Listen. There’s something you need to think about before you step up to the squat rack (and no it’s not whether or not you’re going to do curls). Are you about to squat because you want to increase your max back squat? Or are you squatting because you want to be a better olympic lifter. For most CrossFitters it always ends up coming back to the olympic lifts. If this is you then there are two things you need to do every time you squat heavy (as opposed to squatting as part of a metcon):

1. Rack the bar high on your shoulders (as opposed to the low bar back squat used by power lifters). This will keep your body in a much more upright position, similar to the position found when cleaning or snatching.
2. Drop low at the bottom of the squat. Not hip-crease-below-knee low (the standard range of motion for most CrossFit Games events). Low like butt to deck low. If you want to clean or snatch a heavy weight do you think you’ll be able to catch it without dropping well below parallel? You best prepare yourself to be able to drive that thing way up out of the hole.

So to summarize: High bar, low butt.

Pair this article with our post:  Squat Technique – Number One Mistake And Correction

Looking for more even more info?

Fletcher Pierce has a great article at Lift Big Eat Big has a great piece entitled Which Method Of Squatting Should You Use.  He compares the needs of powerlifters, stongman competitors, and CrossFitters.

Diane Fu puts together a nice post on her tumblr with her take on the topic: A Common Observation Of New Weightlifters

High bar, low butt (image from the Diane Fu post referenced above).

Every article by Jim Wendler contains multiple nuggets, frequently as tangents on his main theme. The recent T-Nation post on combining his 5/3/1 template with rest pause training is no exception. It included this paragraph on the garage gym:

Having your own strength facility that isn’t bombarded with egomaniacs, manic-depressive owner/managers, poor music selections, and pointless equipment is like winning the lottery. I could go on and on but the fact is, a home gym = freedom.
-Jim Wendler

Even though my garage gym use is relatively low compared to how often I go to my local affiliate I still find it invaluable, especially for strength work.

My new favorite CrossFit shirt. Tipped off to this one by 4eva’s Tumblog. It isn’t clear who’s behind these but based on the other shirts in their shop they apparently also like coffee so they’re obviously cool.

You can purchase the shirt at Caffeunimatic.

A good avocado is awesome. A bad avocado is, well, bad. And it really sucks to split one open and find a discolored brown mess inside. Turns out you can determine if an avocado is ripe by popping of that little nub of a stem and checking the color underneath. I came up with this little rhyme to help you remember.

If it’s brown put it down.
If it’s green there will be dishes to clean.

Going forward I’ll leave the rhyming to Dr. Seuss. Checkout this little photo sequence via courtneyisawesomeatpaleo’s Tumblr:

Here’s a great photo sequence of Matt Chan (last year’s CrossFit Games 2nd place finisher) snatching 205lbs. Two things stood out to me in this sequence:

1. Check out the hip extension in the 5th frame (counting left to right, top to bottom). His entire torso is extended, from feet to the top of his head. This is a great visual reminder of what you want to look like *before* trying to get under the bar.
2. Look at the difference between the 6th and 7th frame. The speed with which he drops under the bar is so fast the camera didn’t catch it.

The pic and following caption come from Diane Fu’s tumblr: fubarbell:

Matt Chan (@matt1chan) sequence of a 93kg/205lbs snatch. Still well within Matt’s ability, he’s taken a step back to rebuild his positions as he regains strength and confidence from knee surgery.

 

Among the various scoring controversies during the 2013 CrossFit Games Open, Peak 360 has clearly separated from the pack. And in so doing eliminated themselves from the Regionals.

While reviewing a video of his 13.5 workout Noah Ohlsen, who finished in the top 10 for the southeast region and helped his team to a 30th place finish, noticed his judge mistakenly counted a clearly incomplete rep.

What would have been a minor detail for some led to a gut wrenching realization for Ohlsen. His team Peak 360 had made the regionals cut off by only a single rep. By notifying CrossFit HQ, Peak 360′s team would be eliminated as a regional contender.

