“Gymnastics”

This article is mainly targeted at our Building group, but there are some great take-aways for the Foundation crew as well.

So… some of you are not having the greatest time with the structural gymnastic strength work I’ve been prescribing. Face hovering just inches off a dusty gym floor, entire body shaking, fighting as hard as you can to keep your face from plummetting down toward the floor… this is not lifting weights, and it SUCKS. Worst of all, it might feel like you’re getting worse at it.

Today I want to address some frequently annoying asked questions about the “gymnastics” work.

Why do I suck at this?

You can squat a room full of 8 year old female gymnasts, but those same female gymnasts would humiliate you in these basic exercises which they, by the way, do as a WARM-UP for their training. How is this? Well, first of all, you have very poor trunk control. Don’t get me wrong… when there’s a barbell on your shoulders, your trunk is stable and strong, but take you out to the pool, on a run, into a high-rep pull-up contest, into a “let’s just stand around and see whose posture fails first” contest (many of you don’t even realize you’re in these contests, but if you’re anywhere near me, then now you know… you’ve probably been in several)… take you into any of these environments and your lack of trunk control starts to rear it’s ugly head.

To cut to the chase, you suck at this because you never HAVE to do it… You can stand, sit, walk, run, swim, and even do high rep kipping pull-ups without it, but it tends to result in low back pain, relatively poor performance… and on top of that, you will NEVER be able to even show up, for some basic gymnastic core strength skills.

Also, your daily habits, which tend to involve a lot of sitting, have caused you to get all tight and wound up in your anterior musculature… and all weak across your posterior musculature… You realize the full effects of this when you try to arch rock. Hollow rocks and arch rocks, when done in equal measure can have tremendous effects in contributing toward the correction many of these posture issues.

Why does it seem like I’m getting worse?

Not everyone is asking this question. In fact, lots of you are saying the opposite and seeing the benefits. But, to those of you who ARE experiencing this, let me point out that the combinations have been getting more difficult. It is a lot more difficult, for example, to do hollow rocks after garhammers, than it is after tuck-ups. This is by design.

Aren’t there some other exercises I could be doing? (this is getting boring…)

Actually, I’ve got about another 25 progressions beyond hollow rocks and about another 25 beyond arch rocks… however, we’re just not there yet. Putting in the time on these most basic drills will (and already has, as many of your trainers have testified to me) improve the skills most relevant to your performance in CrossFit. I mean, who of you wouldn’t like a few more kipping pull-ups? Or a better handstand walk? Maybe I’ll cut back a bit further… how about more push-ups? Or how about we get rid of that post-run back pain? The exercises I’ve been selecting have the most carry-over to your goals. Boring as hell… hard as hell… but so beneficial. Moving beyond these drills at this point in time would be getting too fancy too fast…

By the way, one of the most “advanced” CrossFit programs available to the general public (The Outlaw Way), has a “connectivity” program (they don’t call it “gymnastics” because these are just basics… CrossFitters don’t really do gymnastics!) which has been going on for several months and continues to hammer away at the same basic drills… hollow and arch.

Where are we going from here?

All this to say, that even as we transfer phases and remove the regular exposure to the gymnastics structural work, you can and should continue to work on this stuff on your own. You cannot really overdo it. You can do it in your warm-up or in your cool-down.

Back when I was running River City CrossFit, we did “Boat Rockers” as a “cash-out” every single day… and it was a really good thing. I will be providing guidance to those who are interested in it, but for the most part, if you really hate that stuff… so much that you don’t care if it’s good for you… you just ain’t gonna do it… then the good news is that you likely won’t have to until spring next year 🙂 But for those who see the merits and want improvement, then some options are: talk to me about ideas for what to do, explore the Outlaw connectivity programming, or just continue to work hard at these basics on your own and take down these fundamental limitations.

The concluding message…

We are moving into a new phase starting next week, and the gymnastics stuff won’t be as heavily programmed. However, if you want to do any fancy CrossFit “gymnastic” tricks, or maybe even pursue some real gymnastics strength, you should be taking care of the gymnastic basics at least 2-3 times per week… and it doesn’t get much more basic than hollow position and arch position. I know it sucks, but do it anyway!

Any questions, email Brendan.