October 01, 2007
The bucket and rope is, without a doubt, one of the best overall core-strength builders that I use. A basic principle that I always try to implement with my athletes is something I call strength with movement.
Working bucket circles properly, helps teach athletes to maximize their strength from the hips to the shoulders. You'll feel a complete workout in the abdominal area and entire trunk, deltoids, latissimus dorsi (lats), trapezius… Continue Reading
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In Combatives, Videos
October 01, 2007
Combatives and self-defense expert Tony Blauer presents part 2 of the scenario-based conditioning lecture and demo that we left off with in the August issue.
Blauer argues that effective combat and self-defense tactics--and training--should work with the body's natural movement patterns and instinctual responses to attack and fear. Scenario-based training is all about harnessing those instincts and conditioning the mind to working under high-stress physical and mental conditions.
Part 1… Continue Reading
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October 01, 2007
Continuing our series on the Olympic lifts, we focus this month on addressing a common problem for many CrossFitters: looping and floating under the bar. All three lifts--the snatch, the clean, and the jerk--must be fast, explosive, aggressive movements. Success in these movements requires the attitude of a junkyard dog. Unfortunately, we see too many CrossFitters pulling aggressively off the ground only to get… Continue Reading
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In Exercises
October 01, 2007
When I was training as a wrestler for the 1992 Olympic Games, the jump rope, along with many of the kinds of functional training exercises embraced by CrossFit, were the keys to my development into one the quickest, most explosive, and most highly conditioned wrestlers in the world. I believe that CrossFit's fitness principles of functionality, intensity, and variety are taking us back to the basics and setting the standards that can help our… Continue Reading
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In Workouts
October 01, 2007
Last month I received more inquires about my article than for any other article I've written for the CrossFit Journal. It was significant on several levels. For one thing, I enjoy discussions about dumbbell conditioning and am glad folks are finding the articles useful. It also confirmed my that CrossFit groups are expanding rapidly and that the CrossFit movement is reaching evening deeper into broad fitness… Continue Reading
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October 01, 2007
Bad form is bad in every way. Citing specific examples from lifts, Mark Rippetoe co-author of Starting Strength and owner of Wichita Falls Athletic Club/CrossFit Wichita Falls, writes that what constitutes bad form is not a matter of opinion.
Bad form occurs when a movement pattern is executed inefficiently. The bar is moved by incorrect biomechanics. Instead of all the muscles in the system making their anatomically… Continue Reading
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CrossFit workouts emphasize high-skill movements (relative to isolation and/or machine-based movements) because they are, in almost every respect, better vehicles for optimizing fitness--for achieving CrossFit's mission of increasing work capacity across broad time and modal domains.
In this lecture from a recent CrossFit certification seminar, Greg Glassman looks at the differences among the shoulder press, push press, and push jerk and compares them to the differences between strict and kipping… Continue Reading
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In ExPhysiology
October 01, 2007
Continuing with my theme of muscle mechanics (following my article two months ago on the stretch-shortening cycle), this month I would like to explain the rationale behind the plethora of variable resistance machines and training concepts that are so common. It isn't that designers of exercise machines and fitness programs do not understand muscle mechanics (although some clearly don't), but that knowledge is… Continue Reading
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