Given the issues with the scoring during the open and the wide spread accusations of fraud (see Fraud Watch) it would have been pretty easy to rationalize keeping that missed rep quiet. Especially, when it’s entirely likely a team ahead of you on the leaderboard probably also had a missed rep somewhere over the course of the competition.

I would have felt guilty letting it slide with the proof right in front of me. We wanted to maintain our integrity as a CrossFit gym, and I myself as an individual, so I emailed HQ … Upsetting, but just a driving force to qualify beyond doubt for next year.
-Noah Ohlsen

In a word: Impressive.

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.” – Frederick Douglass

You can find additional details at CrossFit Games: Peak 360 CrossFit Brings Attention to Miscount

Pic via Noah’s Tumblr

Culled from the Tumblrverse:

If you’re not out of your comfort zone with two to three minutes to go in your workout, then there’s something wrong.

- Michael Roach

(via f**kyeahcrossfit)

Pair with Camille Leblanc-Bazinet’s 3 Mental Tips For CrossFit

After the recent post on avoiding the power snatch in favor of the squat snatch, Chad Chisholm left a comment asking about the split snatch as an alternative to the squat snatch. I guessed it would be akin to the power snatch and thus not a good option. A quick check of the Pendlay Olympic Lifting Forum revealed otherwise.Per Glenn Pendlay:

If you [have] hopes of being a high level weightlifter, better to learn the squat style. If you are doing it for recreation or for general fitness or strength, the split is not such a bad thing.

Be smart though. The same rules still apply. In order to put up more weight you’ll need to get under the bar. As another commenter on the post, Nick Horton,  points out:

Depth is still depth. And more depth = more weight on the bar. And if you decide at some point to start squat snatching, you don’t want to have built a habit of not getting under the bar.

Horton also provided the following pics to illustrate his point:

The forum posting can be found on: Pendlay Forum>Olympic Lifting>Split Snatching

If you want more snatch info check out this listing of all our posts tagged with “snatch”

The New York Times website had a lengthy article on businesses which have incorporated CrossFit into their corporate culture. The level of involvement ranged from a small startup where co-workers collectively headed to CrossFit NYC for an afternoon break to Hitachi Global Storage which has it’s own on-site affiliate run by CrossFit Celebrity Jason Khalipa.

One of the primary companies discussed is Colorado based Datalogix which is working with Games competitor Patrick Burke. From the article:

There are other, less quantifiable benefits. Karin Eisenmenger, 46, Datalogix’s director of order management and the woman running up the stairs past her panting colleague, says the classes unite people from different departments who might otherwise never meet. “If you can sweat and groan and moan with your co-workers,” she said, “you’ll have no problem working with them in a meeting.”

Ben Nelson, 31, an information technology analyst who says he lost 60 pounds after he started CrossFit in 2010, said a lunch hour spent doing squat thrusts and swinging kettlebells enabled him to work longer and with greater focus. “I used to work for the Dish Network,” he said, “and the workouts there were running up and down the stairs on the way to company meetings.”

You can find the full post at:

New York Times: We’re One Big Team So Run Those Stairs

Uh oh, did I submit my TPS report!?!

 Great pic via Flickr courtesy of moreofavideoguy

Rudy Nielsen of the Outlaw Way posted the following message from Olympic Lifting Coach Glenn Pendlay:

The Power Snatch is half the movement. It gives someone with a shitty pull and a shitty finish, the ability to continue to be shitty at Snatching, while moving a relatively heavy load to overhead with the shittiest, most useless possible technique. It allows under-developed lifters to feel good about themselves, while remaining under-developed, and only practicing the pulling portion of the lift. My best lifters—at the Snatch—look the exact same with an empty barbell as they do with 150kg. The Power Snatch is good for de-loading, or practicing the pull, but it should never be a lifters default choice.

Reminder to self: quit trying to improve my snatch by doing power snatches.

You can find the original post here:
The Outlaw Way: A note on Power vs. Full lifts

You can also find our favorite Snatch video here.

That’s no power snatch…

Awesome pic courtesy of Amber Karnes on Flickr