That’s because they have figured out the formula. In my opinion, the formula looks something like this:

Community x Leadership (Coaching + Programming) = n

Where “n” is, “I would sell my house and move there to be a member of this gym if I could.”

While the maths is tongue-in-cheek, the formula is a solid one. Whether you are looking for the best gym in the area, or you want to create a great CrossFit gym, these components are key. Great leadership, coaching, and programming, without community, is flat. A fantastic community with sub-par coaching and programming, while perhaps fun, will leave you far from achieving your goals. A box must excel at all aspects of the formula to be effective.

This is a look at some of the boxes in North America that have got it right.

CrossFit Milford – Milford, CT

CrossFit Milford offers a multitude of different programmes for people on every part of their fitness journey.

Overview

CrossFit Milford is an eight-year-old box in the Northeast with a long history of turning out successful athletes, such as Kaleena Ladeairous and Elizabeth Warren. The team was second in the world in 2015. The box is led by master programmer and Games-level coach Jason Leydon, and offers a multitude of different programmes for people on every leg of their fitness journey. CrossFit Milford has a particularly strong emphasis on community.

Community

This community focus is highly evident at CFM, and is not just confined to within the walls of the box. From a mentoring program where new members are hooked up with a more experienced member, to scholarship offerings for high school athletes and fundraising efforts for charities, it is clear that Jason and his wife Jocelyn set out to create a community when they opened up CFM.

“Seek out the CrossFit gym that truly gets it, and you will enjoy a long and healthy relationship with that gym and with fitness.”

Leydon’s most recent innovation is a business directory where people in the community can leverage the skills of other gym members – for example, plumbers, lawyers, and web developers. This only serves to strengthen the bond members.

Coaching and Leadership

Leydon is one of the top competitive programmers in the business, having gotten a number of athletes to the 2015 Games, including the CrossFit Milford Team, Dan “Boomsauce” Tyminski, and Masters athletes Amanda Allen, Liz Warren, and Robbie Davis. Allen was on the podium, as was the Milford team. He coached a number of other athletes to successful Regionals berths and he was the head coach of the 2014 GRID team the Philadelphia Founders. He is widely respected in the greater CrossFit community as a coach with a deep knowledge of the game.

In addition to almost twenty other coaches on hand, CFM also staffs a physical therapist, an ART practitioner, a nutritionist, a massage therapist, and a yoga instructor.

Programmes and Programming

CFM offers multiple levels of programmes, including general fitness. They have group CrossFit classes, performance-level classes for those who want to compete locally and master higher level skills, and competition level for prospective Games competitors.

A review of the daily programming for all levels reveals thoughtful, logical work that includes dynamic warm up, workout prep warm up, strength, skill, and conditioning (in that order), cool down, and some optional finishing pieces if you just want some additional sweat.

You can find additional information on CrossFit Milford on their website. 

CrossFit Jääkarhu – Austin, Texas

CrossFit Jääkarhu is built on strength in community.

Overview

There is a lot to like about CrossFit Jääkarhu, but their devotion to continuing education is what stands out most. Jääkarhu is dogged in their determination to pass along vital tips and coaching knowledge for the purpose of bettering their community. One only needs to visit the blog section of their website to see a litany of recent and ongoing educational offerings.

Community

Jääkarhu is built on strength in community. The concept of oneness pervades nearly everything they do, from top-down leadership where the coaches and owners genuinely like each other and enjoy hanging out, all the way down to unifying terminology that springs from their name, Jääkarhu, which means polar bear in Finnish. They refer to the box as a sleuth (a community of bears). This concept flows through to their classes too – CrossFit Kids are cubs, and each level of programming has a different name relating to the bear concept, i.e. pit, cave, den, etc.

“A box must excel at all aspects of the formula to be effective.”

Silly, you say? Far from it. I would defy any CrossFit box to match the level of community and togetherness shown, for example, when the entire sleuth came together to produce this video for Mino Solomon. Mino was severely injured in a weightlifting accident, and the video was part of an overall fundraising effort to help with his medical expenses.

That is family, folks. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Coaching and Leadership

CrossFit Jääkarhu houses some of the best coaches in the nation, including Games-level athletes Ingrid Kantola, Jessica Estrada, Ricky Redus, and Orion Hones. Kantola and Redus are professional GRID athletes, and Redus is a well-respected weightlifter as well, who brings his knowledge of the Olympic lifts to a number of instructional videos available on site. Estrada does the same for bodyweight movements. The prevalence of on-site instruction and education in the blog is further evidence of the quality of coaching. Watch the videos. Would you want to be at this box among these coaches? My money says yes.

Programmes and Programming

Much like Milford, Jääkarhu offers multiple levels of programming – fitness, sport, and competition. Fitness encompasses the classes, Sport is designed to take a good CrossFitter and make him better, and Competition is just that – if you want to compete at a regional or national level, this is the track for you.

You can connect with CrossFit Jääkarhu on their website.

12 Labours CrossFit – Glen Burnie, MD

From rowing clinics, to seminars and competitions, 12 Labours CrossFit has nailed the concept of community.

Overview

12 Labours CrossFit is a three-site, one-membership gym in Annapolis, Maryland. They were founded in 2007 as one of the first two hundred affiliates in the world. The 12 Labours team was ninth at 2014 CrossFit Games, and sixth in the world in 2015.

Community

Community is a huge focus at 12 Labours – so much so that they have an event director on staff, whose job it is to create events, competitions and parties for the sole purpose of fostering camaraderie within the gym and within the local CrossFit Community. From rowing clinics, to holiday parties, to seminars and competitions, 12 Labours has nailed the concept of community. From one testimonial:

“This place and the people I’ve met have helped me overcome some mental struggles while I’ve gained great physical strength and confidence in myself. I am forever grateful for the coaches here who have been an integral part in this positive change in my life.”

