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So we are one week into the Open with the second week looming quickly. Hopefully your lungs have recovered after the first workout and I hope you felt satisfied with your performance.
There is a common question that flies around during the Open which is - shall I re do the Open workout?
Well, as a coach who has helped many different folks through the Open from those going to regionals to those just looking to complete it RX’d for the first time I have a fairly good insight into how to approach the decision.
As yourself the following questions…
1 - Are you an athlete?
Yes? Continue to question 2.
No? Well if you are not competing then you are doing this for fun, even if some of the fun is comparing scores with others. This, I am afraid, is not competing. It is important to keep this in mind and I would suggest that just doing the Open workout once is enough.
Why? Well, if you have not dedicated a large portion of the year to preparing seriously for the Open, your body most likely is not ready for two very stressful, intensive pieces of work in four days. Especially when I will take a punt and guess that on top of this you are holding down a full time job, with all the social and family commitments that come with life.
Doing the Open workout once, with friends at the gym can be a great fun, and is worth it if you are healthy and of the right mindset. However, turning it into a serious athletic endeavour without the training base put in earlier in the year, specifically for this and you are asking for injury or sickness! Instead, I would suggest training as normal and come next week you will be fresher and mentally ready for another testing piece of adult PE to do with your pals!
2 - Is this your ‘A’ Competition of the year?
Yes? Do it. A second outing will be what you’ve been training for, the base work is done and this is your all or nothing. The chance to qualify for Sanctionals or maybe even the games outright. Hit it hard Friday, assess your tactics and performance over the weekend and go again on Monday. Get at it.
No? Well weigh up where your ‘A’ competition is in the year? If it is fairly soon then training for that must surely take priority? If this is the case, I would question the reasons for doing it a second time and maybe you need to ask difficult questions about how much control your ego has? What does your coach say? If this is just a ‘see where you sit’ kind of competition for you then one and done is enough.
Doing the Open twice will get you a better score most likely, but it also, over five weeks brings huge physical and mental strain which will severely limit your training time, the amount your body can adapt to any training and quite simply is degrading. Many come out of the open having hit it hard with reduced performance, injuries and/or niggles/sickness.
Some take away principles for you…
Hopefully this gives you an insight into my view point as a coach on the Open.
Enjoy it, whatever reason you are doing it for!!
Words By Head Coach Tom McPartlan - The Athlete System
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These Sanctioned events are as follows:
This list made available by CrossFit inc
]]>You can minimise the risk of this happening by performing simple but regular stretch routines, and it doesn't take as long as you think.
We've linked up with leading Sports Injury clinic, Injury Active to guide you through a 7 minute back mobility drill that you can perform at the gym or home.
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Fast forward 6 years and we’ve grown into something of an international company, delivering to countries across the globe. But, in the current climate, it’s become harder to put a uniquely European feel to our products. So at the end of 2018 we decided to completely overhaul our business model and cement our roots firmly in the UK and Europe as a whole.
We realised that nearly all of our competitors in the “Crossfit Clothing” space and the fitness space in general, were manufacturing their products in the Middle East and Asia. How did we know this? Well to be honest, we were using many of the same factories and they would often send us our competitors garments in the hopes that we would place orders for the exact same products. Delays on orders were becoming commonplace and imperfections, sizing issues and shortages became more frequent. Things needed to change fast.
So we took the decision to create our own manufacturing facility right here in England. We ordered new industrial sewing machines, a giant press and a fabric printer, hired machinists and pattern makers and spent 6 months sourcing fabrics. It’s been a huge learning curve but after 8 months we’ve finally released our new clothing range made solely in the UK and only using fabrics sourced in Europe.
Finally. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank or customers for their ongoing support and patience during this transition.
]]>First, Fitness. We must have an appropriate level of work capacity to be able to carry out high level skills under fatigue. This is pretty simple, the more your body is capable of, the more work you can do without movements/skills degrading.
Second, skills. These need development outside of a fatigued environment, and time must be taken to work on them in an ‘easy’ setting.
Too often we see athletes within the sport of fitness throwing skills randomly into workouts with no structure or reasoning behind it. Lets take a closer look at how these skills need developing.
C2B pull-ups. Lets assume our athlete is strong enough and well structured enough to do these safely. They can do 10-12 butterfly C2B but they are inefficient and find them extremely taxing.
First step is to identify technical flaws. Maybe they struggle with thoracic extension, or their hollow/arch positions are poor. We can work on thoracic mobility and positional awareness, strength and endurance on the floor. This can be built into training and may look something like this.
A. Bretzl – 3×5-8 breaths each side. Each set followed by 10 Cat-Cows. Rest as needed.
B1. Hollow Rock – 4×15-20 Rest 30s
B2. Arch Raises – 4×10-12 w/3s hold at top each set. Rest 90s
This is just a simple example and obviously is athlete specific, for some this may not be appropriate.
Secondly we start to practice the actual skill alongside this, in a non fatigued setting where the athlete can really focus on that specific skill. It is important that they are mindful during this practice. Pretty simple:
A. Butterfly C2B – 5×4-6 rest as needed.
You can add in physical cues here, e.g. squeezing a towel between legs and ankles (Something that was like gold for me, thanks to my coach Matt Connolly for that one).
