December 25th

Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones today.

Thank you for your support, determination, and stellar effort since we’ve open CrossFit Ireland. you make my job exceptionally fulfilling. Thank you!

My experience at the CrossFit Certification – Day 2

The following morning saw an even earlier start, 7AM. They’re crazy in California waking up so early, but to them it’s no biggie. Haven’t they heard of hangovers and lie ins?

As I stiffly walked back into the lecture room, I was asked how I was feeling. “Sore” was definitely the word of the day. Fight Gone Bad in the rain with the flu had taken it’s tool on my body. Really I just wanted to sleep.

The reason we were all up so early this Sunday was Greg Hammond from Concept 2 had flown out for the seminar and was giving a talk on rowing technique for non rowers. Coming from an “on the water” background this wasn’t particularly new to me, but great for anyone who had been rowing badly on the C2’s before.

I see that there’ll be a fifteen minute video of this for CrossFit Journal subscribers out in January. As if you need another reason to buy this fine publication. His great line was “The rowing stroke is a lot like the golf swing. We can show it to you in a day, but it’ll take a lifetime to master.”

We all spent a few minutes on the rowing machines outside, but there weren’t enough for everyone so I didn’t row that long. We could say this was noble, because I’ve a decent enough technique compared to most gym users. Or maybe it’s that I was saving my strength for whatever WoD they’d throw at us today. Really, I was just depressed looking at my power output. ?

In addition to the rowing bonus, we also had Brian MacKenzie and Michael Collins give us a super brief intro to POSE running and CrossFit for endurance and ultra endurance sports. Even though I scribbled furiously for 6 or 7 pages I couldn’t take in all these guys had, nor could they dish it out. Mike must have skipped 80% of his powerpoint slides trying to surmise POSE running alone!

Some interesting thoughts, though, on how Brian trains people for endurance sports. His order of learning for endurance is
1. Technique
2. Pacing – doing correct technique faster
3. Longer

The amazing thing is though, he normally gets his clients after they’ve f*cked themselves up with bad technique. Since they can’t put in all those miles/hours they have to scale it back and work on technique.

So why do people get damaged? Long distance aerobic work simply puts your body into a catabolic state. You have to break yourself down if you’re training this metabolic pathway. And since you keep on training longer and longer hours (I mean, this is what everyone else is doing, so it must be the right way) you just break your body down more and more.

Brian pulled out some stats on recovery times based on POLAR’s recommendations on their site (POLAR are the world leaders in heart rate monitor. I don’t have the figures but essentially doing “Diane” or “Fran” got your HR into the anaerobic zone (so it pushed you Aerobic capacity up) and took a lot less time to recover than all these crazy long runs. In some cases, the recovery for a long run (race distance) was up to 180 hours. Contrast this to a CF style workout, which had a recovery of 3-4 or even less!

Brian’s training protocols were based off intervals of 200m-1600m for running, 1/4mile to 10K for biking, and 25m to 250m for swimming, the aim being to hold a consistently fast pace with ample recovery time for all your repeats. All these interval workouts would take less than 30 minutes and prepared his athletes more than adequately for endurance and ultra endurance races. His athletes have been improving their times since starting his programs over the usual run more, bike more, swim more training mentality in endurance sports.

Get this, before Brian’s last 100 mile race (yes, one hundred miles – the freak) his longest run was 13.1 miles!

Mike introduced us to the POSE method of running in about 20 minutes, so any write up I do hear isn’t doing this justice. But hopefully, like me, it’ll get you thinking more about the technique of running.

“Pain is the penalty for violating the principles of nature!”

When people ‘run’, they usually fight against gravity instead of working with it. They throw their leg out in front of them which acts as a breaking force, since your muscles contract to stop you breaking something. They pull themselves over that lead foot and then push off (jump) onto the next step.

All of this is not only horribly inefficient, it’s injurious. The POSE method is essentially falling with grace and precious, as it’s based off using gravity to pull you forward. All you do is keep your posture and cadence to keep going.

