Tim Russert is dead.  The suffer-no-bullshit anchor of “Meet the Press” had a massive coronary on Friday at the too-soon age of 58.  

This was a guy you liked for the same reason you liked Die Hard-era Bruce Willis.  He was funny, he was aggressive, and he saw right through your front.  The only way you got off Tim’s hook was to tell the truth, own up to your argument, and admit your shortcomings.  I routinely felt sorry for his Sunday morning guests—they’d stumbled into a maze where the Minotaur was impossibly smart and every passage was a dead end.

Unfortunately, the otherwise brilliant Mr. Russert fell prey to the plague of the intellectual class, treating his body as an inconsequential vessel for his rock star brain.  His work ethic was notorious--round-the-clock marathons of analysis and exposition, executed for the benefit of a spoiled television audience.  His long hours in the office precluded regular exercise and proper diet, and his heart gave out.

You think you know pain, but you have no idea.  The heart thumping, chest expanding, lactic acid burn of your last workout was a walk through the meadow.

Somewhere, there’s a guy who did it in half the time it took you.  He suffered.  Plasma forced its way into his lungs, causing him to hack on repeat.  He choked down bile halfway through, and ended on his back, pupils dilated to the size of dimes.

While you were walking around, telling your friends how hardcore your workout was, Guy Number Two was still collapsed, the prospect of driving home as daunting as climbing K2 during a snowstorm.

When he finally stood up, he didn’t say a word.

CrossFit is a decidedly masochistic pursuit.  To be any good at it, you have to enjoy the pain.  You have to push back the threshold day after day, until last year’s traumas feel like an hour-long rubdown at the Canyon Ranch.  One day, you find a threshold that takes the whole thing just a little too far, and you get scared to go back.

The men and women that decimate your times are not superhuman.  They’re not particularly genetically gifted.  Hell, most of the top CrossFitters in the world would get absolutely pummeled in your standard game of rugby, buried by larger athletes begat by larger parents.

What differentiates these individuals is not a gift, but an unreasonable desire to push self-imposed suck beyond its logical limits.  What comes out the other side becomes legendary.

Like any human pursuit, we seek ways around the hard part.  Limited range of motion and new techniques.  Dropping the deadlift from the top, bouncing it off the floor.  Squatting above parallel and not standing up all the way.  Chicken-necking above the chin-up bar, and reviewing the tape to see if we made it.  

We want the reward (speed) without the sacrifice (pain).

This is not conscious cowardice.  It’s pure out-and-out rationalism.  At some point, the next threshold is the one that takes it too far, leaving us in an exercise-induced hallucination that lasts a few moments too long.  Our hearts bounce around our insides for one beat too many, and our lungs beg to explode for an unwanted extra second.  Every exhalation coincides with a constriction of vision, and the cold taste of copper.  

No sane human being would enjoy such a feeling.

Still, the glory beckons.  Surely, with enough training and the right supplements, there’s a way around the Hard Part.  Enough sleep and enough vitamin B will get you the sub-whatever time without the attendant pain.  There’s no need to redline your heart rate or pop capillaries.  No need to ache so badly at night that you can’t sleep.  Surely, there are ways around this.

Fortunately, the steroids are a no-go, and the exercises are done correctly or not at all.  The only way to legend is through ever-mounting piles of pain.  The meadow has to tilt at 45-degrees, and he rubdown at the Ranch must be done with Brillo Pads.  If you can talk, you’re not trying hard enough.  If your nerves aren’t frayed and ready to rebel, you’ll never get there.

Do yourself a favor, and realize that there’s no technique in the world that will save you.  There are no pills, no secrets, no passwords on the path to greatness.  You’ve got to embrace the pain, push the threshold, and feel the suck, and then you’ve got to muster the courage to go back six times a week.

After all, the world is a lot brighter when your pupils are the size of dimes, and massaging your sternum with your heart starts to feel good after a while.  The plasma finds its way out of your lungs, and eventually you’ll be able to drive. 

Sometimes, lying on the floor is its own reward.

Dave Castro takes his kettlebell for a walk.  Picture courtesy of CrossFit.com.

The upright squat—hips under the shoulders, back arched, weight on the heels—requires tremendous strength, stability, and motor control.  It’s less-than-upright cousin, the powerlifting squat, requires the same, although it puts the hips behind the shoulders and the torso at a forward angle.

