You could struggle like a rocket trying to take off on regular unleaded, or you could actually get stronger.

You’re the kid who saw one phenom go from high school straight to the Major Leagues, and figured “What the hell?  If that skinny punk can do it, so can I.”  Attention, achievement, some sliver of recognition, nothing less will do.

You’re Rx’d.  You made the Major League jump. Except, you really, really shouldn’t have, and now you’re striking out.  Slow your roll, tee ball slugger.

It’s okay.  I did the same thing, and if I don’t admit it, the pot would definitely be calling the kettle another piece of kitchen equipment.  Learn from my stupidity.

The whole point of our sport is power output: do more work faster.  Intrinsic in this little missive is “faster”, but every guy secretly wants to be bigger and stronger, and figures that what we actually meant was “heavier”.

This is not what we meant.

It comes down to simple physics: power is the product of speed and strength.  Too much of either (without the other) will result in extremely blunted power.

Imagine speed and strength on the see-saw together, and strength is the fat kid.  The really fat kid.  In fact, he outweighs speed by a factor of ten.  The see-saw stays stuck, and no one has fun at recess.  Escaping my metaphor, if the load is too large and speed is too small, power is zip, much like multiplying by zero always gets you zero.

Now, imagine speed and strength are balanced, each kid weighing about the same.  This parity allows them to act in concert with each other, and the see-saw really flies.  We get power.

“Heavier” isn’t the answer.  Balance is the answer.

On page six in The Science and Practice of Strength Training, author Vladimir Zatsiorsky posits that maximal power output occurs at approximately 30% of maximal velocity and 50% of maximal load.  I’m in love with page six, and simultaneously dumbfounded by its mathematical exactitude.

Applied to CrossFit and our never ending pursuit of power, this unforgettable page states that we’re looking for a load that you can move with 30% speed, one that tends to occur somewhere around your 50% of one-rep maximum. 

Of course, CrossFit won’t ask you to move the bar once, but perhaps ten or twenty or fifty times.  To maximize your power across this broad spectrum of work, you’ll want to load to less than 50% 1RM, and continue to try to move the hell out of the bar.

Holy shit.  A formula for scaling.

For too long, we’ve focused on strength bias this and power animal super athlete that, when this entire program is predicated on power. Stop thinking of scaling as something to keep Grandma in the game.  We scale to the physical and psychological tolerance of the athlete for one reason: it enables the individual to produce as much power as possible.

Following Zatsiorsky’s formula, if you can’t thruster at least 190 pounds, you shouldn’t be doing “Fran” with 95.  If you can’t clean and jerk 270, don’t do “Grace” with 135. You’re blunting your power output.  Scale that weight down; it will make you more powerful.

I did not just tell you to abandon heavy weights. In fact, I want you to lift heavy.  A lot.  Just not in the middle of your WOD. 

If you increase your 1RM, through any number of methods, your 50% 1RM will go up as well, and you’ll climb into the Rx’d echelon via this prescription.  You thruster 150, you do “Fran” at 75 pounds or less.  You thruster 200, welcome to the Big Leagues.  

In other words, don’t strength bias your WODs—strength bias your strength, and scale your WODs to your current strength level.

Proof? Take a look at the strongest men in the world, not by fiat, but by actual numbers lifted, the gargantuan boys of Westside Barbell.  Their program regularly calls for moving 50% 1RM as fast as possible.  In fact, it was a conversation with Louie Simmons, the founder of the Westside Method and its Dynamic Effort Days, that persuaded me to pick up a copy of The Science and Practice of Strength Training in the first place.

I’m sure he’d be disappointed I never made it past page six, but I bet he’d love it if you stopped trying to do Fran with 65% of your 1RM.

The successful implementation of scaling demands a simple recognition: there are an infinite number of weights that can be loaded on a barbell, and every one must be removed from ego and firmly affixed to power.  When this mental shift occurs, we’ll get more powerful athletes, guaranteed.

Stacey attacks the box jump at CrossFit Fenway.  Picture courtesy of Ethan Bickford.

