CrossFit Oakland

That is a seriously cool picture. Nice handstand, Sherrill.

Sick picture Sherrill! Sounds like a great trip.

Audge are you kidding me? 198lbs on the deadlift!!! It must have nearly snapped that little body in half... I forgot you are on "something" and it ain't Muscle Milk ;)

T & Audra,

So inquiring minds want to know, when is the throwdown between the two of you going to finally happen?

My handstand goal is to avoid getting hit with medicine balls by Shira.

Damn, I'm going to have to miss the handstand clinic after all. Messed up my back doing yesterday's deadlifts (was all ready to set a PR, too). Nice job, T and Dave! And cool shot, Sherrill.

Hopefully there will either be another handstand clinic, or someone can pass the knowledge on to me sometime. How about doing Diane without use of the wall as a goal? :)

BTW, I think we should get some of these for the gym:
JumpSnap: Ropeless Jump Ropes
I might finally be able to do double-unders.

Audra-
Seriously 198lbs. ?! I think my moisture level just went to that of tropical rainforest status!

Brad-
That jumpSnap is simply amazing. I'm so ready to bust some calories!

Mike next rest day Audge is going down. I know she is on something and I will prove it. She is way to "top heavy" to get those numbers on deadlifts...I thought we exposed all the cheaters! And by the way, I got 220 doubleunders with my ropeless jump rope, please put it on the board.

Hey -

If anyone likes Green Day, they are making an unannounced surprise performance tonite at a local bar. They are going on at 8pm. A record producer asked me to go and listen, but I'm in LA.

Jonathan, you there? If anyone wants to go, email me.

Sherril - go shot, beautiful scenery.

Brad - what's your email address?

Sherril - that's cool. Beautiful scenery.

(did I post this 4 times?)

brad.gilliatt@pernod-ricard-usa.com

Its Green Days other band - "Foxboro Hot Tubs". But I was told they will play some of their old stuff.

I think 1 repetition maximum (1RM) deadlifts are a bad idea for many people. In fact, they may be a bad idea for most people and I think that when you see 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 deadlift on the main site, you should approach the workout with great care and strongly consider altering the rep scheme.

Deadlifts are a wonderful exercise and they are phenomenal for strengthening the back. They are also challenging to do correctly because you need to hold your spine in a normal anatomical position when pulling a heavy weight from the ground. As you approach your 1 RM form will start to suffer. This is a fact. In the deadlift this means rounding your back on the pull which greatly increases unhealthy loading on the vertebral discs and hence your chances of injury. The goal of training is to get stronger, not to get injured.

Unless you are very strong, very resilient, or have a desire to compete in powerlifting, I would argue that the reward from pulling heavy singles is vanishingly small compared to the risk. If you do not have some serious deadlift training under your belt, the wisdom of heavy singles further comes into question. The max effort 7x1 deadlift is a truly advanced workout and I feel that anyone who doesn’t already have a have a good idea of what their 1 RM is to within about 10 lbs, would be better served by doing a full warm up and one or two sets at their 5 RM.

I now invite any and all who read this to attack my position, or heap accolades upon me for my insightful comments.

Sherrill - Beautiful! I like the bikes strewn carelessly about as you get your "real" workout on...

Audra - seriously?? That is amazing - congrats...

Brad - I LOVE Green Day and totally want to go, but I am saddled with these rugrats for the night...thanks for the heads up...

TomC,

Don't you know you only get stronger and better by repeatedly smashing yourself into the Wall of Failure and dowsing yourself with the Sweaty Waters of Shame?

How are you to know if you are to be able to vanquish thy enemies without experiencing back spasms?

Chad,

I apologize. You once again have pointed out what should have been obvious to me. :)

tomC, sounds like what you are saying is that 1RM workouts, like most CF days, are in many ways "know thyself days." my guess is that most people get hurt not at their first pull/squat/press with compromised form but the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th - which would lead me to believe that either a) you know your form sucks but... or b) you don't know your form sucks. both indicating a lack of self-awareness.

but it also means that we are letting our partners lift heavy loads with compromised form. mike, nicole, lau and the rest of the trainers have done an amazing job creating an educated community. perhaps the next challenge is to create an accountable community. i think you'd agree that max effort days are great, provided that technique and form is not compromised. we don't let angela drive home drunk :), maybe the same vigilence needs to happen when heavy weights are involved.

and then after our workout we can all sit around in a circle and sing kumbaya...

