Athletic Development

Accountability

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 06:27:00 GMT

Accountability and Results

These words are base line of our CrossFit training program. The WOD written on the board is not magic. You have to do the work and do it correctly in order to achieve the optimum results. In the heat of training whether during a training day or game day situation it is up to the athlete to maintain their integrity. We train not for the number on the board but more importantly for the betterment of their performance. If you are chasing the weight strictly for numbers sake you will be hindering your longterm potential. Proper form and range of motion must be achieved first. Or if the you do not do the full amount of reps you will be failing to achieve the desired effect of the wod. For any competitive athlete both of these faults are not acceptable. The shoddy range of motion will not be overlooked during the competition which will lead to alot of extra reps. Also if you are use to doing less than the full amount of reps, when you are confronted with a judge and full workload you will be in for a rude awakening.

We are a training facility based on performance and competition. We must be held to a higher standard. Stay focused on form, range of motion and full amount of reps. Here is where the accountability comes into play. The times on the board lose all meaning when athletes misrepresent their times or weight. This does a huge disservice to the program and to the rest of the athletes. Let's focus more on doing things correctly instead of doing these solely for the fastest time. With that said train harder and stay focused on being the best.

Going Overhead

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:08:00 GMT

Going Overhead By CrossFit Norcal

By: CrossFit Norcal

In Crossfit as in life we are often required to go overhead. The movement should be the same whether we are doing heavy presses or placing an enormous box of old college textbooks on the top shelf in the garage.

We are constantly reminding our athletes to maintain a neutral low back position and stabilize the spine under load, task, or intensity. This is most commonly cued by telling you to pull your belly button to spine, pull your pelvic floor up, and anchor the bottom of the rib cage. When doing presses however many of us break at our rib cages and hyper-extend our low back as the bar gets overhead. This is not only a weaker position, but one that sets us up for potential injury. In other words if you want to press more weight overhead then you need to keep that neutral low back position and spine stabilized throughout the movement.

Take a look at the picture below. Notice anything strange? Let me help you out – that huge hyper-extension in my lower back and break at my rib cage is not good. Presses should not look like this. This position is dangerous and weak. This is also what my press looks like if I don’t mobilize my lats and triceps prior to pressing. Some of us (myself included) struggle with this positional fault not because we aren’t fighting like crazy to keep our back neutral and midline stable, but because we literally don’t yet have the range of motion required to go overhead.

The shoulder mobility circuit we go through as part of every class certainly helps open up the shoulders, but some of us need additional TLC to improve our movement. Our friend Kelly Starrett, physical therapist extraordinaire, from San Francisco CrossFit has provided us with two epic stretches to help us on our mission for better movement. Check them out at the links below:

http://sanfranciscoCrossFit.blogspot.com/2009/02/your-poor-lats-instructions-for-care.html
http://sanfranciscoCrossFit.blogspot.com/2009/02/ummm-youre-overhead-break-is-on.html

After taking the picture above I did these stretches for a total of 3 minutes. Now check out my overhead position. Not yet perfect, but noticeably improved.

How do you know if these are the right stretches for you to be spending your precious time on? Always test then retest. Pick a movement and try a few reps. Do your stretching and retest. Did you notice any difference? You should notice a difference if you doing the right stretch to address your limitations and if not we need to try something else. For me these stretches obviously make an enormous difference and are part of my daily regimen. Shoot for 90 seconds per stretch. Each time you stretch.

Generally we don’t recommend folks do static stretches prior to our workouts and during heavy strength work, but if you literally cannot safely get into the correct position then by all means spend some time prior to class opening up these ranges. If you have serious movement limitations then you need to make these stretches your daily friends and check them out several times a day. It is not weird to wake up, shower, grab some coffee, and spend a few minutes mobilizing your lats and triceps no matter what my wife says. Trust me.

Running- certain constants remain true

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:07:00 GMT

There has been some debate over running technique, which i love by the way. I am a firm believer that there is no one style fits all approach. However I do believe there are certain constants that have to be met in order to maintain an injury free running career. Below is the link to a good clip that breaks down one of the constants I believe to be true.

CrossFit Endurance - wheel analogy

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Wed, 05 Aug 2009 05:51:00 GMT

By EC Synkowski

So Why Sleep?

