Reminder- 10AM class only this morning! Night classes normal schedule! Hope everyone had a great Christmas!
Strength-
Back Squat 5 5 5 5 5 (5 Challenging sets of 5 don't count warm up sets)
W.O.D.
10 Min AMRAP
6 Chest 2 Bar Pull ups
8 Hang Squat Cleans (95/65)
Tricep Extensions with Danny Broflex - video [
ipod] [
mov] [
720 HD] [
1080 HD]
Top 10 Mistakes CrossFitters Make
-Talayna Fortunato
1. Not Warming Up Properly
Everyday it takes me around 30 minutes to warm-up. I start with easy
cardio for 5-10 min. then do some light foam rolling and stretching, leg
swings, lunges, rotator cuff exercises, and finally movements specific
to the workout I’m about to do. My warm-up has gotten more extensive
(and longer) with each year I do CrossFit®. Almost to the point that it
started to annoy me, and then I remembered back to my gymnastics days.
Ever since I was on team at age 8, I remember our warm-ups taking us at
least 30 minutes with all of the stretching and other calisthenics we
did. Even though we were young and healthy I believe the gymnastics
coaches knew what they were doing to keep us that way. With the
intensity of competitive CrossFit® it’s imperative to put in the time
for an adequate warm-up and mobility work. If you don’t put in the time
now you’ll put it in later when you have an injury.
2. Eating too Strict of a Paleo Diet
If you are a recreational CrossFitter following a Paleo lifestyle is
probably nutritionally adequate and a good way of maintaining longevity
and health. However, if you are a competitive level athlete and training
intensely more than an hour a day your main source of energy is
carbohydrates and strict paleo simply does not provide enough sources of
them. Now I’m not saying to go out and carb load on pasta, bread, or
sugar. That’s just an inflammatory insulin bomb. I am saying look for
complex sources of carbohydrates from plants and low glycemic grains to
add into your diet, especially when training is at its peak. During an
interview at the Games every individual athlete was asked who follows a
paleo diet, and not a single one raised their hand.
3. Sacrificing Technique and Movement Efficiency for Intensity and Eventual Technical Breakdown.
CrossFit gets results due to the intensity of the workouts, but that
doesn't mean throw all good form out the window. For example if your
back starts rounding when you’re pulling from the ground or you’re
chasing wildly after snatches, it’s time to put the bar down until you
can regain efficiency. Your back and other body parts will thank you
later! Also if you’re compromising range of motion enough to miss
consecutive reps, take a quick rest before you go again. Otherwise
you’re ingraining poor habits and when you reach that place of pain and
fatigue again in competition guess what’ll happen… No Rep!
4. Doing Volume for Volume’s Sake without Intent.
CrossFitters are notorious for thinking that when they’re getting ready
to compete more is better. This mindset leads to the performance of
multiple hero WoDs in a day with the intent of “loading”, when what it
really does is break the athlete down with laborious repetition and
impede lasting gains. More is not better, better is better. Having a
purpose, i.e. knowing the energy system and muscular groups you’re
trying to tax during a workout allows you to work smart and hard, not
just hard. Again, your body will also thank you later!
5. Cherry Picking Workouts and/or Jumping Around Programs
This is for the CrossFitter that walks into the gym and decides when
they get there what workout they’re going to do based on what their gym
posts and which one of the blogs they follow appears best that day.
Blogs are written for a reason, with progressive intent to allow your
workouts to build upon themselves for measurable improvements in your
numbers. If you jump from program to program, weekly or even daily, that
progress is completely short-circuited. Not to mention you’re probably
doing mostly what you’re good at and not working your weaknesses enough.
6. Following a Strength Progression that Doesn't Makes Sense or One Without Any Progression at All.
The body adapts to load by responding to meet the load in the form of
muscular hypertrophy. There have been many studies showing the best
percentages of max load, sets, reps, and frequency to produce optimal
gains without under or overloading the athlete. These studies have
produced named strength progression tables, squat cycles, and the like.
You can reinvent the wheel and use yourself as a guinea pig to do your
own research, or you can find a viable progression and just follow it.
I’ll give you one guess what most long-term successful athletes do. One
other thought to keep in mind is how much loading your conditioning work
is providing. An example would be making your conditioning heavy on
the weights during the heaviest week of a strength loading cycle (no
bueno).
7. Forgetting to Supplement Your Program with Basics, Strict Strength, and Supplemental Work.
Just because you can kip almost any movement in CrossFit, doesn’t mean
it’s in your best interest to do so all of the time. Working strict
strength with things like dumbbell press or tempo bench press can do
wonders for the strength of your jerk or stamina of kipping handstand
push-ups. Sometimes to get better at a complex movement you need better
strength with the basics as well. Think along the lines how important
the hollow position is during kipping in general and you’ll see why
doing hollow rocks would have carry over into almost all gymnastics
movements. Basic skills and strict strength also overlap with
supplemental work, which can be a great way to address muscular
imbalances and push past plateaus. Supplemental work is also a staple in
the work of some of the strongest people on the planet who employ Loui
Simmon’s conjugate method.
8. Waiting >90min. to Replenish After a Hard Training Session or Only Replenishing Protein.
The fact is the majority of CrossFitters do not need a liquid protein
shake post-workout. If you are just doing CrossFit as part of a healthy
lifestyle or you are trying to decrease body fat, then a meal consisting
of lean protein, nutrient-dense carbs (vegetables) and healthy fat is
best post-workout. However, if you are participating in CrossFit as a
competitive athlete and are completing multiple grueling and taxing
workouts several days per week (and many times twice per day), your
post-workout nutrition becomes vital to your success. Although this is a
very individualized thing, there are some constants; the first being
that you need more than just protein after each session. Protein
combined with carbohydrates is essential immediately following a workout
- it's just a matter of how much of each based on the individual. The
ideal ratio of carbs:protein can typically run anywhere from 2:1 to 4:1
depending on the athlete's body composition and type of training session
just completed. The source of carbohydrates should be something that
will work quickly with minimal interference. Some examples would be
maltodextrin or sugar. The priority is timing and you want to make sure
this liquid shake is taken immediately after the session is completed in
order to replenish your glycogen stores decreased from training and
spark muscle protein synthesis. Approximately one hour after drinking
this shake, you should then consume a whole foods meal consisting of
lean protein and carbohydrates. A great example of that would be some
grilled chicken and a sweet potato. Again, the amounts of protein and
carbs are extremely individualized. It doesn’t have to be the size of a
traditional dinner, and each athlete must find their ideal ratio, but
the constant is timing and the combining of the two macronutrients.
9. Skimping on Sleep and Skipping Rest Days
Nearly as important as what you’re doing in the gym is what you’re doing
outside of the gym. The ability to recover is instrumental to seeing
consistent gains in athletic performance. Growth Hormone (GH) is an
essential part of that recovery. It allows the body’s ability to repair
itself after intense exercise through muscular hypertrophy and plays a
significant role in the maintenance of lean body mass. Nearly 50% of GH
secretion occurs during the third and fourth NREM sleep stages. If you
are regularly skimping on sleep by 2 or more hours you are missing the
body’s prime production time of GH, and thereby not recovering as you
could or should be. Basically all the effort you put into your squat
cycle was just thwarted by a significant percentage if you were sleep
deprived during it. Another important aspect of recovery is taking
needed rest days. Continuing to workout through a certain level of
fatigue or soreness can actually be counterproductive long term.
10. Asking for Advice and Then Not Implementing it.
See 1-9
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