There is no question that the powerlifting squat allows athletes to move greater loads.  Simple observation adequately proves this point.  The end goal of the powerlifter—to put up the biggest total possible—is borne out again and again using this method.

 
Nicole demonstrates a fully-transferrable air squat at CrossFit Boston.  Picture courtesy of the author.  For a tutorial on obtaining an upright squat and additional reasons for doing so, check out Fixing the Squat on our Mic’d Instructor page.

Dubbed “the toughest two minutes in sports” by ESPN, the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge is tailor-made for CrossFitters.

The participants, all active firefighters, scale a five-story tower with a 45-pound high-rise pack, pull a second pack up from the ground, rocket back down the tower, and hit every step en route.

 
Profession-specific equipment aside, the event is a generalist’s dream—carrying, pulling, striking, sprinting, and dragging, always under load, and always with the clock running.  The course practically screams for a name like “Eva” or “Annie”.

Paul’s first run of the day, the individual, was disappointing.  He finished a full ten seconds behind his personal record, coming out of the tower slowly and having a hell of a time with the dummy drag.   His experience wasn’t unique.  Most of the CrossFitting firefighters came out slow, turning in times that were short of the previous year’s bests.  

Inevitably, the disappointment set in, and the questions came with it.  Sitting on the D.C. Metro with Paul and his fellow competitor, Dave Bowman, I fielded the torrent.  Given the promise of CrossFit—elite level general physical preparedness—Paul and Dave wanted an explanation for their sub-par performances.

The answer extends beyond the Challenge, and is applicable to every sport in the world:  CrossFit does not replace sport-specific training.  

Although the Challenge clearly favors general physical preparedness, elements of the course are unique.  Climbing the tower demands leg strength, but it also demands proper placement of the hose pack, familiarity with the breathing apparatus, comfort with the rise and run of the tower, and a quick transition to the hoist pack.  Hitting the Kaiser requires tremendous hip flexion.  It also requires a proper hammer grip, staying in front of the slug, and accurate striking.  The list goes on.  Each portion of the course has obligatory skills above and beyond those provided by GPP.  

For the men in question, this was the first time they’d been on the official course since August 2007.  Although each had done his best to mimic the course in firehouses, garages, and parking lots, they lacked recent course experience.  While their general physical preparedness was undoubtedly at its peak, it couldn’t overcome the relative absence of skill-specific training.

Paul ran the tandem ninety minutes after his individual effort.  Running with a champion teammate and the fire of failure at his heels, he turned in a gold medal-winning personal record of 1:24.  His skills were back, and the results were astounding.

CrossFit fills holes.  Unparalleled at exposing and correcting for athletic weakness, it creates versatile monsters out of former non-performers.  Combined with adequate skill training, it will improve the performance of any athlete in a non-specialized sport.  The Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge certainly fits the bill.  

Don’t worry gentlemen—domination is coming.

Paul and Brandon await the start of the team relay on top of the tower.  Picture courtesy of the author.  Check out the D.C. stop in an Again Faster original video, "CrossFit and the Challenge". 

We’re bringing personal responsibility back.  You can’t do what we do while shirking your load, depending on other people, or otherwise passing the buck.  Your WOD time is yours and yours alone. You cannot turn in a fifty-minute “Fran” and then scold your classmates for the result.  Blame is not cast in the gym.

Conversely, I can’t count the number to times I’ve seen an athlete turn in an epic time and then thank everyone in the room for making it happen.  Adulation is shared.

I view the gym as a microcosm of the moral world, one in which control of success and failure ultimately lies with the individual.  There is no fatalism in the gym.  Your maximum pull-up number is not preordained by some higher power.  It is determined by speed, strength, coordination, accuracy, agility, and mental fortitude, all qualities that are within your domain and solely within your control.  Others can give to the effort through correction, encouragement, and support, but they cannot make your chin clear the bar.

For some reason, the extraordinarily clear relationship between effort and success, responsibility and result, fails to make it through the gym doors into the wider world.  Fingers are pointed freely, horizontally as well as vertically.  Misfortune becomes the byproduct of an unknowable cosmic soup.  Accidents are happenstance, determined by coincidence.  Crime is not a choice, but the unfortunate result of socio-economic divergence.  Individual awareness and control fall by the wayside in favor of widespread blame, the ridicule passed ever higher, until personal responsibility lies with no one.

