Mike went to another affiliate and started coming here in late February.  Before coming here his max Deadlift was 315, in 2 1/2 months here of working the program and never testing a 1 RM he pulled 365 last week for a 50 lb PR!!!

I posted this article to Facebook and wanted to post it here as well as add my thoughts.  It is about whether you are building strength or merely testing it.  Here is the article from EliteFTS:  Building vs Testing Strength

The basic gist is that if you just simply come in and keep trying that 1 RM instead of working a program and working to build strength you will hit a sticking point and go nowhere fast.  The author, as well as me, have fallen victim to this many times.  You get a lift and then everytime you come in and just try to beat that lift and get that new PR, at this point you are no longer building strength!  Get back to building strength, work to add a little more weight to the bar each cycle and beat your old AMRAP.  Below is an example of our program based on a 400 lb Deadlift:

Cycle 1

Cycle 2-  In this cycle add 5 lbs to your Deadlift/Squat and 2.5 to Bench Press/Press

In this scenario you got stronger no matter what your 1 RM is.  By liftinmg 385 x 5 you are stronger than a month earlier getting 380 x 4.  If you keep building strength like this your 1 RM's will come up but if you just come in and keep trying 405 everytime we Deadlift you will stall and go nowhere.  Also, the muscular endurance you gain from that 5's Wave is invaluable to CrossFit.  Think of yesterday- if you can get 325 x 10 then 225 in a 21-15-9 is going to be much easier for you.  This is why we work so hard on building strength and not just throwing in a random 5,5,5,5,5 or 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 as is commonly seen in CrossFit.  By building strength you become better at CrossFit and in life.

Alexis pulls 200!!!  This was a HUGE PR of 35 lbs!

On the front whiteboard I tried to have everyone on there with all of your numbers buit it became way too much to manage.  So what I have done is turn that into a Leaderboard for 5 CrossFit Benchmark WODs as well as the main strength work we do.  The WODs are Fran, Grace, Helen, DT, Elizabeth, Diane as well as Deadlift, Squat, Press, Bench Press, Clean and Jerk, Snatch.  I want these to be numbers that you shoot for and strive to get on the board.  The lefthand side is for the guys and right for the girls.  This is a great way to track your progress and to work towards certain goals. 

Take a look at the board, there are enough examples to show how to put your name up if you qualify.  If you are not sure grab me and I will be happy to go through it with you.

You guys are all kicking major ass!!!

I have posted some of these lists before and I will get harassed about them, and that is EXACTLY why I am posting this one from Jason Ferrugia...  Seriously I know some, if not most, of this list is not possible as you add in things like jobs and kids but there are some good bits in here that you can do, I will bold them.  Here you go Todd and Andrew get ready for your eat only grass fed fish, sleep more, make more money, be happy list!

Here are 39 ways that would be a good start.

Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.- Mark Rippetoe

Ok, this is in response to the Adaptation article I posted from EliteFTS as well as the comments on the article and some in person.  First, I use EliteFTS as a source of information frequently because they are a phenomenal resourse BUT they are geared to Powerlifting (Squat, Bench Press, Deadlift) so please bear that in mind.  Not all of the articles will apply to CrossFit and what we do.  Specifically in this one he mentions handstand push ups as well as a "jack of all trades" mentality and that IS what we do in CrossFit.  I want you to be a "jack of all trades".  So please take this into consideration when reading articles posted, not all will apply to CrossFit but they will have parts that do apply and take and use those nuggets.  I try to push info out to you guys 5 days a week, not just some random piece once a month.  I think I owe it to you guys to try to educate and inform as much as possible, when pulling articles keep that in mind...

Now, on to the comments and questions directly and in my words why I do what I do and why I program the way I do.  Ok, here goes.  First, the quote above is 100% true; the stronger you are the better able you will be able to withstand and recover from injury, illness, trauma pretty much everything.  Real life example, Tammy from the noon class had to have 14 inches of her colon removed and the doctor said she was able to leave the hospital a week earlier and her recovery would be significantly faster because of her fitness level.  Stronger people are also more useful, the stronger you are the easier things like yardwork and hobbies or sports become.  Think about who you want helping you move- Jim or the person who lifts just the bar...

The strength work is built to help you build strength, power and muscular endurance.  This strength greatly enhances your fitness levels and your work capacity.  I heard someone say they don't lift heavy they just train for endurance and use 75 lbs for Thrusters.  Say you squat 200 lbs and can do 20 Thrusters in a row at 75 lbs.  If you lift heavy and get you squat to 300 I guarantee you will be able to do more Thrusters in a row because each rep will be at a much lighter percentage of your maximum.  So by building strength you also build muscular endurance as well. 

