at Westminster Abbey. It had the intended effect—jealousy. I think Kelly wanted one before she found out what it was.

Standing with two Crossfit legends, I bellowed across the room at my girlfriend, gesturing for her to come say hello. Sammy came over, smiling like it was going out of style.

Between the two of them, Lynne and Kelly beat the hell out of nearly every fitness pursuit worth pursuing—Crossfit, RKC, Clubbells, powerlifting, gymnastics—and Sam knows it. Standing face-to-face with her role models, Sam exhibited all the humility and grace you’d expect from a novice. Not surprisingly, those traits were returned in spades by our new friends. The lack of ego was palpable.

The joy on Sam’s face was worth the price of admission, and we hadn’t even started yet. At 8:00, Nicole stood under the whiteboard, calling for attention.

She introduced Coach Glassman to thunderous applause. Greg Glassman created Crossfit during decades of work as a trainer, embracing a contrarian approach to fitness that often left him on the wrong side of the popularity divide. He commands attention in a manner that belies his stature—at five foot six or so, his physical presence is unintimidating. Nonetheless, his eloquence draws you in and keeps you there.

We started at the beginning. The Tao of Crossfit. In tiny blue letters, Coach marked up the corner of the board:

“Empirically Driven Continuously Tested Community Developed Constantly Varied Functional Movement High Intensity.”

Everything you need to know about Crossfit in twelve words. He left his scribble to soak in, and launched into the basic movements of our trade.

The squat. According to Coach, it takes three to five years to develop a mature squat—torso upright, lumbar arch maintained, midline stabilization constant.

Using his demonstration piece, a sarcastically self-professed “dumb jock”, we got an up-close view of athletic perfection. Nicole made the squat look easy, cranking out rep after rep with flawless form. The downward portion of the movement is initiated by the hip flexors—rather than fall into the bottom position, the athlete pulls back and down. The return to standing is accomplished using a full contraction of the butt and hamstrings, and the weight remains on the heels for the duration. Her lower lumbar arch is enduring.

It’s amazing how hard this is to do correctly.

Coach pointed out the alignment of the pelvis and spine, using a simplified schematic that we’d see ad nauseum over the next two days—a stylized “s” connected at the tail with an oval. For a first-hand look at this artistic masterpiece and a great overview of basic anatomy and physiology, grab a copy of the August 2003 Crossfit Journal.

The point of the drawing: in nearly every athletic movement, the pelvis remains wedded to the spine, forming a continuous line unperturbed by posterior tilt.

“In this position, she’s bombproof. She’s bulletproof…your ability to punch, jump, run, throw…will be largely determined by your ability to maintain stabilization of this structure…Extension of the hip is necessary and maybe even sufficient for elite athleticism. If you cannot powerfully, explosively extend the hip while maintaining midline stabilization, you are working at a fraction of your capacity.”

This little bit of information would remain with me all weekend long, rearing its head again and again as I practiced squats, wall ball, high pulls, and slam ball. Evidently, my spinal alignment leaves something to be desired.

Using a five-foot dowel, Nicole demonstrated proper deadlifting technique. The shoulders remain behind the hands, arms taut, lumbar arch maintained. The load stays in the frontal plane throughout the movement, following a vertical path from the ground to lockout.

To allow for a straight up and down movement, the knees clear out of the way of the bar—the bar does not travel around the knees! Nicole went through the deadlift at warp-speed, the return to the ground precisely retracing the path to lockout. She probably could’ve pulled 225 with the same grace, although her speed might have suffered.

Our lesson in foundational movements continued with a review of the shoulder press. Coach stressed the importance of shoulder flexibility in facilitating overhead lockout. During the shoulder press, the entire body is active, leaving nothing relaxed. The shoulders are pressed into the ears, stabilized by the traps, and the bar is directly overhead. Everything should be tight and working.

Shoulder flexibility can be developed thorough focused stretching—hanging from the pullup bar with a narrow grip or partner stretching Superman-style.

We’d been sitting for close to two hours without any form of physical activity, and the fine folks running the Cert decided to change that with a vigorous bout of bottom-to-bottom Tabata squats.

Gee, thanks.

The Tabata protocol dictates twenty seconds of work followed by ten seconds of rest, repeated for eight intervals. A bottom-to-bottom squat is just like it sounds—you start and end in the hole. Conveniently, the “rest” also takes place at this lower elevation.

Like everything else Crossfit, the Tabata interval is scored. The lowest number of squats completed during any of the eight intervals is your number. This has ramifications on the athlete’s strategy during the exercise.

“What does it tell me if you do twelve in one interval and sixteen in the next?”

Coach answered his own question: “You’re stupid.”

With a quick warm-up (standing up and putting away the chairs), we formed a circle around the room. Coach stood in the center, and showed us three ways to cheat the bottom-to-bottom: inadequate depth, slumping in the bottom position, and inadequate extension. Then he put Nicole in there.

“Just keep up with her.”

This is like trying to outrun a thoroughbred on the back stretch of the Belmont Stakes. Nicole is capable of upwards of 20 squats in a single interval. I am not. With Dave Picardy and Jesse Woody standing directly over my left shoulder, we proceeded to Tabata-ize our morning. With typical indiscretion, I tried to keep up with Nicole. While Sammy received effusive praise to my right, I heard over and over:

“Come up higher. You’re losing your arch. Lost it. Don’t sink. Arch!” Yep, okay guys. I’m on it. I couldn’t have pushed myself higher in the bottom position if Jesse had broken out a pistol and threatened to aerate my head.

The Tabata protocol has the unique distinction of causing aerobic and anaerobic failure simultaneously, placing it in the same torturous class as electro-shock therapy at Guantanamo Bay. By the end of the protocol, my legs were a curious mix of Jello and cement, and my beige folding chair looked like an overstuffed couch.

Back in our seats, Coach asked if anyone managed to keep up with Nicole. No hands. He worked his way down—“Nineteen squats? Eighteen?” One guy raised his hand. “Seventeen?” No one. “Sixteen? Fifteen?” Hands started to go up. Mine stayed down. I wasn’t sure what I’d scored, because it’s hard to count when you’re dying.

Coach took up his station at the whiteboard.

Crossfit is empirically driven. We do things because they work, and we find out they work by doing them. Exercise science informs Crossfit only tangentially—academic work is largely ignored in favor of trial and error conditioning. If a particular theory can be proved through real-world experience, it becomes practice.

If not, it remains theory.

The Internet has given Coach Glassman a fantastic tool for refining the Crossfit Method. Hundreds of comments regarding the Workout of the Day are posted daily, giving him insight into the quality of the program. By examining the output—the relative experience of the participants—Coach is able to tweak the input, changing the sequence and duration of the prescribed movements to optimize physical development. In this manner, Crossfit is community developed and continuously tested.

The Method comes with a simple caveat—if you can come up with something better, we’ll do it. To paraphrase Coach, if a three-day sequence of yoga, pilates, and the WOD creates world-class athletes, we’ll be doing yoga, pilates, and the WOD. Until then, we’ll stick with what we know—a carefully orchestrated combination of gymnastics, weightlifting, and sprinting.

The squat, press, and deadlift represent the foundations of human movement—Crossfit embraces this triad and expands its scope. Coach illustrated this expansion with a simple diagram.

The squat becomes the front squat as resistance is added to the movement. The front squat is more difficult than the air squat, requiring a higher level of strength, coordination, and power. The sequence culminates in the overhead squat, the most difficult of the three movements.

This three-part progression holds true for the press. The press becomes the push press becomes the push jerk. Each subsequent movement requires increased agility and coordination, enabling progressively larger loads to be pushed overhead.

The deadlift is extremely functional, enabling large loads to be raised to hip height. It evolves into the sumo deadlift high-pull, a movement that brings the load to the upper chest through a combination of hip extension and close-grip pulling. This sequence ends in the clean, an exercise that allows otherwise unmanageable objects to be pushed overhead.

Nicole demonstrated each of the second-tier movements. Coach stressed the importance of the rack position during the front squat and the need to remain completely vertical during the dip/drive portion of the push press. During the dip and drive, the midline moves in a vertical plane, straying neither forward nor backward.

