Wednesday July 28, 2010
Jammed packed Wednesday morning class today…Individual warm ups followed by a little group warm up to get the blood moving. We then did a group stretch and Tracy led us through a review of the Push press and push jerk.
Part 1
5-5-5-5-5 Push press/jerk
Part 2
“Elizabeth”
21-15-9
squat cleans 135/85
ring dips
We had 3 fellas tackle this WOD Rx….Nice work Greg An, Spencer and Nathan!
Most seemed to struggle with the ring dips, especially with the double the reps band penalty in effect. Squat cleans looked good, but be sure to get that shrug and elbows through quickly and agressively.
Cash out was dead hang pullups, but most seemed to be done for the day after Elizabeth pushed them around a bit:)
Welcome to Gordana who joined us on her vacation from CrossFit Mississauaga.
Times and weights for Elizabeth:
Spencer 16:58 Rx
Gary 10:16 85#
Nathan 12:03 Rx
Greg Ar 9:47 75#
Carol 12:11 55#
Mary Lynn 9:12 85
Heather 10:52 85
Greg An 15:35 Rx
Corena 15:01 75/65#
Pammy 16:20 55#
Tom 11:05 75#
Faith 9:50 45#
Gordana 12:49 85#
Hate to push the panic button on summer, but I noticed things just a little darker this morning and we will be turning the calendar to August this weekend! Halfway point. If you have things you wanted to get done this summer….get ‘em planned! PEI is a beautiful place in the summer with lots to do. Beaches, live music, races? What have you got planned? I am thankful for completing my first duatholon last weekend, abeit quite slow, enjoyed some live music at Indian River Church and am looking forward to the hopper and Coach B coming to town next month, maybe a race if I can get a bit of running in.
Evening class times and weights for Elizabeth…
Joey 11:24 Rx
Mike 10:53 95#
Jason L 8:36 85#
Scott 9:02 85#
Cheryl 14:28 85#
Amanda 14:51 95#
Tracy DNF 65#
Suzanne 12:33 55#
Sarah 15:10 25#
Amber 14:40 65#
Sheri 9:06 55#
Pam 9:56 55#
DW 11:43 125#
I missed the workout this morning, but I had a comment re: “penalizing” bands.
For the past few months I’ve been using bands for HSPUs and ring dips. I find the tendency to “cheat” myself without them, particularly in a WOD, is too strong. Or with these particular moves, the strength simply isn’t there to do them.
The benefit of the bands is clear: you do full range of motion. I’m pretty sure this is much better than shallow rings dips and HSPUs and is the path to eventually doing them Rx.
While unintended, I wonder if the “bands penalties” encourage folks to do bad, unassisted moves rather than good, assisted ones.
At then end of the day, we’re all on our own and manage our workouts to meet our own needs, goals, drivers. I also completely get the need/interest to record and acknowledge when people truly Rx their workouts. But I do think there’s some competitiveness or other psychology at play here that has the penalties on bands driving some unintended results.
Not sure I said all that right … or if it matters.
I have to agree with Dave on this one. If I had done the workout today I would have used the red band and reached muscular failure. There is no real benefit to being penalized and reaching for a heavier band.I think patience, full range of motion and good form will get me there, but I could be wrong!
Thanks for the class Cheryl & Tracy. I struggled with the squat cleans this morning. I can clean more thant 45 lbs but it is the squat where I am challenged. My front squat weight hasn’t increased much as of late and an area I need to continue to work on.
And well I am off for the next month so I do plan to fully enjoy August and get hopefully most of what I need to get done…done…always including Crossfit time in my day!
thanks Faith….you are so thoughful posting thanks frequently!
Ok, my bad….perhaps I shouldn’t have used the verbage “penatly”. The purpose of using the band is to get the full range of motion….you are quite correct Dave. The idea of doubling the reps is multi purpose….one, to have a more comparable time and effort exerted to those doing Rx, to “encourage” those to strive to do unassisted movements and so that when you get to a time you can do unassisted ring dips for instance, you are not totally bummed by what is sure to be a substainal increase in WOD time. I always suggest doing what you can unassisted and moving to a scaled version then. Ring dips is good example actually…..not many gals can do them at all, not one rep unassisted, myself included. If I went beside Megan today in the WOD, I would hazard to guess that my time would be alot quicker than hers if I did the same number of reps with a band. Megan can do unassisted ring dips, albeit it takes her a while longer because they are so difficult. I do believe a more fair workload distribution would have me doing twice the amount assisted.
I have travelled to many CF gyms and this is quite common practice. We are quite gentle on some of these scales actually. At CF Hardcore for instance, if you choose to skip single instead of attmepting double unders, you are doing 5 times the reps of skipping and the number of double unders prescribed as tuck jumps.
Again, my bad using the word “penalty”…
Today, like many other days, I don’t get too wrapped up in how quickly I do a workout (maybe I should be but to me there are more important things in life to worry about). Admittedly, I felt a bit frustrated with myself today for having to go get a thicker band in the middle of the WOD. That being said, I don’t feel that I have taken a step backwards. That was a tough workout and next time if there are fewer ring dips, I will give the thinner band another whirl. I do see the value in doubling the ring dips if you use a band. If you are a band user, my advice (for what it’s worth- from this slow chick), I would be to alternate bands if necessary.
Dave, you seem to have covered the reasons why we use the bands pretty well (full ROM, building strength, etc.). Another key reason is safety – for example, band assisted pull ups help build up enough strength in your shoulders for kipping pull ups.