9 p.m. in Iceland looks like 6 p.m. everywhere else.  The shadows get long, and the air starts to cool, but the sun doesn’t go down.  In fact, it never goes down; it just dips, tracing arcs in the ever-lit sky.

After three days in-Country, this lent a hallucinogenic quality to everything, an odd haze from two nights of quasi-sleeping.  Compounding the effect, I was standing at the base of a mountain with four CrossFitters, watching Annie Thorisdottir stretch her quads, clad head-to-toe in compression gear.

I wore cotton and sweatpants, appropriate clothing for the task I thought we were pursuing: an 800m run.  Turns out, the 800 meters we’d latched onto were vertical rather than horizontal, the rise over a 3500-meter trail.

The parking lot being a poor time to back out of a misunderstanding, I gave my legs a token shake and handed my windbreaker to Joe, confident I’d be creating plenty of heat without it.  Stupid, in retrospect.

Blair Morrison fell in beside Annie, and I heard the last words I’d hear for forty-eight minutes and seven seconds: “Take the right up, and the left down.”

They took off, and Karianne, Joe, and I started up behind them.  A few steps in, it was evident we were outclassed, the European Champions consuming elevation at twice our rate. 

I watched their backs get smaller as we passed through alpine forest and meadow, the well-groomed trail belying the exposed climb above.  The mountain streams ran hard in the cuts around me, their speed an unheeded sign of the grade we were headed toward.  Pavement turned into gravel turned into dirt turned into stone.  Twenty minutes in, I was sure it was nearly over.  I was wrong.

I don’t remember exactly when it got hard.  My pace broke: walk, jog, walk, run, stop.  I resorted to picking landmarks, running when the mountain would allow, walking when it wouldn’t.  The physical task became mental, quitting prevented only by my slim lead on Joe and Karianne and the knowledge that third place would have to do.

My hands on my knees, I’d spot an arbitrary rock in the distance, and resolve not to stop until I’d reached it.  Early success and short distances emboldened me, and I started picking objects further and further in the distance. 

Then, I went too far. 

I picked a rock at the top of a steep rise, nothing special about it other than I’d made it special, its power contained in the distance between where I started and where I would end.   

I started running toward it, quickly clear that I’d underestimated the distance and the rise, and my legs begged to stop.  I didn’t.  I’d committed, I’d called out that rock, and goddamn it, I wasn’t stopping until I got there.  I pumped my legs and then my brain: one more step, one more plod, don’t give in you worthless bastard, don’t you dare stop.  The pain was indescribable, dream-like, a hallucination on top of a hallucination, running up a mountain in the middle of the night in broad daylight with your own voice pulsing in your skull.

The mountain was a treadmill, that rock closer then farther away, in my grasp and then out, steps bringing me closer, steps bringing me nowhere.  I reached it with my body and my mind simultaneously, cresting the rise, and victory was total.  I’d won, but there was more to do.

The path became steeper as it cut the side of a near vertical bluff, and running was no longer an option.  My hands drove my knees down and my chest upright, and the Arctic headwind blew straight through my soaked t-shirt.  Pain became needling discomfort, and I put my palms over my ears to keep them warm, trudging upward toward the unseen summit, one foot in front of the other.

I saw Blair first, his fist in the air as I came around the corner, standing and hollering, and then the top of Annie’s head, huddled behind the large boulder that marked the apex.  They smiled through tears, crying silently from the biting wind and surprising cold, and we hunkered down to wait for Joe and Karianne, comparing times.

It was miserable up there, but I didn’t feel a thing, the cold an inadequate match for the suffering I’d felt running toward that rock, my body high and hot from the internal struggle my mind had won, dragging my legs with it.

Now, I see that rock every time something hurts too much, every time I want to quit.  It is an ordinary object become talisman.  Nothing I do in the gym hurts like that rock.  Nothing replicates crushing gravity like that rock, nothing has the power to stop me like that rock, and now, nothing will.

A few minutes later, Joe and Karianne reached the top, and we all walked down together, the sun still lighting the way, tracing arcs in the Iceland sky.  My legs hurt, but not as badly as they had.

From the summit Esja, Iceland, picture courtesy of Joe Alexander.

