Do you have trouble nailing those Double Unders, Kipping Pull Ups, or progressing in some other area of your fitness? Warming up can help you break through those plateaus. Take it from someone that is still weak in the Handstand Push Ups and the Pistols – by not practicing these skills during my warm up routine I still have to scale them down.

Warming up provides us two opportunities: preparing the body for given activity, and mastering new skills.

According to the American Council on Exercise’s (ACE) Third Edition Manual:

• Warming up permits a gradual metabolic adaptation, prevents premature onset of lactic acid accumulation, causes an increase in muscle temperature which reduces the risk of injury, facilitates neural transmission for motor unit recruitment, improves coronary blood flow, allows a gradual redistribution of blood flow to active muscles, increases elasticity of connective tissues, provides a screening for future musculoskeletal and metabolic problems that may arise at higher intensities, and provides a psychological warm up.

That’s all fine and dandy, but the main point to take away from this is that it helps prevent injury.

As far as improving  athletic skills, don’t practice it and you will never get it. Double Unders require learning the timing and speed and practicing it to the point it becomes muscle memory. This goes for everything. WoDs will help improve skills but there still needs to be some extra effort put in by the athlete. Double Unders do not just come to a person, and the same can be said for most skills (Muscle Up transition, hitting the “Power Position” in a lift).

Use the warm up to develop the areas in which you’re lacking. If you are someone that has a hard time getting your knees to track out over your toes take the time to really force the knees out and hold it to help build the Sartorius (adductor) muscle. Practice climbing the rope or learning how to lock your feet into place while ascending the rope. Practice the Burgener Warm Up: Coach Burgener recommends executing the Burgener Warm Up every single day to aid in the Olympic Lifts. Similarly, if you choose to do 20 Kettlebell Swings you can be assured that when a “Helen” or “Filthy Fifty” pops up you will be better prepared for it.

Warming up is a crucial element to your success as an athlete for injury prevention, preparing for a ME (Max Effort) lift, or working on your weak areas. As CrossFitters we all have weaknesses – every last one of us. So my advice is “warm up; become a better athlete”.

The First Pull starts from the floor and moves to the top of the knees. It is critical that the set up is perfect. In a slow lift, such as a Deadlift, there is sufficient time to make corrections throughout the lift. This is not the case with the Olympic lifts as they are too fast to make corrections once the lift is initiated. The hips are much lower in the set up for the Olympic lifts than they are in a Deadlift with the knees flared out to the sides to allow for a more vertical bar path and the toes angled out slightly for comfort. Pull the chest up, take a deep breath and extend the legs at the knees making sure the hip and back angle rise at the same rate while driving through the heels. We do not want a stiff-legged Deadlift; as always HOOK GRIP! At this point, with sufficient weight, the bar should feel heavy, let it feel heavy. The lifter is still pulling with enough speed to quickly get the bar to the receiving position, but this is not where the explosion comes into play. While the first pull is slower than the second, the lifter should not purposely make it slower.

Set up of the Snatch

First Pull

The Second Pull is from the top of the knees to the crease of the hip. This is where the bar really gets moving as the lifter will violently stand up to full extension significantly increasing the velocity of the weight. Sometimes the lifter will hear this referred to as “speed through the middle”. A number of verbal cues can be given to signify to explode with the weight. The lifter needs to put as much power behind the weight as possible to allow the bar to become as weightless as possible for as long as possible. This is what takes the strength aspect out of Cleaning a new PR (Personal Record). Think of the Wall Ball exercise, throwing a 20#, or even a 4# ball, 10 feet does not happen slowly. One must apply speed to the ball to get it up there, it is no difference here. The Laws of Physics still apply.

Second Pull

Now, this is where things usually go wrong with most everyone. Most, if not all, beginners want to start the Third Pull halfway through the Second Pull. Fine, the lift is still good considering if none of the rules were broken (different story at a later time). While the lift will still be good, the lifter is taxing their biceps by pulling, and therefore, muscling the weight up. It is easier just to stick with this philosophy and be content with an early arm pull than taking the time to make corrections and get it right. Here are the choices: Pull early with the arms, fatigue the arms, and never lift as much weight as possible, or learn to hesitate on the arm pull, take the arm fatigue completely out of the equation, and lift more weight with less effort. I’ll opt for the latter, I hope you will too.