The sumo deadlift high-pull has tremendous real-world application, as most objects don’t lend themselves to being picked up with a conventional deadlift. Boulders, sandbags, and other small loads must be picked up with a close grip rather than a wide grip, rendering the conventional deadlift useless.

As the movements progress along the continuum of difficulty, they require more and more power for successful execution. Coach would return to this point after lunch.

At Nicole’s cue, we broke into groups of six or seven athletes, each attended by a bevy of veteran trainers. The student-to-teacher ratio during these sessions was fantastic, approaching one-on-one. The feedback was quick and freely given. We reviewed the front squat, the push press, and the deadlift using five-foot lengths of PVC as resistance.

An eight-ounce pipe precludes a proper rack position for all but the most flexible athletes. I am not a flexible athlete. With a trainer pushing down on the pipe, I descended into the hole, only to realize my legs were totally frozen from the morning Tabata session. Once again my inadequate lumbar arch made an appearance, eliciting cries of “Arch!” from my new teachers.

I disappointed them horribly, cranking out Quasimodo-esque squats on command.

The push press wasn’t much better—I was slow with the dip and my chest was determined to pitch forward. After a mild correction, I was push pressing to everyone’s satisfaction.

We reviewed the sumo deadlift high-pull under the watchful eyes of Kelly Moore and Jesse Woody, cranking elbows toward the ceiling. I escaped unscathed, released into the October afternoon to find some lunch.

Sam, John, Heidi, Shad, and I crammed into Sammy’s beat-up Ford Focus and roared off toward Trader Joe’s. Several chicken breasts and some uber-crappy sandwiches later, we were back at the Facility, ready for more.

Our lesson in the Tao of Crossfit continued after the break. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard the phrase “constantly varied, functional movement, executed at high intensity” several hundred times. I’ve seen more word-for-word copying of this statement in the Crossfit-o-sphere than any other Glassman-ism, and for good reason.

It describes Crossfit perfectly.

Coach addressed functional movement first. The exercises employed by Crossfit exhibit “universal motor recruitment patterns”. This means they exist everywhere. They are not contrivances specific to the gym.

Coach flapped his arms like he was trying to take off, driving home his point by mimicking the absurdity of the weighted lateral raise. Functional movement is always applicable, in that it transfers easily to daily life. Real-world squatting, lifting, pulling, and pushing are all done in a non-isolated, compound manner, and we train for the real world. Therefore, Crossfit makes exclusive use of compound movements.

In Crossfit, intensity is exactly analogous to power; the latter defined as force multiplied by distance over time. Increased power output invariably leads to increased fitness, as seen again and again through observation of Crossfit athletes.

Power = (Force * Distance)/Time

Crossfit naturally incorporates the pursuit of increased power output. WODs are typically structured to elicit a specific number of reps in an unknown timeframe or an unknown number of reps in a specific timeframe.

For instance, “Fran” demands 45 repetitions each of the thruster and the pull-up. The duration of the effort is up to the athlete. In this case, the “force times distance” portion of the workout is fixed, leaving time as the unknown variable. The less time it takes the athlete to complete the workout, the more power he/she has generated.

By way of contrast, “Cindy” holds time constant, demanding the athlete complete as many rounds as possible in twenty minutes of a pull-up/push-up/squat combination. To maximize power output, the athlete must increase the “force times distance” portion by completing more rounds.

In both cases, the fittest athlete is the one who produces the most power.

With a subtle warning, Coach Glassman theorized that greater power outputs lead to increased neuroendocrine response, creating changes in body composition that “mimic exogenous hormone therapy”. In other words, Crossfitters begin to take the shape of steroid users without the negative side effects—they enjoy low body fat levels and increased lean muscle mass through high power output.

The impact of compound movement extends beyond mechanics. For instance, deadlifting will improve an athlete’s sprint speed even though the two movements are mechanically dissimilar. This cross-exercise improvement seems to be unique to compound movement, and serves as further evidence of the efficacy of the Crossfit Method.

The argument for constant variety in our training is simple. To tackle unforeseen tasks, we must confront and overcome the unknown on a regular basis. When faced with a novel physical task, “we fail at the margins of our experience or exposure.”

Toward eliminating failure, Crossfit emphasizes exposure to functional exercises across aerobic and anaerobic metabolic pathways. Coach offered the observation that endurance-sport athletes lose their superhuman endurance capacity even when asked to compete in outwardly similar events—marathoners are typically poor cyclists, exhibiting the same lack of cardio-respiratory endurance as novice cyclists. In his words, “VO2 max doesn’t translate very well.”

At the other end of the spectrum, “Crossfit produces a ready state.” Coach presented the example of Greg Admundson, a crazy-fit product of his Santa Cruz gym. While waiting to compete in the “Toughest Cop Alive” Competition, Greg participated in a triathlon, taking second place despite no sport-specific training. He won the TCA Competition later in the week, beating out better-rested athletes for the title.

According to Coach, adequate variance, functionality, and intensity are sufficient for calling any activity Crossfit: “If you were to dig a moat, fill it with crocodiles, swim the moat, scale a castle wall, battle a dragon, throw the damsel over your shoulder and escape, that would be Crossfit!”

Our survey course in Crossfit philosophy over for the day, we turned our attention to the final three movements in the progression—the overhead squat, the push jerk, and the clean. Nicole took center stage to demonstrate each exercise.

The overhead squat possesses all the mechanical attributes the squat, putting the load 8-12 inches overhead.

Using a dowel, Nicole performed dislocates to find her optimal overhead squat grip. She does this by cycling the bar from the hang to overhead to behind the back without bending her arms. The wider the grip, the easier the movement becomes. The athlete works her hands inward on successive repetitions until she cannot complete the movement without bending the arms. Her optimal grip is immediately outside this terminal position.

Grip width determines clearance of the bar over the head. The shoulders are active, shrugged hard. This tension is critical to performing a successful overhead squat with any significant load.

The overhead squat amplifies dynamic and structural problems in the squat. By necessity, any forward inclination of the torso places the load behind the neck, putting the athlete in a suboptimal position to complete the squat. She must cantilever severely to keep the load in the frontal plane. When the torso is kept upright, the movement becomes much easier—the load is directly over the heels, enabling the athlete to transfer force from the ground directly to the bar.

The push jerk is the granddaddy of all presses. Once the push jerk is mastered, the earlier iterations of the press become obsolete—it will get more weight overhead than the press or the push press, respectively.

The standing press is simple, cued with one word: “Press.” The push press is more complicated: “Dip, Drive, and Press.” The push jerk begins where the push press ends, incorporating an additional dip and catch: “Dip, Drive, Press, Dip, and Stand.”

The athlete puts momentum and elevation on the bar, throwing herself underneath it in a partial squat, arms extended overhead. The final movement is very similar to the third pull of the clean or the snatch. The arms lockout overhead milliseconds before the feet hit the ground—“Jump and land partially squatted.”

Nicole performed the push jerk with extraordinary speed, demonstrating an exceptional ability to leverage herself under the bar in perfect position. Shoulder flexibility plays a huge role in the successful push jerk, as the bar ends up overhead with the hands just outside shoulder width. Nicole nailed the movement again and again, her flexibility evident.

According to Coach, each new press variation should allow for a 30-50% increase in load over the previous press. The push jerk momentarily puts the athlete in freefall with the load locked overhead—the weight is limited only by the structural integrity of the body on impact. Coach offered the example of being thrown out of an airplane with a grand piano. You’d be able to press it overhead without any difficulty, but the landing would suck.

The final exercise for the day was the clean. Nicole held a Dynamax ball in a close-grip deadlift, standing and shrugging on Coach’s cue. She went to triple extension, rendering the ball momentarily weightless.

“A clean is exactly playing catch with yourself with a heavy object.”

Coach emphasized this aspect of the clean, commanding us to watch the ball rather than Nicole. As she shrugged, the ball hovered just long enough for her to get underneath it in a solid squat.

The clean has a large psychological component—it is not human nature to want to throw oneself beneath an object in freefall.

“The athleticism of (the clean) is not in the pull…powerlifters look at the loads Olympic lifted, and they’re not impressed…There’s one guy that can get under that 650 pounds, but probably thousands that can pull the load as high as he did,” Coach said, gesturing toward his abdomen.

The glory of the clean is the third pull.

