Part 1—From Humble Beginnings

Full cleans can get complicated, but Bill Starr simplifies the movement into a power clean and a front squat. Get comfortable with the movements, then start refining the clean by adding speed and power.

Full cleans are one of the very best exercises for any strength athlete.

They are beneficial because they involve so many of the large muscles of the body in a dynamic fashion. When performed correctly, full… Continue Reading

Firefighter Combat Challenge competitor David Bowman and nutrition top gun, guru and geek Robb Wolf joined Justin on Episode 94 of CrossFit Radio, webcast live at 6 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009.

Justin began the show by reading an e-mail requesting the input of teachers who are using CrossFit in their P.E. classes. The listener thought information on successful strategies would help other teachers and affiliate owners alike—especially… Continue Reading

CrossFitters know all about gravity: it’s the unrelenting force that sometimes keeps a PR deadlift glued to the floor. But according to Dr. Nicholas Romanov, gravity can also make you a better runner.

Dr. Romanov, a two-time Olympic coach, invented the Pose Method in the 1970s as a way to improve efficiency by letting gravity do some of the work usually done by muscles. For an untrained observer, it can be hard to tell Pose… Continue Reading

After working his athletes through the clean and the first parts of the jerk, Coach Burgener completes the progression with the full split jerk.

Starting with the bar on the shoulders behind the head, the athletes work on a good dip with a vertical torso before jumping and landing in the receiving position with the bar locked out overhead. The next step is to start with the bar in the rack… Continue Reading

What does a back tuck have to do with Olympic lifting or Fran?

According to Jeff Tucker of GSX Athletics, the answer is, “A lot.”

Gymnastics is all about efficiently moving your body with strength and power, and improvements in your gymnastics movements will often bring about impressive gains in other aspects of CrossFit. That’s probably why Greg Glassman made gymnastics one of the foundations of CrossFit and reintroduced the rings to the fitness world.

“The… Continue Reading

Join us for a live webcast of Dr. Sears’ Zone Nutrition lecture on Sunday morning, Nov. 15, at 9 a.m. EST.

In a first-time event for CrossFit, watch a live Internet stream of Dr. Barry Sears, creator of the Zone Diet, presenting his renowned lecture on the anti-inflammatory aspects of the Zone Diet and how it relates to enhancing your physical performance.

With a precisely balanced diet, smart training and the right amount of… Continue Reading

CrossFit Games competitor Blair Morrison is living in Europe and trying to stay fit on a continent that’s just discovering CrossFit.

Earlier this year, I accepted the enrollment offer of the Leiden/Paris/Oxford Europaeum Programme, which will see me traveling across the continent and studying the respective histories of various European countries and their civilizations. From the experience of others, I was loosely aware of the fitness culture in Europe. I… Continue Reading

It would be great if every load you ever lifted was set 8.5 inches off the ground and was perfectly balanced. In the real world, however, the objects you have to move are seldom shaped like a barbell.

Stone lifting, on the other hand, trains your body to pick up awkward objects without handles and knurling. It’s a real-world activity that’s been around for millennia, and it’s one of several events you can usually… Continue Reading

At a Level 1 Cert, trainers break the med-ball clean down into five easily digestible steps. When training kids, you have to break things down even further.

With a complicated movement like the clean, it’s not practical to go through a host of progressions that will only confuse and frustrate the kid. Jeff Martin of CrossFit Kids says you only need a few simple and clear cues designed to encourage the most essential parts of the… Continue Reading

On Aug. 28, 2009, CrossFit co-founder and CEO Greg Glassman made an appearance on Fort Hood TV during a visit to the U.S. Army facility in Texas. Coach Glassman was invited to speak at a Commanders’ Call just as the Army was doing an eight-week evaluation of CrossFit vs. regular PT. Coach used the occasion to present the Army with $20,000 of fitness gear as part of Operation Phoenix.

He also did an in-studio interview for… Continue Reading

Your inner monologue can be a source of strength or a cause of weakness. Wendy Swift explains how you can fill your head with positive thoughts that will result in PRs and high performance.

If everything that passed through your head was said out loud to another CrossFitter, would you be considered a good coach or a bad coach, a motivating coach or a demoralizing coach?

I’m talking about that little voice… Continue Reading

While injuries are a part of any sport, they don’t have to happen all the time.

In his own special way—no BS with extra profanity— strength expert Dave Tate of Elite FTS offers his strategy for avoiding downtime due to injuries:

“We all do stupid shit. It’s just you want to try to stop from doing stupid shit 100 per cent of the time, and just do stupid shit, like, 20 per cent of the time.”

You may not be able to avoid a… Continue Reading

In Part 1, Coach Mike Burgener taught a group of athletes the grip and receiving position for the clean. In Part 2, he showed them how to put speed on the bar as they clean it to the rack position. Part 3 finds the CrossFit Olympic-lifting expert teaching the split jerk.

A good split jerk looks like a quarter lunge, where the back heel is off the deck with the weight in… Continue Reading

“Selena” takes in only 1,200 calories a day. She’s 300 lb. and isn’t losing any weight.

What gives?

Robb Wolf asked that question at a recent CrossFit Nutrition cert, and participants came up with the following answer: the calories Selena takes in constantly raise her insulin levels and encourage her body to store fat. Her consumption of artificial sweeteners compounds the problem.

According to Wolf, artificial sweeteners can create… Continue Reading

Muscle-ups knocked Annie Mist Thorisdottir out of the 2009 CrossFit Games. Mike Warkentin reports that Thorisdottir is confident the movement won’t be a problem again.

“DNF—first muscle-up!”

That was what appeared on Annie Mist Thorisdottir’s scorecard when judge Chuck Carswell brought it to the scorer’s table after the final women’s WOD at the 2009 CrossFit Games.

Moments earlier, the 19-year-old from Iceland had failed to finish the gruelling chipper but… Continue Reading

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

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