I am a huge fan of the sport of Olympic lifting.
If you don’t believe me, read this article: http://mcthrows.com/?m=201512
If that didn’t do it, read this article: http://mcthrows.com/?m=201602
If that didn’t do it, you’re just being contrary.
Anyway, please believe me when I tell you that I really appreciate the way that Crossfit has spread the Olympic lifting gospel to the masses.
I know Crossfit has done this because I have friends who teach seminars in how to perform the Olympic lifts, and demand for their services has increased in direct correlation to the burgeoning popularity of Crossfit.
Also, not long ago I used the term “push press” in front of my sister and she knew what I was talking about.
I’ve never joined a Crossfit gym, but I’ve always been a little curious as to what a exactly goes on there so I was quite interested the other day when my daughter cued up a documentary on Netflix called Fittest on Earth.
It was about the 2015 Crossfit Games and was clearly and cleverly produced by the Crossfit folks to make their sport appear absolutely epic. A solid hour of really good-looking people chucking sandbags, running stairs, snapping off set after set of heavy cleans and snatches seemingly impervious to heat and fatigue. Here’s a trailer for it:
Somewhere in my brain there resides a meat head football coach, and the whole time I was watching the film, that guy kept saying things like “Hey, I want our guys to be the Fittest on Earth! If we were impervious to fatigue and heat, we’d be unbeatable!”
So I looked up some Crossfit workouts to get insight into how these athletes got in such incredible shape and to see whether or not we could use any of their concepts in training our athletes (I coach football and track at Wheaton North).
Here is one of the workouts they used in the 2015 Crossfit Games:
Heavy DT
Five rounds for time of…
12 deadlifts
9 hang power cleans
6 push jerks
Here is one that is on the schedule for the 2016 Crossfit Games:
Squat Clean Pyramid (weight increases by 20 pounds each set)
10 squat cleans
8 squat cleans
6 squat cleans
4 squat cleans
2 squat cleans
As far as I can tell, these workouts represent a pillar of Crossfit philosophy: the combining of aerobic training with strength training.
And here is why you should never do workouts like these with your high school athletes: They are not safe.
Each of the lifts in these workouts must, in order to be done safely and effectively, be executed with proper technique. Correctly performed, these lifts will help keep your athletes healthy by building up leg, back, and core strength. Poorly performed, they will expose your athletes to injury by loading the spine in awkward ways. And performing cleans, jerks, deadlifts etc…for time and/or in high-rep sets makes it just about impossible for young athletes to to do them correctly.
Let me illustrate my point using an example from football. I coach defensive linemen, and the technique we use to attack offensive linemen at the snap of the ball is similar to performing a snatch or clean or a jerk in that it consists of a series of joint extensions (ankles+knees+hips+elbows) that must be executed explosively and in the proper sequence. We work on this technique every day in practice, and because the qualities we are trying build are explosiveness and sound technique, we never mix this type of training in with conditioning. I like to use a blocking sled to practice attacking the offensive linemen as sleds generally hold still and do not get distracted by butterflies or the smell of pizza emanating from the nearby bowling alley (I coach freshmen). If I have ten kids in my position group on a given day, I will have them attack the sled in two groups of five. One group will perform two reps and then step aside while the other group performs their reps. We try to maintain a brisk pace, but I often interrupt the process in order to make corrections to a kids’ stance or hand placement. As a result, the drill proceeds at a pace that allows the athletes to recover enough from each set so that they can perform explosively on the ensuing set.
Think about how this would go, though, if I didn’t allow the kids adequate recovery time, but instead tried to use our sled drill to build endurance. We could perform sets of ten reps in rapid-fire fashion with no timeouts for instruction and after one round the kids would be sucking wind. I know that many of my meat head brethren out there would argue that any and all football-related activities should involve the kids sucking wind, but the problem is that once kids enter that wind-sucking state they lose their ability to perform explosive, technically complex movements. So, rapid-fire sets of ten on the sled would be good if your goal is to have the kids practice moving slowly and sloppily. But if the focus of the drill is to build explosiveness and technical proficiency, you’ve got to conduct it at a pace that allows the kids to recover from each set.
The same concept applies in the weight room. Snatches, cleans and jerks are great for enhancing the explosive power of your athletes, but you have to let them recover enough between reps and sets for them to be able to execute each lift explosively and with sound technique. Performing high-rep sets or timed sets of the Olympic lifts, or including Olympic lifts in some sort of Crossfit-style circuit (say having the kids perform box jumps or sprints between sets) just about guarantees that your athletes will move the bar slowly and sloppily while also preventing you from making the technical corrections young athletes constantly need in order to perform the lifts safely.
To those grownups out there who participate in Crossfit and maybe want to punch me in the face right now, please understand that I come in peace. As noted above, I greatly appreciate the fact that Crossfit has exposed many thousands of people to the fine art of Olympic lifting. I took an excellent Olympic lifting class from Eleiko Barbell last fall and it was hosted by a Crossfit gym in Naperville. I’m taking another Eleiko class next weekend, and it will be hosted by…a Crossfit gym in Darien.
To me, though, there is a difference between a group of consenting adults fighting their way through a workout that mixes aerobic training and Olympic lifting and a group of teenage athletes attempting to do the same workout.
Many, though certainly not all, adults tend to have some sense. Teenagers, especially boys, do not. That is scientific fact, folks.
So, as an adult, if you have just done 47 burpees and are now in the middle of a set of ten snatches and your technique falls apart there is at least a chance that you might step back from the barbell and say “Hang on. Let me take a break here before I mess up my back.”
Most teenagers will not do that, so it is up to us coaches to design workouts (and to coach them through workouts) that they can execute safely and effectively.
Unfortunately, Crossfit-style training does not fit that criteria.