Attention: All Posts Moving to New Blog

New Website is Officially Up!

Hey everyone. The new website trainedwright.com is up and pretty much finished. All subsequent workouts and blog posts will be posted there. Blog posts will show up on both the homepage and in the Blogs section. Thanks for your continued support and, as always, feel free to email me with suggestions or questions.

Best,

Coach Wright

Strength Programming Discussion: Part 4 of 4

Peaking athletes for competition AKA how and when to taper

Our final discussion on strength programming will revolve around the tapering phase or "pre-competition" phase of an athlete's program. This phase is arguably more important than the preparatory phase because it allows an athlete to focus on recovery and ultimately peaking their performance for a major competition. We will also end with a brief discussion on the role and importance of accessory exercises for the Olympic lifts.

What is a tapering phase and how does it work?

The typical program for a competitive weightlifter will involve a couple months of ramping up training volume. This period is known as the "preparatory" phase and will typically tax the athlete's body, mind, and nervous system to a point near total failure. Advanced athletes will typically complain of colds and diarrhea during the most volume-intensive periods of this phase. If this volume continues, it would be in no way sustainable for the athlete. Therefore, following the preparatory phase there must be a "pre-competition" or tapering phase. This phase will involve far less volume and far more intensity (more max lifts and typically no more than 2 reps per set). This continues up until the final week before competition in which the athlete will perform a training session involving both low volume and low intensity. This allows the athlete's body, mind, and nervous system to reset somewhat so that they are at their highest performing potential for the competition. In training phases without a competition, there must still be a tapering phase which acts as a transition between preparatory phases so that the athlete can recover, effectively reducing symptoms of over-training. In long seasons with multiple competitions, it is impossible for an athlete to reach a 100% peak multiple times. Therefore, it is important to pick one major competition per season for the athlete to reach their fullest potential. In our case, this competition is the CrossFit Games (or Regionals for athletes with a smaller chance at qualifying for the Games).

Why must we taper?

As mentioned, tapering is essential to prevent over-training and to allow an athlete to reach their highest potential. This is the reason that we as coaches cannot have you constantly increasing training volume in an effort to "outwork" your opponents. The phrase "train smarter, not harder" is very applicable when it comes to tapering periods of heavy volume. Tapering does not need to be done with a competition in mind -- for example, we taper many times in training that ultimately builds up to Regionals and the Games. This phase is relatively short and allows the body to reset, while total training volume increases from one preparatory phase to the next all the way up until the Games. This is a common practice which allows an athlete to gradually increase their strength and conditioning while minimizing injury and excess fatigue. I cannot stress the following point enough: proper recovery is infinitely more important than what happens during training sessions. This is why proper training practices must include tapering and de-loading periods.

Accessory exercises, how often and when?

There are a series of accessory exercises which can be added to a training program to increase strength and proficiency with the Olympic lifts, and I would like to end our discussion with a very brief overview. Things like squatting, pressing, and segmented portions of the Olympic lifts are absolutely essential for improving one's abilities with the Olympic lifts themselves. For this reason, these exercises are written in as a direct component of a successful training program. The ultimate goal is to minimize the number of accessory exercises (with the exception of squats) as an athlete becomes more technically advanced. Most importantly, accessory exercises count towards total training volume! For this reason, try not to add too many of them on your own without the permission and involvement of your coach. A general rule of thumb is that pressing can only be performed twice a week while heavy dead lifts can only be performed once while still maintaining optimal recovery.

Hopefully these discussions have been helpful in giving you a better idea of how a strength program should be designed in order to achieve the desired results in a competitive athlete. Hopefully it will also answer your questions about why we perform strength work in the fashion we do at Reebok CrossFit Back Bay. Any further questions, comments, or concerns can be sent directly to me at justin@reebokcrossfitbackbay.com

Strength Programming Discussion: Part 3 of 4

Progressive Loading and Prilepin's Table

Today's discussion will focus on the progressive nature of loading in an average strength cycle and why this method is optimal. We will also discuss Prilepin's Table (sometimes called Prilepin's Chart), a series of ideal rep ranges calculated during the Soviet Era of weightlifting. The goal of this discussion is to help give you an understanding of how we regulate daily training volume whereas the previous discussion of periodization involves regulating weekly, monthly, and yearly volume.

