In the late ’50s and ’60s, future Olympic legends Mark Spitz and Debbie Meyer were knifing through the pool at the Arden Hills Swim Club. In total, Arden his has produced 31 Olympic medals, 21 of them gold. Today, prospective Olympians and top swimmers are doing the same thing—but now they’re using CrossFit too.

The mission of the Arden Hills USA Swim Team is to help athletes reach their full potential and follow their Olympic dreams, and head coach Brian Nabeta has decided CrossFit is going to help them do so. Nabeta introduced CrossFit in the fall of 2008, and he reports that he saw impressive strength gains in the first three months. Improved swim times followed. He wrote about integrating CrossFit and swimming in the CrossFit Journal article Pukie at the Pool.

Just like other top athletes, the swimmers at Arden Hills have discovered they can achieve elite performances with lower volume. The key, of course, is the intensity of the training, not the yardage in the pool. With CrossFit, Nabeta is seeing stronger swimmers who use their powerful bodies to cut through the water and drive out of the turns. Starting the day with a WOD allows Nabeta to condition the athletes before he gets them into the pool to perfect their technique.

Brian himself works out at CrossFit East Sacramento and is a Level 1 trainer, and he was also recently selected as a swimming coach on the United States World Youth Team that will compete in Spain. Since starting the program, both he and his wife Cherie have lost weight and regained their competitive conditioning, and Brian’s out-of-control cholesterol is back to normal without meds.

Nabeta’s athletes are stronger and fitter, too. Many are well on their way to scholarships and perhaps even the Olympics. Visit CrossFit Arden Hills Swimming for WODs and more information.

58min 38sec
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How many of us let golden opportunities slip away every single day?

For a long time, Zach Even-Esh did the same thing: he sat on his hands instead of reaching for the brass ring. At FilFest 2010, the colorful character from Dirty Jersey shared the story of how he learned that you have to go out and be aggressive and take chances—and yes, the story is about a girl.

Even-Esh learned from his experiences and committed himself to taking action and working hard, and he believes that’s the real secret of success—not intelligence or wealth or luck. To Zach, commitment and drive are more important than anything else. He calls this mentality being an “asskicker,” and it’s the reason he’s successful.

8min 02sec

Additional video: The Story of Fran by Greg Glassman, published Dec. 24, 2009.

Dan Williams proposes CrossFit athletes are only as strong as their weakest links and suggests a way to train these weaknesses to produce better all-around athletes.

The essence of CrossFit lies in its ability to define the previously undefined. Pioneering definitions have been created for such concepts as fitness, health and work capacity. Let’s consider CrossFit as an adjective rather than a noun. I am CrossFit, as opposed to I do CrossFit. This also deserves defining. What is it to be “CrossFit?” I propose that you are CrossFit if you are generally physically prepared for the unknown and the unknowable. It comes back to that random physical task you would least like to see come out of the hopper. I propose your performance in this least-favorite task is your true measure of CrossFitness.

You are only as strong as the weakest link in your exercise chain. The weight hanging on the end of this chain is your level of general physical preparedness (GPP). The more the chain can support, the higher your GPP. If each link in this metaphorical chain represents a component of fitness (cardiorespiratory endurance, stamina, strength, etc.), the focus of training should be obvious. The first link to snap and drop your GPP is the weakest link. To increase GPP, our weaknesses should not simply be overcome but rather improved to match our strengths. To quote Coach Glassman in What Is Fitness?, “You are as fit as you are competent in each of these 10 skills.” Perhaps this could be narrowed to state, “You are only as fit as you are proficient in your weakest skill.”

We have a CrossFit strength bias, a CrossFit endurance bias and, for argument’s sake, a CrossFit power bias (CrossFit Football). So why not a CrossFit weakness bias?

Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell broke his back twice, and while he was recovering from the first incident in ’73, he invented the reverse hyper.

According to Simmons, the patented machine builds strength and range of motion at the same time, and he believes it has restorative qualities that will do wonders for back problems. The reverse hyper creates traction, opens up the discs and rotates the sacrum, and athletes such as A.J. Roberts swear it’s the best thing for your body after a heavy squat. Simmons himself will use the machine several times a day.

“I’m 62. I just pulled (a) 670 deadlift easy two weeks ago in a meet. If it wasn’t for reverse hypers, it wouldn’t have happened,” he says.

8min 00sec

Additional reading: Tuning the CrossFit Athlete Part 2 by Daniel Christie, published Jan. 28, 2010.

Lt. Jason Fernandez believes it’s time for members of the military to rethink their definitions of quality of life to include things that really matter—like fitness and health.

What is quality of life?

Ask the average CrossFitter, and you’ll probably hear something about being able to walk up the stairs, play with your grandchildren or get off the toilet at the age of 75. Now ask the same question of your typical military member, especially one on a lengthy deployment, and you’re bound to hear something along the lines of bigger TVs and more comfortable living arrangements.

