WOD 101112

The 4 o'clock group trying out the new pull-up bars

5 rounds for time
8 snatches (135/95)
10 wall ball 2 fer 1's (20/16)

Many of you have been having fun warming up on the new pull-up bars in the gym. Thats great one thing CrossFit does well for most people is to get them to do their first pull-up, and then their first set of 10, 20, 30 pull-ups and so forth. Doing Angie as RX'd is a huge mile stone and CrossFit  can get you there. However with great power comes great responsibility. As you increase your capacity in pull-ups make sure that you properly warm up before grabbing the bar and cranking out a few pull-ups. a Proper warm-up includes a general and a specific warm-up. A general warm-up involves increasing you heart rate and body temperature. It can be anything from rowing to running, squats or jump ropes. This is the reason for the progression of our general warm-ups that we do in the gym every day. The specific warm-ups involves increasing mobility in a specific joint and gradually loading the joint so that it is ready for the movement and stress you are about to place on it. When it comes to pull-ups this is the reason we do the shoulder mobility circuit the SMC includes the shoulder pull-throughs, over head squats with a pvc or light bar and kipping on the pull-up bar some optional additions are sottz presses and snatch balances with pvc or light bar.  This all serves to prepare the shoulder joint for the pull-ups and should be done before even the pull-ups involved in the warm-up. The shoulder is the a common problem area with injuries plaguing plenty of people abd warming up properly before pull-ups can help protect you from any damage you might do to your shoulder with pull-ups ( especially kipping pull-ups).

The Basics

It seems that today there are people every where wanting to sell you the next big thing in getting fit. It could be some new BOSU ball move, guaranteed to activate all your stabilizer muscles and burn 50% more calories that what ever you are doing now. or it could be some new diet promising to drop the fat in 4 weeks. The fact is America is fatter, lazier and are getting worse every day. We like to think that these fancy moves and workouts and diets are what we need, and more than that we like to think that they will work like magic giving us movie star bodies and superhuman  strength by next weekend, unfortunately the human body does not work like that. It takes months and year of steady progressive overload and a constant clean diet to ensure achieve the goals most people have. Whats more is because it takes this long to really see big results you could be doing something wrong, and not realize it for a long time. Fortunately there are a number of people out there who have still remember or have learned one simple truth that not only applies to fitness but to pretty much every much every aspect of life. Stick to the Basics. Unfortunately most of us have forgotten what the basics are, so here is a reminder. 

Back Squats: The King of the Strength Movements. 

      Aside from being one the greatest full body movements for improving strength there is just some thing about putting a loaded bar on your back dropping down below parallel and standing back up. Also included in the basics are the Front and Overhead Squats. Both are great exercises that build muscle and strength.

Dead Lift: If you like putting a lot of weight on the bar then this movement is for you. Due to the shorter distance and mechanical advantage of the dead lift you can train to pick up huge amounts of weight.

Presses: Bench, Shoulder, Push, whatever taking something heavy and pressing it away from your body. 

Olympic Lifts: The Clean & Jerk, Snatch. These are the two best applications of the strength you can build using the other lifts. both involve taking a weight from the ground and putting it over head. This is the largest distance you can move a weight and both movements require you to do it with exceptional speed.

You may notice a few things missing that you would find in your typical gym. Like the bicep curl machine , or th leg extension machine. These types of isolated muscle exercises do very little in the way of stressing the body so that is adapts and changes.  The changes people want to see are only available through the progressive overload of their muscles in the previously listed movements. While their is much more to be said about the right way to get truly fit this is a brief intro into the basics. If you do not know how to do these movements properly find some one who does and start using them.