January 2008

Dip Shrug Pull



Dip Shrug High Pull

Muscle Snatch

As you may have noticed, Nicole and I have thrown the Burgener Warm-Up (BWU) at you on a near-daily basis this past week or so. There is a method to our madness, and that's the topic of this post (along with two other posts to come).

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of the BWU, I want to state up front that our version of the BWU is slightly different than the official BWU that's out there on the CrossFit national site:

BWU for Quicktime

BWU for Windows Media Player

As you can see in the videos above, the official BWU is comprised of 5 steps (the first three are identical to our version of the BWU):

1. Dip shrug pull
2. Dip shrug high pull
3. Muscle snatch
4. Snatch drop
5. Hang power snatch

Each of the above exercises is performed for three reps.

We've seen versions of the BWU that are longer than the one we're currently doing at CFO, by the way. Ours is a nice compromise between the official BWU and a longer, more drawn out version.

Our version is comprised of seven steps:

1. Dip shrug pull
2. Dip shrug high pull
3. Muscle snatch
4. Pressing snatch balance
5. Heaving snatch balance
6. Snatch balance
7. Hang snatch (or hang power snatch if depth is an issue)

The primary difference between our version and the official version is that we've taken step 4 from the BWU, the snatch drop, and spread it out over three different skill transfer exercises (steps 4, 5, and 6 in our version, the snatch balance exercises).

In the photo sequence above, Nicole performs the first three movements of the CFO BWU: the dip shrug pull, the dip shrug high pull, and the muscle snatch. For each move, we show the start and the finish positions.

Although this post has already taken up a lot of real estate, I want to answer a question that many of you may have: Why are we doing this?

I'll expand on the answers to this question in the final post on the Burgener Warm-Up (remember, there will be three of these posts in total), but for now, let me just list the reasons:

1. The BWU is an excellent warm-up progression in general.
2. The BWU provides a direct skill transfer for the clean and the snatch.
3. The BWU provides an indirect skill transfer for any movement that has us extending the hip and leg to generate momentum, whether against an external object (such as a barbell) or with our own body (vertical jump). The skill development gained via the BWU applies as much to push jerks, thrusters, wall ball shots, and box jumps as it does to the snatch and clean.

Post your early impressions, experiences, and opinions regarding the BWU to comments.

*****REMINDER*****

There will be no 7pm class this Friday, Jan 11.

When in doubt, play.

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NO 7P.M. CLASS TOMORROW NIGHT!

I'm away at the CF certification seminars going on this week (Thu-Sun) and can't help but reflect on the importance of the nine movements.

CF is built around nine fundamental movements:

Shoulder Press
Push Press
Push Jerk

Squat
Front Squat
Overhead Squat

Deadlift
Sumo Deadlift High Pull
Medicine Ball Clean

The first move in each three-move progression lays the foundation for subsequent moves in the progression. To the extent that there are shortcomings in the initial three moves (squat, shoulder press, and deadlift), the latter moves will suffer, if they're even possible at all.

Even without load (the largest load introduced in any of these movements is 20# for the medicine ball clean; all others are initially performed unladen or with a dowel), these moves offer endless challenge, variety, and programming possibilities.

Embrace these moves! Mastering them is your quickest path to fitness (along with solid nutrition).

Post your favorite of the nine movements, along with an explanation of why, to comments.

1954 Age 40: Swam the length of the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge underwater with 140 pounds of equipment, including two air tanks… an undisputed world record.

1955 Age 41: Swam, handcuffed, from Alcatraz to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, CA.

1956 Age 42: Set a world record of 1,033 pushups in 23 minutes on “You Asked for It, a TV Show with Art Baker.

1957 Age 43: Swam the treacherous Golden Gate Channel, towing a 2,500-pound cabin cruiser. This involved fighting the cold, swift ocean currents that made the 1 mile swim a 6 ½ mile test of strength and endurance.

1958 Age 44: Maneuvered a paddleboard 30 miles, 9-½ hours non-stop from Farallon Islands to the San Francisco shore.

1959 Age 45: Completed 1,000 pushups and 1,000 chin-ups in 1 hours and 22 minutes. “Happy” is born and The Jack LaLanne Show goes nationwide

1974 Age 60: Swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf, for a second time handcuffed, shackled and towing a 1,000-pound boat.