Another common mistake that comes from pulling too early with the arms is not reach “Full” or “Triple” Extension. What I mean by Full Extension is that the lifters ankle, knees, and hips are extended with a slight layback to counteract the weight of the barbell. This sufficiently finishes the Second Pull and begins the transition into the Third Pull.

One more common fault before we put this dead horse to rest is to maintain the bar in constant contact with the body throughout the Second Pull. This isn’t a very common fault in the First Pull. By not running the bar along the thighs the lifter is negating much of the second Pull and will not apply sufficient speed to the bar.

“Triple” or “Full Extension”

During the Third Pull the weight should still be moving upward as the lifter is PULLING their self under the weight. This is the point when the bar should be free floating in mid-air and the lifter moves in to position to properly receive the weight. Falling under the weight will not suffice. The lightest bar with no added load will still fall fast. This is why the lifter needs to engage, get aggressive, commit to the weight, and forcefully PULL their self under the bar.

Third Pull

The Olympic Lifts are a game of patience for everyone involved. With patience on everyone’s part (lifter and coach) in due time anyone can learn to Clean and Snatch with proper and efficient form.

Photos courtesy of USAW’s Club Coach Manual

Squat Snatch

1-1-1-1-1

Try to catch the weight in the Squat. If you cannot catch it in the Squat, receive the weight in the power position and Overhead Squat the load

Rest 5 minutes then

“The Chief”

Max rounds in 3 minutes of:
135 pound Power cleans, 3 reps (95# for women)
6 Push-ups
9 Squats

Rest 1 minute. Repeat for a total of 5 cycles.

Post loads and rounds completed to comments.

WoD:

Front Squat

1-1-1-1-1

Rest 5 minutes then

5-4-3-2-1

Deadlifts (Men use 275#/Women use  173#)

Muscle Ups

Post loads and times to comments

MEBB was created by Coach Micheal Rutherford from CrossFit Kansas City because he noticed that while CrossFit WoDs did develop strength, it took some time to develop optimal strength.

A perfect example of this was when I was running an affiliate out of my garage, I had (and still do) a client that was great at bodyweight WoDs, but sorely lacking in the strength department. When he first came to me he could barely Overhead Squat a PVC pipe and had a low 200# Deadlift. Lori actually brought MEBB to my attention and what I saw was that trainers from other affiliates claimed to have impressive times/lifts while their clients were still struggling to Rx many WoDs. This was exactly my problem and I jumped on it.

After four months of MEBB Joel went from an OHS of 20# to doing 125 for a double, 215# Deadlift to 320# for a single, 5 minutes off of his “Fran”, 7 off of “Angie”, and several other impressive achievements. Bottom line, he was getting stronger and faster by lifting for a Max Effort (ME) for a specified number of reps prior to the metcon.

Joel shortly after PR’ing on the deadlift at 300#

 

So that’s the “why” to our MEBB training approach, now for the “how”.

You may notice a rep schemes of “5-5-5-3-3-3″, “1-1-1-1-1-1-1″, or “2-2-2-2″ and get a little confused by this. Let’s look at the first scheme, the idea is that when lifting, the lifter has 3 attempts at getting a ME lift for 5 reps and then 3 attempts at getting a ME lift for 3 reps. For the 7 singles, it’s the same principle. Look at it from the standpoint of a weightlifting/powerlifting competition where you warm up prior to lifting and then get 3 attempts to lift. Try to determine an “opening weight” while warming up and after the warm up go for the ME. Note that the warm up does not count in that rep scheme. Always warm up prior to lifting.

The idea is to give your ME for that lift for the specified number of reps. We are not trying to set a PR (Personal Record) everyday, but we find that tends to happen, but not always.

When a beginner comes to MEBB we need to be careful to not overload them so we will work to a moderately heavy weight (about 65%-85%) for several weeks as the beginner will respond to reps better than weights. Take advantage of these few weeks to learn proper form and safety. This will be beneficial when it comes time for going for an all out max.

WoD:

5 Rounds for time

15 Thrusters (Men use 135#/Women use 83#)

Run 400m

Skill work:

Handstands

Parallettes

Pull Ups

Ring work (False Grip from high rings, Lever Progressions)

Then

21 Pull-ups
21 Handstand Push-ups
18 Pull-ups
18 Handstand Push-ups
15 Pull-ups
15 Handstand Push-ups
12 Pull-ups
12 Handstand Push-ups
9 Pull-ups
9 Handstand Push-ups
6 Pull-ups
6 Handstand Push-ups
3 Pull-ups
3 Handstand Push-ups

Saturday , the 19th, we will have our next free workout at the gym at 11 AM. This will be a scaled version of today’s workout posted below. Email info@crossfit-orlando.com to register.

For time:
25 Walking lunge steps
20 Pull-ups
50 Box jumps, 20 inch box
20 Double Unders
25 Ring dips
20 Knees to elbows
30 Kettlebell swings, 2 pood
30 Sit-ups
20 Hang squat cleans, 35 pound dumbells
25 Back extensions
30 Wall ball shots, 20 pound ball
3 Rope climb ascents

Post times to comments

In an effort to make our WoDs more effective and better suit you, the athlete, we are going to start programming set versions of the WoD already scaled down. Look forward to these scaled down variations where applicable. Thank you.

WoD:

Clean and Jerk

1-1-1-1-1-1-1

Rest 5 minutes then

5 Rounds

Run 80 Foot Suicides At 20 Foot Intervals

Rest 60 seconds between each round

Score is total time to complete all 5 Rounds

Post loads and times to comments

Max Effort Deadlift

5-5-5-3-3-3

Rest 5 minutes then

Complete As Many Rounds As Possible in 20 Minutes of

7 Knees to Elbows

5 Burpees

3 Ring Dips

1 Rope Climb

Post loads and rounds completed to comments

Max Effort Weighted Dips

2-2-2-2

Rest 5 minutes then

3 Rounds for time

20 Double Unders

10 Dumbbell Hang Power Cleans (Men use 45#/Women use 30#)

200m Farmer’s Walk (Use same dumbbells)

Post loads and times to comments

“Fran”

For Time

21-15-9

Thrusters (Men use 95#/Women use 65#)

Pull Ups

Post times to comments

Push Press

3-3-3-1-1-1

Rest 5 minutes then,

4 Rounds for time

Run 400m

25 Back Extensions

Post loads and times to comments

Max Effort/Skill Work:

Pistols – Develop the skill of a Pistol, if competent with it start adding weight

Rest 5 minutes then

“Petranek’s Baseline”

Row 500m

40 Squats

30 Sit Ups

20 Push Ups

10 Pull Ups

Post loads and times to comments

Skill Work:

Squat Clean and Jerks

then

15-10-5-10-15

5-10-15-10-5

Burpees

10′ Wall Balls Shots (Men use 20#/Women use 14#)

Post times to comments

WoD:

Shoulder Press

1-1-1-1-1-1-1

then

“Annie”

For time 50-40-30-20-10

Double Unders

Sit Ups

Post loads and times to comments

Skill: POSE Running and techniques

then

“Helen”

3 Rounds for time

Run 400m

21 Kettlebell Swings (Men use 53#/Women use 35#)

12 Pull Ups

Post times to comments

WoD:
Box Squats

5-5-5-3-3-3

then

5 Rounds for time

15 Push Jerks (Men use 95#/Women use 63#)

15 Ring Dips

Post loads and times to comments

WoD:

Deck Power Clean

2-2-2-2-2

then

“Death By Push Ups”

With a continously running clock do 1 Push Ups on the first minute, 2 Push Ups on the second minute, 3 on the 3rd… Continue as long as possible. Break into as many sets as necessary.

Post loads and rounds to comments

Max Rep Pull Ups

If you cannot do Pull Ups use a band for assistance or Ring Rows. Choose a difficulty setting that will challenge you. The goal is to hit a fair amount of double digits.

Rest 5 minutes then

Max Height Box Jump

If you cannot jump onto a box start with a bumper or try for a max height step up.

The goal for both of these is maximal output with some degree of ease  (if you can’t RX) to help develop your strength and explosive power to increase your workload and set the stage for improvement next time.

Post loads and heights to comments.

Bonus:

Row 2ooom.