Sunday musings 11/1/15
Sunday musings…
1) Fall Back. Needed that.
2) Pharoah. A champion goes out on top. Not a dry eye chez bingo. Google “Tim Layden” for a great review.
3) Jacket. The motorcycle jacket has been alternately called an iconic male look, and a caricature of masculinity. I do not own a motorcycle jacket. Am I somehow not masculine, or am I subtly making a statement about inclusivity?
Or do I just look stupid in a leather motorcycle jacket?
4) ACL. There is a veritable epidemic of non-contact ACL tears among young female athletes. Unlike concussions in young male athletes, the collective response from media sources of all kinds to this: crickets. Also absent, any hint of a change in how girls are training for their sports.
Why is that? How is that OK?
5) Relative. “Constantly varied functional movements performed at relatively high intensity.” What exactly does that mean? For whom does this apply? I’ve been perusing the programming of some CrossFit Affiliate (and a couple of recently de-affiliated gyms still programming CrossFit-type WODs), watching videos and looking at pics of their athletes, and it looks like there’s a bit of confusion out there.
The “relative” in that definition of CrossFit speaks to the universal scaleability of the physical part of the CrossFit prescription. Load can be moved up or down. Duration can be increased or decreased. Movements that maintain the desired stimulus of the posted WOD can be substituted where a particular skill has yet to be acquired. Intensity is relative to the individual athlete in question, and in the classic application of the CrossFit prescription it is only “high” after that athlete demonstrates mechanical proficiency on a consistent basis.
Watching last year’s Games and Regionals footage one of the things that impressed me was the tight correlation between the virtuosity of movement and the resulting work performed in the more accomplished athletes. One cannot help but notice at all levels of competition the movement flaws seen in athletes who could not sustain enough intensity to place highly in an event. If you go back in time and watch videos of the early days of CrossFit you are struck by the emphasis on proper mechanics as a vehicle to increased efficiency and therefore more work or power output. Form is the gateway to intensity.
At my Alma Mater there is a saying about teaching that goes like this: the perfect classroom is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log, and a student on the other. I always had that image when I watched videos of Coach at the original CrossFit Santa Cruz, when I read his earliest writings in the CFJ. You know, the perfect gym is Greg Glassman on one side of a barbell and a CrossFitter on the other. CrossFit, at least the CrossFit I learned from Coach, is more than just writing a WOD on the whiteboard and opening the garage door. Every solo CrossFitter I’ve ever met, even those doing Coach’s own programming, was better after being actively coached.
“Relatively high intensity” is both a highly personal, individual metric, and a constantly moving target. It requires a shared knowledge of an athlete’s mechanics and consistency by both athlete and trainer. Programming must not make high intensity either unobtainable or unavoidable. There is only one Greg Glassman, just as there was only one Mark Hopkins. Williams College today is much larger than that single log, and Heaven knows CrossFit is much larger than CrossFit Santa Cruz ca. 2003. There is, however, a lineage that we should be able to trace back to both men.
If a gym is training people according to the CrossFit prescription, shouldn’t we be able to look at that gym and see that lineage?
I’ll see you next week…
bingo
Tags: acl, bingo, Crossfit, crossfit.com, glassman, layden, musings, PEP, pharoah, scale, scaling, si, soccer, sports illustrated, usmnt
This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2015 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Crossfit, Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.