Success is hoarded like so much gold, rarely shared outside of the occasional Academy Awards speech.  Encouragement, support, and contribution are forgotten in favor of glory, fame, and reputation, and suddenly the locus of control returns squarely to the individual.

Imagine the day when my substandard split jerk becomes your fault.  After missing out front, I get in your face, screaming about too much load, lack of support, and my astronomically bad childhood.  I start in with the if-onlys and why-God-whys, sure that if things had been different, I would have nailed the lockout.  Reduced to tears, I put an asterisk in my workout journal next to the repetition, noting that the miss was your fault.

In the gym, the irrationality of my actions would be obvious.  Why is it that a similar thought process, applied to my career, significant other, or a simple traffic jam becomes acceptable?  

It’s time to take the lessons of the gym outside.  Burdens, whether iron or pure metaphor, do not move themselves.  Successes are rarely the result of individual action.  Looking to the sky for help or harm is an exercise in futility.

Take stock in yourself, and those nearest you.  Accept responsibility, and share your triumphs.  Ours will become a much greater world.

The sun sets on Santa Cruz.  Picture courtesy of Patrick Cummings. 

My love for the medical establishment continues. I went to my annual physical last Wednesday, looking for a clean bill of health and a referral. Instead, I got orders to check my blood pressure five times a day and an uninformed dismissal of my referral request.

I have no doubt that my doctor is a well-intentioned man. He’d have to be, considering the way he dresses himself. Picture this: thirty-something, 5’11”, one hundred and fifty pounds, night-vision pale, dressed in a ratty blue oxford, a two-sizes-too-big checkered jacket, and olive slacks hemmed for an impending flood.

Clearly, this is a man more concerned with the practice of medicine than making the cover of GQ, a fact that I found reassuring—for approximately five minutes.

After the standard litany regarding smoking, safe sex, diet, and exercise, Doc strapped on the blood pressure cuff. 144/90. According to the device on my arm, I was a good four or five seconds from having a massive coronary, despite a resting heart rate of sixty beats per minute. This is an anomaly we revisit every time I throw down my $15 co-pay, and the standard prescription is to keep a log of blood pressure readings to inform future action.

Here’s the rub: I’m hypertensive by any medical standard. My blood pressure consistently tops 140/90, and the doctor’s playbook of pill popping will undoubtedly put me on some combination of ACE-inhibiting, beta-blocking, calcium-channel influencing diuretics that will kill me the next time I blast through a 21-round “Cindy”.

Granted, I can’t be sure Doc will put me on the ten-pill-a-day diet, but most of the other options are long gone. Changing my diet any further would have me killing squirrels in an attempt to get closer to my Paleolithic roots, more exercise would put me in the Guinness Book of World Records, and stress reduction would require me to take up chanting and yoga in my non-existent spare time.

Genetically, I’m a time bomb. My father’s heart explodes with a regularity that would make the tides jealous, and grandpa has had enough bypasses to receive an honorable mention in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Despite my lifestyle, I’m following in their tracks, one plodding step at a time.

Doc and I had covered this ground before without resolution, mostly due to his “medication first” style of healing. My blood pressure logs, transferred to his corpse-white hands, would invariably lead straight to the pharmacy. I only go to the pharmacy for toothpaste.

Fortunately, I had another solution. Here in Boston, we are blessed with an Active Release Techniques (ART) practitioner who also happens to be an M.D. That two-letter appellation means that my health insurance would pay for her stress- and blood pressure-reducing services, if only I could provide a referral from my physician.

I told Doc I’d like a referral, and quite reasonably, he asked me to explain ART.

“It’s a specialized massage technique used to correct soft tissue damage. Adhesions, pulls, tears, things like that. It restores muscle balance and range of motion through manipulation. My body takes a constant pounding in the gym, and this would help tremendously.”

I might as well have said I wanted to use heroin to treat my insomnia. His eyes narrowed, and he asked for the M.D.’s name and practice. He got it, but it was obvious I wasn’t getting my referral.

“You want physical therapy?” he asked. Shaking my head, I explained the idea one more time, getting into the details of fascia and trigger points. Asked if I had a particular pain, I unthinkingly slammed the door on my referral.

“I get tightness in my rotator cuffs, IT bands, TFL, and lower back.”

I hadn’t named a single disease, complained of pervasive pain, or given Doc a problem that fit anywhere within his neatly defined world. I hadn’t asked for pills, an MRI, or surgery. Stumped, he told me he’d need more information.