When I signed up, I was using the word “competing” loosely.  Yeah, I was going to show up, and I was going to go through the motions, but winning wasn’t on my mind.  Just making a good show would do.  Just participating would make me happy.

Except, it didn’t.  After the first WOD, I was in sixty-something place and pissed.  Pissed I’d let myself go, pissed I’d let myself down, pissed that 115 pounds felt like it weighted 15,000, pissed that six months of not running made it particularly hard to run.

I’d spent the morning laughing and joking, watching waves of CrossFitters go though the first workout of the New England Sectional, a deceptive gauntlet of running and snatching: 800, 30 snatches, 800.  My hoodie up and earphones in, I stretched lightly, waiting for the call, one of the last to go.

Instantly fucked.  I was last in from the first run, trudging behind a guy who looked like he’d lose a footrace to a three-legged dog.  I picked up my barbell, snatches came three at a time instead of ten, and I finished the last eight hundred to the sound of one plaintive spectator, “Com’on Jon, run!”  Saddest sound I ever heard.

Then I got smart, I thought.  I had a lot of time to watch the second WOD, the boys burning in hard doing a three-round smoker of box jumps, chest-to-bar pullups, and wall ball shots.  Some were pulling to their belly buttons, seemingly trying to touch pelvis to pullup bar, and dozens were exceeding the drop-dead 15-minute cap.  Easy win.

I drew a chalk line on my shirt, and confirmed with my judge that the mark was accurate; if he saw chalk, my pulls were good to go.  I limped methodically through all three rounds, five reps at a time, avoiding any sort of metabolic stress, convinced that just good enough would be just good enough.  Except, it never is.

My thirty-second place finish pulled me into 53^th on the day, three places outside of the magical top fifty, three places from a spot in Day Two’s second WOD, the one that really counted.

Goddamn it, I’d come for fun, and now I was all wound up.  Inadequate, and all wound up.  The next morning demanded a seven rep-max squat clean with a 40-second time limit, the make-or-break weight hovering around 185.  I figured I’d either make 185 or go home.

Amped on iPod crack, chalked up, shoes on, I loaded 185 on the bar.  I knew it was too heavy the second I pulled under the first rep.  Bravado overcame sense, and I stood it up three more times before my legs gave out, trashed from the previous day. The consolation weight, 165, went up easy enough, but it was over. I deflated.

Ended in 57^th, with no shot at the last WOD.

Everyone I’d come with suited up for one more push, a nasty combination of running, stone lifting, deadlifting, overhead squatting, and burpees, and I watched, sucking on a beer I’d acquired in the parking lot, the sole failure in my squad of CrossFitters.

They were suffering, and I was watching, an athlete no longer.  All my surfer dude bluster was straight gone, the “just for fun” commentary proving the shield of a man who didn’t want to face the prospect of caring and losing, of making this a matter of personal identity and then being shattered.

I smiled anyway, and cheered and coached, the number 502 printed on my arm in thick block letters, permanent marker smudged by sweat and cloth. 

For whatever reason, this is what I remember, that 502, the only tangible reminder that I’d stepped into the Arena. 

Monday, my training changed.  No longer twice a week, wedged half-heartedly between lectures and demos and meetings and emails, I attacked.  Every WOD was that last squat clean, every effort a desire to never repeat that failure. 

Now, a month later, I’m thankful for that failure, one that no one but me remembers anymore.  I’d stepped into a world with nowhere to hide, and the world had handed me my ass, and now I know.

It’s not enough to be a coach, a writer, a lecturer, a business owner.  It’s not enough, because the rubber doesn’t meet the road in theory, in the margins of training textbooks and accounting spreadsheets.  It meets the road in the Arena, where your theories are only as good as their output, where your motivation meets the hard test of athletic endeavor.   

I won’t be the weak one.  I will not be just good enough.  I will live at the limits of my capacity, because living anywhere else is a lie.   I don’t have the time, I don’t have the will, I don’t have the whatever: all lies, because the scoreboard respects only effort, only the will to win.

Now, there is a mission.

Harry Palley of CrossFit New England, 17th place finisher at the New England Sectionals, front squats at CrossFit Fenway.  Picture by Ethan Bickford.