I then build my WOD programming around the strength work as accessory work or further building on the skills we learned in the strength work.  By accessory work I am talking about movements that help build upon the major movement we did for strength work, so that means putting Ring Dips after we do Bench Press or Push Press after we do Presses.  That is also why you will see Power Cleans in the WOD on the days we do Cleans for strength.  We teach the skill, then enhance that in the WOD to build on those foundations.  Once the major movements are set I like to program a Barbell, Bodyweight, Cardio movement in each WOD.  This is the vast majority, it ensures that you guys are strong, can move your body, have good stamina and are well rounded. 

If you have questions ask!  Just take into account not all articles are related to CrossFit so pull out the salient points and leave the rest behind...

You are invited to a Baby Shower honoring KARLA LARSON
Saturday, May 19th 11am-1pm
Becca Raymond's house
5429 Jadwin Loop
Fort Belvoir,VA 22060
Please RSVP to Becca 706-577-0264 or
rebecca.k.raymond@us.army.mil
Karla is registered at Babies R Us.

The baby will come out overhead squatting...

During this week of 1 Rep Maxes we have seen some great work and lots of PR's, 49 people PR'd their Squat on Monday.  We had a ton of folks PR their Snatch, Press and Deadlift and we are off to a good start on the cleans today.  Keep up the great work.  This is transitioning as I counted 8 guys in the 5 PM class out of 11 hitting the Power Snatches at 135.  We had at least 60% of the gym go Rx on the Thrusters Monday at 135/95, that is huge huge work.  That is a very heavy weight and you guys are killing it!  Keep getting stronger and keep hammering away!

Ummm, don't do this!  Despite this rather obvious bit of advice we had it happen twice tonight on the Jerks.  Then I came home read this piece on Breaking Muscle: No Dying, how to avoid dropping a bar on your head and I thought wow that seems like fate...

Here is the main points, but click the link Nick Horton is really good and there are some good stories:

ONE: Less Freakout, More Lockout

My business partner, podcast cohost, and lifter at PDX Weightlifting, Peter Curcio has a saying, "Less freakout, more lockout." It takes seriously that Olympic lifting is, among other things, downright scary sometimes.

No matter how good your technique is with light weights, if your fear gets in the way, you will use crappy technique with heavy weights. Proper technique includes a powerful and massively tight lockout in the catch of the snatch. Your arms need to be so darned rigid that a herd of stegosauruses could stampede into you and you'd still be holding that bar above your head.

The rules of a good lockout are:

1. Locked arms (duh!)
2. Head forward a bit (that doesn't necessarily mean you need to look down)
3. Shrug up hard

Doing those things will make you far stronger in the overhead position. Being prepared for the zombie apocalypse is all the rage, but don't forget to be ready for that herd of dinosaurs coming to break your lockout! 

TWO: Pull Under, Don't Drop Under

Coaches lie all the time. "One step at a time" is the mantra. And that means we are forced to have you erring on one side or the other of some arbitrary line. One way we lie to you is by saying your goal is to explode the bar off the hip, then dive to the bottom as fast as possible.

That's a lie. It's a useful lie for a number of reasons, though.

If you are like most adult beginners, you have a horrible habit of hitting the hips with the bar and then continuing to pull up on the bar with your arms while the rest of your body remains standing up totally straight! We call that "over pulling."

I use the "dive under the bar" lie myself because if you tell a beginner to do anything at all with their arms - anything - they will almost invariably over pull.

So, I've fixed one problem with my lie. But I've created another: When you are in the habit of diving to rock bottom on every single rep, no matter what, then you are increasing your chances of the bar landing on your head. 

Let's use a hypothetical example to understand why. Assume that when you are in the full overhead squat position, the measurement from the floor to the bar is six inches (What? I'm imagining you as a Smurf).

Now let's imagine that you are ultra-powerful one day - like Dave was - and you explode a PR attempt (heavy!) up to seven inches? Because you listen well, and learned to dive to the bottom when the bar hits your hip, you beat the bar to the bottom and the bar ends up a full inch above your outstretched hands.

This results in a CRASH!

It doesn't take a full inch of difference to cause a major crash with heavy weights. If you are anything less than dinosaur ready - super locked! - then you are risking the bar landing on your head.

The fix is to catch the bar where it lands. Almost every lift you ever take will put the bar somewhere between a tall power snatch and a full overhead squat. It will be in the large gray area in-between. Your goal is to get very good at learning exactly where the bar is going and meeting the bar there exactly.