One reason for the extra reps is to build strength so that we can do them better unassisted. Another is to ensure that people keep their intensity level up.
Are these extra reps an incentive to go without the band? Definitely. This moves people from the heavier bands to the lighter one and eventually off of them altogether.
Now to your point … if people move off the band and their range of motion/form suffers they need to go back on the band (or back up to a thicker one). It’s the same as stripping down your weight in the middle of a workout. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing either … you could do as many as you can unassisted and then bang out the remaining reps x 2 using the band.
Doing an exercise without the bands is a great goal but it can be gradual. It should also be remembered that bands are a great way to improve technique … I do the HSPU workouts as prescribed but I am doing a lot of work on the bands to improve my handstand push ups.
I hope this helps.
Some goals in having different rep schemes for bands use in a WOD:
– more reps = more workload, building strength toward unassisted movement
– keeping WOD times within 20% of the median time
– motivational consequences
Thanks for the explanation Cheryl; I guess I just misunderstand the extra reps because getting through a workout, even with the red band, is very difficult for me. As for my first post I should have worded it better; when I said there is no real benefit to going to a heavy band, I actually have no idea if that is true or not. At the time I just did not understand it.
Hi folks lots of great discussion and here are my two cents for what they are worth. I heart crossfit, crossfit PEI, is a great place to train and has given me much more than I could possible describe.
One other thing I love about crossfit is that CF PEI makes it easily accessible and applicable to everyone who walks through our door, that is one of the beauties of having things like bands to scale so that folks can choose from, given their own fitness level something that works for them. That being said I am a firm believer in the band penalty. Not only does it allow me to get the full range of motion in the ring dip it keeps me honest in the amount of work that I am doing. For me it’s putting the clock out of my head and focusing on intensity. I graduated to the red band about 9 months ago and have been stuck there. Why? Because I don’t work on it, body weight movements are a goat for me and I will be the first one to admit that I don’t put the time and effort into addressing it so this ‘motivational consquence’ is key for me.
I think that it can take awhile but the goal is to take your experience with a lot of WODs to understand the focus of your intensity, once you start seeing the patterns then it will help you scale effectively and preserve the benefits of the WOD.
I have to agree with having the additional reps in play when the bands are involved. Yes in this case it is a lot of ring dips to do, but for me to do the same number of reps with a band as someone does without isn’t even close to the same amount of work. For those that were there this morning, I’m picturing the effort required for Nathan to do his 100% full-range-for-every-single-rep ring dips this morning. (Nice work by the way!)
I generally change up the thickness of the band depending on the number of reps in the workout to ensure I can still do the full range of motion. I don’t see that as a bad thing – it just means that I have to work on them more in order to progress to the full unassisted movement.
If CrossFit was easy, what would be the point?
Ring dips; yet another goat!
Just hate them…PERIOD!
Motivation is entirely personal.
I haven’t been motivated in the past little while to increase my strength to get over all my goats in Crossfit, mainly because my focus and energy has been for higher priorities. I keep going because I love the workouts, enjoy the company, and I’m staying at a level I happy with right now.
Now, come the fall I will be focusing more on fitness and diet, and Crossfit specifically, for the main goal of competing in the Crossfit Masters in 2012.
Do the extra reps when not doing the full range of motion without aid motivate me or bum me out. It can go either way. It doesn’t piss me of enough to refocus my energies on completing one goat. With some goats it is, I believe, purely arm strength and with others coordination and practice. I’ll pick them off one by one when I’m ready.
Now, I’m a big goal and priority setter and work towards my own targets. Do the extra reps work? Obviously it depends on your motivation and goals – both of the individual and of Crossfit. What do you want the extra reps to accomplish? Better range of motion, more strength to complete a ring dip (by the way, great rings dips, Nathan!), motivation to the exercisers, etc?
An interesting exercise may be to find out what motivates people, and help them design specific exercises / extra work at home / etc. to achieve what they want. A big task considering the number of members, but I wouldn’t mind helping out. Tom
My perspective is that for these exercises I am only choosing a band when I have to, and only the minimum assistance needed to do full ROM. I feel I am using max effort and all my strength, and getting full ROM, although assisted. This seems to me to be on par effort with a stronger person doing Rx. For this reason I find the double reps slight overcompensation, but maybe I need ‘em to get off the bands. Like some others noted, I tend to only work on movements when they are in a WOD. My bad I guess, but I do 5 WODs a week so don’t have a lot left in me for goat work. Which brings me to a big Thank You, Dave and Mike, for designing our workouts so well. Regular re-occurrence of key moves, and sequence of our workouts is fantastic, and has helped me overcome some goats by simply CrossFitting. I know I’m getting stronger and leaner and faster because of it!
Good conversation. I like Dave’s phrase “motivational consequences” though I’m not 100% sure what it means. But maybe that’s what I was trying to get at.
My original comment certainly wasn’t meant as a criticism of this aspect of the programming. It was more a comment on my own psychology: the higher the “penalty” the more likely I am to think, “oh, I can do it Rx” (I do approach CrossFit with a healthy measure of competitiveness). But then when I do, I end up cheating (less than full ROM) and realize I’d be better off using the bands.
That said, I’ve been pretty consistently using bands for these two movements for a while now, and I am seeing far more progress towards full Rx than doing “abbreviated, unassisted” moves.