We broke into our groups for individual work on the overhead squat, the push jerk, and the clean. During this session, I had a wonderful revelation regarding my inability to push jerk properly. My failing is caused by inflexibility.

While training at Crossfit Boston, I am repeatedly called out for landing stiff-legged. Unfortunately, this is the only way I am able to land and still maintain an upright torso, as my shoulder and hamstring flexibility levels prevent a proper squat with my hands directly overhead.

Of all the things I learned at the Seminar, this was the most valuable. Knowing the source of your failings is a huge boon to self-improvement.

We reconvened around the whiteboard for a final lecture. Coach encouraged us to maintain a proper attitude toward the highest order of athletic movements, as they can take a lifetime to master.

He also encouraged us to focus on mechanics, properly executing the basic movements before moving on to more advanced exercises—“You can’t go to reading if you don’t know the alphabet.”

He warned us to respect sub-maximal loads. In his experience, most injuries occur at 60-70% 1RM. These weights produce enough force to hurt you, but aren’t large enough to engender proper respect. Focus is paramount when working in this load range. Proper technique protects athletes from injury, even when post-maximal loads are used. If correct positioning is employed, a failed lift won’t end in a hospital visit.

We cleared the floor, and the trainers brought out barbells and stacks of 25-pound bumper plates. They set up nine stations, each with a Dynamax ball and a 95-pound bar.

It was time for Fran.

Greg Amundson and Kelly Moore each took at spot directly in front of the pull-up bars, giving an up-close demonstration of peak Crossfit performance. I’ve never been so amped in my life. Greg’s sub-3:00 attempts at Fran are the stuff of legend, and I was ecstatic to have the chance to witness it firsthand.

With an entire room of screaming athletes behind them, Greg and Kelly blasted through the workout. Sets of thrusters and pull-ups melted into each other as they cranked onward, Greg finishing in 3:09 with Kelly 30 seconds behind. It was amazing--see it here.

When Coach called for athletes to take the floor, I bolted for the stations closest to the pull-up bar. Dead center, with Jesse Woody standing to my right, we launched into Fran. Surrounded by veteran Crossfitters, I felt like I was exercising underwater. I deliberately broke up my first set of thrusters into sevens, preserving some energy for the final assault.

The pull-up bar was an absolute melee, athletes jostling for room to kip. I made the mistake of going inside the bar, losing my slot when I dropped off for a rest. Frustrated, I stood in a forest of kipping legs, waiting. Ten seconds later, I was free.

The mid-workout haze set-in as I went through the remaining thrusters and pull-ups. Jesse counted my reps, preventing my super-ball of a barbell from killing bystanders during the transitions. Surrounded by friends screaming my name, I felt like I had the power of a thousand men.

After the last pull-up, I called for time. Six minutes, 29 seconds, a full fifty-five seconds better than my previous personal record. My enthusiasm was tempered by the knowledge that Greg had halved my time, but a new PR was always welcome.

Two more waves of athletes went through the workout, driven by the incessant yelling of the Level II trainers. For the third wave the bars were set at 65 pounds, and the women ripped through Fran.

Sam dominated the heat, finishing the workout in 5:37 as prescribed. She kipped out every pull-up, drawing the attention of Kelly, Lynne, and Nicole. When it was all over, Sam claimed her place as an upcoming Crossfit superstar, Kelly joking that she had better start training harder.

In the span of one day, I’d seen the heart of Crossfit and received enough motivation to last a lifetime. After a brief discussion on the merits of large-bore shotguns, our crew piled into the Ford for the short trip back to Brookline, headed for dinner and some much need rest.

We passed the evening in my living room, trading theories on proper training methods, periodization, and the best way to handle unmotivated athletes. I fell asleep at 9:00, a hundred thousand theories bouncing around in my head.

I had a million questions. Luckily, my backstage pass was good for one more day.

Fran Video courtesy of John Velandra. Stay tuned for Day Two. All the excitement of Day One with none of the funny aftertaste!

2006-10-20T15:47:00.000+01:00

A Bit Of Craziness

The overhead squat is a nasty exercise. Even at relatively light loads, it takes tremendous focus to put the weight up and keep it there.

Last night, I got a taste of the pain inherent in flinging a bunch of steel and rubber above your head and squatting for reps. It was entirely self-inflicted, and it was excellent.

Dan John wrote about a young collegiate thrower in his e-book “From the Ground Up". When asked what exercise he would do if he could start his training at square one, the thrower replied, “The overhead squat.”

Apparently, the young man’s coach wouldn’t allow anyone to throw unless that individual could perform 15 consecutive overhead squats with a bodyweight load. This is a mean feat. If you can pull it off, you can probably beat everyone you know at everything they do, strength or otherwise.

Every muscle participates, making this one of the premier strength exercises on the planet. You could never do another movement, and you’d have amazing stability and strength across a variety of pursuits.

I cut the bodyweight requirement into tiny little pieces, and it still turned me into a pile of uselessness. Neal Thompson and I came up with this bit of masochism, dubbed “Therapy”:

6 rounds for time:

200m Sprint
5 Overhead Squats (1/2 bodyweight)
10 Burpees
15 Push Presses (1/2 bodyweight)

During the third round, my wrists gave out, and I had an epic time trying to keep my shoulders active. If you’ve ever questioned the meaning of “active shoulders”, the overhead squat will resolve your skepticism immediately. Keeping the load from pulling you onto your face requires full-body tension and the ability to put your shoulders into your occipital lobes.

Achieving that tension after 200 meters of all-out sprinting is a sick joke.

I took the bar from the floor every time. I push jerked it overhead and settled the bar behind my neck. From this position, I took a snatch grip and push jerked the load again, assuming the top position of the overhead squat. If you’re feeling particularly ballsy, a snatch will get you there faster.

The shoulders go into the inner-ear canal, and holding your breath is not optional—this practice generates the tension needed to keep the bar up when you’re down in the hole.

Every time through was agony, and I f*cking loved it.

Give “Therapy” a shot, and let me know where you end up. I managed it in 27:24 with an 85-pound load for both strength movements.

Go faster!

For Coach Glassman's take on the Overhead Squat, pick up the August 2005 Crossfit Journal. It's five bucks worth of brain-candy.

Photo of Pyrros Dimas courtesy of abc.au.net. Stop by on Monday for all the dirty details of the Boston Certification Seminar.

2006-10-19T15:52:00.000+01:00

Go Away

Again Faster is going remote this weekend, and you’re not invited. Sam and I are bringing our unique brand of rock climbing back to the Gunks for one last hurrah before the snow flies.

From the look of things in the Midwest lately, we don’t have long.

If you’re jonesing for a workout come Sunday morning, try this bodyweight scorcher:

10 Squats
200m Sprint
15 Burpees
400m Sprint
30 Pull-ups
400m Sprint
15 Burpees
200m Sprint
10 Squats

Consider it my gift to you. The Weekly Workout Series will continue all winter long, resuming on Sunday, October 29th. We won’t let a little thing like bone-chilling cold stop us, now or ever.

Go faster!

Lead photo courtesy of luminous-landscape.com. Tune in on Monday for a epic recounting of the Boston Certification. Group picture by Tony Budding, Crossfit.com

2006-10-17T19:11:00.000+01:00

The Only Answer

For the last week, athletes have asked me what it means to be Crossfit Certified. In practice, absolutely nothing. New clients aren’t beating down the door, and the Boston Globe has yet to call for my take on cardio kickboxing.

I learned everything I thought I already knew. Mechanics are the basis of everything we do. Squatting without a proper lumbar arch is not a squat. Bottom-to-bottom Tabatas are really f*cking hard. Greg Amundson can kick your ass at anything, and Kelly Moore is way tougher than you’ll ever be.

These simple lessons impart perspective. According to Coach, general physical preparation can advance uninterrupted for ten years.

I’ve only got one under my belt.

The first has been phenomenal, and now it’s time to go back to the beginning. The most advanced power movements on earth—the clean and the snatch—are predicated on a proper squat, which I don’t possess. A decent split jerk requires tremendous shoulder flexibility, which I don’t have. Before we move on to the graduate schools of exercise, it’s time to pass kindergarten.

The Cert gave me a gift. It smashed the sh*t out of my ego.

