Results for “bill starr”

Are you addicted to met-cons to the detriment of overall fitness?

Yes, we know you feel like you didn’t accomplish anything on deadlift day.

It’s very clear you’re unhappy that you are not out of breath and dripping with sweat.

We’re just going to lie here on the rubber with shaking legs while you head over to the corner to bang out 100 burpees for time.

We’ll even start the clock if you feel the need to hit a quick Fran.

But we’re… Continue Reading

Often forgotten in favor of push presses or jerks, the bench press can add variety to CrossFit workouts.

On April 22, 2004, Lynne Pitts followed her normal routine. She woke up and logged onto CrossFit.com to see the workout of the day.

The day’s challenge was 5 rounds for max reps of body-weight bench presses and pull-ups. When she saw the workout, Pitts knew she’d do well.

A competitive powerlifter in the late ’80s and early ’90s… Continue Reading

Chris Hinshaw is a professional triathlete, renowned endurance coach and instructor for the CrossFit Aerobic Capacity Course. At Tennessee Tech, Hinshaw leads a group of elite CrossFit Games competitors through a series of warm-up drills.

The drills—24 in all—begin with prep work for the hips and lower body. The first five are called high-knee karaoke, over the hurdle, knee to chest, figure four and lunge.

“So what we do… Continue Reading

Bill Starr describes additional drills to help you finish the pull and clean big weight.

Editor’s note: Bill Starr completed this article before he passed away April 7, 2015, in Maryland.

In September 2009, the CrossFit Journal published my article “More Pop at the Top,” which described how to do high pulls, shrugs, isometric contractions and throws to improve the numbers on any type of… Continue Reading

Bill Starr addresses an element of strength training that’s too often disregarded by hard-charging athletes.

Editor’s note: Bill Starr completed this article before he passed away April 7, 2015, in Maryland.

There are three sides to the strength pyramid: training, nutrition and rest.

It takes time to learn how to do various exercises using proper technique, what exercises to do on which training days, what sets and… Continue Reading

The individual PDF articles published in April 2015 are collected here in a single download.

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

The articles included here are:

“In Loving Memory” - Brown
“Master of the Many” - Beers
“Periodization: Period or Question Mark?—Part 2” - Kilgore
“Learning for Life” - Beers
“Bill Starr, 1938-2015” - Warkentin
“Hammer Time” - Achauer
“Hydrating the Elite” - Beers
“Ironman in Waterworld” - Beers
“Fear Factor” - Achauer
“Virtuosity 7: One Spirit” - Blackburn
“The Hip and Athletic Performance” - Long

Longtime CrossFit Journal contributor and strength legend Bill Starr passes on at 77.

Bill Starr died April 7 in Maryland. He was 77.

Starr first contributed to the CrossFit Journal with the November 2008 article “Overhead Is Rising.” It was introduced as follows:

“This article is both an instructional piece on overhead lifting, as well as a history of the unfortunate demise of overhead lifting in most strength and conditioning programs.”

The lines… Continue Reading

If the bottom of your snatch is full of trepidation and shaking, Bill Starr has the cure.

I believe full snatches are the epitome of athleticism. When done correctly, the full snatch is a flawless symphony of strength, quickness, timing, coordination and balance. There are many things that have to be done before an athlete is able to master the technique in the full… Continue Reading

Bill Starr chronicles how Universal and Nautilus changed the face of fitness and made black iron a memory in most gyms.

The earliest pieces of equipment used by men wanting to get stronger and build more impressive physiques were kettlebells, dumbbells and barbells with rounded globes at each end. Then barbells advanced so plates of different weights could be added and removed. The next step in the evolution was to put ball… Continue Reading

If your pre-workout prep consists of a cup of coffee and a few squats, Bill Starr has some advice for you.

As every Olympic lifter fully understands, doing full snatches and clean and jerks requires a high degree of flexibility in every part of the body. All the major muscle groups and corresponding attachments are involved in the two competitive lifts: shoulder girdle, back, and hips and legs. A lack of… Continue Reading

Want to get better at strict pull-ups? Bill Starr says the secret is simple programming and a lot of dedication.

In the CrossFit Journal article “The Arms Race and Olympic Lifting,” I stated I didn’t think Olympic lifters should do specific work on their biceps. I noted that these athletes get plenty of work for their biceps through all the heavy pulling they do regularly: power cleans, power snatches, full cleans and… Continue Reading

Bill Starr explains that training your biceps has limited carryover to lifting, but targeting your triceps can result in PR snatches and jerks.

Everyone who ever set out to improve his physique and get stronger started out by working his arms.

Not his back or legs. Arms.

Why?

Upper arms are a symbol of manhood, especially for youngsters, and bulging biceps show that a lot of hard work has been done to… Continue Reading

Bill Starr goes over the finer points of training to lift big loads in strongman competitions.

In Building Behemoths: Part 1, I outlined a number of exercises useful to any athlete training for any type of strongman competition, including those planning on entering any level of Highland games.

In that article, I promised to provide some ideas as to how to improve endurance and flexibility, two attributes often… Continue Reading

Bill Starr offers simple strategies for anyone training for strongman competitions.

The various Iron Man Events, and particularly the most popular one of all, The World’s Strongest Man, came along in 1977 and became more popular with TV audiences than either Olympic lifting or powerlifting.

It didn’t surprise me at all that the contests were so popular. The concept was really based on what happened at the very… Continue Reading

Bill Starr offers advice to athletes training hard in the dog days of summer.

This is the time of year when athletes have to deal with temperatures soaring close to or over the century mark, as well as extremely high humidity in some areas. It’s also when many sports teams train for the upcoming season.

Extreme heat can be debilitating to any athlete, regardless of age, if he or she does… Continue Reading

Bill Starr recommends a host of exercises to build a strong upper back and neck.

For those athletes who participate in contact sports, such as hockey, lacrosse, football and soccer, having a strong neck is an absolute must. It can mean the difference between getting a stinger in the neck after a head-on-head collision or being carried off the field and into the emergency room.

The sad… Continue Reading

Bill Starr explains the technique for the Olympic-style press, which helped set records but ultimately ushered the lift out of competition.

In the ’60s, Tony Garcy of the York Barbell Club invented a technical style of pressing that required a high degree of timing, quickness, coordination and—most of all—balance. Previously, Olympic lifters used brute strength to elevate their presses. Tony’s version was a… Continue Reading

Bill Starr explains why the feet are the key to almost any lift.

Oddly enough, few strength athletes think about their feet when performing an exercise—but they should.

Seldom do people even think about their feet unless something goes wrong with them. Stub a toe badly and you will suddenly understand how important that part of your foot is for locomotion and any other athletic movement.

The feet play a critical role… Continue Reading

As a trainer, you need to be able to see movement. In the push jerk, the telltale sign of improper movement in the dip is forward inclination of the shoulder, Russell Berger says during this CrossFit Level 1 Seminar breakout group.

The second movement to look for is the opening of the hips, he adds before having an athlete demonstrate the push jerk with a PVC pipe. The athlete is leaning forward in… Continue Reading

Doug Chapman asks a poignant question: “How many girls fear Elizabeth because of the freakin’ dips in it?”

Enter the kipping dip.

For Chapman, owner and coach of affiliate CrossFit Ann Arbor/HyperFit USA, the teaching progression begins on the parallel bars.

“The dip is the squat of the upper body. I want you to think about that,” he tells a group of athletes at his gym in Michigan. “From my perspective… Continue Reading