Progressive loading, what and why?

Progressive loading is the concept of dictating sets based on percentages of max lifts and not based on feel. It is important for strength work to follow some type of linear progression for it to be truly effective. The goal of a successful strength program is to bring our lifts from point A to point B, but there must be some kind of daily percentage increase which ultimately builds us up to this point B. This also allows us to better regulate training volume from a periodization standpoint so that we do not overtrain, and it also prevents athletes from under-training and not reaching their potential. Long story short, coming in each day and doing things like squats simply based on feel is not as effective as slowly building up your squat by a certain percentage each day. The only caveat to this would be doing Olympic work or complexes AHAP (as heavy as possible). The rep schemes or types of lifts here naturally regulate the percentage, while allowing people of different skill levels to progress equally. This is not ideal, however, I am programming for a large audience and cannot accurately prescribe percentages for everyone.

Prilepin's Table/Chart

Progressive loading and, more specifically, daily loading can easily be regulated by something called Prilepin's Table. This table prescribes ideal repetitions to be performed in a training session directly based on the percentage of max being lifted that day. It is a great way to regulate training volume and prevent pushing athletes too far or not enough. A simple version of this chart is below:

As can be seen, the ideal reps per set and total repetitions to be performed are based directly on the percentage of max being lifted. Exceeding these totals can be done, however, this will most likely injure the athlete in the long run. Any workouts that I create for Wright Performance involving a barbell movement are regulated, for the most part, by this table. My squat cycle, as well as Oly ladders, are also based on this table. This allows me to regulate daily training volume so that I can continue to build up an athlete's strength over a set period of time. This ramp-up period cannot last forever, as discussed in the post on periodization. This discussion will also be continued in the next post on how to peak athletes for competition. This is an important topic because even if an athlete is not competing, the volume must be regulated so that there is a "pre-competition" or tapering period. Tomorrow's discussion will also briefly touch on supplemental/accessory exercises for the Olympic lifts.

Strength Programming Discussion: Part 2 of 4

Raw Strength vs Speed Strength

The next part of our discussion will focus on the difference between raw or "brute" strength and speed strength, or the ability to utilize our strength quickly and forcefully. There is a definite difference between the two, and I will argue that one is far more important than the other for CrossFit as a fitness program and as a sport. Since most of you who are asking questions about the lack of strength in regular programming are competitors, this discussion is particularly important for you.

What is Raw Strength?

Raw strength is the ability to exert force on a particular object, typically a barbell in our case. Lifts which are classified as involving raw strength are typically "slow lifts" such as low bar back squats, deadlifts, presses, etc. These lifts typically involve no explosive character and thus use different types of muscle fibers than the "fast" lifts which I will describe shortly. Athletes competing in powerlifting are concerned solely with raw strength and slow lifts, and strongman competitors likewise focus on slow lifts involving this type of strength.

What is Speed Strength?

Speed strength is directly correlated with power, or the ability to exert force through a set distance as quickly as possible. The Olympic lifts are the pinnacle of speed strength, with the Snatch being the fastest movement in the weightlifting world. Athletes with speed strength may not be able to out-squat a powerlifter, and they certainly will not be able to bench or press more than one (typically), however, they are highly explosive and can exert a tremendous amount of force in a short time.

What is the difference, and why does it matter for CrossFit?

By now, you can probably assume what I am going to say next -- speed strength is far more important to a CrossFit athlete than raw strength. So many movements in the sport of CrossFit involve maximizing power output, and the Olympic lifts themselves comprise a significant chunk of movements within our sport. For this reason, it is imperative that we build speed strength and train the related movements regularly. This is the reason that the Olympic lifts form the foundation of Wright Performance, and is also the reason that you have been seeing more Olympic lifts in the daily programming at Back Bay. We will also be shifting to a month of strength work strictly dedicated to the Olympic lifts at Back Bay for the month of April.