Coaching and Leadership

Co-founded by a trio of high-level athletes, including Games competitors Luke Espe and Brad Weiss, 12 Labours boasts some of the best coaches in the business. Several have gone on to play professionally in GRID, including Luke Espe and Christa Giordano. Many of the coaches are pursuing their OPT CCP certification, which is a testament to their dedication to look outside the standard CF certs for continuing education.

Programmes and Programming

12 Labours offers numerous specific types of programs in addition to standard group classes, including barbell, weightlifting, CrossFit Kids, personal training, remote and in-house individual programming, competition level programming, cardio-focused classes, and more.

“If your own gym is missing one of the critical pieces of the formula, consider being a catalyst for change and elevating your gym to new levels of excellence.”

They are very intentional about their programming cycle. The year-long cycle is based on the CrossFit Games season and involves strength and skill, open prep, the Games season, and a testing phase. All athletes, regardless of skill level, follow the cycle in some form, so the entire box is always progressing toward a goal. There is no random kitchen-sink WOD or meandering programming. It’s all goal-specific and smartly laid out for an entire year.

For more information on 12 Labours Crossfit, visit their website.

Finding a Gym That Gets It

Not all boxes are created equal. You owe it to yourself to seek out a box that fits your objectives. If you live in anywhere near any of the boxes highlighted here, consider yourself lucky, because you know what a fantastic CrossFit gym looks like. It’s not always the biggest box in the area, by the way.

Seek out the CrossFit gym that truly gets it, and you will enjoy a long and healthy relationship with that gym and with fitness. If your own gym is missing one of the critical pieces of the formula, consider being a catalyst for change and elevating your gym to new levels of excellence.

I plan to do a similar review every six months or so, so if your box fits the bill, alert me in the comments section below the article and I will check it out.

More Like This:

• How to Choose the Best CrossFit Box for You: 5 Questions to Ask
• A Guide to Choosing a CrossFit Gym (By Someone Who Doesn’t Own One)
• Tips for Choosing a CrossFit Gym
• New on Breaking Muscle UK Today

Photo 1 courtesy of CrossFit Milford.

Photo 2 courtesy of CrossFit Jääkarhu.

Photo 3 courtesy of 12 Labours CrossFit.

Headline image courtesy of Jorge Huetra Photography.

The post The Formula for a Successful CrossFit Gym appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

There has been a single article posted in The Morning Chalk Up that quotes Greg Glassman and presents his new vision for how the Games will be structured henceforth.

One thing we know about the new CrossFit Games restructuring is that we know very little.

There has been a single article posted in The Morning Chalk Up that quotes Greg Glassman and presents his new vision for how the Games will be structured henceforth.

It’s not clear when the conversation took place, to whom it was provided, and other than “Glassman said in a call earlier today,” we don’t know if this is official policy, 2019 rulebook law, or Glassman’s off-the-cuff remarks in an interview that was supposed to be about other things.

We’ve not heard from Dave Castro, and as of this writing, his Instagram account appears to be offline. There’s been no official statement from the CrossFit Games, no mention of it on the CrossFit website, nothing.

So really, the massive buzz that is floating about on the various social media channels is – at this moment in time – much ado about nothing. Relax everybody!

Let’s Imagine

For the sake of discussion, however, let’s assume that the details of the article are essentially correct. Let’s consider the Open and the Games will be ostensibly the same.

• CrossFit Invitational – This is being shut down. No one cares about this. This is ok news.
• Regionals – Gone. More about this later.
• Open – Here’s where it gets dicey.

Apparently, every country who has an affiliate will crown “Fittest In Country.” Whoever is the fittest in any given country after the 5-week Open will go to the Crossfit Games.

Let that sink in folks. After a 5-week online qualifier, every country will have a fittest male and female, and those people will get an invitation to the Games. At the moment, CrossFit has affiliates in roughly 162 countries. What this means is that after the Open, 324 people, one male and one female from each country, will get an invite to the CrossFit Games?

This model is rife with holes. First off, the CrossFit Games purports to want to find the fittest person on earth. As such, it seems necessary to have a continuously narrowing funnel – brackets if you will – through which each successive chapter of events narrows the field.

The Open/Regionals/Games process has done that fairly well – as is evidenced by the fairly similar top 10 males and females who’ve finished at games level in the past three years. Narrow it to one per country, however – now you have one Dottir, either Toomey or Saunders but not both, but more than that – there is one affiliate in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

So the USA is going to send one male and one female to the Games, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo is, as well. There is a single affiliate there. So will the affiliate’s coaches be the CrossFit Games representatives?

I get that this has more of an Olympics kind of flavor to it, but the Olympics is not seeking to crown the fittest on earth. If this system is initiated, there will be lots, and I mean lots, of CrossFit games athletes who couldn’t even win a local competition in Cincinnati, Ohio, let alone a regional competition.

What About Tonga?

The main issue here is simply the data points being tested. You can’t have a conclusive result without repeated tests of the data. The Open in the Congo with one affiliate is a single data point that is now going to be given the same weight as the data coming out of the US where there are thousands of affiliates, and the results will rumors the same. Bad idea.

As a result, the data will be skewed going in. The pool will be polluted if the sample sizes are too small to produce meaningful data.

But much worse will be the cheating. We know that bro-reps and long-shot video angles can be pervasive in the Open, but heretofore, those bad reps only got you over a bubble and any embarrassing weaknesses where exposed at regionals. If it means a games berth, forget-about-it.

And, since CFHQ in their infinite wisdom handed Brooke Wells a mulligan on her handstand push-up video, how on earth are they going to start holding winners to standard now that they have set the bar at “capacity to do work” instead of “actual work performed?” And if you think it’s not possible to game HSPU lines, camera angles, editing, filtering and much more, you are mistaken.