All of your actions are controlled by hormones. Hormones interpret what's going on in the environment around you (e.g. light, temperature, danger), triggering biochemical responses in your body. This includes your first line of defense against disease, your immune system. In darkness, your body produces melatonin and prolaction. Melatonin is the most powerful antioxidant in your body (you don't have to eat spinach!), and prolactin is essential for normal T-cell and natural killer cell function (destroys harmful foreign cells).

Their activity is directly tied to the time of day. To have melatonin and prolaction, you need darkness. The more you're awake, the less time your body has to prevent disease. Our society has extended daylight with electricity, 24-hour businesses, and cities that never sleep. In return, we have lost our natural and most powerful mechanism to combat disease. Sleep.

How Much Sleep?

I would guess that many of us consider 8 hours the benchmark level of a "good night's sleep". Many of us get by on much less.

The authors recommend at least 9.5 hours of sleep a night. Why? Remember, sleep (darkness) equals melantonin and prolactin production. The less sleep we get, the shorter the duration of the immune system response.

And why 9.5 hours? Because 6 hours of prolactin secretion in the dark is necessary for NORMAL immune system function. Prolactin, however, doesn't come on until you've had 3.5 hours of melatonin secretion. Now, I know what you're thinking. "So, really, I just need 3.5 hours of sleep. We just need to trigger the prolactin production and we're set?" Yes, you€ll get your prolactin production, but it comes while you're awake.

So? Prolactin also affects your diet. More on this point later.

What€s the simple rule for sleeping? Sleep according to the sun. Summer (June-August), means shorter nights - about 8 hours. Winter, however, you can sleep up to 14 hours! I'm not sure how feasible this is for many of us€ the book says sleep as much as you can without getting divorced or fired. Remember, 9.5 hours in the dark equals normal immune system function.

How Powerful is Light?

So maybe you get 9 hours of sleep if you include the few hours dozing in front of the t.v. before going to bed. Is that good enough? Unfortuntely not.

Studies have show that a very small amount of light can disrupt melatonin and prolactin production. For example, the light from a single candle was enough to promote tumor growth in rats (Dauchy et al., 1997 as cited in Wiley and Formby, 2000). In our society, avoiding light completely is virtually impossible. Try to make your bedroom a cave with heavy shades, and turn off anything with a digital display.

Why dots?

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 06:14:00 GMT

Why Dots
Josh Everett

September 30 2008

Cataylst Athletics

My first experience with the dot drill came about in my high school football off-season strength & conditioning program. I remember one day as we went out to the track for conditioning seeing a whole gang of white dots spray-painted on the asphalt leading to the track. The football coach showed us a routine and I was hooked. Of course anything that is turned into a competition or race highly motivates me. In this article I’m going to briefly discuss how and why I use the dot drill as part of my strength & conditioning programs for college athletes.

Let’s start with where the dot drill came from. The Bigger, Faster, Stronger outfit didn’t invent the dot drill, but they did popularize it—it’s impossible to think dot drill and not associate it with BFS. Kim Goss at BFS was kind enough to let me use their nifty diagram for this article. I’m going to go off on a small tangent here, but over the years I’ve heard a lot people go out of their way to knock Bigger, Faster, Stronger in particular and other strength & conditioning programs in general. My questions are 1. Why bother? and 2. What have you done for the world of strength & conditioning? I’m a fan of Adam Corolla who has a morning talk radio program here in Southern California. Corolla has a philosophy of “If it doesn’t bring you happiness or money, don’t burn calories on it.” That’s the way I feel about this topic… don’t burn calories on picking apart every strength & conditioning program out there looking for the negative and then complaining about it to anyone who will listen. Instead burn calories on examining programs out there and finding the best ideas and practices of that program. Wake Forest Strength coach Ethan Reeve once told me to develop and stick to my own philosophy of training but keep an open mind and constantly search for new ideas that fit your philosophy. I’m constantly borrowing from other coaches & programs to make my program better. So my advice is stop looking for and hammering on the negative and start searching programs for the good ideas… the dot drill is one of many good ideas from BFS.