Ironically, he was exacerbating my hypertension.

My problem with the medical establishment is the same problem I have with nearly every entrenched authority—the marked inability to consider alternatives to conventional wisdom. Time after time, we find doctors with an unnatural affinity for the Physician’s Desk Reference and surgeons who believe every problem can be solved with a scalpel. The manual never mentions naturopathic remedies and soft tissue manipulation, so our doctors are left with a toolbox that’s missing a few screwdrivers. Even worse, the idea that there might be another screwdriver out there is met with more skepticism than the front page of the National Enquirer.

Next year, I’ll forgo the fifteen-dollar tour of the old guard, and make our friendly ART practitioner my primary care physician. When my blood pressure readings come in high, perhaps soft tissue work will be the first solution instead of the last.

Maybe then I’ll calm down.

Picture courtesy of admin.state.nh.us.

I have never run a 10k.  The idea of six miles of pounding pavement appeals to me about as much as a waist-down hot waxing. 

Until October, it was easy enough to avoid.  No one asked me to run 10ks, and I never volunteered.  Then something changed.  In small Lucida Grande type, set above a picture of Annie Sakamoto, CrossFit was telling me to crank out a middle-distance run.  Engaged in a heated battle for a dress-less Toronto Certification Seminar, I bristled at the thought.   A 5k earlier in the month had left me with enough lateral knee pain to cripple a horse, and I had no desire to repeat the experience.

Even more, everything I knew about physiological effects of distance running pointed to a scratch.  Habitual runners, reflected in my mind by the recreational marathoner, suffer from a general lack strength and power that runs contrary to every athletic goal I have.  The mental image of emaciated limbs slogging through 8-minute miles put me smack in the middle of the training floor, barbells set for a go at "Linda".

In November, the seeds of change were sowed.  I received an invitation to attend the CrossFit Running and Endurance Certification, taught by Brian MacKenzie and Mike Collins in Newport Beach, California.  A chance to learn the POSE Method of running overcame my longstanding distain for endurance sports of all kinds, and I booked a flight.

Brian stood in front of the room, half-full of CrossFit Affiliates and fire breathers, looking decidedly punk rock.  Tattoos, punctuated by skulls and fire, decorated the length of his arms, their menacing appearance offset by an easy smile.  He asked us to explain ourselves.

We each stood in turn, describing variations on a theme of dislike, pain, and injury.  In a room of otherwise competent athletes, we admitted our inability to execute the most basic of functional movements--locomotion. Brian picked up the common thread and hammered home the point of the Certification.
 
"There's a reason you don't like running," he said, "You suck at it."

Unlike the rest of our movement catalog, we were approaching running as a skill-less activity.  Our clients were sent to the road without instruction.  Inevitably, our undirected charges embraced ideas like increased stride length and power to the ground, letting intuition lead to injury.  Instead of working with the forces of nature--gravity, momentum, and elasticity--they fought them, pushing against the road and braking with the heel during every stride.

Brian, a veteran of Ironman Canada and the Western States 100, pointed to his shoes, displaying a pair of flat-soled Adidas, and then to ours, highly cushioned and reinforced with energy-absorbing technology.  "Running shoes are airbags to save you from your shitty form," he said, eliciting a laugh from the soon-to-be reformed crowd.

Michael Collins, a small guy with the focus of a sharpshooter and the owner of Multisports Orange County, took the lead.  According to Mike, POSE running is based on a very simple set of ideas.  Rather than fight gravity, we work with it, striving to use our falling bodyweight to create forward motion.  Rather than push our feet into the ground, we pull them off it, changing our support leg at a cadence that allows maximum efficiency.  Employing gravity, ground reaction, and the natural elastic tendencies of our muscles, as well as good posture, we run farther and faster with less fatigue.

Employing these ideas requires training, but we weren't going to get it quite yet.  

Mike and Brian herded us out into the street for a series of six 400-meter sprints, setting up video equipment to capture footage for a post-lunch analysis session.  We lined up in two groups, taking off at five-second intervals with the directive to maintain our pace across every sprint.

Hardly.  By the fifth iteration, my legs were on fire, every step jolting my winter-built body and screaming for me to quit.  I was running the only way I knew how, driving my feet into the ground and cycling my arms at breakneck speed, employing the teachings of USA Track and Field in pursuit of good splits.  With a best-to-worst disparity approaching twenty seconds, it was obvious that my technique was lacking and my ability to pace was raw and poorly honed.