This would increase slowly in reps or sets each week to build the volume.
From there, once the skill is nailed, we can make these into much bigger sets or we can add fatigue into the mix. This will depend on the goals, time in season, athletes injury history etc.
A way to progress in fatigue would be:
A1. Burpee Box Jump – 5×4-6 No rest
A2. C2B – 5×6-10 UB Rest 90s
This is pretty simple and quite easy…the next progression will have more reps in, different movements and more fatigue…
EMOM 14
1- 50 DU
2- 8-10 C2B
……
5 Rounds of:
Ab 20 Cals
15 Wallballs
10 c2B
Rest 60-90s
…….
AMRAP 10
8 c2B
16 KB Swing @ 32/24kg
24 DU
You can see how we slowly build from simple, low fatigue practice. Once the skill is at a proficient level, we slowly layer in fatigue.
This is really quite a simple concept…however it does require patience and this something that seems to be pretty much non existent in the world of fitness. All I would say is that if you suck at a particular movement, accept that it will take time to develop and you need to step back from it and re start sometimes.
It should also be noted that you need to slowly increase volume and be careful with this otherwise you will be very much leaving yourself open to injury. If you struggle with C2B, don’t just do C2B all day every day! Start with once a week and very very slowly build from there.
Hopefully this was of some use to some of you!
This Article was brought to you by Head Coach Tom McPartlan of the Athlete System. More information can be found here
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In 2013 Kat and I found out we were going to be competing at the CrossFit Regionals together on a team.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but what unfolded next has shaped and defined Dalecki Strength as well as Kat and I as coaches.
The workouts were released..
EVENT 3 on Day 1
Complete as many total reps in 7 minutes of:
Burpee ring muscle-ups.
MINIMUM work requirement- 6 reps per gender.
This meant that 2 out 3 women had to complete 3 burpee ring muscle ups.
In 2013 ring muscle ups were very rare for women.
Kat had a natural ability for muscle ups. They were strong, consistent and beautiful.
Sam our other girl was very far away from her first muscle up.
That meant I absolutely had to get 3 muscle ups on the day otherwise our team would be disqualified and knocked out of the competition.
I had started CrossFit exactly 1 year prior to this moment.
Yes I was an ex gymnast but I had ZERO exposure to ring training.
In traditional artistic gymnastics, women (sadly) do not learn the rings as an apparatus.
Not only that, when I started CrossFit I was de-conditioned, unfit and had even lost my strict pull ups!
During my first year of CrossFit I progressed really quickly. I took full advantage of the “beginner gains” but also I was able to rely on my previous athletic background. I knew how to move well, I just had to be disciplined with my training.
I pretty much picked up everything I needed to be decently competitive at CrossFit, I had all the barbell and gymnastics movements, the one exception being the dreaded ring muscle up.
I felt pressure to be good at CrossFit because people expected me to be good.
“Oh you are an ex gymnast, CrossFit must be easy for you"
“Ah you are Kat’s sister.. Are you as strong as her?"
This caused me to become incredibly stressed. CrossFit was the furthest thing from easy.
I was embarrassed and anxious. To add to that, I was extremely competitive.
As it unfolded this adversity was the biggest blessing I could have asked for.
Kat worked with me on this every single day in the gym for hours.
During these few weeks we learnt..
I got those muscle ups and we progressed through the whole weekend of competition.
It was surprisingly easy on the day.
We learned true empathy for our future clients.
We know how to help them because we have been through the struggle personally.
Another lesson was in the beauty of CrossFit.
Competing in CrossFit is not just “an exercising competition.” It is more than that. It is about tackling your fears and insecurities in front of thousands in a public arena. Whether that is on the Open Leaderboard, Regionals or a local comp, it takes bravery and can make you a better person in the process.
If you need help with gymnastics to get better at CrossFit and you care about doing things properly, we are here to help. We have been through the struggles you are facing now.
Evelina Dalecki
Dalecki Strength
These programmes are often the first step for someone with aspirations to compete in the sport of fitness. Blogs are cheap and often seem pretty exciting! Especially if the blog in question has a flagship athlete that is crushing it at regionals or the games. You are pretty much definitely going to be as good as them in a few months aren’t you?!
To be blunt, probably not. Anyone looking to compete in the sport, or simply to be as good as they can be in fitness needs an individual approach. Every person on this planet has a different training age (how long they have been training), biological age (your actual age), different genetics, different environmental factors, different training history, different goals, different physical and mental weaknesses/strengths that all need different approaches.
To reach your maximum physical potential, this all has to be taken into account, assessed and then discussed with a coach. Someone who takes the time to get to know you and build a picture of who you are, what you need to work on and who knows how to systematically work on it.
Training then slowly works towards these goals in a systematic manner, not cutting corners, building a foundation from which long term you can make consistent progress towards your goals. If you can’t do more than five kipping pull-ups then why are you attempting conditioning pieces that have sets of large unbroken kipping pull-ups in?
An individual design is often not as exciting as working out in a group or on a blog. However if someone wants to reach their maximum physical potential, then they need to decide wether they want to just have ‘fun’ in the gym and do random bits that are not designed with them in mind, or wether they want to commit to long term progress and adaptation.
Tom Mcpartlan
The Athlete System Head Coach
Check out - theathletesystem.co.uk
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