In addition to that, the question then needs to be asked:

• How many athletes are now going to relocate to get their shot at the games?
• Is the 4th-fittest Dottir in Iceland now going to move to Samoa? (Or is that part of the US? Do we know yet?)
• Which one of the Smith brothers get to stay in the US?
• Why can’t Pat Vellner catch a break?
• And where will the dancers go next??

The Open will occur in February, according to the news, for the 2019 Games, then repeat in October. Which leads to:

Regionals

From the sound of it, Regionals are gone. In their place, CrossFit will effectively co-opt 16 of the world’s leading functional fitness competitions like Wodapalooza, The Granite Games, and some of the other big competitions that have remained in place.

Ironic, in a way, because CFHQ has adamantly disavowed these competitions quite heartily for years – “Don’t call them CrossFit competitions. CrossFit has nothing to do with the OC Throwdown.” – now it is set to provide oversight, staffing and more so that the winners of these competitions can also get an invite.

In other words – did you miss the women’s top Open spot by two points in Albania? No problem! Register for Wodapalooza, win that, and you get to go to the games. There’s your regional competition.

However, it is doubtful that all of these competitions will have the same format – some two days, some three, some barbell heavy, some gymnastics heavy. Some cardio focused, others skill focused.

Oy. Talk about your data points being skewed. Now you have a CrossFit Game made up of athletes who’ve all taken different tests. That’s all well and good, but again, it pollutes your pool and essentially renders the title “Fittest on Earth” rather flat.

It appears as though the opportunities will still be plentiful, but the value of the Games-level competitors may be diluted.

I Get It.

I understand where CFHQ is coming from on this. I know they want to focus on health, not the .01% that makes up the CrossFit Games athlete pool. But I hate to break it to them – the reason they have the outrageous growth is due to the games.

I was there when it was a garage, underground, cultish program, and I watched as the games transitioned from the Aromas to The Stub Hub center – as ESPN picked it up, as the media grew more savvy, as the prize money raised, as the production grew, ad infinitum. I can assure you that the explosion in growth of affiliates is directly correlated to the popularity and associated marketing benefit of the Games.

Everybody wanted to be like them. So CFHQ should at least gauge the pulse of what has fed its explosive growth and give credit where credit is due. While I understand that Greg Glassman wants to cure sickness and ill health, he has his enormous platform in part because Dave Castro delivers a hell of a show.

The Games may lose money – true – but we call that a loss-leader in business.

Does This Take the Gloss Off?

In a way, up to this point, if you earned your way to the CrossFit Games through a grueling year of training, putting yourself through hell in the Open, traveling to Regionals, getting on the podium, and making it to the Games, you were part of an elite class of athletes. You earned it. You were the 1%. That had value.

Now, if you show up at the Games and you’re amongst some guy from Bavaria where an affiliate just opened who are sending their two best athletes who just learned kipping pull-ups. Can this be real? I can’t imagine this is how it’s going to be, but it appears so. In that case, is it really that exciting anymore?

Do you want to qualify for the games by winning the Wodapalooza? I don’t know. It seems … cheaper.

The post The New CrossFit Games – What About the Dottirs? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Recently, the CrossFit Games social media department reposted this video of Brooke Wells’ 345lb back squat double. Nice work, Brooke.

A twenty-year year old wunderkind, Brooke took the functional fitness world by storm last year when she was drafted by the Miami Surge GRID team. She went on to dominate the 2015 CrossFit Central Regional, taking first place on the podium and punching her ticket to the CrossFit Games. She followed this with a successful career in the GRID regular season, providing much of the strength and power needed on the female side of the team.

There is no doubt she is a tremendous athlete.

Watch the video. The video has been removed.  It showed Brooke’s knees caving in. The subsequent outcry was deafening. But there is a lot wrong with this post, and none of it has to with her knees.

Haters Gonna Hate

Let’s address the commenters. The so-called haters, or, as Jon Oliver has put it in the past, “Good evening, monsters…” (Watch the whole video or skip to 13:00. Oliver is amazing.)

Context is helpful when critiquing form online. Sometimes, that context is a request for critiques – the “Hey guys, what am I doing wrong here?” posts. Or in the larger sense, CrossFit has its own message board with threads devoted to sharing videos inviting critique. That’s when it is okay to chime in.

But this is not a video of some novice athlete at a random box. Brooke is a solid enough athlete to have won Central Regional. Won it. It’s fairly safe to assume she has squatted thousands of reps and hundreds of thousands of pounds. It’s also safe to assume she has a coach to address any form critiques. Brooke Wells does not need any of us to offer coaching tips via social media, thanks very much.

CrossFit Social Media Is at It Again

I have long taken issue with CrossFit’s social media team, because I know how they operate. They post as much potentially inflammatory stuff as they can to get the biggest reaction. They also use social media to humiliate at times. If you think I am making this up, read this. It’s why CrossFit HQ posts asses, dead bears, bloody animals being hoisted overhead, and their own athletes falling over bars. Trust me folks – CrossFit HQ saw the knees, and they knew damn well what would ensue.

“If you think this video was posted because of the impressiveness of the 345lb double, you are naïve.”

So, like a sacrificial lamb, Brooke Wells was offered up on the altar of CrossFit’s great snigger-fest. They didn’t bother to repost Well’s 200lb snatch from the blocks or her 210lb snatch from the floor. These are amazing achievements, but they are hardly controversial. Rather than celebrate a 210lb snatch (think about how impressive that is for a second), CrossFit HQ would rather humiliate. If you think this video was posted because of the impressiveness of the 345lb double, you are naïve.

Falling Victim to the Troll

Like any marketing team, posting the most compelling, interesting, or sharable content is key. CrossFit’s media team is not going to post a picture of a brand new 20lb wall ball and hope that it gets even a like. No, clicks and shares are everything. This is how CFHQ approaches social media. Sometimes it’s laudable, as in the case of an elderly cancer survivor getting his or her first pull up. Other times, it’s blatant trolling, like the string of dead ‘gator pics from a few years back.