Back in our seats after a trip to Trader Joe's, Brian proceeded to pick our performances apart, looking for the hallmarks of the POSE method:  the telltale figure-four, forward lean, and proper landing that indicate good technique.  Most of us did not pass muster.  Feet were landing out front, reaching for ground contact and disrupting forward momentum.  Trailing legs were fully extended, betraying a push method of generating movement and inviting injury.  Tension was omnipresent, embodied by fully dorsiflexed feet, hunched shoulders, and excessive torso rotation.  

We took turns laughing at each other's ineptitude, marveling at our struggle with an activity that we'd taken for granted.  It became clear that Brian was offering us a path to improved performance without the drawbacks of long mileage and strength loss, and we began to understand the tremendous gift we'd been given.

Reunited with Mike's group of newly minted runners, we launched into a discussion of injury.  According to Mike, injuries are caused by biomechanical breakdowns rather than environmental factors.  Braking with the heel leads to a multitude of syndromes, including plantar facitis, sore calves, shin splints, and IT band tightness, while driving into the ground elicits blown hamstrings.  In each case, the athlete is fighting gravity and creating unnecessary leverage, contradicting the low-energy, high skill tenets of the POSE Method.

Mike explained that our view of elite runners, feet out front and flying far behind, was largely an optical illusion, created by speed rather than poor technique.  Popular media publishes still after still of runners in this position, thereby creating the reach-and-extend method of running practiced by the general populace.  In fact, this splayed position is a mid-air shot.  The well-balanced, bent-kneed landing is never shown, and the casual observer assumes that pushing is the name of the game.

Left with a beautiful quote--"Pain is the penalty for violating the rules of nature"--we headed outside for a day-ending tangle with "Helen".  Waves of CrossFitters tore through the workout, attempting to reconcile the POSE Method with all-out intensity.  Jeremy Thiel of CrossFit Central provided the highlight, turning in a 7:30 effort with near-perfect form on every repetition.  My own effort was modest yet satisfying, as I experienced the efficiency of using POSE mid-WOD for the first time.  The draining effect of Helen's 400-meter sprint was gone, leaving ample energy for the ensuing swings and pull-ups.  The record-destroying benefit of conservation without speed loss became clear, and the value of the Certification tripled in my mind.

The following morning, greeted by a gray sky and the threat of rain, we gathered to continue our education.  We were reintroduced to the idea of cadence, the rate at which the support leg is pulled from the ground.  In order to execute the POSE Method, the minimum acceptable cadence is 90, indicating a stride frequency of 180 steps per minute.  This frequency allows us to employ muscle elasticity and ground reaction, using the natural stretch-shortening cycle of our leg muscles to create motion.  At slower cadences, the shock of impact overpowers this internal engine, reducing running efficiency and requiring increased energy expenditure.

Following our discussion of cadence, Brian reminded us of the effects of pure aerobic work--increased cardiovascular function and fat utilization at the expense of speed, strength, power, and overall athletic ability--and told us his own experience with the anaerobic blast of CrossFit.

With virtually no reduction in long-distance stamina, Brian had replaced the majority of his roadwork with the Workout of the Day.  Inevitably, his output increased substantially in ultra distance events, newfound power and strength allowing him drop his pace by over two minutes per mile.  Even more, he found he was able to maintain pace throughout the events, no small feat during greater-than-marathon efforts.

This result flies in the face of traditional endurance training, which relies on a dogma of volume:  more output requires more distance. Solidifying his case for CrossFit, Brian told the story of one of his athletes, a young Amish-looking guy going by the moniker of "Rookie".

Rookie cranked through the WOD for six months before deciding to try his hand at distance running.  After a mere six weeks of POSE training, carefully controlled and monitored by Brian, Rookie completed a 50k race.  Prior to the event, he'd never run more than thirteen miles, and the vast majority or his training was anaerobic.

Inspired by Rookie's story, we headed out to the road, this time with a basic understanding of the POSE Method and enough drilling to get the basic motor patterns down.  Once again, Brian and Mike set up the video camera, accompanied by the CrossFit Media Crew and the ever-present Tony Budding.  Mike had given each of us a small tempo timer; a beeping device intended to keep us on cadence.  Twenty-plus athletes, each bleating like a time bomb, lined up for a second go at 400-hundred meter repeats.  

