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10 thoughts on “Wed, Feb 18th”

1. Ah the beauty of time zones, as I get to be the first to post, and I have an opinion on this. Having seen form breakdown in the very first round of Cindy and continued through round 15, I can tell you that allowing it does nobody any good. Also as Rip said if you can’t back squat a weight with good form, you can’t back squat that weight.

   Now Glassman will use the marksman analogy to say that if you have perfect form throughout the WOD, you weren’t going fast enough. Fair enough. So for the last little while I’ve been running my own experiment: focus on trying to make every rep of every WOD a perfect rep and see the effect on intensity.

   For bodyweight movements I found that I have to be very near to collapsing before my form breaks down against my will and I can keep pretty good form throughout the workout and get the same feeling of intensity. Therefore in Crossfit Car Hole little to no form degradation on gymnastic movements will be tolerated.

   Here’s the kicker, though. On heavy lifts form break down follows a curve. At first form is ok, but as I start to tire, form actually improves for two reasons 1) from necessity, especially on the o-lifts—there is a reason why technique exists; and 2) I really focus on it because I don’t want to let form slip enough to hurt myself. However as tired turns to exhausted, form breaks down to worse than when I started and the ‘any way overhead’ mentality slips in. I think that this is very dangerous and ripe for injury. Therefore, at Crossfit Car Hole some degradation on would be allowed but only very slightly and only at the end.

   For the vast majority of us, this argument falls under the category of chasing mice. For me the difference between a super strict Fran time and less than strict Fran time is minimal. It’s the time the bar is sitting on the floor with me looking at it that has the biggest impact. Sure for Rhabdo it doubles his time. So once I’m at Rhabdo’s level I may revisit.

   I know that I’ve been that guy plenty of times and I know the feeling, at least for myself. When I let my form slip I am just letting myself be lazy on that rep. My opinion is that CF WOD’s are intense enough that trying for near perfect form on each rep will not significantly take away from the intensity, power output nor intended benefits to increased work capacity.

2. I reckon we should video air squats during a tabata, then look at it, then cry a little. I found doing the squats against the wall the other night was just as intense if not more intense,

   The other thing to be looked at is the amount of times we perform a movement during a metcon, maybe 30, maybe 150. Form breaks down at the best of times, so are we re-inforcing a incorrect movement pattern under stress and multiple times??

   I will say that I will be a fan of strict strict form and I reckon much like a heavy squat the numbers go up as they are on a brilliant platform from all the form work,

   It will also remove the argument that crossfit allows sloppy form.

3. Personally, form is more important to me than reps. From a novices point of view I firstly feel that if you’r going to do something do it properly. Secondly, I believe the long term benefits will be felt as your forcing yourself to maintain a standard. Whats the point of doing lots of sloppy press-up? You’ll end up missing out on the full benefits.

   I’d agree with Kyle as well that you’ll eventually get to Advanced/Ninja level and the form slipping is so minimal that you should keep going and stop staring at the weight.

4. Ninja Level

5. While I think form is very important I also think there is a broad range of what is acceptable.

   What I mean is that on one end of the range you have a perfect deadlift with a good straight back and all the trimmings, on the other end the back is still reasonably straight but the hips are rising too quickly and so on. Both in my mind are acceptable, one is better than the other but both work safely. I suppose the hard bit is where to judge the bottom end of the range is.

   The funny thing about form is that good technique actually makes the exercise easier. You think you’re getting away by using bad form but you’re actually making the exercise harder. And Tom’s right in pointing out that we’re reinforcing a bad movement pattern, your brain has no idea that what you’re doing is bad form. I remember a skiing instructor in the US telling me about practicing movements, he had a number which he said was a rough estimate for how many times a movement would have to be drilled correctly for it to stick, it was around 150 times I think, much higher than I thought.

   Oh and on the subject of form, I was pressing today and struggled with my first set until I remembered Will’s advice about the proper form for the shoulder press. Worked a treat.

6. I am all about looking what is acceptable and unacceptable but what I do not want to do is to compound a bad movement by doing it over and over,

   I wanna video my next tabata squat session, I may look like a goober but it will show me just how quick it breaks down

7. Principally personally I’d be worried about form breaking down during heavy slow lifts, because this is I feel I’m at most risk. If my form sucks on a gymnastic movement then over time perhaps I’m putting my progress in jeopardy or risking some kind of injury/strain … But with a heavy deadlift I *know* I’m flirting with injury if I allow my form to degrade.

   For a period there I was convinced that I could tell when my form was breaking down during say deadlifts or squats. I hadn’t had a ‘shallow’ squat in a while, I thought, and my deadlifts felt good. But really you need someone to check every now and again, last time I did sets of 5 deadlifts I did 130kg across and Colm was able to tell me that my back was rounding out and I was straight-legged to some degree on the 2nd or 3rd rep of the last set or two. I thought my back was going horizontal, but not rounding out. So you do still need that external check.

   Sometimes I wonder how guys training independently of a coach, let alone an affiliate, get by safely. But I guess they do.

8. Sue – 13:36 @ 20Kg
   Damien – 14:30 @ 60Kg
   Pixie – 16:18 as rx’d
   Rob – 20:57 @ 60Kg/50Kg

   Ames – 19:58 @ 30Kg
   Deirdre L – 12:43 (15Kg/8/10)
   Tony – 19:36 @ 45Kg

9. Damien: 50-50-50; 195
   Darragh: 40-40-45; 160
   Deirdre: 55-60-62.5(4); 178
   Jeff: 70-75-80?; 216
   Mike: 40-40-45; 175
   Robbie: 62.5-65-70; 207
   Rory: 62.5-62.5-80; 234
   Big Shane: 90-95-90; 225
   Tom: 62.5-62.5-65; 234

   Paul: 70-75-80; 287
   Pistol: 70-75-80; 165

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