An added benefit of training speed strength is that these types of movements take less time to recover from. Doing nothing but bench presses, slow squats, and deadlifts would wreak havoc on an athlete's body and nervous system, particularly if they trained all three movements regularly each day. For this reason, one of the most effective powerlifting programs, created by Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell, utilizes something called "dynamic effort" and the "conjugate method" to alter the stimulus that its athlete's experience each training day. For those of you who want to do 5x5's of bench, deadlift, and low bar squats each day of the week, I encourage you to try this and get back to me in 2-3 weeks so you can let me know how your recovery, sleep, and mental clarity are going. Here's a hint: the answer is not good. Bulgarian weightlifters train the snatch and clean and jerk multiple times a day, up to 6 times a week. If they were performing this same training volume with slow deadlifts, etc, their careers would be over in no time.

In short, we are making you stronger by programming heavy Olympic work into the WODs and making you perform these movements in EMOTM-style workouts. Even movements like thrusters build speed strength when performed at an appropriate weight. So, once again, we have been making you all stronger at Back Bay without you realizing it. There is indeed a method to our madness. Tomorrow we discuss percentages, progressive loading, and Prilepin's chart.

Strength Programming Discussion: Part 1 of 4

Periodization: What and Why?

Hey guys. So recently there has been a lot of talk amongst our members at Reebok CrossFit Back Bay about what they want to see in the daily programming from a strength perspective, and many people have expressed their dissatisfaction with the trend of the past two months to focus on skill/on-the-minute style work versus "traditional" strength in the sense of 5x5's, etc. I will be writing one blog each day for the rest of this week discussing this subject, and sharing some insight with anyone who is interested regarding why our programming has been following the trend it has and what we can expect moving forward. The first subject of these discussions will be periodization and how this concept plays into the CrossFit "season."

What is periodization?

Periodization is the idea that training must follow a "peaks and valleys" type of model in which intensity and volume are changed over the course of several days, weeks, months, and years. If you actually look at the weekly model for Wright Performance, volume (total reps/sets) is typically highest on Monday, lower on Tuesday, then back up for Thursday with decaying volume Friday and Saturday. In contrast the intensity (relative exertion for each set, typically expressed in percentages) is lowest on days with higher volume and highest on days with low volume (i.e. max effort Saturdays). For our purposes, the highest intensity is a 1-rep  max or Max Effort set whereas sets of 4 or 5 reps are often lower intensity in comparison.

For training purposes, it is not sustainable to pelt athletes with high volume for extended periods of time whereas higher intensity, lower volume efforts are not enough to create growth in an athlete. In short, for those of you looking to do max effort sets every day you come in with the thought process that this will make you stronger, I cannot state enough how ultimately ineffective this approach will be. Strength work must attain peaks and must also go through valleys -- we must build you up over a period of weeks, then slowly de-load your training volume, and lastly allow your body and nervous system to recover before we can throw more strength work at you.

Why periodize, and what does this mean within the CrossFit "season?"

As stated, constant volume training will cause damage to an athlete's body, mind, and nervous system. Strength work must be performed in cycles for it to have a positive adaptation within the body of an athlete. This can also be performed by altering the type and focus of strength work being performed. For those of you at Back Bay who feel as if we are not doing strength work, what do you think EMOTM, heavy skill work, and barbell movements in WODs are? If you notice, many recent WODs have involved challenging weights with small rep numbers per set. The EMOTM work where you are alternating exercises each minute for 20 minutes is an adaptation of your previous strength cycle -- converting this raw strength into muscle endurance for the Open and Regionals. By altering the stimulus of this strength work from typical sets on the squat rack into muscle fatigue work performed during the WOD, your body is continuing to build strength under different pathways. Because CrossFit follows a "season," this is precisely the type of work you need to be doing right now. There will be time again in the near future to max out on your squat, and I can almost guarantee that none of you got weaker in your time away from strictly labeled "strength" work. Tomorrow's discussion will be on Raw Strength versus Speed Strength.

Coaching Tips: Breathing (and not Breathing) in Weightlifting

Efficient Breathing in Weightlifting

Hey everyone, Coach Justin here with another tip on one of my favorite subjects: weightlifting. While I sadly will not be bombarding you with a bunch of technical jargon involving lifting technique specifically in this blog post, I would like to comment on one of the mistreated step-children of the weightlifting family. Breathing is something that often either goes completely unnoticed, is misunderstood, or is performed entirely incorrectly under false pretenses and outdated methods handed down by high school football coaches everywhere. While it may be unappreciated, breathing (and more importantly NOT breathing) is one of the most important foundations of proper lifting technique. Breathing is the main factor in whether or not your midline stays tight, and if you have been regularly attending classes with me you will probably have noticed that one of my primary coaching cues involves yelling at you to stay tight.