Concentrating on maintaining my cadence, leaning forward, and pulling my feet from the ground, I took off in my designated time slot.  With very little effort, I turned in a 1:11 time on the short course.  Over the next five intervals, my time increased a paltry four seconds, and the previous day's feeling of sluggishness and tension was gone.  Crossing the finish line on the last 400, I felt as if I could have run a dozen more.

My experience was not unique.  Gathered for the video analysis, we each described a similar feeling of reduced effort and pain, as well as increased stamina.  In forty-eight hours, we'd gone from hating running to wanting out of our chairs so we could do it again.  The video session showed marked improvements across the board, and the excitement in the room was palpable.

After going over several training templates for endurance athletes, we hit the treadmills for some technique work, ending the Certification with another chance to benefit from Brian and Mike's expertise.  Standing behind me and slapping my heel as I extended out the back, Brian gave me one last reminder of the need to pull off the ground quickly.

Sam and I said our goodbyes after a long post-Certification session of gymnastics with the Media Crew, heading to the airport to find Eva T., a cancelled flight, and an extra night of California vacation waiting for us.  My initial skepticism was gone, replaced by thoughts of powerful athletes cruising through WOD sprints with more speed and less effort, eschewing the negative effects of excessive roadwork for the benefits of high intensity training.

By combining technique with the anaerobic work of CrossFit, Brian and Mike promise to revolutionize the way endurance athletes train, opening the doors for an entirely new population to find CrossFit.  Given my experience in Newport Beach, they're my favorite new members of the CrossFit Community.

Gone is the fear of the 10k.  Next time it comes up on the Board, I'm going to do it, and I'm going to like it, utilizing the POSE Method to get through the previously misunderstood distance.  I might even get that hot waxing, provided it makes me faster.

Brian MacKenzie talks POSE.  For more information on the POSE Method, visit POSEtech.com or contact Brian and Michael at CrossFit Newport Beach and Multisports Orange County.

The relationship between rep scheme, load, and the resulting physical adaptation is well documented.  At one end of the continuum, we find high repetitions performed with low to moderate loads.  This training style produces increased muscle cross-section (hypertrophy) with little concurrent increase in strength.  At the opposite end, we find very low repetitions performed with maximal loads, producing little change in muscle cross-section with tremendous concurrent gains in motor recruitment (innervation).  Between these two extremes, we find combinations of volume and load that produce a blending of our two desired attributes, hypertrophy and innervation.  

When we consider athletic performance independent of bodyweight, it becomes obvious that both attributes should be developed.  Muscle cross-section and motor recruitment both play a role in making us stronger, faster, and more powerful.  Spurring hypertrophy gives the athlete more muscle mass to recruit, while subsequent innervation makes optimal use of the newly available muscle tissue, thereby increasing contractile potential.

Striking a balance between the two becomes necessary when bodyweight enters the picture.  Maintaining a large physique requires caloric intake well beyond the natural eating patterns of most athletes, and mass can become a burden for bodyweight-dependent activities such as gymnastics and sprinting.  For the smaller athlete, reduced mass produces a collision-time disadvantage during contact sports and makes it difficult to lift large loads during training.

CrossFit takes these disparities into consideration, employing workouts that do not favor either type of athlete, typically combining gymnastic and sprint-based activities with weightlifting.  This ensures that the balanced athlete—one possessing a high strength-to-bodyweight ratio—meets with the most success during non-lifting-specific WODs.

Because of the emphasis on high strength-to-bodyweight ratio, CrossFit athletes tend to lift toward the low repetition/maximal load end of the continuum, developing strength without a subsequent increase in mass.  This is embodied in the rep schemes of the 10x1, the 3x3, and the CrossFit Total, where total working volume rarely (if ever) exceeds ten repetitions.

While training in this manner clearly benefits the CrossFitter, it produces a glaring deficit in certain lifting situations, specifically the ability to move sub-maximal but substantial loads for moderate volume.  This area lies just short of our maximal load, low volume sweet spot, and is particularly troublesome for male athletes.

The oft-cited predicted load within this area, represented using five sets of five repetitions, is 80-85% of one-rep max.  Nonetheless, our male athletes, trained to lift high loads at low volume, consistently fall short of this mark.  Without intervention, their maximum working load during the 5x5 trends below 80%.