So, what does it mean to be Crossfit Certified? It means recognition. Recognition that our broad-based curriculum always leaves room for improvement. Recognition that Crossfitters are some of the most humble, caring people on earth. Recognition that our Superstars achieve their status through hard-nosed dedication to the basics. Recognition that Greg Glassman could talk his way out of Dirty Harry’s gunsights without breaking a sweat.

Recognition that you can always be better.

There’s no certificate, no plaque, no fancy credential for attending a Crossfit Certification. The token of participation lies squarely in your drive to succeed.

Embracing the ideals of Crossfit will lead to achievement. You may know what they are, quoting Coach word-for-word, but until you’ve experienced them in their raw, concentrated form, you know nothing.

A hundred athletes cheering their brethren during a massive FGB assault embodies “constantly varied, functional movements, performed at high intensity” like no sound bite ever could.

Crossfit Certification means you’ll find me and my girl in the garage after our first sub-4:00 minute Fran, wondering how the hell it got to be 2015.

It means we’re in this thing until it goes nuclear.

Go faster!

Picture of John, Shad, and Kelly, moments after Fran, courtesy of Crossfit.com. Looking good, John.

2006-10-15T17:50:00.000+01:00

Tilting At Windmills

As the earth orbits around the sun, it tilts on its axis. One of the earth’s hemispheres is always closer to the sun than the other, and we get seasons as a result.

October in the Northern Hemisphere is the product of a severe tilt away from the sun, and it only gets worse from here.

This morning, I rode my bike—or Sam’s father’s bike, if you want to be technical—down to the parking garage to retrieve her Ford Focus. It was cold like a penguin’s asshole. I wore a layer of thermal underwear beneath my workout gear, making the ride slightly more tolerable.

There are no distractions at 6 o’clock on Sunday morning. People don’t beep at you, and the constant fear of being run off the road by an over-zealous soccer mom is eliminated. It’s a nice break from the fight-or-flight vigilance usually induced by Boston traffic.

My tires hummed softly against the pavement as I coasted down Harvard Avenue, leaving me with my thoughts. Always the deep thinker, I wondered if anyone would be brave enough to endure the near-freezing temperatures of Jamaica Pond at sunrise.

I would know shortly.

After jamming the bike into the trunk and returning home for coffee, I made my way down Commonwealth Avenue to Boston College. Sam stumbled to the car, her eyes still blurry with the fog of sleep.

We jetted over to the Pond, arriving a half-hour too early to do anything worthwhile. I practiced my handstands as we waited, slamming onto my back in the cold grass several times. Sam laughed, documenting my lack of coordination with a few poorly exposed pictures.

The cavalry arrived at 7:53. Always the Boy Scout, Thor carried his own thirty-pound dumbbells across the Arborway, Ilene at his side. It was time to rock.

I designed the workout as pure torture—350 reps for time, every exercise as difficult and metabolically demanding as the one before it. I planned on watching my Charges crank it out, snapping pictures in the cold morning air. That didn’t work out so well—Ilene said two words, and I was into the fray.

Fifty reps of each for time:

Deadlifts
Cleans
Swings
One-Arm Split Jerks
Weighted Squats
One-Arm Snatches
Weighted Burpees

My body temperature defied my outerwear as we slogged through, demanding that I drop layer after layer to prevent overheating. The cleans hit me hard, allowing only eight or nine reps before I dumped the dumbbells. Clean, drop, lift, repeat.

At some point during long workouts, pain ceases to be an issue. You continue, heedless of the work in front of you or the work already done. You move onward like a mountaineer to the summit, each small step bringing you closer to the end.

A half hour after we started, the last rep was complete. Sam, Ilene, and I roared for Thor as he pushed through his last burpees, ignoring the stares of curious onlookers.

At Again Faster, cold weather is not a decent excuse. Of course, neither is fatigue, injury, or chronic disease. We’re a little excitable.

Thanks to a few good friends, we made this week’s workout a hell of a good time. If you stayed in bed, you missed out.

Go faster!

2006-10-13T18:33:00.000+01:00

Certifiable

After a one-week hiatus, Again Faster is back, and this time we're dragging some weight out to the Pond.

A three-hundred-and-fifty rep chipper should get everybody back in the swing:

50 DB Deadlifts
50 DB Cleans
50 DB Swings
50 DB One-Armed Split Jerks (25 left, 25 right)
50 DB Weighted Squats
50 DB One-Armed Snatches (25 left, 25 right)
50 DB Weighted Burpees

For the duration of the workout, you'll have a pair of 40, 30, or 20 pound dumbbells. Name them if you'd like, because they're going to be with you for a while!

As always, we'll meet on the west side of Jamaica Pond next to the pullup bars, 8:00 a.m. sharp. If you need directions, shoot me an email.

This is gonna be fun...

Coach, Nicole, and Carrie, moments before the world's slowest successful muscle-up. Damn that girl's good!

2006-10-10T15:09:00.000+01:00

To The Victor

Competition, whether in sport or life, is not a cause for alarm. The act of pitting faction against faction holds the power to unite strangers, spur achievement, and immortalize greatness.

Unfortunately, there is a movement afoot aimed at eliminating competition from youth sports. Yesterday, my friend Will aired his distress at the no-cut, no-competition policies he sees within the communities he serves. You can read his take, which I published some time ago, here.

Parents will not let their children be ranked, placed, medaled, or otherwise ordered. Their intentions are pure, but misguided. Insulating children from the rigors of competition spares them the grief of defeat because they never lose.

Of course, they never win either. They’re supplied with plastic trophies and cheap medallions—all marked “Participant”—which they quickly and dismissively add to a growing pile of worthless childhood artifacts.

Children are not stupid. They are also supremely skilled at imitation. They know they are being insulated at the behest of their parents, and they quickly assimilate this thought pattern. If it’s good enough for Mommy, it’s good enough for me. Repeat after me: “If I never compete, I never lose.”

As horrible as this sounds, it merely masks the true message—“It is not okay to fail.”

By telling our children that competition is bad, we tell them that failing is bad. Every parent on earth would love to see their child finish first in everything—spelling bees, bake-offs, track meets, and academic rankings. The reality is that only one child in hundreds of thousands is capable of this level of achievement, and he or she is probably miserable. Every type-A parent knows this, and seeks to insulate their child rather than create a teenage burnout.

I see the after-effects of this societal predilection all the time. It manifests itself in the gym with excuses and abject refusals to compete. Athletes thwart their own progress with ready-made safety switches.

“My legs hurt I hate this I’m no good at I didn’t sleep I can’t I’m having a bad day.”

Again, the implied message is, “I’m afraid to fail.” The built-in excuse provides an explicit reason for athletic failure, immediately precluding the possibility that half-assed training and poor nutrition are responsible.

As athletes, we need to give ourselves permission to fail. We must remove personal self-worth from every push-up, pull-up, and squat. The ability to look at these things objectively, to laugh at our foibles, is critical to continual progress. When we give ourselves permission to fail, we also grant ourselves permission to compete. We free ourselves to give everything we have to an effort and have it come up short.

We cannot turn a blind eye to the existence of competition, shielding our children and our athletes from the harsh reality of the world. As adults, we are required to compete every day for jobs, spouses, recognition, and influence. One day, our children will be adults, drastically ill prepared for the rigors of the real world due to idiotic parental policies.

Competition should be embraced, with all its virtues and faults. It makes us better human beings, driving self-improvement with unmatched efficacy. It only does so when we recognize its true nature and give ourselves permission to fail.

Tomorrow brings another competition, another workout, and another chance to be the best. Grab it with both hands.

Greg Amundson in the middle of a sub-4:00 Fran, side-by-side with Kelly Moore at the Boston Crossfit Certification. Competition at its finest.

2006-10-03T19:06:00.000+01:00

Quit Now

This is my favorite Again Faster post of all-time. With the Boston Certification upon us, and hordes of Crossfit Gods descending upon Beantown, I thought today would be a good day to extoll the virtues of Crossfit--again. Enjoy!

Most days, I don’t ram the virtues of Crossfit down your throat. Today is not one of those days.

If you’re at a commercial gym, I want you to quit. Hell, you want you to quit. You just don’t know it yet.

Last time you were in Buff Joe’s Spandex-O-Rama, you were probably working out alone. You were listening to Kelly Clarkson belt out a tune somebody else wrote, and you kept losing the pull-up bar to some meathead who was using it to stretch.