1975 Age 61: Swam the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, underwater, for a second time handcuffed, shackled and towing a 1,000-pound boat.

1976 Age 62: Commemorating the “Spirit of ‘76”, swam 1 mile in Long Beach Harbor, handcuffed, shackled and towing 13 boats (representing the 13 original colonies) containing 76 people.

1979 Age 65: Towed 65 boats filled with 6,500-pounds of Lousiana Pacific wood pulp while handcuffed and shackled in Lake Ashinoko, near Tokyo, Japan.

1980 Age 66: Towed 10 boats in North Miami, Florida filled with 77 people for over a mile in less than 1 hour.

1984 Age 70: Handcuffed, shackled and fighting strong winds and currents, towed 70 boats with 70 people from the Queen’s Way Bridge in the Long Beach Harbor to the Queen Mary, 1 ½ miles.

Jack LaLanne turned 93 in 2007. Who's up for a rest day challenge of 1000 push-ups and 1000 pull-ups (Jack's record was 1:22)? Post your Golden Year fitness goals to comments along with a R.S.V.P for the Jack LaLanne Tribute WOD to comments.

A corrective drill designed to keep the torso bolt upright during the dip-drive phase of the push press or push jerk

As some of you know, I was away at the CF Level 2 certification seminar this Thursday and Friday. The photo above was taken while we were drilling mechanics for the push press.

The point of the drill is to burn into an athlete's muscle memory the plum vertical position that the upper torso needs to be in for the successful execution of a push press. One of the biggest form faults in the push press is to allow the torso to dip forward. This results in a loss of efficiency, and therefore power.

Expect to see this corrective drill, plus a few more, during our warm-up and skill components this week!

On Thursday, January 31st from 3p.m to 7pm we will be offering a Hydrostatic Body Fat Test. The test takes approximately 10 minutes and the cost is $49.

During the test you will TOTALLY submerge yourself in water for a few seconds, so bring a bathing suit and a towel--private dressing rooms are available. For the most accurate test results it is recommended that your last meal be consumed 2 1/2 hours prior to your test.

After the test, you will receive a 4-page printout, which includes your body composition including body fat percentage, lean mass percentage, resting metabolic rate, and caloric expenditure tailored specifically for you.

There will be a sign-up sheet at CFO, please also include a check for the full amount in the envelope provided.

THE GOLD STANDARD OF BODY COMPOSITION ANALYSIS IS HYDROSTATIC OR HYDRODENSITOMETRY.

Although, because it is time consuming, cumbersome, and complicated, and difficult to find, many physiologists turn to other types of measurement as an alternative means of assessment. However, hydrostatic weighing is the method by which all other means of measurement compare their degree of error.

Body Composition

What does it mean?

Body Composition is the technical term used to describe the different components that, when taken together, makes up a person's body weight. Now you must keep in mind that body composition and body weight are two entirely different concepts, and they are not interchangeable. To get a better understanding of the difference between the two, you need to understand a bit about anatomy and physiology.

Body Tissues

You probably realize that the human body is composed of a variety of different tissue types. The so-called 'lean' tissues, such as muscle, bone, and organs are metabolically active, while adipose, or fat tissue, is not. Since scientists like to classify things, they have divided adipose tissue into three different categories:

1. Essential fat, which supports life, and is extremely important to normal bodily function.
2. Storage fat, that protects internal organs and supplies some energy requirements.
3. Non-essential fat, serves no real purpose, and may, in fact, be detrimental to health.

The difference in these tissues is not readily distinguishable by stepping on a scale. A scale simply takes the sum of everything (fat, muscle, water, hair, you name it), and gives an absolute weight measurement. Scales can't determine the lean-to-fat ratio of that weight. An individual can be "over-weight" and not "over-fat." A bodybuilder, for example, may be 8% body fat, yet at two hundred and fifty pounds may be considered "over-weight" by a typical height-weight chart. Therefore, these charts are not a good indication of a person's ideal body weight for optimal health, much less for athletic performance.

We'd love to get a team from CFO together for the CrossFit Games this summer.

The Games run over two days, July 5 & July 6. The more, the better (men and women).

Post to comments if you'd like to participate as part of a CFO team.

