A CrossFit apology

A brief summary:

1. Build a strong back. CrossFitters train their lower back in one way or another every day. Utilizing this type of strategy will carry over to Olympic weightlifting exercises, deadlifts and squats.
2. Respect the repetitions. CrossFitters train a lot with high repetitions and this leads to gains in strength and muscle mass.
3. Dominate the weight. CrossFitters who are new to weight training often have no mental blocks when it comes to setting personal bests and making rapid progress.

Lesson learned

I used to think CrossFit was a fad and assumed that they all used poor form exercise execution and that CrossFitters couldn't get strong or build muscle with these workouts.

I was wrong.

Working with a lot of CrossFit athletes has changed my mind. Even though I personally wouldn't train only with WODs (Workouts of the Day), I've learned a lot from training CrossFit athletes.

I work with a very diverse clientele: recreational athletes, bodybuilders and CrossFitters and I have to say that after the powerlifters, the CrossFitters were the strongest overall. Oddly enough, for a group that has a reputation for using poor exercise execution form, they probably use the best exercise execution form of anyone I've ever trained.

Serious CrossFitters are perfectionists and work hard on their skills. Of course, technique will dip a bit during WODs, but most of the time their technique is solid. Here are three things I've learned from them:

1 - Strengthen your lower back

This is the secret to rapid strength gains in the Olympic weightlifting exercises, deadlifts and squats. CrossFit athletes - and even most athletes who only do CrossFit recreationally - have a super strong lower back. And as a result, they progress quickly in the Olympic weightlifting exercises when trained properly. Heck, many CrossFitters I've trained were able to move weights after a few months that had taken me years to do while training full time with Olympic weightlifting exercises.

CrossFit athletes don't train with only Olympic weightlifting exercises all the time, and certainly not at a frequency that would justify those super fast gains I saw.

The following is part of pretty much every WOD. You perform hundreds, if not thousands of reps per week training the lower back in one way or another:

• Deadlifts with everything from super high reps (up to 100 reps during a workout) to super heavy weights.
• Kettlebell swings with all types of weights and repetition ranges.
• Olympic weightlifting with high reps (not something I personally do or recommend).

Not only are you doing all this lower back work, but you're also loosening up your form a bit during WODs. This causes them to slightly round the lower back. I'm not saying that you should start doing tons of lower back workouts with a slightly rounded lower back, but deadlifts with a rounded back put more stress on the erector spinae and if you don't herniate a disc, it will make your lower back stronger. Even Klokov does a ton of pulling exercises with a rounded back. When it comes to the Olympic weightlifting exercises, a strong lower back will allow you to stay in a position where you can best utilize your strength when the weights get heavy.

One CrossFitter I coached started out performing deadlifts. He didn't have much experience and performed the worst type of deadlift with a round back I had ever seen. I made fun of him at the time because he told me that he would go from his current 405 pounds to 535 pounds in four months doing deadlifts. I even wrote him an email telling him why he was being unrealistic and that he was being disrespectful to powerlifters who bust their asses for every 10 pound weight gain. Well, he eventually managed to reach his goal, but with the worst possible form of exercise execution. Fast forward to a year later and the guy is now using some of the best exercise execution form I've ever seen and this is due to the fact that he has a super strong lower back. He now performs snatches, deadlifts, deadlifts and squats with superior weights for his size.

I had "theoretically" understood the value of a strong lower back, but never focused on it that much. I thought I was getting all the lower back stimulation I needed from the Olympic weightlifting exercises and squats. Looking back, I realize now that I always had a weak lower back and it was probably hindering my progress.

Apply it

The lower back responds better to a high volume of work. If you want to build your lower back up to a level that gives you the strength to shock people, then you need to train it with high reps and a very high frequency. The good news is that the muscles of the lower back seem to have the best "trainability" of all muscles. This means that they will get bigger and stronger very quickly if you focus intensely on training them.

