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The snatch is the fastest of the Olympic lifts. While a good Olympic lifter makes a good snatch look easy, the movement requires a bit more skill than traditional powerlifting movements. The Olympic lifts develop power and speed in an athlete unmatched in other sports. Here are a couple of shots of two of our CrossFitters as they begin the third pull under the bar. Yes, that's a pull under the bar. Momentum on the bar developed from the explosive power of the legs is what gets the bar, and keeps the bar, moving up. The lifter's final, or third, pull on the bar doesn't get the load any higher, it just gets the body under the load as quickly as possible. Continuing to pull up on the bar is a common fault that leads to missed lifts and plateaus in loads.
Ben, above, and Jen, right, have reached full extension of the hips, torso is fully upright, and they have begun to pull under the bar. You can tell from the hair that they have begun to travel under the bar!
Our CrossFit Ocean City Girls Club gets some local press. Click HERE.
Santa showed up at our 5:45 a.m. class this morning! It was great to see Santa, who's thinking of opening CrossFit North Pole, sometime next year. Santa told us that he finally decided that it was time to start CrossFitting and focus on his health and fitness! This year, Santa would like us to substitute a Zone friendly one-block snack for the usual milk and cookies we leave out. By the way, Santa puts out some serious wattage on his rows!
A vision board is a great way to see the future. Visualization is one of many creative ways you can turn your dreams into goals and your goals into reality. 2010 is going to be a great year!
This is the first in a series about goal setting. To begin with, you may or may not have specific goals in mind. Rather than thinking of this as a negative, think of your lack of goals as unchanneled opportunity! But were to start? The best place to start is to just brainstorm. Take out a large piece of paper, use a white board, or try online brainstorming programs like FreeMind. List categories of your life (work, family, fitness, health, etc.). Under each category, list anything that comes to mind - ideas about what you want, what you need, things you want to work on, or things you dream about. Next, think about where you'd like to be in 6 months, a year, or even five years. Don't forget to include your big dream goals, like financial independence, run your own company, own a house, or vacation in Hawaii.
Chris in mid jump onto one of our 25" boxes.
Box Jumps, or plyometric jumps onto a box, primarily develops strength and speed through the quick and intense contractions of the leg muscles. The eccentric contraction, or stretch reflex, of the hamstring in particular will improve overall vertical jump height and help with improved squat loads. The movement also requires coordination, accuracy, and agility. When done properly, a box jump landing should be soft, landing on the full foot with weight more towards the ball of the foot, and in a full squat. The jumper should then immediately stand tall to open up the hip flexors before either jumping, or stepping, back down and beginning another rep. The box jump will also develop the tendons and ligiments in and around the knee that aid in the prevention of injuries from lateral movements on playing fields and courts.
The medicine ball clean is one of the Nine Basic CrossFit Movements. It's taught at all CrossFit Level 1 Certifications. Why? The med ball clean teaches the athlete to work the explosive power of the hips to full extension, the quickness required to drop under a load, and the timing and sequence of performing a proper clean. Can these movements be taught with a barbell? Sure they can, but if you have a large number of athletes a med ball clean becomes a perfect teaching tool. Besides, not everyone can relate a barbell to lifting everyday odd objects. A med ball more closely resembles a bag of groceries, a large bag of dog food or mulch, a small child, or your dog (note: cleaning your small children may result in a knock on the door from child protective services). Plus, it's a lot softer and more forgiving than a barbell and people of all ages can be taught fairly quickly how to perform this movement. Once you get it, the med ball clean then becomes a powerful movement to do at speed to create a very challenging workout! For those who only want to lift heavy stuff, the med ball clean can be used as a fantastic warm up.
Molly and Austin performing the med ball clean during a workout last week.
Here's another great article from Coach Mark Rippetoe of Witchita Falls Athletic Club on the efficacy of the low-bar back squat. Click HERE to read. In this article, Rippetoe explains why the low-bar back squat, which is what we coach in our gym, builds more strength and develops the hamstrings better than the high-bar back squat. The high-bar back squat helps with pure weightlifting movements and has its place in training as well. Though our thought, like that of Coach Rippetoe, is that if you're doing cleans and snatches anyway, doing a high-bar back squat isn't going to develop the hamstrings any further unless you do the low-bar back squats. This is an interesting read for a cold and stormy night by the fire.
After hitting it hard in the early part of the week with snatches and cleans, we worked in a crushing couplet of man makers and becks burpees. Man makers involve dumbbells, pushups, one-arm lifts, cleans, thrusters, and lunges (for one rep). Becks burpees start out like regular burpees, but ends with a broad jump rather than the regular jump and clap overhead. Recognizing this combo as "hard", we put had our CrossFitters do as many rounds as possible of 5 man makers and 5 becks burpees. At the end, they had nothing left in the tank! Will we see this one again? Not for awhile.
Kristi does her broad jump as Steve and Jen work the man makers.
Kristi in a man maker plank with Ben in motion on the broad jump.
Check out this website for some really interesting food: click HERE. If you're eating this kind of s**t over the holiday's, please take a pic for us!!!