Sherrill, awesome picture, but I have to say I'm glad that you're back and I'll be seeing you more at 6am! You're a mighty strong lady. Speaking of, what the hell, Audra, I'm struggling to DL more than 150! Your max is like 50 times your body weight!

Sherrill, awesome picture, but I have to say I'm glad that you're back and I'll be seeing you more at 6am! You're a mighty strong lady. Speaking of, what the hell, Audra, I'm struggling to DL more than 150! Your max is like 50 times your body weight!

Edgar-
By "sit around in a circle" do you mean sit around in a circle? And by "sing kumbaya" do you mean smoke insane amounts of weed?

Credit goes to Scott for the photo. [ Glad you liked it, Brad, four times over. :) ]

Audra - 198# DL is truly remarkable, plus I see you cranked out a great performance on Cindy today as well. Strong and fast, plus charming and lovely. Nice work!

Edgar - now you've been to the L1 cert, you can boss us all around, honey. Actually, I feel like many people at CFO are watching out for each other and most of us are also very open advice and input on form.

(Brad Gilliatt -- we maybe need Kumbaya on that mix tape in addition to Meat Loaf and White Stripes...)

my guess is that most people get hurt not at their first pull/squat/press with compromised form but the 2nd, 3rd, or 4

I disagree. You can hurt yourself as easily on 1 lift as you can with 20. Here's the issue with 1 rep max efforts - it is very rare to exert maximum force against a weight with perfect form. It may, in fact, be impossible to do. If you are strong enough, this may not be a particularly dangerous situation. However, in the deadlift, when form breaks down, worse things happen than on some other lifts.

In the November 2007 CrossFit Journal, there’s an article entitled Spine Mechanics for Lifters by Tony Leyland. In that article, Leyland summarized some research that used a computer model of the human body and calculated stress on the spine during deadlifting. The numbers the model spit out were instructive. If you keep the spine in a normal anatomical position, you can deadlift enormous weights (600+ lbs) safely. When you round your back during deadlifts, shear forces on the lumbar spine increase dramatically and quickly go into very dangerous ranges.

Let’s also refer to another reputable source, Mr. Mark Rippetoe:

ANY limit effort on ANY lift will cause form to break down, whether at a high school meet or at the IPF Worlds. This is what made the attempt a limit.

From here

So let’s examine what we have. Bad form on deadlifts is very bad for your back and predisposes you to injury. Max efforts lead to form breakdown. Therefore, I argue that max effort deadlifts are not something with which many people should concern themselves. They are often dangerous and your 1 RM can be estimated from your 5 RM well enough.

Nabil,

What is this weed you speak of? Back in Pennsylvania I used to have a garden and I would use mulch to keep the weeds down. Do you recommend using smoke instead? Do tell.

Tom - by your reasoning, isn't your form as likely to break down on the 5th lift of your 5RM as it is on a 1RM attempt? After all, it is a *max*. I definitely struggled has hard to get up 330# doing 5x3 as I did doing 365#.

I can't blame anyone other than myself for my injury. Dawn was doing a great job giving me advice and reviewing my lifts on video. I think I just had a momentary lapse about halfway up...Dawn said it looked like I rounded my back. My back was also still a little sore from Fran. It's not bad, though...I should be back in a couple days.

isn't your form as likely to break down on the 5th lift of your 5RM

Good point. I was careless in my use of "5 RM." I intended it to be a weight that you would use in a 5 rep work set.

any RM effort - be it 1, 3, 5, or 50 reps, or any workout where you're working to best your previous PR is by rippetoe's definition, a "limit effort." so where do you draw the line? part of the beauty of CF (and life, for that matter - i may or may not have been singing kumbaya tonight) is being confronted with limits, testing those (thoughtfully, we hope), then breaking through them and confronting new limits. people get hurt by testing their limits, that's just how it is. like nabil told me sweetly once, "it's better to have loved and lost then to have never loved before..."

nabil, i knew i saw you at this party...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=KmFHW7YWK_E

Sherrill, Great Picture!! you two must have had great trip!! Congrats Audge for both Cindy and your nearly 2x bw DL!