Back to the dot drill. The first question I’m going to answer is why I use it. Like Bigger, Faster, Stronger advocates, I often use it as a warm-up. The drill consists of low-level plyometrics and going through the routine certainly raises the heartrate and body temperature. I’ll generally follow the dot drill with a series of calisthenics (think Greg Amundson Crossfit warm-up) then a barbell warm-up… after that we are ready to start our Olympic lift for the day. In addition to a warm-up, it’s a great drill to develop quickness, agility, and ankle strength. Also I use the drill as a way to teach proper landing and cutting mechanics, which involve keeping the knees and hips slightly flexed. Approximately 90% of ACL tears happen when the knee is locked out completely straight. The dot drill is a time when we teach the athletes and have them then practice to land and cut with a bent knee and to never get caught with a locked out knee. This is particularly important for female athletes who tend to be quad dominant and perform these movements with their knees locked out. This is one reason they have up to a 9x higher ACL tear rate then men, and simple drills that teach them to cut and land properly have been shown to reduce their rate of injury. Also performing the drill with slightly flexed knees and hips allows the athlete to help carry their weight and control the movement with their posterior chain rather than only their quads, which is safer, more efficient and more powerful. And the beauty of the whole thing is that it’s timed—progress is measurable, and competition is a strong motivator. Not bad for a 60-second warm-up.

Now the second question to answer is how I use it. Most of the time I have my athletes do the patterns advocated by BFS (described below). In addition to this I have my dots lined up in a row and we will do “dot sprints” horizontally down that row utilizing a pattern similar to the first up & back pattern in the diagram, but instead of going back, the athlete continues forward to the next set of dots. The student-athletes love this as we will do individual and team races. Lastly you can also do a reaction drill numbering or lettering each dot and call out patterns they have to react to. As for set up, you can buy the pre-designed mats from BFS, or you can just spray paint some dots on concrete, asphalt, or your rubber gym flooring.

As a college strength & conditioning coach who has limited time with my athletes, I need to get as much bang for my buck as possible. The dot drill covers a lot of bases for me in a short amount of time.

The Drills

The following drills are courtesy of BFS. Each drill is performed six consecutive times.

Up and Back

A. Start with feet on A and B.
B. Now jump quickly to C with both feet
C. Then jump and split feet to D and E.
D. Come back the same way jumping backward.
E. Repeat 5 more times.

Right Foot

A. Your feet from up-and-back should end on dots A and B.
B. Now go to dot C with your right foot.
C. Now go in order: Dot D, E, C, A, B.
D. Repeat 5 more times.

Left Foot

A. You will end the right foot drill on Dot B.
B. Now go to dot C with your left foot.
C. Now go in order: Dot D, E, C, A, B.
D. Repeat 5 more times.

Both Feet

A. You will end the left foot drill on Dot B.
B. Now go to C with both feet.
C. Now go in order with both feet: Dot D, E, C, A, B.
D. Repeat 5 more times.

Turn Around

A. You will end the Both Feet Drill on Dot B. Now go to C with both feet.
B. Now go to dots D and E spread apart both feet as in the up-and-back (Drill #1).
C. Now quickly jump 180° clockwise to face the other way. You should still be on D and E.
D. Hit C with both feet and then A and B with feet split.
E. Now turn quickly again with a 180 spin to the left with your feet still on A and B.
F. Repeat 5 more times.

Are You Overtraining????

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:13:00 GMT

Rest Schmest
Written by Michele Vieux

I have a couple of CrossFitting friends that just can’t rest. They workout EVERY day, sometimes multiple times per day, and NEVER take a rest day. You might think they are super committed to their training, but I think they are diminishing their returns on their hard work and might be setting themselves up for failure and injury. This is called OVERTRAINING and it is a medically recognized condition. YOUR BODY NEEDS REST. It is necessary to repair worn, tired, and injured muscles; to give time for the central nervous system to unwind; and for the body’s energy sources to be replenished. If you don’t schedule rest days into your routine, your body just might do it for you. Take one or two on your own or be forced into a break of a week or more.

It was just a couple weeks before the CrossFit Games Qualifiers that I injured my knee pretty severely whilst demonstrating an (aggressive) kip for a client. I know it sounds ridiculous to get hurt this way but I could barely walk. I could barely get around my house without pain, and my training was forced to a screeching halt. It was hard for me to deal with since the Quals just were just around the corner, but my body was getting worn and I knew it could only lead to more injury if I didn’t take a break.

