Crossfit Hillsdale Blogposts

In CrossFit, we sometimes break down movements into positions. How does this work? Let’s look at the push up as an example as to why this might be useful.
First, we all get into the top of a pushup and look at the key points of the position. The head, hips, and ankles are all in a line. The elbows are locked out. The fingers can be pointed straight ahead or rotated slightly outward depending on wrist comfort.
Second, we’d all get in the bottom of a push up and repeat the process. Again, the head, hips, and ankles are all in a line. The elbows are in against the body.
Finally, after feeling and talking about what both those positions are supposed to be, we’d do a few push ups. Why? Because with this sort of approach many students will see an improvement in technique.
Like everything, it doesn’t always work and it can be overdone, but better technique equals better fitness and we’re all about that.
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The Olympic lifts are incredibly complicated. They can be dissected into hundreds of tiny sections, drilled hundreds of different ways, and argued about for years.
Given all that, it can be useful keep things simple. Sometimes, when the lift looks flat, it can be super helpful to simply focus on jumping during the clean. Why is that useful? Because jumping, will almost always cause you to go into full extension and put all your power into moving the bar.
To be sure, this is not a failsafe method, or even the best method all the time, but if you find your lift is slow and your brain is overloaded, focus on jumping, then have the coach give you some refinement from there.
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Meet the press family. There’s shoulder press, push press, push jerk, split jerk, and squat jerk. All of them share the same finish position, the bar overhead such that if you were to draw a line starting at the middle of the foot, go through the knee, the hip, the shoulder, and then finish at the barbell, it should be straight.
Why should it be straight? So that we’re supporting the weight with good structure. If the bar is behind that line, it puts a strain on the low back, increases the risk of injury, and possibly causes the bar to crash to the ground behind us. If the bar is in front of that line, it puts a strain on the shoulders, increases the risk of injury, and possibly causes the bar to crash to the ground in front of us.
That’s why today we spent a bunch of time focusing on how to find the correct finish position. Technique is strength. Strength is skill. Work hard in the smartest way possible.
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Some gyms, so I’m told, are barbell-centric. Others are HIIT centric. So which are we? We’re community centric.
Too cheesy of an answer? Too much of a dodge? Alright, fine. We use the barbells, we spend time dissecting how to properly lift. We also do HIIT and spend time practicing good technique for bodyweight movements.
Still a weak answer? I guess I’m not up to picking a side, because I find the debate to be meaningless. We’re here to learn how to move properly, with barbells and without. Today we threw medicine balls. Tomorrow we might throw barbells. Either way, we’re going to use good technique and develop quality movement patterns that are going to make us more awesome humans both inside and outside of the gym.
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We’ve been spending this week looking at the difference between a “muscle” motion and a “power” motion. The clean, snatch, and other related lifts can be dissected this way.
Today we worked the dumbbell snatch. So if you do the “muscle” version, it means you simply throw the dumbbell using your legs as the primary driver and the arm whips the weight up. If you do the “power” version, it means you did everything you did in the “muscle” version, but you don’t have to throw it quite as high because you also land underneath it (not in a squat, but anything shy of that.)
So why choose either of these two versions? Well, the “muscle” version is faster, so if you’re doing a CrossFit workout with 9 reps of a dumbbell snatch and you can do the motion without having to get under the weight, it makes sense to use the “muscle” version. If, however, the weight is too heavy and you find yourself starting to press the weight instead of throwing it, it makes more sense to do the “power” version.
Developmentally, it’s important to learn both motions, because they are both useful and they build on one another. Ideally, you’d learn the “muscle” version first, and then the “power” motion, but different folks have varying ease picking up one movement over the other.
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