It took you an hour to do a workout that takes 20 minutes because you had to wait to get the 30s from a pre-teen doing quarter-range tricep kickbacks. Screw that.

Quit now.

The transition isn’t easy--after my first Crossfit workout, I walked funny for a week.

Suck it up, Sunshine. Paying your dues is well worth the effort. Our methods will give you tremendous returns in motivation, work capacity, strength, and coordination.

Working out does not have to be a solitary slog through the machine minefield. There are future Crossfitters all over the country who are currently hooked to their iPod, standing on a treadmill, staring at a 5-inch TV, wondering why they’re not getting any better at anything.

The solution? Unplug all that sh*t. Come workout with people. All the computer programming in the world can’t replicate the motivation you’ll get from watching the guy next to you work harder and longer than you ever thought possible. In a few months, you’ll be competing at his level.

I tell my friends about our workouts.

“Today, we did Angie. 100 pullups, 100 pushups, 100 situps, 100 squats. Took about 25 minutes.”

This usually results in the “Holy Sh*t” stare. This is where your friend/girlfriend/mom/boss looks at you like you just told them that you believe euthanasia is a viable method of population control.

I love the stare.

The reason you get it is the numbers you just spat out. We think nothing of doing 100 of anything, because we do it all the time. Crossfit builds amazing work capacity quickly. There’s no magic trick involved. The human body can produce a staggering volume of work. Getting it to do so requires repeated attempts at doing more work than you did the last time out.

Try to do 100 pushups. You’ll end up breaking them down into multiple sets of 5 or 10 or 15. Next time you try, you’ll do sets of 15 or 20. A few months down the road, 100 straight pushups will just be a momentary respite from those nasty pull-ups, and you’ll thank God for every rep.

Your superhuman work capacity will transfer to every physical activity you undertake. Suddenly, running a 5k feels like the saddest little workout you ever did. Baseball doesn’t even seem like a sport, and football games are over before you get a chance to break a decent sweat. Your resting heartbeat will hover in the low 60s, and you’ll be able to hold sustained aerobic activity for hours.

You’ll also be stronger than you’ve ever been in your life. We practice the most effective lifts in the world—the snatch and the clean and jerk. Each of these movements is a full-body lift that requires power and coordination to complete. The weight goes through an unparalleled range of motion extremely quickly. This results in huge power output and work volume, and a whole boatload of strength. Check out “A Physics Lesson” for further explanation.

Coordination comes from all aspects of the Crossfit experience. You’ll learn handstands, kipping, dips, muscleups, and a myriad of other gymnastics skills. Spatial awareness, balance, and agility will result. You’ll be a more effective athlete in every sport you try, because the learning curve for new skills will flatten significantly—you’ll already have all the building blocks you need.

Crossfit is not easy. You’ll pay for your gains in sweat and skin. Nonetheless, you’ll get better week after week and month after month, with no end in sight. You’ll do it with a great community of athletes who live for every moment of endorphin-induced bliss, and you’ll love every second.

Call your gym and cancel your membership. Come out to Again Faster on Sunday mornings, or stop by any of the Crossfit Affiliates. We’ll show you what you’re missing, and I guarantee you won’t ever want to go back.

2006-10-02T20:25:00.000+01:00

Not Without A Fight

I was at a party on Friday night watching drunken girls dance on furniture. After a feeble, half-hearted attempt at participation, I carted my sober self out of the room, my Solo cup of water in tow. I was too preoccupied to worry about the trivialities of booze and sex—FGB was less than 12 hours away.

I found myself sitting in an unoccupied bedroom, scrawling notes on a purple Post-It. “Row, WB, SDHP, BJ, PP. 1, 2, 3.” I was mapping out my Saturday afternoon assault on Fight Gone Bad, the five-round CrossFit man-maker that had crushed me repeatedly in the past. I set a lofty goal of a 300 point score.

It demanded planning.

After a few minutes of contemplation and some hasty calculations, I set the marks—20 calories on the row, 18 Wall Ball, 20 Sumo Deadlift High Pulls, 22 Box Jumps, and 20 Push Presses per round. If I could hack through all seventeen minutes of hallucinatory hell at this pace, I’d make my 300.

At some point, Sam and I left the party and made our way to my apartment. I undressed distractedly and crawled into bed, visions of the Concept II Rower stuck in my head like post-accident head trauma. The imaginary sound of the Erg lulled me to sleep.

On Saturday morning, I took Sam to the lab, crawling past hordes of Cops with the unenviable duty of directing Boston College Football traffic. At the edge of the BC campus, I dropped Sam off, swinging a wide u-turn and heading back toward the city.

I was fully caffeinated and over-stimulated, my veins coursing with premature adrenaline and three cups of home-brewed Starbucks sludge. I cranked the Slipknot hate-music to eleven, and swerved through the gathering Superfans. I imagined the seventy-five pound push press flying skyward, my hip extension violent enough to warrant a downward pull before the next rep, my box jumps lightning quick, my feet barely grazing the ground as I launch upward again and again.

The bright yellow shirts of the BC faithful barely registered.

I pulled up to the curb in front of my building, bolting out the door and up the stairs. I bounded into my living room, intent on—waiting. I spent a full hour in overstuffed purgatory, waiting for Sam to finish some rodent matchmaking in the bowels of an institutional BC lab. During my wait I read several chapters of the Darwin Awards, a book detailing the exploits of those who unwittingly take their own lives engaging in moronically dangerous pastimes.

It didn’t even cross my mind that I might win a Darwin that afternoon.

Sam and I pulled up to the Facility, rocking out to one of the unknown bands gracing the end tracks of the OzzFest Summer Sampler CD:

“…I will stone you, stone you, wrap my arms around you, I will stone you, stone you, my little Halo…”

The Facility was set-up to accommodate spectators, the FGB course condensed to half the floor space. EC and Neal were there finishing the last-minute details, but I wasn’t in the mood for conversation. I threw on Sammy’s headphones, continuing my odyssey of full-frontal thrash metal with “Back to School” by the Deftones. I strapped into the rower for some warm-up pulls, pushing hard through my heels at the rate of one calorie per pull. After a few hundred meters, I exited left, picking up the 20-pound Dynamax ball and chucking it to the ceiling.

A little sport-specific practice never hurts at a time like this. I made my way through FGB at half-speed, pushing just enough to get my heart moving. It was time to go. I wrote my target scores on a hastily torn piece of paper, and handed it to Sammy.

“You gotta yell at me, baby.”

Just after 1:00, I strapped into the rower, Jack and EC prepping for their attempts somewhere in the background. I set the PM to “Calories”, and grasped the handle with my already-sweaty hands. Then, the signal:

“Go!”

I made my twenty calories in under 45 seconds. I flew off the rower and stood behind the Dynamax balls, waiting for the “switch” call. In my excitement, I threw the first Wall Ball shot almost to the ceiling, grazing the underside of the building-spanning support beam. I bagged eighteen reps with plenty of time left to contemplate the waiting barbell.

I banged out twenty high pulls and moved to the box jump, rebounding rapidly off the floor. It took the full sixty seconds to make twenty-five jumps, and I scrambled to the push press right at the turn.

The final tally for Round One came to 109. Predictably, it got worse from there. The steamroller hit me during the Round Two box jumps, sending my score plummeting to 15 reps per minute. At the close of Round Two, I lay on the floor in a futile attempt to slow my hammering pulse, forcefully pushing the carbon dioxide out of my lower lungs. Sam stood over me:

“99 in that Round. You need 92 to make 300.”

At that moment my heart sank. My legs were numb and lifeless, and I couldn’t consume enough oxygen to stop the panic breaths. 92 seemed impossible.

I strapped into the rower for the last time, and pulled with everything I had. After ten strong pulls, my legs stopped, my hamstrings bathed in movement-arresting lactic acid. I pulled feebly through the remainder of the minute, coming up with only 15 calories. The Wall Ball was no easier, and I began to lapse in and out, my vision blurry and obscured by torrents of sweat. Sammy’s exhortations to push sounded tinny and distant, and my mind fell prey to the weakness of my body. I finished Round Three with only 73 points, nineteen repetitions shy of my goal.