I took one week (okay…6 days) completely off of exercise. I had been hitting it pretty hard for the two months leading up to the injury—grueling workouts, heavier loads, and multiple WODs per day—which most likely played a role in its occurrence.

During my week off, I spent time addressing one of the issues that most definitely contributed to my current injury as well as a slew of problems I’ve been dealing with for a couple of years—flexibility. I enlisted Calvin to help me rehab. He showed me a variety of stretches and exercises to help me strengthen the injured area but more importantly, to prevent future injury.

After my six-day hiatus, I began to hit it every-other-day for the next week and kept up with the stretching routine as I eased back into my workouts. By week three, I was back on the regular 3 on 1 off schedule and I felt great. I could barely walk just a couple weeks ago and now I was hitting PRs on my Oly lifts and my met-con was still right where I left it. I felt strong, confident and invincible.

I have been “back on it” with the strict diet and ramping up the workout regimen since Memorial Day. Last weekend I was in Huntington Beach hitting a WOD with the SoCal Six (the other women who qualified from this region) when “pop!”—my hammie that’s been giving me trouble for a few months finally had enough on the downward motion of a SDHP. It was a partner WOD, there was a crowd, and I didn’t want to quit. I asked for a sub for the SDHP (the judges foolishly picked hang power clean) and I finished the third of four rounds. Just as I’m about to start round four, Julie (one of the owners of CFHB) walks over to me with a bag of ice and tells me to sit down. I was planning on finishing the WOD but, I complied.

Then I got the bigger blow—Coachie Poo (Sage) refused to train me at our regularly scheduled session on Monday! Now I am REALLY annoyed and plan my own workout session for the next day. Thank goodness I had a good night sleep that night so I had a chance to come to my senses and listen to my coach (and others looking out for me).

My body is telling me I need another rest. I don’t really have a choice in the matter—the hamstring plays a pretty major role in a lot of movements we do around here (and in our everyday lives). Maybe if I had listened to my screaming hammie a couple months ago and avoided activities that aggravated it I wouldn’t be sitting on the sidelines now.

My point with all of this is that you have to plan your own rests instead of forcing yourself into rest via overtraining and injury. And, “rest days” don’t have to mean you sit around like a lump. Think active recovery—go for a walk with the family, stretch, do yoga, or shoot some hoop.

Maybe It's not Your Jeans; It's Your Perspective

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:04:00 GMT

Maybe It’s Not Your Jeans; It’s Your Perspective
Written by Dani Dufrene

A couple months ago I set out to accomplish a goal. I wanted to go
from #109 to #120. I believed that with a little extra mass I would be
able to lift heavier weights and recover better from my work outs.
Although I have not yet hit #120, I did reach #116 and have felt a
remarkable difference. That is not the point of this post, but
important to note for the story to come. So that is 7lbs in
approximately 8 weeks. Seven pounds may not seem like much for some,
but my frame is rather small and all 7 of those pounds are very
noticeable to me. They seem to have found a home in my quads, glutes
and hamstrings. Not surprising given the CrossFit regimen. Now to my
story…

A few weeks ago I went shopping with a girlfriend. The primary goal
was to find some jeans because I only had one pair of pants that fit
me. What I came to discover on that shopping adventure is that my body
has changed drastically. The cap sleeved, frilly shirts that once
looked so cute now looked ridiculous. And locating a pair of jeans
that fit both in my thighs and my waist was not possible. I was very
grateful on that day for my amazing girlfriend who has a healthy
perspective on her own body image and had been down this road before.
After several failed attempts at finding a pair of jeans, she simply
suggested that I find a pair that fit my thighs and have them altered
to fit in the waist. As for the cap sleeved frilly shirt, well she
said say goodbye and find a new style. Her point was simple, it wasn’t
the jeans; it was my perspective. My body had changed and rather than
fight it I needed to embrace it and adapt. So I did. I located shirts
that didn’t make me feel like the Hulk or Linda Hamilton and I purged
my closet of anything that no longer flattered my body in its current
state.

