CFB News letter
Programming
So the main focus from our last newsletter was Move better = Be better.
“One thing that will help you get even more PB’s, make you WOD faster and get better scores is getting back to basics and really working on your technique.”
Strength Head
So with The British Champs and Wild West out of the way we can now start to go through a strength phase.
The last few months have been focused on improving your movements so that you can move faster and maintain a higher intensity. We have also been improving your gymnastic on Thursday “Rest Day” to develop skills and movements. What it is has highlighted to us coaches is a lack of midline strength on basic movements, which makes more complex movements even harder to perform.
Over the last 5 weeks I have started to add a pure strength day, this allows us coaches to work with you on your Olympic lifts and to use accessories to improve elements of those lifts. We have also been doing a heavy WOD once a week to help with strength gains whilst still improving your broad fitness levels.
Gymnastic Head
We have been using the 50 rep white board over the past few weeks to set some bench marks on common movements, these come up in work outs and comps so we need to get better at them.
Pull ups - for those of you that haven’t got a pull up yet I posted a 30 day program to follow; have you ?
If you want pull ups you need to do the accessory work to help build strength. Those of you that have 5 – 10 reps on your kipping pull ups, work on your strict pull up strength to improve your kipping numbers.
Those of you wanting to learn butterfly pull ups; ask yourself can I kip 21 pull ups unbroken, is my kip strong on my CTB and can I transfer over to bar muscle ups, ring muscle ups and even TTB. Once you have mastered your kip on these movements then you can start to learn to Butterfly. The Butterfly is more complex than the kip, but remember the kip is transferable.
HSPU and Dips – For the most of you these are bad movements as you struggle to hit 50 regular push ups. If you struggle to maintain an active midline whilst performing a push up, when you come to go upside down the lack of tricep strength will hold you back. Look at all your pressing movements and ask yourself do I move well and what’s stopping me moving better.
Competition Update
The British champs
Coach FON took top 20 but had to retire from the final due to a calf strain.
He maintained top 25 finishes on the met-cons but suffered two bad finishes on the running WODs. He also took a 7th on Fight Gone Bad, which was his best finish of the weekend.
Hannah performed great on her 1st individual comp and took loads away from the weekend to focus on. She made the top 40 cut and finished 33rd with a well rounded performance.
Wild West
We had 5 teams entered, which was joint highest with CrossFit Cheltenham. It’s fantastic to see so many of you looking to compete.
I have spoken to most athletes in class or by text and email, to see how they did and what they have taken away from the weekend. Most comments have been positive and given drive to now want to work weaknesses.
Now for those looking to take competing to the next level you need to start looking at this table and see if you can make any improvements to any of areas listed on the left. I do this myself after each competition. My biggest change was moving to pre made meals to ensure my food is planned out each day.
Make sure you met-con and that your getting the required stimulus from the WOD through intensity levels.
Turning up to Thursdays gymnastics class to work skills as these will help a broad range of movements not just gymnastics.
Weight lifting is affected by mobility; are you doing the required mobility before lifting load to improve movement patterns and turning up on Saturdays to work lifts or kb accessory drills with Joe.
Feedback and Suggestions
My door is always open if not drop me an email and I’ll try my best to answer your questions or listen to your thoughts.