I wonder why we continue to fall for this particular troll. It would seem logical to step back and say, “I know what they are doing there – they are trying to drag me into a fight.” But before long, hundreds of people had posted, “OMG those valgus knees!!” and “Good luck with your ACL surgery.” And hundreds of other people shouted back, “Shut your mouth, you armchair coaches! When you can lift 345 then you can comment!” Our friends at CrossFit sit back and smile, because we’ve taken their bait.

Brooke Wells does not need any of us to offer coaching tips via social media, thanks very much.

Them Knees, Tho…

I almost never comment on someone’s form. I don’t even do it in the gym where I train, unless I am asked. Giving unsolicited coaching advice is like giving liver to an eight-year-old. They don’t want it, they didn’t ask for it, and they will never ever consume it. They will shove it under the mashed potatoes until you aren’t looking, then feed it to the dog. (Sorry mom.)

In any case, there is conflicting evidence as to the harm done in a knee valgus response. Here are some resources for you to look at:

• Bret Contreras offers this article providing some support for a slight knee cave for advanced lifters.
• This fine video from a member of the Chinese weightlifting team offers some cogent thoughts about knees forward rather than out.
• Better yet, this article from Conrad Stalheim goes into great detail on the knees in versus knees out debate.

Let’s face it. Most of us shout, “Knees out!” because we’re taught to do so, without any real biomechanical knowledge as to why. Of course, in novice lifters, knees tracking over feet is a fundamental cue. However, as lifters gain strength, experience, and power, there are multiple schools of thought as to the best mechanical response coming up out of a squat. Femur length, quad strength, and hip flexibility all play a role in shaping the direction of the knees in the ascent.

There is a good deal of support for what Contreras describes as a “valgus twitch” – knees caving slightly on the initiation of the lift before returning to neutral. On max efforts, you will often see the knees do this. Just watch the top lifters in any high-level weightlifting meet, and you will see knees moving inwards in intense effort to make the lift.

“But Pat,” you may say. “Brooke’s knees are way more than a slight twitch.” Maybe. But that’s not my problem, nor is it yours. The proper response? “Awesome job on the 345lb double.” 

More Like This:

• Poking the Bear: Is CrossFit HQ the Ultimate Internet Troll?
• CrossFit Should Not Be Based on a Dare
• Social Media and Fitness: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photo courtesy of CrossFit.

The post Is CrossFit HQ Trolling You? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

These are my hopes for the new year for you as a functional fitness aficionado. Pick one, pick them all. Happy New Year!

Commit to Understanding Mobility

Almost nothing will make you a better overall athlete than understanding how mobility affects nearly everything you do. From pull ups to back squats, from snatches (especially snatches) to muscle ups, mobility is king.

I’m not just talking about your warm up. Laying on a foam roller and rolling your low back for ten minutes before class does not count. Mobility is different. It’s pre-workout dynamic stretching and post-workout deep stretching of the muscles and connective tissues. Understand how mobility affects your body’s mechanics, and you will be better at everything you do.

Make Friends With the Redline

Learn about pacing, and know not every WOD is designed to be performed at 100 percent. Base your pace on the length of the workout, and understand that once you redline (take yourself to your limit), you’re pretty much done for. At the “3, 2, 1, go,” your classmate may take off like a hare, and you may feel more like a tortoise. That’s fine. Rich Froning rarely comes out of the gate in the lead, but he frequently finishes first.

Assess the best strategy for each workout. Play with pacing and rep schemes. If you’re doing “Karen” (150 wall balls), opening up with a huge first set of fifty wall balls may not be the best strategy. Sometimes, on chest-to-bar pull ups, singles may be the fastest way to knock out reps. Learn how to work yourself into a pace that allows you to keep moving and always keeps you just short of being over and grabbing your knees.

Stop Saying “Squat Snatch”

That’s all. Just stop. When you say “snatch,” the squat is implied. When you say “power,” you are prescribing a specific movement. “Squat snatch” is redundant and ugly. And it’s the same with “squat clean.”

The squat snatch. Or as the rest of the world calls it, “the snatch.”

Fine-tune Your Fuel

Make this the year you figure out how important your fuel intake is to your performance. Consider that paleo may be awesome for aesthetics, but not too awesome for performance. Make friends with rice, oats, and yes, sometimes wheat. Have a sandwich now and then. You will not burst into flames. 

Tinker with timing so you know when to eat, not just how. Make note of what and when you ate on the days your training feels amazing, and do the same for when everything feels shitty. You’ll be surprised at what you discover. No amount of mental toughness can overcome a simple lack of fuel. 

Find the Slam Balls

Get out all that equipment sitting in the corner of the gym that no one ever uses and make use of it. You’ll be a better athlete and competitor for it. For example:

• Atlas stones – Roll one out of the dust in the corner, and lift it it up over your shoulder.
• Axle bars – Learn how to continental clean a heavy axle, and perform front rack walking lunges with it.
• Slam balls – Not just for the mom’s boot camp class. Have you ever done 150 slam balls at 30lb? Try it and report back.
• Sleds and prowlers – Push them, pull them, and drag them. Go all out on a heavy 800m sled drag once a week.
• Airdyne and Assault bikes – These are not just for casually warming up. Try this: Four sets of a 20-second all-out sprint, resting 3:40 between sets. Trust me, if you do this right, you will need every bit of that 3:40.

Want explosive power and a strong motor? Doing a lot of this won’t hurt.

Add Quality to Your Social Media

If you want to get better at your Olympic lifts, Jared Enderton and Charis Chan are the two to follow. Enderton is a well-known weightlifting coach and educator. Chan is an American record holder in her weight class with an 86kg snatch. Both are multi-sport athletes bringing their talent to CrossFit and GRID. They are also highly respected weightlifting competitors.

Their social media accounts document quality movement and serve as inspiration for anyone wishing to get better at their lifts. I have met them both, and they are humble athletes and all-around good people.