There’s always something.

The bright lights.  The Top 20 pop.  Someone wanting to talk to you about the something about the time you did the thing.

Ignore them.  Not nasty.  Not with distain.  Because now is the time, the moment when you concentrate on the task ahead, on the never-ending belief that what’s about to go down will go down, that you can’t be beaten.

Every ounce of psychic energy you’re about to bring to bear; it’s easy to disrupt, easy to kill.  You have to protect it, feet on the ground, head down, focusing on the simple mental images of success.

There is great power in the singular sight, the sole goal, the only reason you came here.  Your next personal record, better than last time, better than ever, it’s right here in front of you, ready for the taking. 

And now, you have to take it.  Two words, three words run through your head, a tight, concise, pithy description of the end state, the moment right before the chest bumps and high fives and screams like a fifteen-year-old’s cracking voice.

When they try to distract you, jump in on your bar, talk about the suck, borrow your 5s, cure your stress, just stop.  Look up, make eye contact, not angry but ready, and look back down.  This isn’t about Community.  Not now.  This is about winning, succeeding, making yourself believe that what’s about to happen will happen, must happen, that nothing else can happen, the intellectual certitude followed by physical reality.

And then, get ready to go.  Grip the bar.  Chalk up, and remember that your momentary lapse in social nicety will be rewarded with what you wanted, the moment of apex.  Your short, pithy phrase repeats until there is nothing else, no sound, no Top 20, no mats, no platforms, no nothing except a bar and a goal, the universe bent around you in a cocoon of now.

Don’t think heels down, chest up.  Don’t think at all, because you don’t need to.  You already did it, and miracle of miracles, what was supposed to happen happened.  It’s over your head.  It’s locked out.

And now, they fade back in.  The sound of volume slow marching to full blast, clapping, screaming, backslapping rah. 

You can give in, or you can go back.  Sit down, shut your eyes, and bring pithy back.  Because it’s not over, and you can shut it out again.  Accept that this is just a step and not the end, and it will happen all over again.  Another record, not a defining moment, but an ephemeral glimpse at where you were, the shallow footprint of an athlete who’s moving forward faster.

Ignore them, and bring it.  Because there’s always something more.

Neal cleans at CrossFit Boston.  Picture courtesy of CrossFit Boston.

“You know, your grandmother’s been doing CrossFit in her basement.” 

Maybe it’s only a rumor, an exaggeration at best.  But as the potatoes are getting mashed and the pumpkin pies are batting their eyelashes at me from the countertop, as my family mills about the kitchen waiting for the official start of our Thanksgiving festivities, my mother whispers to me and I can’t help but believe it. 

“She’s not telling anybody, but she’s doing it.”

My grandmother is almost eighty years old, but don’t tell her that.  She’s a former nurse, mother to nine children, and wife to one stubborn and amazing old man.  Together, they are the picture of what retirement should be—travel, family, continued intellectual curiosity and the occasional glass of good scotch.  They are the reason I’m not scared of getting older.

So when my mother tells me that my grandmother is doing CrossFit in the basement, she unwittingly jars me from my newfound CrossFit malaise. 

It’s been a week of reading blog posts and endless pages of repetitive comments.  Days of conversations with no real conclusions.  Hours spent trying to determine how I felt about the whole mess, with no result other than disappointment pointed in no general direction. 

But now it’s as if my mother’s taken me by the shoulders and shaken me back to reality. 

I think about my aunt in Virginia emailing me a few days earlier to tell me her “Fran” time.  I think about doing “Daniel” at CrossFit Cape Cod alongside two aunts and a cousin, my uncle across the gym on the C2, pulling himself toward a new 2K PR.  I think about teaching my twenty-nine year old sister how to do pullups with a band and my four year-old cousin showing me what a burpee was. 

Later, after the turkey has been cleared from the table and I’ve finally given in to the pumpkin pie, I sit across from my grandfather.  We’re talking about why the world seems so imperfect these days and I ask him a simple question.  I ask, “If someone comes to you tomorrow and says, ‘Give us the one thing we can do to turn this all around.  One thing, and we’ll all do it and it’ll set us heading back in the right direction.’  What’s that one thing?”