"Stay tight," "set the core," and "squeeze" are all common cues that we use here at Reebok CrossFit Back Bay when we are trying to force you to maintain proper tension through the midline. All power in our body is generated in a "core to extremity" fashion meaning that, among other things, we are strongest at our center of gravity (near our hips and core) and weaker as we move out on our limbs towards the fingers and toes. Any and all power should be generated, therefore, from our midline and radiate out to the extremities. This is the exact reason we force you to keep arms straight while pulling on the clean and snatch until the hips are fully (not partially, or kinda sorta) open. What this also means is that you can transfer a lot of power and energy through your midline assuming, of course, that you are keeping it tight. I am going to embrace my inner artist with the following analogy: lifting while not squeezing your core is much like a piece of pottery before it has been fired in the kiln. The clay is still pliable and easily loses its shape when any type of force is applied. Stick that bad boy in a fire and it becomes rigid. Unless you shatter it against the ground (quite a nasty fate for your spine if you are feeling this analogy) the clay will not deform under pressure, and many high quality pieces of pottery have endured for many years. Now imagine that instead of clay and that one guy in the senior year pottery class hell-bent on ruining your chef d'oeuvre (French for "masterpiece," how's that for sophistication?) we are instead talking about your spine and a 500 pound bar resting on your back while you are attempting a new PR back squat. You can imagine that tightness through the midline becomes even more tantamount here. How exactly does breathing help you achieve this rigidity you ask? Enter the Valsalva maneuver.

What is the Valsalva maneuver, and why does it matter?

I would like to open our discussion of the Valsalva maneuver by providing an example. For those of you who have perused the pictures of Team Reebok CrossFit Back Bay from this year's NorthEast Regional competition, you may have seen quite a number of hilarious mug shots from the snatch ladder event. For me in particular, as the snatches got heavier, a giant vein appeared on my forehead and my face looked contorted and bloated as if I had stuffed a pack of delicious chocolate-covered almonds in each of my cheeks. While often confused with an "angry vein," the one that appeared on your dad's forehead when he found your report card, the appearance of this vascular oddity is actually caused by the Valsalva maneuver. In short, this technique involves taking a deep breath, squeezing the abs and back, and closing off the throat while attempting to push the air you just breathed in outward. Due to the squeezing in your body and the closed position of the throat, this air cannot actually escape, effectively turning your midline into a rigid, high-volume cylinder. Much like the game of Billiards on a brand new, felt table, transferring energy through this Valsalvafied midline is very efficient. If, however, you do not hold your breath and instead let your core go loose, you have turned that felt table into a tub of jelly (try transferring any type of energy through that, I dare you).

Unfortunately, conventional wisdom and many pot-bellied, angry football coaches have caused high school athletes to breathe in during the eccentric, lowering phase of many lifts, and breathe out during the explosive portion of the lift. This is extremely inefficient given our previous discussion because breathing out while performing any type of explosive power transfer causes us to lose that crucial midline stability and waste a large chunk of the power we just generated to internal friction in our bodies. So instead I leave you with this piece of newfound wisdom: take a long, deep breath PRIOR to beginning the eccentric phase of your lifts (i.e. lowering down in the squat). Once you have filled your lungs with air, squeeze your abs like that time you walked down the beach two months after starting CrossFit, and hold your breath through the entire range of motion of the lift. While often performed for no reason at all, the grunting noises heard from meatheads in the gym have some merit. Grunting is caused by our closed throats attempting to prevent air flow out of our bodies, effectively maintaining that pressure we built up with our deep breath. This is why many Olympic weightlifters grunt while driving out of the bottom of their cleans and snatches, where rigidity is crucial to prevent 400 plus pounds from crashing down on their heads. Practice this with your air squat first if you are having difficulty, and then translate the technique into all of your lifts. You will soon find that you feel much more stable under an external load and that maintaining those difficult positions in the front squat and overhead squat becomes much easier. You will also generate much more power in your cleans, snatches, push presses, and jerks.