• Jared Enderton IG: @jaredenderton
• Charis Chan IG: @charischan

Put 20-50lb on Your Squat

In my humble opinion, being able to squat heavy is the foundation upon which a happy, long, productive life is built. I am convinced that staying out of a nursing home is predicated on having a strong squat well into your golden years.

Work with your coach and set some squat specific goals for the year. Ask your coach to factor in progressive strength training with a squatting emphasis to get you there. Yes, a solid and heavy snatch may look great, and a jerk PR is always uplifting, but there is a large element of technique involved in both of these.

Squatting requires strength. Make 2016 the Year of the Squat.

More Ideas to Supercharge Your New Year:

• Get a Big Squat: The Russian Squat Routine vs The Smolov Squat Routine
• The Intelligent Athlete’s Guide to Fueling Performance
• How to Strategize and Win a WOD Like Rich Froning
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photo 1 courtesy of CrossFit.

Photo 2 courtesy of Jorge Huerta Photography.

The post Resolve to Make This Your Best CrossFit Year appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Dave Castro has come up with some pretty solid competition workouts. “The Pool” in 2013 (swimming and bar muscle ups) was a beautifully simple test of multiple layers of fitness and skill. The 2014 “Muscle Up Biathlon” (400-meter runs and muscle ups) was a fantastic and uncomplicated couplet that tested skill under fatigue.

But other workouts never quite panned out and either left the crowd scratching their heads, like the “Sprint Chipper” in 2013 (medball GHD sit ups, snatch, and wall burpees), or left the athletes busted up, like “Murph” in 2015 (running, push ups, pull ups, and squats).

As this year’s Games season approaches, let’s examine three movements that need to go away forever and take a brief look at another three that might be fun to watch.

Ditch: 1. The Worm

Bury this thing once and for all. Worm squats, worm thrusters, or worm shoulder to overhead – they are just plain unwatchable.

The worm may lend itself to difficult and challenging movements in a team competition, and I am all for teams working as a unit to complete a movement or sequence of movements. But it’s just ugly to watch.

I am all for teams working as a unit, but the worm is ugly to watch.

Add to that the worm’s near-impossibility to judge, and it borders on the ridiculous. What is the standard for a worm “shoulder to overhead?”

Is one judge able to identify twelve locked-out elbows in a fraction of a second? The fact that the worm, or some version of it, keeps appearing every year tells me that the Games brain trust is running thin on ideas.

Ditch: 2. Handstand Walks

We’re over it. Move on.

This was a novelty in 2011 when only a handful of people could execute the movement with extreme proficiency, but now, it’s like walking upright.

Unless you up the ante by making it an obstacle course or up a set of steps, a simple walk-for-distance is no longer challenging or exciting to watch. How about a handstand walk through a 6-8” shallow pond? Now you have my attention.

Ditch: 3. Speed Bars Without Offset

GRID got it right from the outset. Their Race 7 ladders feature a series of progressively heavier bars that are zig-zagged down the GRID. In 2014, CrossFit pilfered the idea of a speed ladder right from GRID, introducing a speed clean ladder with five bars. It didn’t pose much of an issue that year.

In 2015, that same ladder arrived on day three of Regionals directly after fifteen muscle ups. The resulting fatigue provided a trip-and-fall shit show that was second to none.

Both individuals and teams failed to account for the apparent bounce of the bar, and were tripping and tumbling left and right. The same thing happened at the Games, only it was a snatch ladder.

The solution is simple – offset the bars so the athletes don’t have to go over the top of the bars to get to the next one. Why is that so hard, Dave?

Introduce: 1. Atlas Stones

I am aware they used proper cement Atlas stones in the CrossFit Invitational in 2015. Now let’s bring them to the Games. Not the rubber, sand-filled bags from 2012, but actual concrete stones.

Nothing challenges every single ancillary muscle fiber, right down to your fingertips, like a stone. Stones demand strength, skill, agility, balance, coordination, and guts like no other movement.

At the 2015 CrossFit Games, most athletes failed to account for the bounce of the bar during the snatch ladder.

Here’s an idea, Dave. Build a four-sided staircase in the tennis stadium with a single column at the top. In heats of four, athletes must shoulder a heavy stone and ascend the stairs with the stone on their shoulder.

The first athlete who places it on the pedestal wins the heat. Single elimination until you have an eventual winner. The stones need to be heavy enough that it’s a slow grind up the stairs for maximum entertainment value, but not so heavy that they need to drop it every few steps.

(I have the sketches if you need them.)

Introduce: 2. Backward Roll to Support

Greg Glassman was teaching the HQ staff how to do these back in 2013. Then CrossFit issued a challenge for the community at large to submit their videos. But it was Tony Budding who brought them to the masses when he introduced them into GRID at the first combine in Las Vegas.

Within one year, there was scarcely a GRID athlete who could not do a backward roll to support with proficiency.

CrossFit has stayed away from this movement as a competition piece, but it’s time to bring it to the Games. It’s an extremely technical movement, and entertaining as hell to watch.

Introduce: 3. Rope Muscle Ups

Just what it says. Standard ring muscle ups, once the holy grail of every CrossFitter’s repertoire and a staple at the Games, are as routine as air squats now.

Everyone can do muscle ups, so why not take it up a notch and separate out the elite athletes with high-level bodyweight movements?

Using a rope takes muscle ups to the extreme and tests something that rarely gets tested in its truest form: grip strength. Here’s a nice couplet for you: 5 rope muscle ups, 5 burpee back flips. 3 rounds. Go.

Finding the Balance

There is always the need for balance between entertainment and testing for fitness.

Of course, testing for fitness supersedes entertainment value, which is why we have rowing for calories, assault bikes, and the TrueForm treadmill. However, I have no doubt whatsoever that ESPN always has an ambassador in the mix demanding that the television package be of value. You have to factor in how it plays on TV.