He thinks about it for a few seconds, leans back and smiles.  He says he has no idea, which, if you know my Grandfather, is a rare occurrence.

He says change isn’t so simple, that it doesn’t work like that.  He says the best we can hope for is to positively affect those people within our own circle of influence.  Do right by the people closest to you, and they will do right by those closest to them. 

I make a quick mental list: one grandmother, one mother, two sisters, three aunts, one uncle, three cousins and three college friends.  I claim no credit but being lucky enough to have been introduced to CrossFit two years ago by a good friend.  I was within his circle of influence and they are within mine.  The two women my aunt has recruited to workout with her in the basement are within hers. 

They don’t care about the drama.  They don’t care about the ramifications or the politics.  They care only about feeling better and living fuller lives.

And that’s what I’m back to thinking about now.  Because my grandmother might be CrossFitting in her basement.

The contention, like most that endure, made perfect sense.   Get too strong, and your endurance will suffer.  Too much endurance, and your strength will drop.  You can’t have everything.

Fortunately, perfect sense and reality do not always occupy the same space, their neat relationship thrown askew by the inexorable march of athletic evolution.

The fact that we missed:  previous feats of athleticism will always be surpassed.  Sprinters will sprint faster, lifters will lift more.  Quarterbacks will throw more accurately, batters will hit more home runs.  CrossFitters will get stronger and faster. 

Once, we said that developing the capacity of a novice across a variety of physical disciplines would create the fittest men and women on the planet.  Unavoidably, we’re being forced to remove the word “novice” from this definition; it no longer applies.  Our fittest are not novices, but legitimate contenders in nearly every arena.

For the first time, we’re seeing the strong, the fast, the enduring, occupying the same space.  The guy with the 5-minute mile is deadlifting 500 pounds.  He’s putting out half a horsepower for ten straight minutes.  He’s jumping four feet in the air.  He’s running eighty miles.  He is world class; his accomplishments are not a compromise.

Simultaneously, we are seeing adaption to imposed demand that does not follow traditional pathways.  Now, the strongest are not the largest, the fastest not the most waiflike.  Strength is achieved through increased neurological efficiency rather than mass.    Speed is achieved by getting stronger, not running more.  Athletes are borne from variety rather than specificity, exhibiting unheard of strength-to-bodyweight ratios.

We are throwing training on its ear, and this is just the beginning.  This discipline is in its infancy, still far from widespread, still the province of few.   There may come a day when our definition of fitness is not a compromise, when we no longer sacrifice mastery in one domain for competency in many, instead choosing mastery in all.

That day has started to dawn.

Josh Wagner fights 485 in Aromas.  Picture courtesy of CrossFit.com.

Boston’s Back Bay is surprisingly stable.  Row after row of brick homes, built on top of a dirt-filled marsh, every flagstone basement below sea level.  Logic would dictate that this early nineteenth-century engineering should have calved into the Atlantic years ago, yet it stands to this day, a testament to the audacity of those who built it. 

John and I were driving down Beacon Street, the Back Bay’s main artery and canyon of Victorian-era architecture, when he handed me a manila envelope.

“This is my knee.”

Today marked the first time I’d seen John outside of the walls of CrossFit Boston, where he’d been training for six months.  Headed to a Celtics game at the Fleet Center, we were trading the platform for the parquet.

The son of a world-class powerlifter, John looks anything but.  Six foot five with limbs to match, he wasn’t built to move weight, yet a childhood of ignoring anthropometry had left him crazy strong.  Years without coaching had simultaneously eroded his technique, and we spent months bringing him back to the realm of acceptability.

John’s squat stance was too wide and his depth high, a silent admission to the pain he felt each time he descended.   We worked gradually and steadily until he made bottom, pushing his knees out and his hip backward.  Now, John squatted correctly, fighting his size for every inch.

I opened the envelope and slid out an x-ray film.  Holding it up to the dome light, I saw a blacked out joint, a femur and tibia joined by thin white tentacles and a pile of rubble, the detritus of a destroyed knee.

“This is your knee!  Jesus, why didn’t you tell me?”