For the longest time, Mike and I have been trying to figure out the best way to get our clients feedback about anything and everything under the sun. Lucky for us, a wise bird had a simple idea: a suggestion box! As of today, you will now find a shiny black mailbox--an empty vessel for the pages and pages of gripes, praises and suggestions that we hope to have the pleasure of reading! Help us be better at what we do: suggest something soon!

REMINDER: ZONE COMMUNITY SUPPORT POTLUCK ON SUNDAY THE 20TH AT 3PM!!!!!!!!LOOK FOR THE RECIPE BOOK POST ON THE BLOG NEXT WEEK!

OPT during his Helen performance, taken from CrossFit.com

In case any of you haven't seen it, please check out OPT crushing Helen (3 rounds of 400m run, 21 KB swings @53#, and 12 pull-ups) in 6:59:

Quicktime version of OPT's Helen

Windows Media Player version of OPT's Helen

(I was actually one of those on hand to see it go down.)

Not only is it a great performance, but it's a perfect lead-in to the topic of tonight's post.

There's been a lot of discussion at CFO, online and offline, about performance in the workouts.

The best performances we see, and OPT's Helen is certainly an example, combine solid (though not perfect) mechanics, in which one moves through a full range of motion for a given movement, with peak intensity.

In other words:

Mechanics + Intensity = Performance

We don't want one or the other. We're greedy; we want both. Furthermore, peak intensity levels can't be reached without solid mechanics. Coach Glassman has stated that his best athletes would probably get an A- in the mechanics department when performing at peak intensity levels (i.e., creating a high power output).

Athletes with poor mechanics simply won't develop the capacities required to perform at high levels of output.

This applies as much to the athlete working to develop a full-range squat against the wall as it does to the athlete looking to shave 10 seconds off her Fran time so that she can break the 3-minute mark. In other words, it's all relative and highly individual. Every one of us can work at a higher intensity level AND can do it with really solid mechanics at the same time.

At this point, besides being sick of me discussing the importance of mechanics and intensity, you might be wondering why anyone should care about working at a high level of intensity. In other words, you're asking the very sensible question, "what's this have to do with me?"

Issues of integrity aside, which have been discussed quite a bit in the comments of previous posts, you simply won't get the most out of our program if you don't go hard. The really cool stuff happens when you work out hard: muscle mass increases, bone density increases, insulin sensitivity increases, blood flow increases, and the immune system strengthens (to name just a few of the well-documented results of hard exercise).

In short, you express your genetic potential when you go hard, and you can never go as hard as you're capable of going if you don't have good mechanics. So go hard and do it right!

And just so it's clear, any mention of intensity or power output I'm discussing here is relative. The benefits of performing at a high relative intensity level are not confined to only those few whose name goes up on the "Best Performances of the Day" (BPOD) section of the blog.

And thus I arrive at another point: the purpose of the BPOD is inspirational, not ceremonial. We're not handing out trophies here, we're simply showing what's possible. The entire BPOD concept was thrown up there at the suggestion of a 9am client who was curious about the best times in later classes. We thought it was a great idea and went with it. And we still think it's a great idea.

And finally, we won't be highlighting best technique or best form of the day, because we're looking for best performance, and mechanics is only half of the equation when it comes to performance. Furthermore, a best-form accolade gets highly subjective and it's not our intent to turn this into a gymnastics meet where one person's squat is deemed better than another's because he only has 5 degrees of forward lean in the upper torso vs. the other guy with 7 degrees of forward lean in the upper torso. There's a vast ocean of difference between setting standards for a squat versus judging the prettiest squat.

Post any thoughts you have about this long-ass, rambling blog entry to comments.

From AGAINFASTER.COM:
The Non-Negotiability of Perfection
CrossFit is the pursuit of athletic perfection—performing difficult workouts with technical mastery under conditions of duress. We’re looking for flawless form with a jackhammering heart, bursting lungs, and battery acid-filled veins.

When this is accomplished with unyielding intensity, the result is nothing short of beautiful. When we fall short of the mark, the result is horrifying at best.

Athletes often set up a false dichotomy between perfect form and intensity, assuming that as one increases the other must necessarily fall. This idea is a thinly disguised excuse for athletic complacency. Rather than revisit proper technique through low-intensity, low-excitement skill work, the athlete chooses to pursue personal records with diminished form. The unstated reason for this choice: it’s easy on the ego to put up “good” WOD times. Taking a hit to your “Fran” time in order to perform perfect thrusters is not going to move you up the records board—at least not right away—and the blow to the ego is too much to bear.