The “Introduce These” movements satisfy both the need to test fitness and the need to be watchable to the millions who tune in.

The worm fails on multiple levels, and tumbling ass over teakettle on speed ladders only serves to wind up in CrossFit fail compilations. No one wants that, am I right?

You’re welcome, Dave. See you at the 2016 Games.

More Like This:

• 3 Lessons We Can All Learn From the CrossFit Games
• Survival of the Survivors: The CrossFit (Hunger) Games
• The Brutal Truth About Getting to the CrossFit Games
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photos courtesy of CrossFit.

The post 3 Movements the CrossFit Games Need to Get Rid Of appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The Games website described the event as:

“[A]n online, three-event competition consisting of different weight classes allowing athletes to compare their lifts with those of similar size around the world.”

Initially, I was excited that a competition sponsored by CFHQ might veer into a unique area of strength and skill and enable some fringe athletes to have a shot at prize money and recognition. Even the introduction of weight classes was a promising new addition.

Turns out, it was just another CrossFit competition. With the Games, the Team Series, the Invitational, and now the Liftoff, CrossFit is doing nothing new. They are just reinventing their own wheel. The CrossFit Games summary article broke the event down like this:

“Even a killer snatch and clean and jerk could not make up for a very low score on the AMRAP, and consequently the CrossFit athletes fared better in the overall total which combined snatch weight, clean and jerk weight, and workout reps.”

No kidding. CrossFit athletes are good at CrossFit. So the Liftoff gave us nothing new. It gave us Froning and Briggs. That’s like watching the Emmy Awards in the 1990s. You knew Kelsey Grammer was going to win Best Actor for Frasier, so what was the point of watching?

CrossFit Comps Don’t Have to Be CrossFit

What if CrossFit, Inc. held a competition that wasn’t simply CrossFit? After all, as an entity, they already have branches of specialty certification – powerlifting, weightlifting, and gymnastics, to name a few. So what might happen if their competition menu branched out to include true tests of those specific domains?

“Well, it wouldn’t be CrossFit then,” you say. Perhaps, but does that matter anymore? CrossFit, as an ever-growing monolith of health and fitness, can afford to sponsor competitions that are forks in their road. In fact, the fact that CrossFit claims to be the rogue renegades of fitness demands that they push the envelope in terms of competitive offerings.

Lauren Fisher finished seventh overall in the Liftoff, despite placing only 36th in the weightlifting total.

Imagine, if you would, that CrossFit actually had a weightlifting competition. Make it “The 2016 CrossFit Weightlifting Nationals.” Powered by CrossFit, sponsored by Rogue. Singlets required. Not just an online competition, but a fully scoped, national event with qualifiers and rules, judges, and lights? And, God forbid, kilos? Like the Open, you would register and submit your best of three lifts in the snatch and clean and jerk via video. From there, perhaps the top twenty finishers in each weight division would qualify for the national competition. The competition itself would be run just like a USA Weightlifting event – three judges, white and red lights, no press outs, no elbow-to-knee contact, no horrible recovery from the knees.

Look, for example, at the women’s 131-140lb/58kg-63kg weight class at the Liftoff. Keep in mind that the scores were simple: total weight lifted plus total reps on the metcon. Sarabeth Phillips snatched 195lb/88kg (second place), clean and jerked 245lb/111kg (first place), and had a total of 440lb/200kg. The overall winner of that weight class, Emily Bridgers, snatched 180lb/82kg and clean and jerked 215lb/98kg.

So Phillips outlifted Bridgers by 45lb/20kg. Phillips outlifted the third place finisher, Maddy Myers, by about 12lb, or 5kg. Both Phillips and Meyers are widely known in the CrossFit community as excellent weightlifters, and their snatch and clean and jerk results reflected this. But the metcon made what might have been a really interesting weightlifting competition into a rather run-of-the-mill CrossFit competition.

Time for CrossFit to Leave Its Comfort Zone

Frankly, with the Team Series, the Liftoff, and now the CrossFit Invitational (fancy that, Froning’s team wins again), it’s all becoming boring. We’ve been watching the same damn people win these events for years. So why include the Liftoff if it’s nothing more than a mid-season CrossFit competition?

Shake it up, CrossFit. Have a national bodyweight competition that features three workouts specifically designed to highlight gymnastics movements, such as strict bar muscle ups, backward roll-to-support, back tucks, and handstand walks. Then have a true weightlifting competition. Give us Marco Coppolla and Sarah Robles instead of Froning and Briggs. Find a new and creative way to engage your extended athletic community.

More Like This:

• Why CrossFit Will Never Not Do the American Swing
• The CrossFit Dream Team: A New Era of the Affiliate Cup
• Why Froning Is Not the Fittest Man in History
• New on Breaking Muscle UK Today

Photos courtesy of CrossFit.

The post Failed Attempt: The CrossFit Liftoff Was Just CrossFit appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

But other workouts never quite panned out and either left the crowd scratching their heads, like the “Sprint Chipper” in 2013 (medball GHD sit ups, snatch, and wall burpees), or left the athletes busted up, like “Murph” in 2015 (running, push ups, pull ups, and squats). As this year’s Games season approaches, let’s examine three movements that need to go away forever and take a brief look at another three that might be fun to watch.

Ditch: 1. The Worm

Bury this thing once and for all. Worm squats, worm thrusters, or worm shoulder to overhead – they are just plain unwatchable. The worm may lend itself to difficult and challenging movements in a team competition, and I am all for teams working as a unit to complete a movement or sequence of movements. But it’s just ugly to watch.

 I am all for teams working as a unit, but the worm is ugly to watch.

Add to that the worm’s near-impossibility to judge, and it borders on the ridiculous. What is the standard for a worm “shoulder to overhead?” Is one judge able to identify twelve locked-out elbows in a fraction of a second? The fact that the worm, or some version of it, keeps appearing every year tells me that the Games brain trust is running thin on ideas.

