Starrett and keeping our bodies working
In lieu of a normal Saturday workout a group went to Stadium and ran stairs. It sounded like a good time, but I was busy with last minute preparations for the Starrett seminar. We had 24 people, 70% of whom were coaches and gym owners, coming from as far away as Oregon and Bellingham. Kelly talked for about 8 hours, covering the purpose of stretching, methods, and resources. We spent time learning stretches for systematically working through the body.
Some things I took from this. First, there were no big surprises, nothing new that made me think, “I’ve gotta incorporate this into our program!” In fairness that may be because I’ve watched and read everything Starrett has put on the Crossfit main site. But the encouraging part, as Leon pointed out, is that it means we’re not missing anything. We’re doing the right things to be the best gym, the best fitness program possible. (Even if we’re not there yet, we’re getting there.)
Second, I liked how he described lack of flexibility as a vampire. It sucks away your strength, your speed, your stamina. A great demonstration of this is to lie on your back and have a partner lift your femur to vertical with the knee bent. Now the partner lifts the your foot, straightening your knee. Full range of motion, without resistance, is to extend to 5 degrees off of vertical. However, most of us felt resistance far from 5 degrees. That means that for movement passed that point, the muscle and connective tissue is working against you.
If you were to have freer movement through that range, you would be able to move faster and do more work. As an example, Leon can press a lot more overhead than I can, but he is also tighter through the shoulders. When we did the Rainier competition last weekend, I ended up doing more push presses in bigger sets. I wasn’t fighting the same structural limitations he was. The lesson: flexibility will free up your strength and endurance.
Third, the whole point of getting flexible, as illustrated above is to be able to do more work. Getting bendy for the sake of being bendy is pointless. We want to be more capable.
Lastly, midline stabilization is something that is essential to what we do. It is our ability to keep a neutral spine while moving or lifting. We have coached this, but Kelly gave us some refining to do and emphasized the importance of it.
Here is how you do it: 1. Pull your belly button in towards you spine (don’t get hollow, just pull it back by flexing). 2. Raise your pelvic floor (contract your sphincter, pretend you have to stop yourself from peeing). 3. Take a deep breath into your belly. 4. Squeeze your abs and compress that breath. 5. Keep your lower back engaged but not over-extended. 6. Keep your neck neutral- don’t look up or down, look straight ahead.
You’ll hear us harping on that in the days ahead.
Other attendees, I’ll be interested in what you came away with.
Hi Morgan. Great clinic filled with loads of good info! Both Michelle and I were really glad we could make this and thanks for arranging and hosting it. Like the nutrition cert, this clinic was extremely valuable in pointing out and reinforcing what should be obvious to us as athletes and coaches. That along with proper nutrition, flexibility and range of motion are key to better movement and performance. So much of what we do as CrossFitters focuses on the strength, speed, power etc. and neglects flexibility. Taking what we learned here back to our gyms and clients will only help translate to better performance gains for both them and us.
Now it’s time to break out the lacrosse ball!
Sounds like it was an awesome day of learning.
Since we’ve been doing the Snatch so much I’ve been trying to find some good online lessons. Along with flexibility and midline stabilization, form is equally important and I don’t think many of us do it correctly.
Check out the video here:
http://journal.crossfit.com/2009/06/lunchtime-snatching-with-burg-part-2.tpl
for an excellent Snatch lesson.
Thanks for hosting. Your gym is beautiful and Tom and I had a great time. My biggest take-away was to start using video with my back squats, to see if I can stay neutral instead of hyperextending and to avoid the pelvis tucking at the bottom. I feel like I have to go back to beginner status, which is sort of good because you can start seeing new progress all over again.
My takeaways:
1) I like the ideal of “movement prep” instead of a warmup, and having it be specifically tailored to the movements you’re about to execute (if the WOD has a lot of overhead then include full overhead movements in your prep). I’ve been doing the oldschool CF warmup (Sampson stretch, PVC OHS, etc etc) for a while now… need to change that when I’m on my own.
2) As you already said, you all have already incorporated a lot of his stretching into your warmup/cooldown. My takeaway from this is that the CrossFit Journal is a pretty damn useful resource. the fact that nothing Starrett said was terribly mindblowing is proof that the CFJ is a great place to learn if you can’t get to any certs/seminars or don’t have the cash.
3) That being said, its always humbling to feel like you’re doing alright on a certain topic like CF, and have a subject matter expert come in and blow your mind. Made me realize how much more there is to learn.
4) beyond academics, as a proud CrossFit dork I enjoyed being around a large group of people who were equally or even moreso enthusiastic/obsessive. When the instructor can joke about everyone showing off their “Paleo-berries and raw bison meat” at lunch and everyone laughs, you know its a different kind of crowd.
Good seminar. Glad I went.
A few things I that I took away from Saturday:
1. Keep the Mid-line tight at all times. This is nothing new but hearing it over and over is a good reinforcement.
2. Flexibility- You need to see or feel change. If you don’t see it or feel it, change did not happen.
3. GOAT! What is my goat in flexibility and work on it?! I do this with my weaknesses within CF, why not with flexibility?
I am sure there is a lot more, I need to go over my notes again. It was a great day.