With the lower back, the big secret is to simply train it. Try to end every training session with a lower back exercise. Depending on how fresh and refreshed I am and how strong I feel, I choose the exercise that will work best that day. If I'm feeling tired, then performing heavy sets of Romanian deadlifts with three reps might not be such a good idea. I now dedicate a good amount of time to strengthening my lower back using different repetition ranges, using 3 to 10 reps on Romanian deadlifts and other pulling exercises, 10 to 12 reps on back extensions, glute-ham raises and reverse hypers, and up to 30 reps on kettlebell swings. Don't ignore something as simple as a back extension machine. The lower back doesn't need to be trained at a high intensity to strengthen it. Just do something for your lower back every day and it will get stronger.

2 - Respect training with high repetitions

I'm a fan of low reps and that's not going to change. If I had to identify with one 'school of thought', it would be the Bulgarian School of Weightlifting, which focuses on always using very low reps and heavy (close to max weight) weights. However, after training with a lot of CrossFit athletes, I've come to appreciate the value of training with higher reps. Yes, doing 21-15-9 on deadlifts and pull-ups sucks while you're doing it, but I have to admit that it works. It's easy to say that most CrossFit athletes do other strength training in addition to their WODs and that this is the reason for the high weights they can move, but I know a lot of CrossFitters who have gotten strong just by doing WODs.

They are much more likely to do deadlifts, front squats and push presses standing with momentum from their legs (the Olympic weightlifting exercises are a given) than the average strength athlete who trains with the specific goal of getting more muscular and stronger and does bodybuilding training to do so. I'm not saying that training with high reps is better than powerlifting or training with low reps and heavy weights to get super strong, but useful weights with higher reps will certainly make you stronger.

And relatively high reps on the big basic exercises (deadlifts, squats, front squats, push press, pull-ups and dips) will build a lot of muscle mass while leading to useful strength gains. I'll use my wife as an example. She never used more than 85 pounds when repositioning and deadlifting. After a few months of doing only CrossFit WODs, she reached 140 pounds.

The cool thing about high reps in the CrossFit style is that they are not defined as "sets". If you need to do 21 reps of deadlifts at 355 pounds, you can do those reps as "sets" of 2, 3 or 4 reps as long as you try to do them as fast as possible. This will give you a high work density with a fairly heavy weight and that will build a lot of muscle mass. I recently started doing something like this myself.

After I've done my heavy weight training, I use 60% of my maximum weight in the exercise and aim for 20 reps. It may require a short break or two, but the exercise isn't over until I've done all 20 reps. I've noticed an increased rate of muscle growth for me with this simple addition to my training. Another method you can use is strength training with a high training density. Use 70 to 80% of your 1RM and try to perform 30 total repetitions in as little time as possible. It may take 6 to 8 sets to achieve this, but that's perfectly fine. Just rest as short as possible: 5 reps, 10 seconds rest, 5 reps, 10 seconds rest, etc.

Apply it

After you've done your heavy work for your main exercise of the day, you can challenge yourself to do 20 reps at 60% of your max weight on the same exercise.

If you can do all 20 reps without rest, then next time you should use 65 or 70% of your max weight! You can also train at a high density by trying to complete 30 total repetitions at 70 to 80% of your maximum weight in as short a period of time as possible.

3 - Master the weight

CrossFitters don't have the same respect for weights as powerlifters, Olympic weightlifters or bodybuilders. They don't seem to realize how heavy a certain weight should be.

At this point, I come back to my friend who was able to deadlift 405 pounds and had set a goal to deadlift 535 pounds within 4 months. He didn't seem to realize that a weight increase of 135 pounds on one exercise in 4 months is insanity, but he did it! And I'm seeing this everywhere. CrossFitters at a fairly low level say "man, I need to make 315 pounds on the deadlift" while still struggling at 205 pounds - and then they reach their goal within a few months. Back when I started Olympic weightlifting, three discs was a high weight for me and my progress came to a halt because I had a negative mindset and believed that a certain weight was out of my reach. That's the weird thing about CrossFit. In powerlifting, we see massive guys doing deadlifts and squats 900 to 1000 pounds and think "these guys are superhuman, I'll never reach that."

