Essentials: Coaching

The CrossFit program aims to develop a fitness that is broad, general, and inclusive. To truly pursue and attain this degree of fitness, athletes of all developmental levels should continually strive to learn and master new and more challenging skills.

The CrossFit program is designed for breadth, generality, and inclusivity. Variance follows as a critical element to achieve this aim. It is not enough to develop one capacity at the expense of any or all others. To truly achieve a state of general physical preparation, elements such as repetitions, distances, loads, movements, and durations of effort must be varied and varied regularly.

In parts 1-4 of the “Power of Progression” series, we covered standard progressions used in CrossFit certificate courses to teach complex movements like the push press and push jerk, sumo deadlift high pull, med-ball clean, and snatch. These are a few examples of progressions, and while we have found these particular examples effective, they are not the only possible progressions for these movements. There are also many other movements for which a progression may be an appropriate teaching tool. Thinking about and attempting to create your own progressions is a great way to develop a better understanding of a given movement while also providing your athletes with new learning tools.

Regardless of skill or fitness level, revisiting movement progressions can increase an athlete’s level of technical refinement. Whether your gym members are beginners or seasoned CrossFit athletes, challenge yourself to incorporate the snatch progression into your lesson plan for today’s workout.

To run group classes without compromising our hallmark laser focus and commitment to the athlete, the trainer has to learn to give each member of the group the impression that he is getting all the attention he could get in one-on-one training, and that requires tremendous training skill. … All the demands on the trainer skyrocket in this situation, however. Attention, enthusiasm, voice projection, and engagement all have to escalate. It is an acquired skill — an art, really.

The fitness that CrossFitters demonstrate cannot be found without ring training. Gymnastics rings occupy a place in our training that only the barbell can match. Kettlebells and dumbbells, medicine balls and stretch bands, while essential to our practice, are second-tier tools to the rings.

The skill acquired through training the sumo deadlift high pull — that of transferring power from the hips and legs, through the upper body, and into the object being lifted with maximal efficiency — is essential both in sport and life.

Progressions can be useful in training many different styles of movements, especially the more complex. The practice of gradually refining the athlete's current skill then challenging that skill with a next step is one of the cornerstones of threshold training.

All our athletes begin squatting with the “air squat,” that is, without any weight other than body weight. As a matter of terminology, when we refer to the “squat,” we are talking about an unladen, bodyweight-only squat. When we wish to refer to a weighted squat, we use the specific terms “front squat,” “back squat,” or “overhead squat.” Training any of these weighted squats before mastering the weightless variant compromises both the safety and efficacy of the training process and the athlete’s potential.

Safely scaling workouts for a wide range of athletes without sacrificing attention to non-scaled athletes — it’s an essential CrossFit coaching skill. Effective scaling at an affiliate demands an understanding of CrossFit programming theory, awareness of your athletes’ capabilities and limitations, and quick application of many possible scaling methods. It’s also important to understand why we scale CrossFit workouts: CrossFit workouts are scaled to preserve the intended stimuli despite athlete limitations such as experience, injury, illness or range of motion.

CrossFit defines core strength as midline stabilization. Capacity with midline stabilization translates to improved efficiency and performance as well as greater power output. We use the GHD for four exercises that heighten awareness and develop this capacity: the hip extension, back extension, hip-and-back extension, and the GHD sit-up.

High-level CrossFit trainers consistently use movement progressions to break down a complex movement into more manageable pieces. These pieces act as building blocks for the critical skills needed to successfully execute the full movement.

There is a tendency among new CrossFit athletes and trainers to avoid heavy days entirely or execute them incorrectly. However, CrossFit is a strength and conditioning program. While people sometimes characterize CrossFit by its programming of mixed-modal workouts for time (“met-cons”), this is a limited view. Days devoted to strength training are essential to CrossFit and are integral to CrossFit’s prescription of constantly varied workouts. Heavy days are important for everyone: the young, old, fit, and unfit. Excluding anyone from this work will blunt important adaptations.

“Exercise training programs may prove to be simple, yet important, methods of enhancing aspects of children’s mental functioning that are essential to cognitive and social development.” Therefore, programming short bouts of relatively high-intensity physical activity can be an efficient way to increase not only fitness but also brain function in a scholastic environment or in a box as part of a CrossFit Kids program.

“Strive to blur distinctions between ‘cardio’ and strength training. Nature has no regard for this distinction.” But how does CrossFit blur this distinction given that strength/power training and cardiovascular training are at different ends of the power spectrum? More simply put, when you do “Grace” or “Fran” or “Angie” or even “Linda,” what kind of training are you doing? Is it power, strength, or cardio? Can they be combined? To what extent do they overlap? Obviously, they in fact do, and this is one of CrossFit’s huge contributions to fitness, but it flies in the face of much of the accepted knowledge in exercise science. How does it work? What are the mechanisms? These are complex questions and the answers depend on many factors.

Our purpose here is to show specifically how a simple goal, like rowing a seven-minute two thousand meters, can not only be systematically and deliberately approached from multiple protocols, but can generally encourage similar thinking in pursuing other fitness milestones.

Technique is everything. It is at the heart of our quantification. You will not express power in significant measure without technique. You might expend a lot of energy, but you will not see the productive application of force. You will not be able to complete functional tasks efficiently or effectively. You will not be safe in trying.

As CrossFit has grown into a worldwide fitness and health community with millions of adherents, CrossFit, Inc. now looks to broadly expand the scope and reach of CrossFit-endorsed professional development courses. To this end, CrossFit is now offering the CrossFit Preferred Course Program. As of July 1, the Preferred Course Program will recognize and grow a global network of quality courses across disciplines relevant to CrossFit affiliates, trainers, athletes, and enthusiasts. These courses are designed to broaden, deepen, and challenge participants’ knowledge of CrossFit-related training areas. All CrossFit Preferred Courses will be conducted by subject-area experts among a community of peers and in the spirit of continual self-improvement.

In this 2003 article in the CrossFit Journal, Greg Glassman provides a series of observations on the then-current state of the “diet wars” and the growing understanding of the benefits of carbohydrate restriction. Along with a review of “responsible diet books,” he notes: “In the public square, the realization that carbs, not fat, make you sick and fat is spreading rapidly. Spreading like truth unobstructed. The position that carbohydrate is essentially toxic at common consumption levels was a truth suppressed by political and industrial corruption of science and journalism. Suppressing truth is like holding a beach ball under water; it takes constant work against a tireless resistance. They have slipped and our position sits like the beach ball on top of the water, where everyone can see it.”

Our template contains sufficient structure to formalize or define our programming objectives while not setting in stone parameters that must be left to variance if the workouts are going to meet our needs. That is our mission—to ideally blend structure and flexibility.