Maybe I shouldn’t have ignored the dancing drunk girls.

I lay on the floor, my lungs scorched from a long-forgotten cigarette habit, my head swimming in an ethereal fog. I moved from the floor to the bay door to the sidewalk, alternately standing, sitting, and lying prone. I paid no attention to the spectators that had gathered, fleetingly hoping I hadn’t scared any of them off with my incessant yelling.

Then, too soon, it was Sammy’s turn. I stood by the rower, shirtless and doubled over, still panting as she strapped in. I marked her goals on the bottom of her score sheet, noting the huge discrepancy between our strategies. Instead of a twenty-calorie row, Sam was shooting for only ten, making up the difference with huge 25-rep thruster and push press efforts.

As we ticked through the Rounds, she flawlessly met and surpassed her goals, relentlessly closing in on 300. At the final push press, she needed 22 reps to make the cut. She cranked out ten, and dropped the bar to the floor. I stared at her, willing her to go on. With a steady gaze, she met my eyes:

“I’ve got it.”

She picked up the bar with less than thirty seconds to go, slamming out twelve reps to make three hundred. It was a tremendous effort. She collapsed to the floor smiling, and I quickly verified her score.

300 it was.

Along with sixteen other athletes, Sammy and I spent our Saturday in an exercise-induced stupor, enduring pain and fatigue in the name of cancer research. Including a matching grant from the Wade B. Thompson Foundation, CF Affiliates nationwide raised $212,544 for the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

The least we could do was leave it all on the gym floor.

Go faster!

2006-09-29T17:11:00.000+01:00

At My Signal

Fight Gone Bad. Sounds gnarly, huh? It is, but it’s not that horrible. Sure, you’ll be a panting puddle of useless bile when it’s over, but three or four minutes later you’ll be your normal self again. The steamroller of Crossfit Love that ran you over will be history, and you’ll look back fondly on the choice moments:

“Yo dude. Remember in Round Two, when you told me to ‘SUCK IT UP!!!’ in front of my grandparents, and I totally knocked out three more box jumps? That was cool. Yeah. If I’d gotten 14 more reps, I would’ve beat you. Next time, bro, you're going down!”

On Sunday morning, you’ll whine about how everything hurts, and you couldn’t possibly make a pot of coffee, let alone workout. You’ll limp around all day, vacant-eyed and wincing, telling strangers about the previous day like you earned the Medal of Honor for jumping on a hand grenade.

That, or you could come to Again Faster.

We’re going to be living the dream, banging out an hour of sprinting less than 24 hours after a mythical encounter with FGB. For the first time, we’ll introduce sled drags to the AF Curriculum, switching between full-out 200 meter sprints and 100 meter sled pulls until your legs feel like they’ve been dipped in concrete. You’ll love it.

Ten Rounds for Time:

200 meter Sprint
100 meter Sled Drag

We’ll meet by the pull-up bars at Jamaica Pond at 8:00 a.m. Now that’s active recovery!

Go faster!

Photo of Chuck Liddell, moments after Randy Couture's Fight Gone Really Really Bad, courtesy of IcemanMMA.com.

2006-09-27T16:00:00.000+01:00

Training Maturity

I’m having a little trouble with maturity. Not jokes-about-poop-in-business-settings maturity, but a different kind.

For the last few weeks, my shoulders have been bothering me. I cranked out a 21-15-9 of 135 pound deadlifts and 135 pound jerks a while back, and I’ve been smoked ever since. Instead of scaling back, I’ve been pushing right along as if nothing happened.

Lo and behold, my shoulders still hurt. I’ve been bathing them in Biofreeze and taping bags of mixed vegetables to them every night, all the while avoiding ibuprofen like the plague.

(Last week, I read a study that showed that ibuprofen consumption limits muscle development. F*cking study.)

My pain-reliever-free regimen, combined with a stubborn unwillingness to de-load, is exacerbating my problem. I should step back, assess, and lighten up for a week.

That would be the mature thing to do.

On Saturday, we're hosting the Fight Gone Bad Fundraiser. I think I’ll half-ass during that. It’s only an Open House—who’ll be watching?

The following weekend, we have the Certification Seminar right here in Boston. Greg and Lauren will be there, along with Tony, Nicole, Kelly, Lynne, and a bevy of fantastic athletes. I’ll be surrounded by Crossfit Gods, but that’s no reason to push hard. I’ll definitely scale back then.

If I was my own trainer, I’d demand rest days. “Jon,” I’d say, “you’re not doing yourself any favors. Recovery is just as important as training, and you know it.” Like a million other trainees, I’d tell my (trainer) self, “You got it, Coach,” and then I’d go home and do whatever I was going to do anyway.

I’m a stubborn bastard. I know that recovery is the single most important factor in athletic development aside from training. I don’t care. I train heavy and hard every day, damn it! My ego demands satisfaction!

This morning, I had a conversation with an athlete who’s going on vacation next week. He’s trying to cram in five workouts before he leaves. I told him how dumb that is, how he needs to rest, how he can workout on vacation, how eating 10,000 calories today and nothing tomorrow is the nutritional equivalent of his workout plan and a retarded way to do things.

God, I’m such a hypocrite.

I learned my lesson. I’m going to give up the alpha male schtick and get some rest. It’s time to let my shoulders heal.

Back squats don’t work the shoulders, do they?

Picture of me swinging, back when I was smarter, slower, and weaker, courtesy of my beautiful girlfriend.

2006-09-25T17:00:00.000+01:00

On The Turn

I went to bed on Saturday night thinking Sunday was going to be a bust. The National Weather Service claimed rain, and I’m not one to doubt the Masters of Meteorology.

Luckily, they were wrong.

It was clear and cool at the Pond when we arrived. The grass was freshly cut and slightly wet, perfect for getting a taste of chlorophyll mid-burpee. Patrick and I hung the rings amid a hail of acorns, standing under a turning oak tree. The AF Bar was mounted down by the shore, and we were ready to go.

We split into two teams, holding sway over two thoroughly shuffled decks of cards. Sam, Thor, and I took on Josh, Pat, and Ilene, each team responsible for 96 Overhead Squats, 96 Beck’s Burpees, 96 V-ups, and 101 pull-ups. A lone Joker sat in each deck, signifying a bonus round of “Cindy”—5 pull-ups, 10 pushups, and 15 squats mid-melee.

Ilene and I pulled the first two cards, launching into a half-hour of nausea-inducing bodyweight exercises. EC looked on, simultaneously coaching, taking pictures, and entertaining one very hung-over bystander. 106 cards hit the deck, each one bringing us closer to victory.

We finished just before 9:00, high on endorphins and soaked in sweat. In the post-workout haze, I began cranking out kips on the AF Bar, while EC “filmed” for a super-low-budget commercial. My ancient digital camera breathed its last on Sunday, but we managed to get some footage before it died.

Thanks for coming out, guys. We’ll be at the Pond next Sunday, less than 24 hours after the semi-apocalyptic Fight Gone Bad Fundraiser.

Fitness waits for no man.

Go faster!

2006-09-22T18:45:00.000+01:00

When the Facts Change

If it works, we use it. Evidently, so does everyone else. In the last few days, an epidemic of anecdotes has flooded my cell phone and my inbox:

“Jon! They’re doing Crossfit, but they’re not calling it Crossfit. It’s Captain Joe’s Superhero Bootcamp, except it’s not! It’s our stuff! What do we do?”

We do nothing. Not out of apathy, or lack of indignation. We do nothing because they’re doing everything that we’ve already done. Crossfit is a conglomeration of the best fitness systems known to man. We didn’t make up the clean, the 400-meter sprint, the back lever, the muscle-up, or the sledgehammer swing. We didn’t make up the high-intensity circuit either. We took other people’s stuff, and they took it from the folks who came before them. Somebody’s bound to take it from us.

Crossfit is a synthesis of hundreds of years of training experience. Guys were performing on rings and lifting weight above their heads before your Grandpa was born. Man has sprinted and deadlifted heavy objects since the dawn of time. The fittest athletes on earth have always exhibited competency across a wide variety of physical skills.

None of this stuff is new, ladies and gentlemen.

Moving heavy objects quickly builds speed, strength, and power. Diet is critical. Sugar is bad for you. Sleep is important. Stress will kill you. Ice reduces swelling. See anything earth-shattering in this list?

Greg Glassman is, by all accounts, a brilliant man. He has dedicated his life to collecting and espousing the most effective training methodologies on the planet, with the caveat that if he found something better, everything would change overnight.

The willingness to abandon and rebuild is the mark of a stoic and reasonable individual. For better or worse, many of our direct competitors have become reasonable individuals, and they’re encroaching on our market space. We are no longer the sole purveyors of effective, full-body, functional fitness.

Fortunately, we don’t have to be. We’ve got something they don’t—Community.

Patience, persistence, and indomitable will are the hallmarks of the Crossfitter. They also happen to be the hallmarks of a good person. Through this undeniable connection, we know that the people who make up Crossfit are good people, bound by hard work, sweat, and collective suffering. We embrace total strangers when they mention the word “Crossfit”, because they are us, and we are them.

The rest of the world is waking from the Nautilus-induced coma that has plagued fitness for the last two decades. Once again, people want to train hard and fast, using the techniques and methods of elite athletics.

We should wish them well, and continue the revolution with or without them. In the end, they can never have what we have, because we stand together.

Go faster!

Picture of John Maynard Keynes courtesy of news.bbc.com. Mr. Keynes famously quipped, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

2006-09-21T15:08:00.000+01:00

Double Decker

Last night, a new trainee asked me why I put on the Weekly Workout Series.

“So you don’t charge a dime?” she asked, “You just do it out of the goodness of your heart?”

Yeah, I do it out of the goodness of my heart. That and I have some minor sadistic tendencies that need a good outlet. Luckily, I’m not the only one who finds growth through endorphin-riddled, sweat-soaked sprints and weight-tossing metabolic blasts.

This week, we’re bringing back the team race, Again Faster style.

The deck-of-cards workout is making its second appearance, albeit with a twist. Two decks, two teams. First team to make it through their deck wins. The concept is simple enough.

Clubs: Pull-ups
Spades: Beck’s Burpees
Hearts: Overhead Squats
Diamonds: V-ups

Pull the Eight of Clubs, everyone does eight pull-ups. Two of Hearts, two overhead squats. Etcetera. Face cards count as ten, the Ace as eleven.

The entire team must finish before the next card is pulled. 52 cards later, we’ll have a winner. Start thinking about who you’d like on your team now, so I can disappoint you later.

The Again Faster Weekly Workout Series is not paid for in dollars. It’s paid with effort, perseverance, and sweat. It will be free until somebody starts charging me, and then I might suck up the cost anyway. It's just that much fun.

See you at the Pond, 8:00 a.m. sharp. If you need directions, shoot me an email.

Go faster!

Image courtesy of onlinepokernews.com

2006-09-20T16:39:00.000+01:00

Learning the Hard Way

The student-teacher relationship is complicated. Knowledge flows in innumerable directions—teacher to student, student to teacher, teacher to teacher, student to student.

The source of authority is blurred as these flows spin into a web of setbacks and improvements. As the student and teacher learn from each other, each experiences psychological and physical gains that would not occur in the absence of the relationship.

Allowing this process to follow its natural course has given me some preliminary insight into one of the basic tenets of strength training.

This morning, two of our athletes were working toward a one-rep maximum, cranking out heavy thrusters. We started with a five repetition set, using a 115-pound bar to prime the movement. I was slightly aloof as Leo and Mike went through the set, observing but not absorbing.

Despite their previous demonstrations of strength, each athlete struggled to push the bar overhead. I immediately fell back to my stock lifting speech:

“Use the legs to power the press! This is not a segmented movement. You need to transfer the power from hip extension to the upper body. This is not a press! Snap the hips open faster!”

We loaded 135 on the bar for a three-rep attempt. Mike gripped the bar and pushed it overhead twice, failing on the third lift. He scrambled to get under the load as he went to lockout on each attempt. The bar was four or five inches behind his midline, pulling him backward and off-balance. Leo jumped on the bar, exhibiting the same shaky form and exaggerated lockout. He made two lifts before failing, dropping the bar to the rubber mat.

As I cleaned the bar back to the rack, I started preaching, intent on remedying the shortfall.

“Tension is extremely important. You need to grip the hell out of the bar. Rigidity in the shoulder girdle is going to help you get that bar overhead. Take a deep breath, and hold it.”

I turned to Mike.

“Get f*ckin’mad. Let your eyes bulge. Get pissed at the bar. Hell, when you fail, you have a reason to be mad. Get angry.”

Mike got mad, and the tension came immediately. He racked the bar to his chest, totally solid from head to foot. He pushed out the two required reps, slamming 135 overhead easily.

“I could’ve done another one,” he said, grinning.

Leo followed his example, making the lifts with strength to spare. Based on their effort, I added nickels to the bar, bringing the total to 145 for the first one-rep attempt.

After such a stunning turnaround at 135, I was surprised when both guys failed to put it up. Once again, the hip extension lacked force, the extra tension limiting the athletes rather than propelling them to PRs.

Blaming a lack of rest between attempts, I gave Leo and Mike several minutes to rest, reemphasizing the need to transfer power and maintain tension. As Mike set up on the bar for his second attempt at 145, he was visibly shaken. The fury was gone from his eyes as he began his lift, the bar high across his chest.

He dipped into the squat and drove upward, getting the bar just over his head before failing to lockout. During this attempt, I noticed his grip, hands two inches outside shoulder-width.

Suddenly, the light bulb went off.

By reverting to stock lifting advice, I’d failed to notice a simple solution to a complicated problem. The transfer of power wasn’t failing because of tension or hip extension—-it was failing because of structural flaws.

In any overhead lift, power generation comes from the legs and hips, traveling through the core, and ending with a full lockout overhead. If the athlete is not perfectly aligned, some of that power is lost. The feet must be directly under the hips and the hips directly under the shoulders, creating an efficient path to facilitate power transfer. This path must continue through the arms, the elbows as close to the body as possible, aligned directly under the wrists.

If this alignment is achieved, power will move from the lower body to the torso to overhead with minimal reduction.

I moved Mike’s grip inward, putting his wrists over his elbows. We pulled the 5s off the bar, bringing the weight down to 135. Mike made the lift, exhibiting near-perfect form and crisp movement.

Training is a never-ending process. There is always something to learn, something to improve. The same can be said for teaching—-it is a continual evolution of trial and error, a journey of interaction and reflection. Improvement is predicated on looking outside of our current toolbox, seeking solutions that are not immediately obvious.

I’d spent a good part of our morning session rehashing old advice. Mike and Leo heard the same speech three times-—tension and hip extension, tension and hip extension, tension and hip extension. While these points are certainly valid, they were not responsible for the failed lifts. The cause was outside my narrow view, and I had to watch the guys do twelve lifts before it dawned on me.

To help Mike and Leo, I had to reject my assumptions as to the source of the problem. I was looking at symptoms rather than causes, telling them to stop drinking the water rather than remove the water fountain.

Never again will I assume I know the answer before I've examined the problem. Next time, the speech goes: "Structure, tension, hip extension!"

Today, I learned more than I taught, and I'm sure it won't be the last time.

Go faster!

2006-09-18T16:37:00.000+01:00

Super Sunday

“...the chief value of any routine lies in abandoning it for another.” –Crossfit Foundations

Normally, Sunday mornings at Again Faster are a pretty relaxed affair. Get out of bed, roll out to the Pond, set up a few things, rock out a workout, and go home. This Sunday, the routine was shattered, and I was getting nervous.

My front door key was inexplicably ineffective, leaving Sam outside when she was supposed to be inside. As a result, I was without a camera or whiteboard at 8:15, and nine athletes were milling around, wondering why I wasn’t pointing and yelling and gesturing and cajoling.

Five minutes later, Sam power-walked across the Arborway, holding two espressos, no camera, and a Jimmy Neutron whiteboard the size of a paperback. It was time to adapt and overcome.

Luckily, Dave brought his camera, and I had a rough idea of the workout I’d applied to my very large and very absent whiteboard. The Again Faster Crew would be doing a variation on the Filthy Fifty theme, cranking out nine sets of 50 at a breakneck pace.

This week, Eric and Julie joined us for the festivities, losing their newbie status to a conglomeration of dumbbells, bars, sandbags, and sledgehammers.

Again Faster is extremely accessible to beginners—in this case, we scaled the volume down to match each athlete’s fitness level. They responded by cranking through at full speed, courting the massive metabolic wallop that is Crossfit.

As always, the workout stressed full-body functional movement, originating at the core and moving outward. Hip extension permeates nearly every exercise we do, because we recognize it as it the most critical component of elite athletic performance. We practice it endlessly.

The Faster Fifty came to life in the bright sunshine. My inability to count and a health dose of Starbucks combined to produce a nine-set chipper.

Dave ripped through the workout in fine fashion, taking a seat on the grass after 24 minutes of action. The rest of the Crew came in shortly thereafter, wrapping up the effort before the 35-minute mark.

Despite the inauspicious start, we got through the Faster Fifty, giving our veterans a great workout while introducing two new athletes to the Crossfit methodology. To top it off, I have a new Jimmy Neutron whiteboard. Thanks, Sammy!

If you’d like to join us, we meet at the Pond every Sunday morning at 8 a.m. The Weekly Workout Series is free, and beginners are always welcome. You can contact me via email, or stop by Crossfit Boston to schedule a one-on-one introductory session. We’d love to have you!

Go faster!

2006-09-14T16:06:00.000+01:00

The Faster Fifty

We're back. The Again Faster Weekly Workout Series is on for this Sunday. According to weather.com, it's going to be a beautiful day, and I'm not one to argue with the infallible folks at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They're always right!

We'll be at the Pond at 8 a.m., cranking out an Again Faster version of the Crossfit classic, "Filthy Fifty".

For time:

50 Sledge swings (10#/8# hammer)
50 DB Good mornings (20/30/40#)
50 Double Unders
50 DB Swings (20/30/40#)
50 Push-ups
50 One-armed DB Snatch (20/30/40#)
50 Burpees
50 Sandbag Cleans (25/50# bag)
50 Sit-ups
50 Pullups

This is a high-volume metabolic conditioning workout--great preparation for our Fight Gone Bad Fundraiser! On September 30th, Crossfit Boston, Crossfit MetroWest, and Again Faster are joining forces to raise money for the Prostate Cancer Foundation with a full day of FGB. The event is only two weeks away, so get your conditioning in now!

If you haven't signed up to participate, you can register on Sunday. We still need athletes for all our time slots! If you can't make it, we're accepting donations via the team website or in-person.

See you on Sunday!

Picture of Jamaica Pond courtesy of grif.org.

2006-09-12T16:18:00.001+01:00

Basic

The true masters of any sport engage in endless repetition. This practice turns contrived movements into automatic responses. Conscious processing is eliminated from the action sequence, and the athlete goes on autopilot.

Achieving this state of mind is critical to elite performance. In “Getting into the Optimal Performance State”, Dr. Robert M. Nideffer explains that stellar performance is predicated on outward focus—the athlete must concentrate on the external environment rather than internal thought processes.

Engaging in conscious thought during athletic endeavors can severely limit performance. Any beginning athlete can attest to this phenomenon. It manifests itself in a total and utter inability to complete complicated motor sequences. The clean and jerk becomes impossible if the athlete is trying to keep fifteen sub-movements in his/her head simultaneously.

It benefits the athlete to react on instinct rather than engage in step-by-step mapping of the movement. Toward this end, repetition is critical. As the athlete repeats a movement over and over, muscle memory forms, and the body allows a complicated sequence to follow from a single thought. Rather than “dip, drive, shrug, pull, squat, stand,” the athlete thinks “Clean!” and ends up with hundreds of pounds in the rack position.

The act of repetition is equally important for less complicated movements. The less time the athlete spends thinking, the more time he/she spends moving. This translates into better performances, whether the benchmark is repetitions, time to completion, or points scored.

In the context of Crossfit, there are a number of core movements that deserve this treatment. Among them, the squat, the pull-up, the pushup, the thruster, and the clean are paramount.

They should be practiced in a low-intensity, low-pressure environment, outside of the main workout. This allows the athlete to focus solely on technique, temporarily disregarding the competitive aspects of Crossfit.

The warm-up provides an ideal environment. A significant number of repetitions, done before each and every workout, will ingrain movement patterns rapidly. Although we preach the efficacy of constant variation, the warm-up is not the place for endless variety.

The original Crossfit Warm-up emphasizes six movements, each performed 30-45 times over the course of three rounds:

Samson Stretch
Pull-ups
Dips
Overhead Squat
Sit-up
Back Extension

This warm-up activates the entire body, using functional movements to bring the athlete up to operating temperature, thereby preventing injury.

I recommend a similar scheme with slightly fewer repetitions. The sit-up, the dip, and the back extension, while certainly useful, are very simple movements, and require relatively little practice to master.

The overhead squat and kipping pull-up are more technical movements, and therefore require more practice. Given the prevalence of the clean and the thruster in Crossfit programming, I recommend including them in the lineup as well.

The Modified Crossfit Warmup

3 rounds, 10 repetitions each:

Samson Stretch
Push-up
Sit-up
Dip

3 round, 15 repetitions each:

Pull-up
Overhead Squat
Clean
Thruster

For the weighted movements, use an extremely light load--no more than 30-40% of your 1-rep maximum. Rather than spur organic change in the body, we’re trying to encourage neurological adaptation. In this context, a heavy load is unnecessary, and will detract from subsequent workout performance.

When your movements become automatic, you’ll be able to dial up the intensity of your workouts, achieving greater metabolic benefit during each session. Use the warm-up as an opportunity to permanently incorporate important movements, and performance-oriented results are sure to follow.

Go faster!

Picture of Mike Regan courtesy of Crossfit Boston. "Getting into the Optimal Performance State" was brought to my attention by the Main Site on July 31, 2006. It's well worth the read.

2006-09-08T15:56:00.000+01:00

Again Faster

Earlier this month, Again Faster became an official Crossfit Affiliate. To me, this seemingly minor event was a watershed moment. The shuddering muscles and torrents of sweat had manifested into something tangible, something real.

Again Faster was on the fringes of the Crossfit Community, a simple attempt to demonstrate my devotion to the methodology and the people who employ it. I began with a few pithy sentences, ridiculing the current state of fitness, and those who would buy into its lies, misnomers, and myths:

"This site is dedicated to one thing--athletic performance. This is not your standard bullsh*t. We will not be spinning, doing Pilates, debating 8 by 12 rep schemes, or discussing the merits of the South Beach Diet.

My athletic goals revolve around speed and strength. I want to be stronger and faster. If you don't, that's okay. Just don't spend any time posting about the muscle-wasting effects of interval training, or the twelve reasons that working out more than twice a week leads to rare blood disorders. I don't care.

I'm not a trainer, or an expert of any kind. I want every word I read and every site I visit to add to my knowledge. If it doesn't, I'm not spending too much time with it. I hope this site adds to your athletic knowledge. If not, well...don't let the back button hit you in the ass." –Again Faster, May 2nd, 2006

Two things have changed since then. I am a trainer, and Again Faster is no longer on the outside looking in. Now, we’re responsible for the strength, speed, and power of every athlete who trains under our banner. Our philosophical musings have morphed into a call to action—we spend every day helping normal people become formidable athletes.

My motivations spring from one source—I love what we do. For me, Crossfit is an allegorical journey of pleasure, pain, failure, and redemption. Its tenets of strength and fortitude don’t stop at the confines of our gym. They carry beyond, into our relationships, our occupations, and our ambitions.

Our tools—dumbbells, sledgehammers, medicine balls—are merely a means to an end. We pursue elite fitness, and the mindset of indomitable strength that accompanies it. We do it by pushing our boundaries ever-outward, testing the limits of stamina and strength with every transient effort.

By training others, I hope to impart the collective wisdom of those who have trained me, and those who will train me in the future. Crossfit drills to the core of what I hope to become—ceaseless and strong, engendering an atmosphere of support and determination.

See past the veneer of our activities, and you’ll see hundreds of individuals with the same mandate:

Speed, Strength, Power, Progress.

Working toward this simple and indelible goal is a life-long pursuit, and one that everyone should undertake. If I can help you on this journey in any way, whether the first step or the last, please let me know. It would be my pleasure to give whatever I can.

Go faster!