In CrossFit, we see guys who qualify for the CrossFit Games trying to reach 315 to 375 pounds on deadlifts and thinking "I've got to get this done - and fast." This reminds me of the time when my bench press weight was stuck at 275 pounds for several years. I couldn't increase my weights any further, no matter what I tried. I trained in a college weight room where you were already rumored to be using steroids if you bench pressed 225 pounds, which is why 315 pounds seemed physically impossible to me - such feats could only be accomplished by a mythical beast hiding in some cave.

And then I moved into that cave. I started training in a small hardcore weight room in the basement of a church. The manager was a former Canadian record holder in the deadlift and press and his son was a strongman competitor. All the powerlifters and strongmen in town trained there. There were at least 10 guys bench pressing 405 pounds and some had even surpassed 500 pounds. It wasn't the same as Westside, but compared to my previous gym, it was like a slap in the face.

Within a few weeks I had reached 315 pounds and it wasn't long before I hit 365 and then 405 pounds in less than a year. Watching all those guys move those heavy weights broke my mental block. It's the same with CrossFit. You'll see a lot of CrossFit competitive athletes doing 345 to 380 pounds on the deadlift and 265 to 285 pounds on the snatch, which makes 300 to 315 pounds on the deadlift and 225-235 pounds on the snatch seem perfectly normal (and maybe even a little low) and therefore easily attainable.

Because of this perception, these weights become more attainable. A lot of people start Crossfit without any weight training background. Most of them were people who played a sport first and maybe trained a little bit here and there with weights, so they don't have the same relationship with the weights that we iron benders do.

They don't have the same perception of what is heavy and what is normal progression. An experienced strength athlete will say something along the lines of, "Gaining 50 pounds on an exercise within a year equals very good progress once you get past the beginner stage." A CrossFit beginner, on the other hand, will think "Man, I really need to hit those Rx weights soon or I'm going to look like a failure.

(Note: The Rx weight is the weight specified in a WOD. If you're supposed to do 50 reps of deadlifts at 225 pounds, then the Rx weight is 225.) A competitive CrossFit athlete will think "Rich Froning is snatching 300 pounds and deadlifting 380 pounds. I need to get to at least 245 and 335 pounds in a few months." And in all of these cases, these athletes usually achieve what they think they can achieve. The same thing happened to me with high pulls (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6IObVghelI). Tim Patterson challenged me to go from 275 to 400 pounds in 3 weeks. At the time, my goal was to get to 315 pounds in 3 months. So in a way, he changed my plans. And I did it because I had the right mindset. Another example was the period when I was training with Dave. At that time my all-time best bench press was 420 pounds, but during the last period I had never done more than 405 pounds and in the last three months I had failed 3 attempts at 425 pounds.

When I was training at Tate, I trained with one of the guys there without knowing how much weight we were using (we were using a weird thick bar and I had no idea what it weighed). Then when I asked Dave how much the bar weighed with the weights, he replied "445 pounds."

25 pounds more than my all-time best!

Apply it

It's much harder to teach you to apply a mental strategy than it is a training strategy. However, I have a good recommendation for you. If you want to get strong, the best thing you can do is join a gym or weight room where super strong guys train. I can't emphasize enough the effect that training with these guys will have on your progress.

Learn from everyone

CrossFit athletes still have a lot to do to maximize their performance. However, I also believe that we can learn a lot from them and that the three elements described here are just scratching the surface. Everyone who trains hard has something to teach others. We shouldn't back ourselves into a corner and refuse to learn from other groups of people just because it's fashionable to make fun of them.

by Christian Thibaudeau | 05/27/14
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/crossfit-apology