You do this by pulling yourself under the bar, rather than simply diving down to rock bottom on every attempt. When the bar hits your hips, you start to pull yourself down as fast as possible. This puts you in control of the bar at all times. There should NEVER be a time when the bar and you are not in sync.

Control the bar; don't let it control you.

Hit the hip. Pull yourself down. Lockout. Save your head…and watch out for dinosaurs.

This is a piece from EliteFTS about Adaptation and how the body adapts to the stresses put on it through training.  This, as well as the theory of Progressive Overload, are two of the theories on training I like to have as part of what we do.  As you guys keep adapting to the stresses, WODs, I throw at you I need to keep changing and making the stresses harder so you continue to adapt and get better.  The last paragraph is key too, this emphasizes why we stick to using the big movements so often.  Get the biggest bang for the buck out of movements, it also emphasizes why we don't add in some of the silly movements we have seen done.  Here it is:

All athletes are trying to accomplish the same thing in their training. They’re trying to adapt to the demands and specificity of their sport. In order to achieve proper adaptation, we need to understand how the body reacts to stressors.

First off, stress needs to be looked at differently than the common perception. It isn’t always a negative event. Stress is anything that has an effect on the body—emotionally, mentally, or physically. It can be good or bad.

Application of Stress

Adaptation is the result of a stress applied to the body. It’s the adjustment made for survival or protection of the organism.

Each person has a given amount of energy available to handle stress and adaptation. Hans Selye calls this “adaptation energy” (also known as the current adaptive reserve). Once this limit is reached, further adaptation isn’t possible. In the global perspective of life, further stress beyond the adaptation limit means death. In training, this means a plateau.

In sports, most often we’re trying to find the best possible way to allow the athlete to adapt to the specific demands of the sport and then continue adaptation until mastery of the sport is reached. To keep this article as simple as possible, I will use powerlifting as an example.

Improvements

In order to improve the squat, bench, and deadlift, a lifter must do a certain amount of work. For optimal results, he must choose the methods that will allow for the greatest gains in those three exercises and those exercises only. As a powerlifter, no one cares how many handstand push-ups you can do if you still can’t bench. Any training that doesn’t yield progress in the three main lifts is a waste of energy.

As described above, each lifter will have a certain amount of energy available for adaptation for the squat, bench and deadlift.  The key to filling up this circle is to select the exercises that will yield the most improvement in the squat, bench, and deadlift. However, many times we try to use far too many exercises that will spread our adaptation among many different stressors.

A lifter who trains in this manner is the classic example of a “jack of all trades, master of none.” How is a lifter supposed to improve specific targets when he’s devoting so much energy to such a high number of targets that aren’t specific to the main movements? And it isn’t only the sheer number of targets but also the energy expenditure of each. While one may be doing Prowler® sprints only once a week for 15–20 minutes, the energy expenditure is so high that it interferes with the energy demands of the primary lifts.

Optimal Results

In order to achieve optimal results, we must choose the biggest bang for the buck exercises and avoid devoting time and energy to exercises that have little or no carryover to our main objective. While there are times in training when a large variety of exercises works, there are also times when we need to focus our energy on what’s most important.

We have spots left for the Sunday Weightlifting Clinic, we need to fill them up!!!  I know I screwed up with the Mothers Day scheduling, damn computer calendars don't show holidays...  But if you are a guy just explain to those mothers in your life how much stronger you'll be to help around the house.  If you are a mother, just explain that they can take you to dinner because you got some lifting to do earlier that day.  See, easy!

Register Here!

Awesome work on the Squats yesterday!  We had at least 49 PR's and the ones that didn't were either new or were people I did not want pushing to a 1 RM just yet, still working form.  That is huge huge work!!!!

This week we will be testing our 1 Rep Maxes on all of the major lifts- Squat, Deadlift, Press, Bench Press, Snatch and Clean and Jerk.  Because this has been a pretty rough cycle we will be taking a deload week next week, which basically means we will ease off the strength work for the week so you can recover.  But if you miss a 1 Rep Max this week you can always make it up next week.  I would like to get as many lifts in for as many people as possible.  So we have basically 2 weeks to get in all of our 1 RM's for everyone.

This will finish up the Speed Squat and Olympic Cycle and we will take the rest of May off for any specific work and just get back to regular programming.  I am working on a couple options for June and thinking of what I want to do and how to do it.  As I get that figured out I will pass that on.  Until then keep kicking ass and let's his some big time 1 RM's this week!

Friday: