I stole that phrase from Coach Rip, but it's not like he'll ever read this blog so I'm not too worried.
Well, as Jon Welborn (our crossfit football expert/player) said, it is always better to be bigger and stronger. I tend to agree with his assessment. However, I'll ask this question: how does one measure strength. What I have decided is that I am willing to sacrifice some of my 1 rep max for a given lift. I still hope this will improve, but I am not focusing on it and it will probably go up more slowly than if I trained like a power lifter.
I am instead focusing on upping the number of times I can do a given weight very near my limit. Again, I am not one of those people who thinks it is not important to get strong or who does not recognize that improvements in the one rep max crossover to higher reps. However, I also know (and work by CF coaches much more experienced than me like Jeff Martin at Brand X) that CrossFitters are compressed at the upper end of their strength. Our 5 rep max is closer to our 1 rep max than most. We recover from a max effort faster than most.
This only makes sense. Given the amount of high rep work we do, we are bound to see improvements in muscular endurance. Jeff Martin has done some work to bring a kind of organizing principal to this in his strength program. One of its defining characteristics is the inclusion of a max effort set of 15-20 reps. I don’t see this as an abandonment of the quest to get bigger and stronger. Nor have I determined that I am “Strong Enough.” This is another way to attack my weakness which is, ironically, weakness. I want to get better at CF workouts. If my max jerk only goes up 10lbs but I manage to go from breaking sets of 5x155lb jerks to doing them unbroken, I am happy.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
In other quick news, I have set a big PR in Elizabeth. I bring this up because it is a good example of improving my endurance at moderately high weight. My 21-15-9 of 135lb cleans went much better than last time when I almost DNF’d due to extreme back pain. I probably should have stopped. The rest of you should NOT follow my lead on that one. Also set a Fran PR at 3:09 and a weighted pull-up PR at 117lbs. Pull-up was solid and no doubt. Fran was very good, but I notice that even when I'm all the way up and you can see my ear past elbow, I have a slight crick in my elbow. This is a product of shoulder flexibility more than anything else and does not really shorten the range of motion, but is not clean and leaves more doubt than I would like. I will address it.
Random thought for the day: squat clean thrusters are an awesome exercise and I want to do more of them. Discuss.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
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5 comments:
Also known as the "Cluster" (http://www.norcalsc.com/index.php/post/loving_the_cluster/)
I hate these things, to be honest, i've only ever done them during the start of a fran or starting any thruster movement from the ground. I've never done a workout that consisted of only clusters.
As much as that would suck, it would be good to see them in a workout (both high rep light weight and low rep heavy weight ones).
They just tax your system so much, it's brutal.
I did 6 rounds of 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off of these with 135. It was very hard. Some of the guys did these during the heavy Grace a couple of weeks back. Maybe during the next Clean and Jerk workout we will introduce it with light weight in the warm-up. You are moving a large weight a VERY long distance about as quickly as can be done.
Check out K-Star's latest CFJ article about stretching your shoulder/tricep - might help.
I've been thinking the same thing over the last few months regarding the abandonment of a high CrossFit Total. For the purposes of increasing work capacity, especially in competition events that rarely ask for a 1-Rep Max, I think it would be more beneficial to increase strength in the 3-5 Rep Maxes. 'Twould be nice to have a 1000 CFT, but I'll sacrifice that for a sub 4:00 Fran and sub 9 min Elizabeth any day of the week.
...or perhaps I need an excuse not to touch heavy barbells... as those are my weakness.
It's a delicate balance. But in the end I'm willing to keep a 420lb deadlift rather than push it up too much further if it means I can do 5x400 or 20x315. I'd really like to get 15 2x bodyweight deadlifts. So for me that's 15x380 give or take.
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