31 Jan The G-Force Source: Prepping for the Open
G-Force CrossFit’s big boss and head honcho Glen “Glenny” Laws expanded his horizons over the weekend by attending the Garard brothers’ two day training camp. Over the weekend, attendees were exposed to training tips and Opens preparation and methodology. Each year, the Opens become much more competitive as the calibre of a standard athlete increases. Ben Garard has been to the CrossFit Games, and he and his brother Ricky share what they believe are essential parts of preparing for the CrossFit cray cray season.
The keys points that G-Force bossman took away from the training camp include:
Mobility and activation specific to the movements: if you’re going to overhead squat in the WOD, don’t roll on a ball. Instead, mobilise your thoracic and shoulders. Then work on activating the required muscles with non-static means. Activate your glutes, hamstrings and quads.
Have a purpose: why do you train? Why do you get up every morning and go to the gym? “Just because” is a terrible answer. Do you do it to be fit for your children? Do you do it because fitness helps you at work? Do you do it for your sex life so you’re not a one-minute man or woman? Do you want to be the fittest in the Sutherland Shire? Sydney? Australia? Know why you train. Goal setting is very important.
Sleep: without it, your mind and body isn’t going to recover very well. If you’re going to bed at midnight every night, are you really allowing yourself enough hours in the night to recover? Short answer: HELL NO!
Meditating and breath control: meditating before bed can help calm the mind so you don’t go to sleep with head noise. Breathing exercises will help control breathing during strenuous activity, and breath flow is super important for blood flow to the muscles.
We’ve previously mentioned that our programming has been altered to prepare you all for the Open workouts. Those short and fast burners we’ve been progamming at G-Force CrossFit are designed to get your mind and body attuned to Open style workouts. It’s called specificity. But what’s also specific to such programming, and just as important as turning up at the gym, is diet and rest. CrossFit is plagued with stories of woeful diets and horrible understandings of what “rest” actually is. As your workload increases, your diet needs to accommodate all that extra fuel you’re burning. A vehicle can’t run without petrol, and our bodies are no different (other than that fact that guzzling fuel is probably not a good idea). If you require nutrition advice, see your coaches. If you don’t eat appropriate and comparatively to your training, you will struggle to improve. And then we have rest. We program two rest days a week. If you train Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, you rest on Thursday. If you then train Friday and Saturday, you rest on Sunday. Your body needs to recover from the grueling sessions we put you through. Sometimes rest will mean staying home and doing some NetFlix and chill. Sometimes, it’ll mean you go for a swim, go to the sauna, steam room, or get a massage. Look after your bodies, especially leading up to CrossFit cray cray season. End rant.
Last week, we saw some new personal bests, all of which were front squats. Megan E increased her front squat by 5kg to 70kg, Si’s went up 5kg to 160kg, Courtney edged close to the triple digits with 97.5kg, and Steve M improved by 2.5kg with 92.5kg. Well done crew!
THE G-FORCE MOVEMENT BANK
Muscle-up progression
At G-Force, we’ve talked about transitional movements. These are movements that when performed a certain way, they can transition into a more complex movement. In this week’s Source, we’re focusing on the muscle-up and its progressions. Muscle-ups are like a rite of passage for CrossFit, and they’re becoming more common in competitions; specifically, the Opens. There is now less than a month until the Opens start, so we’ve chosen muscle-ups and its progressions to assist you to perhaps get your first muscle-up (or a more efficient one) for the Opens.
You would of heard your coaches tell you that tight is light, and loose is heavy. Tighter movements are transitional, especially so for the pull-up. We tell you to keep your pull-ups tight (which you can read all about in a previous blog), because they’re transitional from the strict pull-up, to the kipping pull-up, chest-to-bar, and the butterfly. Achieving tight movement in those variations of the pull-up is going to work you towards achieving a muscle-up.
Carl Paoli is our go-to guru for all things gymnastics and CrossFit. He has a four part muscle up progression video which takes you through the necessary movements to help you get that muscle up. Funny enough, he talks about a tight pull-up, chest-to-bar, then a belly-button-to-bar. If you can do those movements, you transition to the rings, and do those same movements with the rings, but instead of belly-button-to-rings, you want to get your hips to the rings.
To assist you with getting those hips to the rings, and to work on your transition to the dip, place a band on the rings and sit it under your bottom. Lay back into a front lever position and ensure you can see your toes on the horizon. Next, you bounce and thrust those hips up to the rings. After some bounces, perform a very fast sit up and transition into the dip with the assistance of the band, and keep your toes pointed in front of you.
The same movement then transitions into the full muscle-up. If you can do all of the above movements, you’re well on your way. Please seek the advice of your coaches before performing any of these activities.
See you all in the gym.
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