To draw a quick comparison, mark a distance about 8 feet away. Normal running is pushing off against the ground (overcoming gravity). This was demonstrated by a big jump – a lot of energy used and a heavy impact against the ground on landing. Contrast this to just leaning forward until you break your balance and fall forward into a run. POSE is all about controlling this fall for efficient running.

Glassman’s day two lecture started off talking about the progression of training skills or athletes. That is, Technique ? Consistency ? Intensity. Put simply, we won’t increase the intensity until the mechanics of a lift are solid. This progression can, and should, take as long as it takes, because after all, if you don’t get the mechanics down it’s going to impede your progress. And everytime you hit a stumbling block or sticking point, you’re going to go back to the basics of the movement. So there you have it, Glassman is in favour of from Nazism!

For those of you that have the CrossFit journal you’ll have seen the better movements clip. This was the next thing to be explained as part of the seminar. Now why a bell shaped curve was drawn is beyond me, but Glassman described how a push press was more powerful than a press, and how a push jerk is more powerful than a push press. Remember we want more powerful movements because they correlate better to a favourable adaptation we’re looking for, i.e. fitness.

What was interesting is that the push jerk is a more technical movement than a push press or simple press, and required/developed better co-ordination, accuracy, balance and agility. If you are lacking in these, all your strength, endurance, and stamina are pretty much useless. This was one of those explanations that had never occurred to me before, but once it was spelled out, is blindingly obvious.

We were then treated to a Shoulder Press/Push Press/Push Jerk challenge between two monster, Jacob and Justin (I may have forgotten the names by this stage but I apologise) Jacob looked like he’d too much muscle on his body, but had busted out a score of 371 on FGB the day before. Justin was a Marine, and looked the part. Tight haircut, USMC tattoo, determined focused stare. Everything about him screamed Unit, Core, God, Country.

The challenge was as many repetitions of 1 shoulder press, 1 push press, and 1 push jerk. What happens is eventually the shoulder press will fail, then the push press, then the push jerk. Funnily enough, Jacob hadn’t much exposure to the push jerk, so this failed before his push press. Justin – honestly, he was so conditioned this got a little boring as he just keep going through the reps. I considered making this joke public, but bit my tongue. I don’t know if marines have a sense of humour!

Failure is an unavoidable, essential part of skill development. If you’re not failing, you’re not learning. This led us into bad technique versus intensity, where Dave (an ex SEAL) gave a great explanation on how he trains shooters based on their scores.

If he comes along and sees a shooter like in A (left), he’ll know that that guy needs to speed it up. It’s too accurate to be fast. In C(right), that guy needs to slow it way down and get his accuracy up. B (centre) we’re looking to tighten it up as we get faster. If 2 out of 10 shots miss the mark and that’s an acceptable ratio, we keep speeding up the rate at which the clip empties until he started missing 3 shots. At which point we get the accuracy back, and speed it up some more.

Glassman took some time to explain his thoughts on the CrossFit movement, and his role in it. “I’m not the architect,” he explained, “you are. I’m more like the caretaker.” Every advancement in CrossFit as a movement has come about through clients and affiliates. The newsletter, the certificate, the journal, the website. Essentially everything but the training has been someone else’s idea.

Is CrossFit a cult? It’s certainly a strange movement, but Glassman asked what was a cult. To him, it’s not. For one, we’re not actively recruiting people, and secondly “no one gives a shit if you leave!” The training will still be here. Also, there’s nothing clandestine about CF, everything’s open source. Hardly the stuff of a cult, unless we’re the cult of openness?

As for the business of CrossFit, it’s now no longer just a fitness success story but a business success story, as evidenced by a Canadian news network recently doing a feature on them, and I believe there’s a Wall Street Journal piece on them. This is all down to their business model of pursuing excellence over money. Excellence, in Glassman’s contention, is obvious and apparent, whereas marketing is mood dependent and fickle. The need for more weights, cleaner facilities, another trainer doesn’t change depending on what mood you’re in. But what colour flyer to use or what font to put on your business card is highly mood dependent.