If you have extreme difficulty in maintaing adequate core pressure, consider investing in a weightlifting belt. Aim for a belt of equal diameter across the entire surface and strap it on tight enough to maintain pressure on the abs and back without strangling you or restricting your range of motion. Wearing a belt allows you to contract your abs TIGHTER than without one (contrary to popular belief it does not weaken your core or your supporting back muscles).

I hope that this guide on breathing technique has been useful and informative. As always, if you have any questions on specifics feel free to send me an email. Also, much of the information in this post was inspired by strength coach Mark Rippetoe. If this subject interests you and you would like an extensive description of why we do certain things in weightlifting, his book Starting Strength is one of the most informative and interesting reads on the subject I have encountered. Remember how to breathe when you lift and you will find yourself setting new PR's in no time.

Happy lifting,

Coach Justin

Coaching Tips: Rowing

Rowing Efficiently in your CrossFit Workouts

Hey all, hope your training has been going well thus far. I wanted to start writing a series of posts on this blog to address some technical errors I notice while coaching classes at Reebok CrossFit Back Bay. On the whole, you guys have all progressed incredibly well as athletes and I must say that I am quite proud of all of your accomplishments. However, in the endless pursuit of elite fitness (other than the summertime abs that's why we are all here, right?) there are certain things we should all be paying attention to in order to get better. I figured I would open this series of "Coaching Tips" blog posts by discussing some faults I see almost every day in our rowing techniques.

I would like to present a quick checklist for many of you to consider while rowing, whether we have forced you to do so in a workout or whether you get your weekend kicks with your rower in a dark room wearing shorts of a questionable length (unless you happen to be Coach Gino):

• Each stroke begins with the handle as close to the fan as possible, chest upright but posture also leaning slightly forward, and legs bent aggressively in between the arms (many of you taller athletes tend to force the legs outside the arms)
• The stroke begins with the knees, much like in our Olympic lifting, with an aggressive drive through the heels which pushes the knees down as we send our torso backwards
• Once the knees have been fully extended, the momentum of the stroke continues into our hips as we open the hips with speed, causing our shoulders to come behind the hips while still maintaining straight arms
• ONLY once the hips are open do we finish the pull by driving the handle to our chest, using our upper back and the ever-familiar "pinching" of our shoulder blades
• Once the handle has been fully extended to the chest we IMMEDIATELY extend our arms again while the hips and knees remain silent
• After the arms are extended we close our hips again, sending the shoulders in front of the hips and the handle over the knees -- the knees REMAIN EXTENDED here (all too often I see people returning with the knees first instead of the arms)
• Finally we re-bend the knees, leaning forward and returning the handle as close to the fan as possible, thus returning us to our starting position (aka the "catch")

All too often these steps get jumbled, particularly on the return. Most of you have become very proficient with your strokes, it is just the return that has become messy. Make sure that arms come BEFORE knees on the way back. The return is simply the same as the pull in reverse order, so train your brain to complete these steps correctly.

Most importantly, the number one thing many of you need to do on your rows is relax. Start paying attention to your "strokes per minute" or s/m reading on your monitors. Coach Gino cruelly programmed a 500m row sprint at 35 s/m or higher earlier this week, and for those of you who didn't black out or immediately attempt to forget this nightmarish endeavor, you remember how incredibly awful it was. Aim to keep strokes per minute low, particularly once the distance of your rows begins to increase. Distance and s/m should be inversely proportional, meaning the longer the distance, the less strokes you should be taking to get there. Focus on getting a strong pull while taking the time to breath and relax on the return. Establishing this type of cadence on your rows will allow you to stay fresher for longer in WODs which happen to involve rowing.

Start paying attention to efficiency when we row during warm-ups and workouts alike. The extra thought you put in now will make you a better athlete and will drastically reduce your times in rowing WODs. Lastly, not following these tips will make you look like THIS GUY and no one wants to look like that. Thanks for reading and as always, if you have any questions please approach me in class or shoot me an email.

Happy rowing,
Coach Justin