A Ringing Success

Who says big men and women can’t be graceful?

“This one is all about walking smooth,” Kurtis Bowler of Rainier CrossFit says of the yoke walk.

The strongman movement is particularly challenging because it requires more than just raw strength and core stability. One of the keys to the movement is fluidity, and athletes who stagger or change speed while under load will find heavy weights very difficult to control.

“If you start walking and… Continue Reading

Athletes who have been in that frustrating no man’s land between ring pull-up and ring dip have heard a multitude of cues shouted as they struggle through the transition with kicking legs and T-rex arms. Some cues are more helpful than others, and many athletes find themselves baffled by the instructions and completely frustrated by the muscle-up.

Jeff Tucker of GSX Athletics teaches the movement with athletes starting on their knees. That way they can… Continue Reading

Kristopher Germain, a new affiliate owner, and Olympic-lifting expert/CrossFit athlete Sage Burgener joined Justin on Episode 92 of CrossFit Radio, webcast live at 6 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2009.

1:42 New affiliate owner Kristopher Germain joined us for the second installment in a series where we follow his progress as he starts a new affiliate. Kris updated us on what’s transpired with his affiliate over the last four weeks… Continue Reading

Can you imagine your Fran time if you hadn’t wasted 10 years doing biceps curls?

What if someone had taught you in college to squat below parallel instead of to barely crease your knees while “feeling the burn” in your quads?

How fit and functional would you be right now if you had never set foot in a Globo Gym?

Greg Glassman came up with the CrossFit Kids program to ensure young athletes don’t make the same… Continue Reading

The CrossFit world is full of amazing stories—here are some of the very best, as written by Daniel Andrews and Mike Warkentin.

CrossFit changes lives—we all know it.

In this regular feature, the CrossFit Journal compiles the most extraordinary stories from a community of extraordinary people.

In this edition, we feature Daniel Andrews, a Denver police officer with a four-hour marathon time and an 892-lb. CrossFit Total. In August… Continue Reading

In Part 1 of this series, Coach Mike Burgener taught a group of athletes the grip and receiving position for the clean. In Part 2, Coach B shows them how to put speed on the bar as they clean it to the rack position.

Drilling from the high hang position, Burgener has the athletes clean the bar, with one trainee getting holy hell for forgetting to use the hook grip. Under threat of burpees, the athlete takes… Continue Reading

The individual PDF articles published in October 2009 are collected here in a single download.

The video and audio articles are not contained in the PDF.

The articles included here are:

Rithner - Rugby and the Rotational Kettlebell Swing
Starr - Strength Training and the Young Athlete
Widman - A CrossFit Start-Up Guide: Part 3
Kostielney - Elite Soldiers, Elite Fitness
Cej - The Business of CrossFit
Hanson - Diluting the Brand?
Warkentin - Centers of Excellence… Continue Reading

The Zone Diet can help you achieve wellness—freedom from disease and inflammation—but it can also help you smash PRs.

In Part 8 of Dr. Sears’ presentation on Aug. 8, 2009, in Orange County, Calif., the creator of the Zone Diet talks about how proper nutrition has worked for elite athletes. From NFL and NBA players to Olympians, top athletes have found that following the Zone Diet can help them to longer careers, PRs, gold medals and world records.

“These are… Continue Reading

Jonny and Helen (Helzy) Smyth are the co-owners of Elite 400/CrossFit Northern Ireland, and they opened their box the day after returning from a Level 1 Cert in Manchester, England. At the cert, they asked Coach Greg Glassman to select the very first workout for the new affiliate, and he chose Fight Gone Bad. Nicole Carroll chose Fran for Day 2.

After an aggressive start in the middle of 2008, CrossFit Northern Ireland hosted… Continue Reading

Athletes from CrossFit Calgary and CrossFit Central did extremely well at the 2009 CrossFit Games. In Part 2 of this two-part series, Mike Warkentin talks to Jeremy Thiel and Mike Gregory about their training secrets.

Rewind to July 11 at the 2009 CrossFit Games.