The remedy is as simple as the problem:  to develop the moderate load, moderate volume strength, we have to lift in this part of the continuum.  This idea is by no means novel—CrossFit has touted the benefits of Mark Rippetoe’s “Starting Strength” program, a five-by-five masterwork, for over a year.  Unfortunately, this came long after many individuals were well into their CrossFit development, leading them to believe that they had advanced beyond the simple linear programming Rippetoe describes.

Per my observations, this is not the case.  When the middle of our load/volume continuum is not visited, we find otherwise well innervated athletes who are hampered by their lack of muscle mass.  While these athletes possess wonderful strength-to-weight ratios, their lack of hypertrophy limits their real-world ability to move sub-maximal loads in line with those predicted by their one-rep max.  Embracing the five-by-five, and working toward 80-85% for all 25 repetitions erases this deficit in the otherwise advanced CrossFitter.

The net effect of this change is a more complete athlete, confident and capable throughout the entire load/volume continuum.  Given CrossFit’s stated goal of increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains, neglecting the substantial gray area between hypertrophy and innervation makes little sense.  Working the five-by-five produces a modicum of each without sacrificing the benefits of a high strength-to-bodyweight ratio, warranting its inclusion in a balanced strength and conditioning program.

Interestingly, the disparity described in this article is much less pronounced in female athletes, perhaps due to gender differences in muscle fiber type composition.  Photo courtesy of the author.

 
CrossFit is the pursuit of athletic perfection—performing difficult workouts with technical mastery under conditions of duress.  We’re looking for flawless form with a jackhammering heart, bursting lungs, and battery acid-filled veins.

When this is accomplished with unyielding intensity, the result is nothing short of beautiful.  When we fall short of the mark, the result is horrifying at best.

Athletes often set up a false dichotomy between perfect form and intensity, assuming that as one increases the other must necessarily fall.  This idea is a thinly disguised excuse for athletic complacency.  Rather than revisit proper technique through low-intensity, low-excitement skill work, the athlete chooses to pursue personal records with diminished form.  The unstated reason for this choice: it’s easy on the ego to put up “good” WOD times. Taking a hit to your “Fran” time in order to perform perfect thrusters is not going to move you up the records board—at least not right away—and the blow to the ego is too much to bear.

In reality, form and intensity are not mutually exclusive, but the non-linearity of their relationship leads novice athletes to the wrong conclusion.  For the novice, maintaining form becomes a cruel joke as intensity increases, leading to the erroneous conclusion that the two cannot coexist.   Advanced athletes believe the opposite.  These athletes recognize that continuous high-intensity work is nearly impossible without strict attention to form.  The advanced athlete knows that perfect form is perfect for a reason:  it imparts structural advantages that poor form does not.

Take the thruster as an example.  Performed poorly, the movement relies on the small muscles of the anterior shoulder to support the weight at lockout.  These muscles fatigue extremely quickly, leaving the athlete with reduced capacity in short order.  When the thruster is performed well, the weight is supported by the large, hard-to-fatigue muscles of the posterior chain, allowing the form-conscious athlete to continue at peak power long after his sloppy brethren have stopped to rest.

The advantages of good form are not isolated to the thruster.  Clear structural advantages can be had in the majority of our movements if one chooses to pursue perfect form.  Most of these advantages are based on the physics of power transmission, specifically the fact that it is easier to send power through a rigid structure than through a limp one.  

Squatting provides a wonderful illustration. The squat utilizes power from the hip to propel the torso through a complete range of motion.  If the spine is rounded and the torso is loose, power is lost and the torso becomes difficult to move.  If the spine is kept in a neutral or arched alignment and the torso is rigid, as proper form dictates, power flows freely and the load is easy to move.  Nonetheless, we’ll often see novices blasting through flaccid, rounded-back squats, heedless of the power-draining effect of their substandard form.

Condoning bad form for the resulting intensity ignores the big picture.  In doing so, we rob our athletes of their long-term potential, artificially capping their progress in the name of immediate gratification.  An athlete with poor form and an ugly three-minute “Fran” will always have an ugly three-minute “Fran”, while a similar athlete with good form will soon find himself pushing the limits of possibility, utilizing the structural advantages of the perfect thruster to close in on two minutes.

For the CrossFitter, perfection should be non-negotiable, regardless of the near-term outcome.  Progressing to the elite level—heart jackhammering, lungs bursting, and records falling—depends on it.

The difference between a structurally solid lockout and its weak cousin is obvious.  Photos courtesy of the author.