11 Training Tips For Crossfit Athletes
OHS Stretch
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1. Breakfast is everything. If I can convince you to eat meat and eggs for breakfast, the other meals are usually OK. If you negotiate with me about having probiotic yogurt instead of meat and eggs, we’re in trouble
2. I can get someone 70% of the way there in the Olympic lifts in about 3 hours. At that point, the limiting factor for men is usually shoulder and hip mobility. For women, its front squat and overhead squat strength out of the bottom.
3. If you aren’t a total idiot with what you eat, you should set a PR pretty much every time you step in the gym for the first 2 years.
4. The shorter the workout, the longer the warmup should be. You need to warmup for 35 minutes for Fran. You need to warmup for 5 minutes for Murph.
5. Unweighed unmeasured Paleo eating works best if you’ve done “The Zone” first. Your Zone experience will give you a ballpark idea of how much you should be eating. If you don’t come from a “Zone” background, you’ll likely do things like sit down and eat 85 Macadamia nuts and wonder why you aren’t losing any weight.
6. As you get better, you need to take a back off week about every fourth week (not because of injury). You can still come in and workout, but take some more rest days and just chill out.
7. You don’t need to learn to butterfly kip. Seriously, stop it. You are going to hurt yourself and you’d be much better off working toward a bodyweight press.
8. Dumbbells are the most under appreciated piece of equipment in the gym.
9. Prior runners do not need supplementary running to improve their run times. People without a running background do. I think this mostly has to do with learning to pace correctly.
10. You can’t just train weaknesses. It’s too depressing. Every now and then, pick something you are amazing at and crush it.
11. You can get away with a lot of inefficiencies if you’ve got a strong grip. Do more farmers’ carries.
26 comments
Damn straight. Great points.
Love this! Thanks for all the great points and tips
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I love these lists of tips for Crossfitters. I always learn something from each of the points, and several of them really resonate with me (#1, 3, 6, 7 from today). Out of curiosity, why would one risk hurting oneself doing the butterfly kip?
Adam-
Glad to hear you like the list.
The butterfly kip is an exceptionally dynamic movement. Unless you have an exceptional base of strength and shoulder mobility, you are asking yourself for trouble with the butterfly kip.
I know why people want to learn it so bad. They look at the really good athletes and say “Well it just looks so effortless, and they all do it”. It looks like the magic bullet that will forever stop your pullup woes and put you on the path to a 2 minute Fran.
Conservatively, I’d say don’t even start playing around with it until you’ve got 30- 40 “regular” kipp pullups without coming off the bar.
Of all the points, I think number 6 is probably the most important, and also the most likely to be ignored. Glad you liked it.
Thanks for the awesome reminders. I especially like #10 — it’s so easy to fall into the “must work harder to get better every time” mindset and end up feeling like it’s no fun. A workout of movement I love once in a while is like a big gulp of refreshing cool water.
Thanks for the explanation, Jon. I’m pretty sure I have 30 kipping pull-ups, but that’s max effort (i.e. not a stroll in the park). I don’t have a bodyweight press yet, but I’m working towards that.
I think I’m just relieved I never have to learn how to butterfly kip.
Great tips.
Thanks for the tips! It is a great way to think about strategy and progression!
The butterfly has a high risk of injuring small assistance muscles/tendons. The guy who runs our gym, CF BWI, recommends only doing it in a competition setting. It seems to me that if you strive for good kipping chest to bar pull ups you will absolutely slay butterfly when you’re competing.
Also, kipping have drastically improved my strict number. TyCF!
I actually like this list… solid stuff.
I especially agree with #8. Before you buy a $500 barbell and a set of bumpers for your home gym, you should at least have a inexpensive adjustable dumbbell set that you’ve put to good use.
And even more with #7. It’s remarkable when people ask for help on these when they have glaring problems with, say:
-the mobility required to overhead squat more than half bodyweight
-the ability to kick into a handstand
-the balance to do a pistol
If I could add something on a similar note, I would say to think twice about pursuing your first muscle up until you’re going chest to bar on your pull up workouts.
As for #10, I realized that when I started biasing my training towards my weak skills, I ended up neglecting my strengths to the point that I no longer had an advantage at them. When I self-program, I now create couplets where I pick a goat move and pair it with a advantaged move. (“Diane”, “Elizabeth” and “Fran” are structured in a similar way where the fixed weight/barbell move benefits those with maximal strength and the gymnastic portion benefits those with relative strength.)
Jeff-
One of my favorite ways to train is “one strength, one weakness”. Its pretty much exactly what you are saying.
Re BJK:
I guess you are talking about Ryan up at BWI? He knows his stuff.
I really like things in list form, but 11 was one too many.
Just kidding, this is one of your better lists in a while.
Great stuff Jon. I’ll dovetail off the butterfly comment: everytime I’ve been hurt doing CrossFit in the past year has been because of butterfly kipping. It’s fast, its efficient, but I’ve unseated my bicep tendon twice just getting lazy with my form (once during a competition). Oh yeah, I’ve got my bodyweight press. What now COACH?
Dude, Lt. Gabe. Check out my goals, top left of the landing page. Let me know what you think
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Thats awesome, great advice!
[...] 11 Training Tips for CrossFitters July 3, 2010 by justinfarina Copied from the following post: http://www.barbellsandbacon.com/archives/1421 [...]
#3 What does PR stand for?
Hey Candace,
Personal Record aka the best you have ever done.
[...] 11 Tips for Training CrossFitters [Barbells & Bacon] [...]
[...] your membership here at CrossFit Fenway. In a similar vein, I came across an article entitled 11 Training Tips for CrossFit Athletes on Barbells and Bacon, the blog of Jon Matzner from Potomac CrossFit. Take from the 11 tips below [...]
Wow! I love this list.. I appreciate your insight, I’m an intermediate level crossfitter, and I will be using these tips in the next few months to improve. Starting with tip #6, I can feel adrenal fatigue setting in, but I just try to ignore it. Then I’ll be doing lots of farmers carries, my grip sucks.
Looking forward to reading new posts!
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