In reality, form and intensity are not mutually exclusive, but the non-linearity of their relationship leads novice athletes to the wrong conclusion. For the novice, maintaining form becomes a cruel joke as intensity increases, leading to the erroneous conclusion that the two cannot coexist. Advanced athletes believe the opposite. These athletes recognize that continuous high-intensity work is nearly impossible without strict attention to form. The advanced athlete knows that perfect form is perfect for a reason: it imparts structural advantages that poor form does not.

Take the thruster as an example. Performed poorly, the movement relies on the small muscles of the anterior shoulder to support the weight at lockout. These muscles fatigue extremely quickly, leaving the athlete with reduced capacity in short order. When the thruster is performed well, the weight is supported by the large, hard-to-fatigue muscles of the posterior chain, allowing the form-conscious athlete to continue at peak power long after his sloppy brethren have stopped to rest.

The advantages of good form are not isolated to the thruster. Clear structural advantages can be had in the majority of our movements if one chooses to pursue perfect form. Most of these advantages are based on the physics of power transmission, specifically the fact that it is easier to send power through a rigid structure than through a limp one.

Squatting provides a wonderful illustration. The squat utilizes power from the hip to propel the torso through a complete range of motion. If the spine is rounded and the torso is loose, power is lost and the torso becomes difficult to move. If the spine is kept in a neutral or arched alignment and the torso is rigid, as proper form dictates, power flows freely and the load is easy to move. Nonetheless, we’ll often see novices blasting through flaccid, rounded-back squats, heedless of the power-draining effect of their substandard form.

Condoning bad form for the resulting intensity ignores the big picture. In doing so, we rob our athletes of their long-term potential, artificially capping their progress in the name of immediate gratification. An athlete with poor form and an ugly three-minute “Fran” will always have an ugly three-minute “Fran”, while a similar athlete with good form will soon find himself pushing the limits of possibility, utilizing the structural advantages of the perfect thruster to close in on two minutes.

For the CrossFitter, perfection should be non-negotiable, regardless of the near-term outcome. Progressing to the elite level—heart jackhammering, lungs bursting, and records falling—depends on it.

http://againfaster.squarespace.com/home/

Post thoughts to comments.

Don't forget: tomorrow we're having our first ever Zone Support Group Dinner. The meal is free to all; the only catch is that if you come, you have to bring food, along with the recipe for your creation.

This will be a great opportunity for you to learn how to combine tasty foods in a Zone-compliant way while having a great time with fellow CFO cohorts.

The whole shebang starts at 3:00 p.m. at CFO.

See you all there!

Also, look for all of the recipes to be posted later next week.

The CF-certified Berkeley Fire Department trainers

Just a quick reminder to all of the CFO firefighters out there: we'll be rolling out our first 8:30 a.m. class on Monday, February 4.

Hope to see all of you who are just getting off shift at 8:00 a.m. there!

We had our first Zone Support Group Potluck Dinner last night and enjoyed some delicious Zone food and excellent company. We are planning on having a dinner once every two months so stay tuned for the next one and the CFO Zone Cookbook!

The Dishes:
Sierra and Lance's Turkey Chili
Tom's Heavy Metal Turkey Burgers
Connie's Berry Bliss
Mini's Apple Sausage and Almond Medley
Vanessa's Veggie Chili
Nicole's Chicken and Olives
Robyn's Chicken Waldorf Salad
Laura's Salmon Sashimi
Loren's Hummus, Olive and Cheese Platter
Sam's Brussel Sprouts

Post your support group thoughts to comments.

The Body Fat Test Mobile Test Lab

Good news everyone: we've gotten the okay to expand the hours we're offering body fat testing on Thursday, Jan 31 (one week from tomorrow).

Mike from Body Fat Test can come as early as 1:00 p.m. But here's the deal: we'll be working our way back from the 3:00 p.m. slot. So the first slot available will be 2:45 p.m., the next one available will be 2:30 p.m., etc.

Remember, the entire testing process only takes 15 minutes, so that means we'll have an additional 8 slots available.

The cost for the body fat test is $49.

Read more about the process at the Body Fat Test website.

Sign up at CFO or respond in comments if you can come between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.