Jeremy Thiel is standing in the athletes’ warm-up area, yelling at a flat-screen TV streaming the live feed from the JumboTron towering over the Stadium. The energized Texan is… Continue Reading

CrossFitting combative expert Tony Blauer of Blauer Tactical Systems is an avid CrossFitter who developed the SPEAR self-defense system—spontaneous protection enabling accelerated response. Blauer’s innovative approach to self-defense uses the startle/flinch response to give combatants a better chance to survive an encounter unharmed.

In this video, Blauer teaches athletes how to behave when a gun is being pointed at them by paying special attention to how people move when they’re… Continue Reading

“I’m a meathead,” says strength and powerlifting expert Dave Tate of Elite FTS. “I have to do what I like. I want to make (my clients) stronger.”

Tate may be focused on the kind of strength that can produce an 800-lb. deadlift, but he understands that the average client wants to be good at everything, not great at anything in particular. Elite athletes, on the other hand, sacrifice competence in some fitness domains for high… Continue Reading

Maggie Dabe from CrossFit Fairfax is one of CrossFit HQ’s traveling seminar trainers. Originally from Ecuador, she explains our standard cues and faults for the deadlift entirely in Spanish.

When performing the deadlift, the stance will be between hip and shoulder width, with the weight in the heels. The grip will be just outside the knees, and the lumbar curve must be maintained throughout the lift. The… Continue Reading

The fat bar is a classic grip-training tool used by competitive strongmen. In this video, Kurtis Bowler (owner and founder of Rainier CrossFit) instructs a female athlete in the somewhat unusual techniques required to get a fat bar from the ground to overhead.

Breaking the movement down into pieces, Bowler demonstrates the difficulty of getting the bar into the rack position, noting that his fingers can’t even fully close around… Continue Reading

You have one hour to teach the clean and jerk to six athletes of varying ability: how do you do it?

Tony Budding of CrossFit HQ threw the challenge at Olympic lifting expert Mike Burgener, who wasn’t phased at all.

“I’m sure we can get it done,” Coach B says. “It’s not going to be that hard.”

Coach Burgener starts with the basics. To establish a good rack position, he ensures proper grip width and has the athletes… Continue Reading

Passionate CrossFitters have questions about the growth of the movement. Alec Hanson believes existing affiliates need to spend less time worrying and more time pursuing excellence and virtuosity.

The following open letter was posted Oct. 7, 2009, on the CrossFit Discussion Board as part of a thread titled “Huge Decline in Quality.” It is reformatted and reprinted here with the author’s permission.

An Open Letter Regarding CrossFit

My… Continue Reading

You can learn a lot about the kettlebell clean with a whiteboard eraser tucked in your armpit.

To demonstrate the correct position of the upper arm throughout a kettlebell clean, expert Jeff Martone of Tactical Athlete squeezes an eraser between his humerus and torso while performing the movement. The key is to keep your arm tight to your body as you pop your hips to drive the kettlebell upward. The elbow drops, the… Continue Reading

Tony Blauer’s SPEAR self-defense system has more in common with CrossFit than you might think. Together with Freddy Camacho of CrossFit One World, Blauer talks about how CrossFit and combatives can complement each other.

The SPEAR System—spontaneous protection enabling accelerated response—is based on the startle/flinch reflex that’s hard-wired into the body. As such, the SPEAR movements are “prehistoric,” instinctive and natural in the same way a squat or a deadlift has been part of… Continue Reading

Trust Jeff Tucker of GSX Athletics to serve up a challenging gymnastics movement like it’s a shot of Irish whiskey.

At a Gymnastics Cert held Aug. 29-30, 2009, at Elite 400/CrossFit Northern Ireland, Tucker uses John Brown (CrossFit Agoge) and Michelle Benedict (CrossFit Fort Bragg) to demonstrate several ways to scale the iron cross while you build up the strength needed to complete the full movement.

By reaching through the straps and grabbing the rings from… Continue Reading

A CrossFit Kids Cert is really about one thing: fun.

Yes, you will learn about exercise technique and how to help youngsters “bank” bone mass as they grow older, but if you don’t have fun, you’re probably missing the point.

According to Jeff Martin of CrossFit Kids, making things fun for kids is the most important part of the program. If children are enjoying themselves, it’s going to be far easier to get them hooked on a valuable program… Continue Reading