Exercises

When Jeff Tucker speaks, he’s passing on two decades of gymnastics instruction—delivered in a friendly southern drawl, of course.

At CrossFit Gymnastics Certifications, Tucker demystifies movements that seem impossible at first, and he emphasizes how the focused strength development in gymnastics movements will carry over and help athletes meet the core stability demands of CrossFit training. Training aside, the ability to move one’s body weight effortlessly and with confidence… 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 press entirely in Spanish.

The press is the foundation for all overhead movements. With the feet under the hips, the athlete will grip the bar just outside shoulder width. The elbows will be down and slightly in front of the bar, and the entire body should be… Continue Reading

“Pigs on ice skates” and “groiners”—two keys to a great warm-up for the hips.

During a visit to CrossFit Santa Cruz, physical therapist and affiliate owner Kelly Starrett helps a group of athletes warm up their hips in preparation for a workout featuring squatting.

Kelly starts with some basic air squats before incorporating very light stretching and moving on to dynamic movements that slowly warm up the joints and increase the range of motion. A… 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 med-ball clean entirely in Spanish.

The med-ball clean builds upon the sumo deadlift high pull by teaching an athlete how to explosively elevate an object and then drop underneath it to receive the load in a rack position. The med-ball clean itself is a gateway… Continue Reading

In early December 2009, Chris Spealler visited CrossFit Sri Ram Ashram, an orphanage outside of Haridwar, India. Home to 65 abandoned children, the orphanage has a CrossFit program courtesy of Rashmi Cole, who first trained at CrossFit Santa Cruz before taking the program back to India.

Though their Internet access is limited, the kids took a huge interest in last year’s CrossFit Games. They studied all the athlete… Continue Reading

The shoulder is one of the more complicated joints in the human body, so it usually benefits from a good warm-up. As tempting as it may be to grip it and rip it when faced with a WOD, spending a bit of time loosening up your joints is a great idea and will improve performance and reduce the chance of injury.

Working with a group of athletes at CrossFit Santa Cruz, Kelly Starrett goes through a… Continue Reading

“If a hurricane that wreaks havoc on a whole town can be Fran, so can a workout.”

In this video shot at several CrossFit 101 seminars, Coach Greg Glassman talks about the birth of one of CrossFit’s best-known and most challenging workouts: Fran.

As a young athlete, Coach believed training with weights would help him become a better gymnast. When three sets of eight lateral raises with a Ted Williams weightlifting set didn’t… 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 sumo deadlift high pull entirely in Spanish.

The sumo deadlift high pull builds on the deadlift by introducing powerful hip extension to the movement. Often misinterpreted as a shoulder exercise, the high pull is a core-to-extremity movement that derives the bulk of its… Continue Reading