If I had gained 7lbs because I sat on the couch gorging myself, that
would be a completely different story. Not the case. The jeans didn’t
fit me because I had gained muscle mass in my legs and my booty. At
that moment I had to make a decision, I could accept the fact that my
body had changed and alter my attire or sacrifice my strength and
muscle so I could fit into a certain pair of jeans or rock a frilly
shirt. To me the choice is a no brainer. I understand that isn’t the
case for many women, but I challenge you to challenge your
perspective.

I write this post because I know that women torture
themselves on a daily basis about their bodies. If you are eating
well, CrossFitting regularly and being active and your quads happen to
get bigger or your booty grows, I challenge you to embrace it. Adapt
your clothing, not your lifestyle. Don’t sacrifice your health and
strength for vanity. You can have both. You can be strong and
beautiful. You just have to change your perspective. Beautiful might
look a little different than it once did.

Hamstrung

Sat, 23 May 2009 21:21:00 GMT

Stretching sucks. It does. There, it's been said. You can't brag about your best stretching time, you don't get to write your stretch PR on the wall, and there is no immediate "Fran"-like gratification that you are really tough. And despite the fact that flexibility is one of the ten CrossFit pillars of complete, well-balanced fitness, increasing flexibility potential remains the ungreased squeaky wheel of most athletes' training programming. According to the ten general physical skills list, flexibility is allegedly as important as power or strength. So why don't we take it more seriously? Because, typically, we simply fail to frame flexibility in terms that are important to us: increasing performance.

Stop kidding yourself. Lacking flexibility in crucial areas has a crushing impact on your athletic abilities; to say nothing of the host of pains and problems that inflexibility predisposes you to. If you know you have tight hips, calves, hamstrings, quads, thoracic spine, or shoulders and aren't actively, aggressively striving to fix them, then you must be afraid of having a bigger squat, faster rowing splits, or a more explosive second pull. Or, you must be very lazy. Because if you are tight and a CrossFitter, you are missing a huge opportunity to get better, stronger and faster. Simply put, not stretching is like not flossing, and the results are not pretty. There are many areas of restriction in the typical athlete, but it makes sense to begin a discussion about flexibility and performance at perhaps the most commonly neglected and profoundly underaddressed area of the body, the hamstrings. The goals of this article are to help you understand how hamstring restriction impedes performance and function, learn to identify tight hamstrings with a few simple assessment tools, and above all, know how to address the problem.

By Kelly Starrett
CrossFit Journal July 01, 2007

How to Get Kicked Out of Your Gym in Ten Days or Less

Fri, 22 May 2009 05:07:00 GMT

Day 1
Bring your own music – use a boom box – and turn
it up to inspiration levels and start working out. ACDC’s
“Thunderstruck” should do the trick.
Day 2
Set up a circuit like one of the typical CrossFit
“Workouts of the Day” and put a sign up at each
station advising others that this equipment is
reserved for accurate timing of your effort.
Day 3
While practicing the Olympic lifts drop a max load
from overhead. This may do it right here.
Day 4
Find a twenty-inch platform and perform box
jumps. Try three sets of two minutes of max jumps.
Bizarrely, this one irks the shit out of most gym
management.
Day 5
Take a pair of dumbbells out into the parking lot to
do walking lunges. You may be accused of theft.
Day 6
Bring several powerlifting buddies to do some super
heavy deadlifts. Don’t forget to grunt, scream, and
use chalk!
Day 7
If the gym has support poles climb them. If
not find something to climb; sling a rope over
a beam or rafters, attach some climbing holds
to the wall and use them. You won’t get to the
climbing part if you need to attach anything.
You may get stopped at the door coming in
with a twenty-five foot coil of two-inch rope.
Day 8
Workout with your shirt off. If you don’t get a reaction
have your girlfriend or wife take hers off.
Day 9
Walk on your hands, or do handstand push-ups or
some other basic gymnastics stuff.
Day 10
If you’ve gotten this far, this one is the clincher.
Record your efforts by writing them on the wall.

If after day ten you are still allowed in,
you belong to a great gym. Let us know
where it is; we’ll feature it on our site. If
you’re asked to leave before or during
this experiment it’s time to clean out the
garage.

People don't know SQUAT!