“Markets are fundamentally unknowable. Excellence is obvious to everyone, and free markets have an uncanny ability to bring money to excellence.”

Here’s another interesting observation – the more CrossFit gyms there are in any location, the better they’ll all do. Being the only CF in your state isn’t an advantage. The more people that know about superior fitness training, the better word will spread from friend to friend, and each affiliate will do better. So, hopefully I can help more people set up affiliates throughout Dublin and Ireland.

Anyway, this movement is spreading. Next year, CrossFit will overtake Ballys and 24 hour fitness in the number of units open in the US. With any luck, we’ll see the end of smith machines once and for all ?

Workout demo time, and it was Fran – the CrossFit benchmark workout. This workout is held in a higher esteem by CFers worldwide than any other benchmark. Elizabeth, Diane, and Grace are all but ugly stepsisters to this revered workout. I would have liked to step up and volunteer, but I don’t think we had that much time to watch me struggle home.

The crazy thing was Jacob and Justin, who must have felt they hadn’t hit their shoulders enough for the day, stepped up to the plate. If I recall correctly, they were only about 20 seconds apart, with times around 6 minutes.

What was more important, was the way every athlete performing the workout was encouraged with such positive, optimistic coaching. And it’s not like the over exaggerated positivity you’ll see most people talk to young children with, it was all genuine. This CrossFit movement breeds a positivity and encouragement that’s one hundred percent genuine and heartfelt. It really is the way we should all be pushed to be our best, and celebrated for putting ourselves out there and working so hard.

Kelly Starrett (who I cannot say enough positive things about) took to the stage next for a talk on a subject that was very close to his heart – midline stabilisation. Like intensity, this is another buzz word that has been taken over by the pop fitness industry. Or rather, “core” has been hijacked. “Core” should be up their with the other C words – calories and cardio!

Kelly brought up Nicole and the Glute Ham Developer – which, sadly, CF Ireland doesn’t have – and introduced the principles of midline stabilisation. Essentially it comes down to keeping control of your spine, and not just sit ups or an ab attack class. It’s 360 degree control of your trunk.

Any of the 9 basic movements are core exercises. You need stability for squats, front squats, overhead squats, presses, push presses, push jerks, deadlifts, sumo deadlift high pulls and cleans – and every other movement that’s build on them.

He started Nicole on the Roman Chair/Glute-Ham Developer with her hips supported and had her work on lumbar flexion/extension. Flexing from the neck down and then extended from the sacrum up.

Once you get this down, working on hip flexion, while keeping the trunk rigid was the next progression (you’re hips are now past the support). It was a hugely impressive display of body control.

Once these two things were mastered, working with both hip flexion and trunk flexion together were the next order of duty. He noted this could take months, if not years to reach, but was so well worth it. See Nicole’s impressive bodyweight overhead squats times fifteen!

Looking at your Overhead Squat to Front Squat ratio is a great way to gauge your midline strength. If your OHS is much lower than you FS, get working on that Glue Ham Developer!

I hope this segment was recorded and will be released soon by CF, because it was a brilliant example of what true core strength midline stability is all about!

After lunch, Dave talked to us about programming. All CrossFit programming comes down to this phrase “Constantly Varied Functional Movements at High Intensity”

Constantly Varied – Vary everything. The rep schemes, the modalities, the time of the day, what days you workout on, the loads. Routine is the enemy!

Functional movements – our movement pool is gleaned mainly from Weightlifting, powerlifting, gymnastics and metabolic conditioning (this is the running, skipping, burpees, rowing, swimming, etc)

High Intensity – I think you can figure this one out at this stage! Remember, intensity isn’t measured by how loud you shout, how red your face goes, your heart rate, or some sort of perceived exertion scale, it’s about power – how heavy, how far, how fast.