“Quality of life” is a phrase that is thrown around so much in the military that it has become misunderstood. As a supply officer in the U.S. Navy, I hear the phrase a lot, and in my opinion it has been bastardized to the point that I give it about as much consideration as washing my vehicle in the middle of the desert!

If I were to try to sum up what true quality of life is, it would be something like this: quality of life is any activity or asset that enables you to perform your duties in a manner that contributes to the greater good of your unit/group. Somehow I don’t see TVs and video games falling under that definition, but feel free to disagree with me on this one.

Interestingly, drinking the beer inside the keg might make you better at lifting it with a continental clean.

Speaking to a group of athletes assembled for the Jan. 16 Hybrid Winter Challenge at Hybrid Athletics, Rob Orlando explains that a big belly can be beneficial when performing a continental clean. Unlike the regular clean that’s one swift movement off the floor, the continental clean is best done as a deadlift and then a hang clean to the belly. Once the bar is resting on the belly, the athlete can adjust his or her grip before a quick movement brings the elbows underneath.

With a keg, you want to deadlift it to your lap and get it tight to your chest before adjusting your grip. From there, you need to pop your hips aggressively to get the keg above your shoulders, essentially using hip extension to roll it up the stomach and onto the shoulders.

4min 35sec

Additional video: Lifting With a Fat Bar by Kurtis Bowler, published Oct. 26, 2009

Elite athletes such as world-class on-water rower Erin Cafaro don’t have a lot of trouble learning new athletic techniques, but it still helps when the inventor is doing the instruction.

In Part 2 of this series, Pose Method creator Dr. Nicholas Romanov teaches Cafaro about pulling her foot off the ground to create an efficient stride.

According to Romanov, the pull is a combination of hip and knee flexion, and the height of the pull is determined by the speed of the stride. When sprinting, for example, you lean forward more than when jogging, and consequently you need to pull the foot higher off the ground. Finally, Dr. Romanov fine-tunes Cafaro’s mechanics to allow her to stop “interrupting” the force of gravity.

On her final trip across the gym at the University of San Diego, Cafaro looks less like a rower and more like a runner.

11min 05sec

Additional reading: Body Weight Perception by Dr. Nicholas Romanov, published Dec. 28, 2009.

Tom Seryak is an affiliate owner who used Westside methods for a period before he started CrossFit. He has done both separately but has now combined them for over a year. He offers strategies for trainers looking for ways to integrate the two programs.

For CrossFitters who are intrigued by the methods used at Westside Barbell, the pertinent question to ask is, “How do I incorporate them into my CrossFit training?”

No one solution will fit everyone’s needs, but I have been experimenting with incorporating Westside principles into my CrossFit training for the past 18 months or so, and after many trials and errors, I have settled in to a protocol that works very well for me. I’ll share several approaches I’ve tried, as well as the benefits and programming obstacles of each approach. Keep in mind that none of these approaches is attempting to duplicate what is being done at Westside. Instead, each incorporates the strength-training methods and “laws of training” that have influenced Louie Simmons’ system.

Incorporating Westside training methods and principles into CrossFit is feasible, but certain obstacles may arise. What follows are four generic templates (two that do not include Olympic lifting, two that do) for using Westside methods in the CrossFit program. It would be foolish of me to provide any more detailed programming because doing so would make it impossible to address the laws of specificity (your personal training objectives) and individualization (your strengths and weaknesses).

Jon Bik considers himself lucky that he only lost his leg after a 40-foot fall off a power pole. Landing on his feet might have saved his life, and with the use of a prosthetic limb, Jon remains active and fit.

While training at CrossFit East Sacramento, Jon talks about his injury and the rehab he had to go through, then he works on the push press.

Jon’s a strong guy who uses a lot of upper-body strength in the push press, and Justin Riley encourages him to use hip drive to make the lower body do as much of the work as possible. Jon may be working with a prosthetic on his right side, but after a few reps he gets the movement down pat and explains that he can rely on his left leg to generate most of the speed.

10min 44sec

Additional video: Everyone Can Drive From the Hip, published June 1, 2009.

CrossFit Radio host Justin Judkins interviewed Utah/Nevada Sectional winner Drew Canavero and other athletes on location at the event for Episode 109, which was webcast at 6 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, March 3, 2010.

Due to the challenges of recording live at a loud CrossFit event, the audio is not up to in-studio standards.

Justin began the show with a firsthand account of the Utah/Nevada Sectional that took place last weekend. He gave a quick rundown of the other sectionals that have been completed, as well as a brief preview of other competitions that will take place this weekend.

12:10 Drew Canavero gave his thoughts and impressions on his winning performance at the Utah/Nevada Sectional. Drew explained his strategy and talked about what he did to recover from one WOD to the next. He also shared some background about himself, detailed how he prepared for the competition, and explained what he’ll do over the next two months to get ready for the regional competition.

43:38 Justin interviewed several athletes live on location throughout the sectional competition, giving listeners a chance to be a part of the action before and after each WOD.

1hr 28min