Crossfit Hillsdale Blogposts

One of the methodologies of CrossFit is to select movements that are generally applicable to everyday movement. In other words, we want to get strong and competent in ways that are functional for our lives. Most people have to take out the garbage once a week, so we want to be able to lift heavy things. Most folks have to carry groceries, so we want to be able to carry heavy things.
A result of this is there is a standard stable of CrossFit movements. After about 6 months, you’ve probably seen them all.
Another methodology of CrossFit is to challenge students with new movements and games. Thus, we have novelty movements. The standard movements make you strong in a broad way. The novelty movements challenge us to see if that general physicality is paying off. It helps us answer the question: does this stuff work?

When you’re trying to throw a ball (or any object) fast, it’s important to use the explosive power of all your major joints. The trouble is you have to open those joints in the right order. In short, it’s not enough to generate power, you need coordination.
So it is with the Olympic lifts. In fact, the Olympic lifts are sort of like throwing a ball… except you’re throwing it straight up and then getting underneath it, so maybe it’s a big stretch to compare the two, but it is not a big stretch to say you need power and coordination.
One joint that is easy to forget, especially during warm-up drills, is the ankles. The bar is light and it’s just a warm up, so who cares, right? Wrong. The purpose of the warm-up drills is to burn in the correct motor pattern, not to casually and consistently do things incorrectly.
The fix is easy. Make sure you’re opening your hips, your knees, AND your ankles during your lifts – even during your warm-ups.

We are, for better or worse, stuck inside these mortal bodies. Given that, it makes sense to put some effort into maintaining a decent state of physicality so that you can have some fun during your brief sojourn on planet earth.
So yeah, physical fitness is serious business. It is, in the end, the only business we have. If your physical fitness reaches zero… then you’re no more. Given all that, we use CrossFit as a methodology to do out best while also realizing that if you take anything too seriously, especially things that are serious, you ruin it… and if you treat everything as a joke, you also ruin everything.
CrossFit is hard. Put some comedy in your seriousness and some seriousness in your comedy. You’ll last longer, or at least die smiling.

Yes they do. It’s not fair that the martial arts people have all the fun. The CrossFitters get the super cool themes… like July’s theme: bagel jokes.
I mean, also we focus on two movements for 10 weeks at a time, test on the first week, do work for 8 weeks, and then retest on the 10th week but that’s the boring stuff. Bring on the bagel jokes.

One of the constant reminders you’ll hear at the gym is that you should be moving your body through a “full range of motion.” It’s a great idea… but what does it mean?

Ideally, it means we should be strong throughout the range of motion of a muscle. So if we’re using that exemplar of muscles, the biceps, it means we want to be strong when the elbow joint is all the way closed (fist as close to the shoulder as possible), when the elbow joint is all the way open (the arm is flat), and all points in between. The theory goes that if you’re weak anywhere in that range of motion, that is the place you’re going to get hurt, so in your training you should strive to move through a full range of motion.

Alright, so if that’s true, then why stop at the floor with a deadlift? Why not stand on a box and keep lowering the weight down until the hip joint is all the way closed? Well, turns out most of us are a lot stronger lifting from the floor than when we stand on a box and it’s nice to be stronger through that (usually) more functional range of motion (we’re not picking things out of holes as often as we are picking things up off the ground) so it would be kind of a bummer to do lighter weights in that bigger range of motion.

But what about the rule?! Full range of motion all day all the time! Maybe. I think there’s strong (pun intended) practical benefits to getting stronger in that functional range of motion where you pick things up from the ground but I also think standing on a box and gaining strength in that greater range of motion is also awesome. Why not? Life will inevitably require us to lift something out of a hole at some point so we might as well not suck at it.

One way to ease into this extra range of motion is to use smaller, metal weights like 25s. It’s kind of shocking how much harder it is to move through that extra range of motion. Go light, but give it a whirl, and then the day you’ve got to reach down and heft that random toddler from an extremely shallow well, you’ll thank me.