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:29:00 GMT

It is amazing what you can find on the internet. It is a great resource as long as the information you use from it is accurate. There is no governing body to regulate what is posted on the vast bandwidth out there. Anyone with a camera and an idea can become a self proclaimed expert on anything. Here is a test, let's Google or you tube "squat" and see how many correct vs. incorrect versions will be displayed. My guess is at least 7 out of 10 will be incorrect.

Ok well I checked and I had to stop at 7 videos because I just could not take anymore bad coaching. The coaches, trainers and home gym wanna-be-superstars were making my knees hurt. I understand form breakdown due to pushing the intensity but to instruct the squats with feet close together, stopping before hip joint is below knee joint, chest collapsing forward and numerous awful cues and instructions.

I will say that only 2 correct videos out of the 7 that I suffered through were from CrossFit gyms. So the point of this exercise was to show you that we need to be careful of what we consider as good advise either from the internet and the abundance of fitness magazines (which is a whole different ball game of miseducation).

Be careful and do you own factual research.

Simon says.....jump!

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:16:00 GMT

I have been toying with the idea that it is not some much your physical attributes that enable you to perform at an elite level, as it is your skill and power of your mind. We often look at our favorite athletes and wonder what they did to get to their position. Most people tend to solely focus on the physical aspects of their ability. The part that is mostly overlooked is the person's ability to control one's body. Let me not go rambling on. Basically it is about being able to send the signals to the muscles, which have been developed to perform the desired task, faster than your competition.

Sports Performance course in Colorado Springs at the Olympic Training Center

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:43:00 GMT

This past weekend (March 13-15) I went to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs for the Sports and Performance Coach certification course. It was a 2 day course starting on Friday and concluded on Saturday afternoon.

This course covered the basics of a strength and conditioning program, how to design such a program, how to teach and coach the Olympic lifts (from the power position), plyometrics and using a medicine ball to help develop inter-muscular coordination. This was not just a sit on your butt listen to lecture and take a test course either. You actually go through an extensive practical part where you actually work in the weight room. We worked in small groups and took turns being the coach and the athlete. I found this to be one of the better parts of the course. Here is where you learn how to effectively communicate what you want to be done and then be critical of the performance of each movement. Our instructor, Patrick Borkowski, did a fine job. He condensed the majority of the lecture into the first morning which left the rest of the time to go over the practical. I will bore you with the entire details of the course but it was well worth time an money.

The course is offered in other cities and taught by different instructors. However i purposefully choose this location for that fact that it was at the Olympic Training Center. Being in the presence of future Olympians, eating in the same dining hall previous Olympians ate and walking around the entire complex was worth the entire cost of the trip. That was an experience I will not soon forget.

So if you are at all interested in being a better coach, athlete, trainer or just looking to further your education on sports performance program design this is definitely the place to go.

If you would like more details about my trip please feel free to email or call me. I will happily discuss the entire weekend in detail with you

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Effective training methods to improve athletic perfromance

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:50:00 GMT

You see ball, you want ball or you see n opening, you want to get through the opening. These are both situations that arise often for an athlete competing in his/ her respective sport. Once your mind realizes the situation, your mind has to communicate its commands to the rest of the body. This neuromuscular reaction has to be seamless and almost instantaneous. Athletes depend upon being one step ahead of their competition. With all that said lets think of all the various methods of training and choose the one(s) which are most appropriate to elicit the effects we desire. If you had to choose from A) isometric bicep curls B) leg extensions C) calf raises D) non of the above, which answer would in and of it itself improve an athletes performance. Answer is D) none of the above. Training isometrically, or more commonly known as body building, does not translate very well to improving total body control and increased neuromuscular communication between multiple muscle groups.

Since our goal is to move effectively and efficiently as one unit, it makes more sense to train our body as a complete unit. To expand on that a little further, the majority of our movements in sport, game or life are rooted in our connection to the ground. This is referred to as closed chain movements. A closed chain is characterized by the fact that during these movements the distal end of the limb, in this case the foot, makes a force against an immovable object, the ground.

Now that we know how we move and where our movement originates, we can better develop our training methods. Let's start a thread discussing the most efficient methods you have found to increase our athletic potential. Feel free to agree, disagree or agree to disagree. We are all here as learners and I look forward to the exchange of quality information.