My brain cycled wildly between disbelief and regret.  I’d stood beside John, demanding range of motion, demanding bodyweight back squats, the Space Needle built on a pile of marshmallows.   I’d told him to do what no sane man should.

"My ACL is gone, too."

He laughed, and my confusion gave way to understanding.

I hadn’t pushed John down.  He’d pushed himself down, stronger with each descent.  Even more, he’d pushed against decrepitude, reclaiming range of motion that a weaker man would’ve lost forever, and somehow he’d done it in the face of impossibility, a gravel-filled knee with imperfect muscular support.

Like the men who built the land we were crossing, John had seen an end result that was more important than the obstacles in the way, that something beautiful could be built atop something inhospitable, and now he was reaping the benefits, back squatting three hundred and thirty five pounds at thirty nine years of age.

I wouldn’t pretend that we’re all capable of doing what John did, an assertion that would merely belittle his accomplishment.  Nonetheless, I firmly believe that we are capable of more, that we can build something from nothing.

I handed the x-ray back to John.

John overcomes gravity at CrossFit Boston.  Picture by Again Faster.

His name was Brett and he was the fastest kid I ever knew. He was shorter than I was, and lighter. He never seemed to get tired. He ran the 400-meter race every meet, and that confused me. I didn’t understand anybody who would want to do that. Every time he did, though, I was relieved. If he ran the 400, then it meant he couldn’t run the 200, and that was my race.

Senior year in high school, I only lost the 200 was when he was in it. I couldn’t catch him.

The end of the season came, and our team of athletic misfits gathered in the center of the track for the league championship meet. A few hours later, I was setting my blocks for the 200-meter final. Twenty-two and a half seconds after the gun, I crossed the line ahead of everybody else.

Call it hubris if you like, but there was never any question in my mind as to what the result would be. Over my entire athletic career, the only moments of clear, unquestioned confidence came at the start of that event. They were the kind of moments where nervousness somehow transforms into energy instead of dread. The kind of moments where your body is light and your mind uncluttered. The kind of moments I never felt when Brett lined up beside me.

No matter how many races I won, I never believed I could beat Brett. And so I never did.

And that’s a hard habit to break.

From the first CrossFit workout I hit, and almost every subsequent one since, I knew where I would finish before the clock ever started.  I never thought I could win, and so I've finished lower far more often than I have higher.

High school track and field long gone, it’s been awhile since I've felt that unquestioning confidence. Years away from organized sports have dulled my desire to win, and my inability to transcend my own muted expectations have left my progress stagnant in the gym.

I never beat Brett because I knew I never could. I didn’t let him make me better. Instead, I felt sorry for myself. I settled for being good rather than the best. And as a result, I never grew as an athlete.

I’ve watched this video fifteen times now, and every time I do, I am amazed at something. Something other than Usain Bolt and his new world record. It comes at the end of the video, while Bolt takes his victory lap.

The camera finds Tyson Gay, second place in the race and amongst the few men on this planet even remotely in the same league as the Jamaican. The race is over and the results are on the board. Bolt runs a 9.58, Gay a 9.71. With a slightly injured groin, Gay sets the American record and runs the third fastest time ever recorded.

The camera finds Gay, and though we can’t see his face, the gesture he makes is familiar to us all. It’s one of disappointment.

Instead of lining up next to the 6’5” Bolt and thinking, “I’m just going to try and beat everybody else,” he went after the top dog. And because he did, he ran faster than he ever had before.

You can’t learn confidence, but you can earn it. Gay may have lost that race, but he knows he can go faster. He knows what it feels like, and it’s that feeling that he’ll be chasing every race, whether Bolt lines up beside him or not.

I never let Brett make me faster, and I haven’t let James Hobart or Stacey Kroon make me faster, even though I line up with them for every WOD. My progress is minimal and slow and I have grown impatient with it.

I lost my competitive fire not because I’ve stopped wanting to be the best, but because I stopped wanting to be disappointed when I was proved anything less. I have forgotten the single most important lesson we learn from CrossFit: Through struggles, to the stars.

I have beaten James at exactly one workout over the past year and change. It’s time I finally went after the big dog.