Outside we went to get back into exercising, and guess what the first group was – god damned power cleans with the medicine ball! With the same coaches so there was no hiding. Luckily, I had a dynamax ball this time and managed to get a few semi decent cleans. My arms still hurt holding this ball in the hang position or for a front squat, but at least I wasn’t curling the balls this time. I’m sticking with my original excuse that I couldn’t do them the day before because they weren’t dynamax.

The second station turned out to be a surprise workout. 5 rounds for time of 100 single unders (skipping) and 20 Burpees (Yay Burpees!). The time to beat was 9:11, and I attacked this mofo as best I could. But alas the flu (I’m getting as much mileage out of this flu as I can) meant I finished in 11 minutes flat. Best of my group, but not best of the day.

Midway through this workout, I saw the Martins of CrossFit Kids fame and thought to myself – “Hey, I must go and say hi.” – but by the time I was finished, they were gone.

For some bizarre reason, they decided to have the muscle up/ring work right after the burpee workout. “Hey, your CNS is fried from 100 push ups, try stabilizing yourself on these bad boys!” Luckily, my natural and inexplicable talent for Muscle Ups meant I could help out here. While showing off doing Muscle Ups, Nicole called me strong. Ergo, I’m strong. (Man, am I lucky she didn’t see the med ball clean debacle!)

Tony then spent some time going over the snatch. “We’re going to learn an Olympic sport in 15 minutes. And yes, just one,” was his opening joke but it didn’t get the laughs I felt it deserved. Maybe people were too tired, or maybe Tony lacks the comedic abilities so inherent to Irish CrossFitters ?

The burpees and muscle ups were catching up on me for this, as my posterior chain felt stiff, weak and unresponsive. Suddenly my hamstrings decided not to let me lean forward without rounding my back, and let my posture fall down. I wanted to assume the correct position for the jump, and told my body to do so. Unfortunately the response was a stern “No!”

For the second time in fifteen minutes I heard Nicole’s voice – “nice shorts, Colm.” I can only assume she was being genuine, so I take this to mean only one thing. Just as Rip is the expert on powerlifting, I’m now the CF expert on flowery shorts. Yep, that’s what I’m bringing to the table – fashion sense!

Mike and Brian were giving people a speed intro to POSE running for the final station. I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Mike after the seminar and he informed me how difficult it was to condense POSE into such a short space of time. We worked on the posture and falling into running, before doing partner drills to enforce the correct movement patterns.

Personally I didn’t feel like I got it, but there’s definitely something more to the POSE method that I’d like to look into. I’ll try and show some of the drills on our next running day. There’s seriously a lot to it.

So that’s it, the Orange County Fire Authority CrossFit level 1 certification. Honestly I’m blown away by just how much I’ve learnt and how inspired and delighted I am to be part of the CrossFit movement. And they want everyone doing this. “Go knock on your neighbour’s door, teach them the deadlift” was one of the parting lines from the HQ staff.

The next steps are the speciality courses – power lifting, Olympic lifting, running, kettlebells – and the Level 2 certification, which takes place in Headquarters in Santa Cruz. I don’t think I’d go for a level two anytime soon, as I really want to hone my movements and coaching of them up to a level where I feel I’m doing CF justice. Next for me is to spend more time with an affiliate or at HQ just training (at full health!). The only problem is, I want to visit them all!

What I haven’t mentioned is the dinner I had with the CrossFitters on the Saturday night. While technically not part of the seminar it did reveal something to me that makes me very proud to be part of this movement. There was no change in who these people were between the lectures, coaching, and dinner with friends and family. They didn’t have a work personality which was turned on in the gym and off again out of it.

The same warmth, genuine caring and fun loving nature was present all the time. This to me showed that the passion they have about fitness, exercise and helping people is what drives them and leads them to be so successful. Being so true to yourself is something I’ve always strived for and it’s an honour to be involved in a movement that is both built from this open honesty and thrives on passion above all else.