Edgar-
I knew we shared a moment when I said those words to you in that stadium on that sunny day. There you were, a young asian boy with a sleevless Look What the Cat Dragged In t-shirt, amongst a crowd of crazy teenagers. There I was up on stage, jaded about love and with frizzed hair. For anyone who wasn't there that day you can watch the video here, with the exact moment happening at 1:11 in the video.

I agree with Tom C. We had at least 2 people injured from this workout yesterday at CFO, which is a significant percentage and probably more than any other workout in recent memory. I'd be willing to bet there are others who had some back pain after the workout as well, and probably a few others who skipped it because they hurt their back the last time they did heavy deadlifts.

Probably many or even most of us should not be doing 1RM deadlift workouts - substituting sets of 5 at a lower weight would be a smart scaling for many, and simply working on form with a lighter weight would be very smart for those who are less experienced. I did this for a long time before I ever tried to go heavy, and I still had form problems that took multiple coaching sessions to correct - and even now it is nearly impossible for me to execute a 1RM deadlift with perfect form.

If your form deteriorates on the 5th rep of your 5 rep set, you are less likely to get hurt than if it is bad on your 1RM attempt, because you have less weight on the bar and you have hopefully just done 4 reps with perfect form, so you are nice and warm and your form is less likely to be horrible, just slightly bad.

Watching people deadlifting heavy, often with rounded backs and hips rising before the back is a scary thing. Most of the time you might get away with it, but eventually you won't - you'll end up with at best back pain for a few days, pulled or torn spinal muscles, or at worst a ruptured lumbar disc.

Most people either don't realize their form is falling apart or are unable to correct it. Ego drives us to lift higher weights at the expense of good form, and this eventually gets us injured. Lifting a limit weight off the floor in the DL requires a commitment and intensity which makes it hard to abort if the form is less than perfect.

So I have to agree that sets of 3 or 5 or 7 or 10 or whatever would be more appropriate for those who wish to avoid injury. If we do 1RM DL workouts it should be with the full awareness that ANY form breakdown, especially with a heavy weight, can and does cause serious and debilitating spinal injuries. Their should definitely be no increasing of the weight unless we do each rep with perfect form.

Those with the experience, body awareness, and of course proper coaching who understand the proper form and the risks involved in deviating from it, will of course derive some benefit from occasionally doing 1RM DL workouts. Those who are relatively inexperienced, new to deadlifting, or not completely confident in their skills should think twice before rolling the dice.

Finally, Brad and Journey, I hope you both heal up quickly. Back injuries suck. And great pic Sherrill! Moab is an amazing place...

Great deadlift discussion. I think the problem isn't the 1RM per se, but the infrequency of the low rep, high weight workouts. Beyond muscle strength, your tendons and ligaments need to be strong enough to lift those loads. You have to train your entire body to get used to holding that much weight, and when it's been a month or so since your last maximal effort on a specific lift, a lot of people are not going to be ready. So the 5 rep work set might be a better idea. I seriously injured my neck (disc bulge) doing one rep max overhead presses during the CF total. Mostly because I hadn't done heavy singles in a really long time, and I wasn't warmed up enough. Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

Tom, you're actually being serious. crazy.

Thanks Allen for your tips on my back injury, have been doing the exercises and am starting to feel better, although not well enough to do michael today, bummer it's my favorite workout. maybe i will try and do some version of it in the pool. btw for others who injured their back pool work outs are great for it. I did one yesterday and definetely got my heart rate up and my back felt great.

Tom, you're actually being serious. crazy.

Yeah, I think I got too much sun yesterday and it affected my judgment. I will make sure not to make these kinds of lapses a habit.

Journey, glad to hear you are doing better and staying active. I would not recommend doing Michael or anything that will put a lot of stress on the injured area until it is feeling a LOT better.

Pool workouts are a great idea, just listen to your body and don't do anything that hurts it. Keep icing it a lot to reduce the inflammation and it will heal faster and better.

And be aware that Ibuprofen, while beneficial for reducing inflammation, will mask the pain and make it possible to do more damage if you take it before a workout.

Edgar, let this be a lesson to you. Never drink and drive and lift at the same time!