Ditch: 2. Handstand Walks

We’re over it. Move on. 

This was a novelty in 2011 when only a handful of people could execute the movement with extreme proficiency, but now, it’s like walking upright. Unless you up the ante by making it an obstacle course or up a set of steps, a simple walk-for-distance is no longer challenging or exciting to watch. How about a handstand walk through a 6-8” shallow pond? Now you have my attention.

Ditch: 3. Speed Bars Without Offset

GRID got it right from the outset. Their Race 7 ladders feature a series of progressively heavier bars that are zig-zagged down the GRID. In 2014, CrossFit pilfered the idea of a speed ladder right from GRID, introducing a speed clean ladder with five bars. It didn’t pose much of an issue that year.

In 2015, that same ladder arrived on day three of Regionals directly after fifteen muscle ups. The resulting fatigue provided a trip-and-fall shit show that was second to none. Both individuals and teams failed to account for the apparent bounce of the bar, and were tripping and tumbling left and right. The same thing happened at the Games, only it was a snatch ladder.

The solution is simple – offset the bars so the athletes don’t have to go over the top of the bars to get to the next one. Why is that so hard, Dave?

Introduce: 1. Atlas Stones

I am aware they used proper cement Atlas stones in the CrossFit Invitational in 2015. Now let’s bring them to the Games. Not the rubber, sand-filled bags from 2012, but actual concrete stones. Nothing challenges every single ancillary muscle fiber, right down to your fingertips, like a stone. Stones demand strength, skill, agility, balance, coordination, and guts like no other movement.

At the 2015 CrossFit Games, most athletes failed to account for the bounce of the bar during the snatch ladder.

Here’s an idea, Dave. Build a four-sided staircase in the tennis stadium with a single column at the top. In heats of four, athletes must shoulder a heavy stone and ascend the stairs with the stone on their shoulder. The first athlete who places it on the pedestal wins the heat. Single elimination until you have an eventual winner. The stones need to be heavy enough that it’s a slow grind up the stairs for maximum entertainment value, but not so heavy that they need to drop it every few steps.

(I have the sketches if you need them.)

Introduce: 2. Backward Roll to Support

Greg Glassman was teaching the HQ staff how to do these back in 2013. Then CrossFit issued a challenge for the community at large to submit their videos. But it was Tony Budding who brought them to the masses when he introduced them into GRID at the first combine in Las Vegas. Within one year, there was scarcely a GRID athlete who could not do a backward roll to support with proficiency.

CrossFit has stayed away from this movement as a competition piece, but it’s time to bring it to the Games. It’s an extremely technical movement, and entertaining as hell to watch.

Introduce: 3. Rope Muscle Ups

Just what it says. Standard ring muscle ups, once the holy grail of every CrossFitter’s repertoire and a staple at the Games, are as routine as air squats now. Everyone can do muscle ups, so why not take it up a notch and separate out the elite athletes with high-level bodyweight movements?

Using a rope takes muscle ups to the extreme and tests something that rarely gets tested in its truest form: grip strength. Here’s a nice couplet for you: 5 rope muscle ups, 5 burpee back flips. 3 rounds. Go.

Finding the Balance

There is always the need for balance between entertainment and testing for fitness. Of course, testing for fitness supersedes entertainment value, which is why we have rowing for calories, assault bikes, and the TrueForm treadmill. However, I have no doubt whatsoever that ESPN always has an ambassador in the mix demanding that the television package be of value. You have to factor in how it plays on TV.

The “Introduce These” movements satisfy both the need to test fitness and the need to be watchable to the millions who tune in. The worm fails on multiple levels, and tumbling ass over teakettle on speed ladders only serves to wind up in CrossFit fail compilations. No one wants that, am I right?

You’re welcome, Dave. See you at the 2016 Games. 

More Like This:

• 3 Lessons We Can All Learn From the CrossFit Games
• Survival of the Survivors: The CrossFit (Hunger) Games
• The Brutal Truth About Getting to the CrossFit Games
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photos courtesy of CrossFit.

The post 3 Movements the CrossFit Games Needs to Ditch appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The Games website described the event as:

“[A]n online, three-event competition consisting of different weight classes allowing athletes to compare their lifts with those of similar size around the world.”

Initially, I was excited that a competition sponsored by CFHQ might veer into a unique area of strength and skill and enable some fringe athletes to have a shot at prize money and recognition. Even the introduction of weight classes was a promising new addition.

Turns out, it was just another CrossFit competition. With the Games, the Team Series, the Invitational, and now the Liftoff, CrossFit is doing nothing new. They are just reinventing their own wheel. The CrossFit Games summary article broke the event down like this:

“Even a killer snatch and clean and jerk could not make up for a very low score on the AMRAP, and consequently the CrossFit athletes fared better in the overall total which combined snatch weight, clean and jerk weight, and workout reps.”

No kidding. CrossFit athletes are good at CrossFit. So the Liftoff gave us nothing new. It gave us Froning and Briggs. That’s like watching the Emmy Awards in the 1990s. You knew Kelsey Grammer was going to win Best Actor for Frasier, so what was the point of watching?

CrossFit Comps Don’t Have to Be CrossFit

What if CrossFit, Inc. held a competition that wasn’t simply CrossFit? After all, as an entity, they already have branches of specialty certification – powerlifting, weightlifting, and gymnastics, to name a few. So what might happen if their competition menu branched out to include true tests of those specific domains?

“Well, it wouldn’t be CrossFit then,” you say. Perhaps, but does that matter anymore? CrossFit, as an ever-growing monolith of health and fitness, can afford to sponsor competitions that are forks in their road. In fact, the fact that CrossFit claims to be the rogue renegades of fitness demands that they push the envelope in terms of competitive offerings.

Lauren Fisher finished seventh overall in the Liftoff, despite placing only 36th in the weightlifting total.