Picture of Kevin Williams and Jay Swift, battling it out at a recent CrossFit Endurance cert in Milford. They were doing "Death by 10 Meters". Picture courtesy of the author.

Successful lifting depends on four elements: area of base, center of gravity, combined center of gravity, and torque. If the aspiring coach understands the relationship between these elements and how they inform technique, the quick identification of faults and their respective remedies becomes automatic.

Area of base is a simple concept. It is the field delineated by the outside of the athlete’s feet and the space between them, length and breadth. It changes in size based on foot position, but is always rectangular.

Center of gravity is the point within any body around which its mass is evenly distributed. For our purposes, we can think of it as the point on which gravity acts. While coaching, we must worry about three separate centers of gravity: that of the athlete, that of the object lifted, and that created when they are joined together (the combined center of gravity).

At rest, the athlete’s center of gravity lies somewhere on a vertical line between the pelvis and the navel and just dorsal of the frontal plane, its exact location dependent on gender and individual anthropometry. The object’s center of gravity lies in its geometric center, assuming it is of constant shape, i.e. a barbell rather than a sandbag or water-filled keg.

The combined center of gravity of the two lies somewhere on the line between the athlete’s center of gravity and the object’s center of gravity, biased closer to whichever weighs more.

Finally, torque is the tendency for a force to cause rotation around a fixed point. When lifting, our primary concern is torque about the hip caused by gravitational pull on the combined center of gravity.

Our objective in any lift is to move an object exactly opposite gravity and to hold it in its highest position for an acceptable period of time. To do so, we must vertically align our three centers of gravity (athlete, object, and combined) with the center of our area of base, minimizing torque and thereby maximizing efficiency.

Faults arise when these conditions of vertical alignment are not met.

Let’s look at some examples. In examining the explanations below, note that the combined center of gravity must always remain directly over the center of the area of base or the athlete falls over, so combined center of gravity is never the root cause of an error when the athlete remains standing.

Example 1: Object COG Forward

In the picture above, the barbell’s center of gravity is well forward of the center of area of base, causing the athlete to shoot the butt backward in an effort to keep the combined center of gravity where it belongs, directly over the center of the area of base. This results in a forward inclination of the torso, creating torque at the hip, and making a return to standing unnecessarily difficult.

To minimize torque, this athlete must bring the barbell within the area of base by lifting her chest. Her hips will come forward, resulting in a more favorable alignment of all three centers of gravity (athlete, object, and combined) with the center of the area of base.

Example Two: Object COG Rearward

In our next example, we see that the athlete has pushed the bar behind the area of base. Although we cannot see the area of base, we can infer that it is forward of the barbell, as the athlete has pushed his mass forward to keep the combined center of gravity over the center of the area of base. The torque on his shoulders is clear.

To minimize torque, the athlete would tighten the abdominal muscles and bring the bar forward, resulting in the alignment of all three centers of gravity (athlete, object, and combined) with the center of the area of base.

Example Three: Athlete COG Backward and Object COG Forward

The athlete above presents an interesting situation, in which the bar is forward of the center of the area of base, and the athlete’s center of gravity is backward of the center of the area of base. These faults result in a combined center of gravity directly over the center of the area of base, as predicted. They also create a tremendous angle at the hip, putting torso perpendicular to the direction of gravity and nearly maximizing torque.

To correct this situation, the bar would be pulled against the shins while the hip was simultaneously lowered, bringing the object’s center of gravity and the athlete’s center of gravity over the center of the area of base.

Example Four: Proper Alignment

Here, we see an error-free lift. The athlete’s center of gravity is just behind the center of her area of base, and the object’s center of gravity is just forward of the center of the area of base. Alignment is limited only by the fact that her body is in the way, and torque due to gravity is minimized.

Although the rules of center of gravity, area of base, and torque are not the only ones that inform proper technique, they are very handy in spotting faults. The simple question: are my centers of gravity as close to the center of the area of base as the movement allows? If not, the coach has work to do.

Tanya demonstrates good understanding of our principles, keeping everything vertically aligned at CrossFit Montclair. Pictures courtesy of Patrick Cummings.