Imagine, if you would, that CrossFit actually had a weightlifting competition. Make it “The 2016 CrossFit Weightlifting Nationals.” Powered by CrossFit, sponsored by Rogue. Singlets required. Not just an online competition, but a fully scoped, national event with qualifiers and rules, judges, and lights? And, God forbid, kilos? Like the Open, you would register and submit your best of three lifts in the snatch and clean and jerk via video. From there, perhaps the top twenty finishers in each weight division would qualify for the national competition. The competition itself would be run just like a USA Weightlifting event – three judges, white and red lights, no press outs, no elbow-to-knee contact, no horrible recovery from the knees.

Look, for example, at the women’s 131-140lb/58kg-63kg weight class at the Liftoff. Keep in mind that the scores were simple: total weight lifted plus total reps on the metcon. Sarabeth Phillips snatched 195lb/88kg (second place), clean and jerked 245lb/111kg (first place), and had a total of 440lb/200kg. The overall winner of that weight class, Emily Bridgers, snatched 180lb/82kg and clean and jerked 215lb/98kg.

So Phillips outlifted Bridgers by 45lb/20kg. Phillips outlifted the third place finisher, Maddy Myers, by about 12lb, or 5kg. Both Phillips and Meyers are widely known in the CrossFit community as excellent weightlifters, and their snatch and clean and jerk results reflected this. But the metcon made what might have been a really interesting weightlifting competition into a rather run-of-the-mill CrossFit competition.

Time for CrossFit to Leave Its Comfort Zone

Frankly, with the Team Series, the Liftoff, and now the CrossFit Invitational (fancy that, Froning’s team wins again), it’s all becoming boring. We’ve been watching the same damn people win these events for years. So why include the Liftoff if it’s nothing more than a mid-season CrossFit competition?

Shake it up, CrossFit. Have a national bodyweight competition that features three workouts specifically designed to highlight gymnastics movements, such as strict bar muscle ups, backward roll-to-support, back tucks, and handstand walks. Then have a true weightlifting competition. Give us Marco Coppolla and Sarah Robles instead of Froning and Briggs. Find a new and creative way to engage your extended athletic community. 

More Like This:

• Why CrossFit Will Never Not Do the American Swing
• The CrossFit Dream Team: A New Era of the Affiliate Cup
• Why Froning Is Not the Fittest Man in History
• New on Breaking Muscle UK Today

Photos courtesy of CrossFit.

The post Missed Attempt: The CrossFit Liftoff Was Just CrossFit appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Sometimes, it’s okay to puke.

A Stomach-Turning Spectacle

Last week CrossFit posted this picture on social media, of John Immel from Kauai CrossFit vomiting into a tire. I will leave the snark regarding puking into a tire for another day. But suffice it to say, the near-300 comments were a fairly even push-pull regarding the benefits or detriments of puking:

Now, there are two forks in this particular gastronomic issue. One is the issue of Pukie the Clown and vomiting being a badge of honor in the CrossFit hemisphere. The other is the very real response to the intensity of a workout that may have you bent over a tire every once in a great while. Let’s examine both.

Pukie the Clown Is an Idiot

Make no mistake, I come down solidly against the mascotization (I made that word up) of a bodily process. This culture seems to almost encourage the act of vomiting as an introduction into the club – the CrossFitter’s hazing process. You can win a free t-shirt for puking or get your name on the whiteboard in some boxes, as if exercising to the point of retching is a particular PR to which we should all aspire.

When these gyms have slogans like “Exercise ‘till you puke!” and graffiti artists tag gym walls with the ‘roided-out version of the clown, it’s just silliness. Encouraging the act of puking completely misunderstands the point of training. Saying things like, “Now you’re one of us” to your fellow CrossFitter as he or she is on hand and knees in the parking lot is just foolish.

Celebrating vomiting, tearing, or any injury at all is the old-school, hard-core CrossFit-of-yesteryear, hearkening back to the days when all of this was so new no one knew what was good and what was bad. We’re smarter than that now. We train for fitness, competition, and life. As such, we should no longer subscribe to the ancient practices of CrossFit jackassery. Which means CrossFit’s social media team should stop posting pictures of people mid-vomit and quit being so giddy about the misconception that upchucking is neat-o.

On the Other Hand

I am here to tell you friends – sometimes, you puke. And sometimes, it’s okay.

Some training tests require an intensity that may bring you to the point of vomiting. Keep in mind this bodily reaction is different from person to person. Some people never vomit, no matter how hard they go. Other folks seem to lose their lunch fairly easily because that’s how they’re wired.

I am not talking about training here, I am talking about testing. Most times, in your daily training environment, your prescription will not call for 100 percent sustained effort, but rather, a submaximal pace or weight. Other times, your workout calls for an all-out effort. Whether you’re prepping for competition or actually competing, a test may require you to give everything you have. For example:

Imagine a workout in a competition where you have, for time, 5 rounds of 49 double unders and 7 deadlifts at 275/175 lb. It’s a fairly short workout, so you’re basically going to go full out, 100 percent pace. Let’s assume that in round 4, you’re a mere 1-2 reps behind the leader and you need to increase speed and intensity. You do, and you find yourself having to go to a dark place to find that extra 3-percent effort.

By the final deadlifts, you can feel your guts beginning to well up. You have pushed past any level of effort you even thought possible, but you continue to crank out the final reps as fast and as hard as you can. By doing so, you not only take the workout – you take the podium.

And you vomit.

A Time and a Place

Do you celebrate the vomit? No. You celebrate the win. You celebrate the fact that you found the gear to go there and separate yourself from second place. That’s the intensity and effort that competitors sometimes find themselves needing to truly compete. It’s not funny, nor is it worth a t-shirt or a picture on CrossFit’s social media pages, but it is a reality. It’s not the end of the world, nor is it “intelligence leaving the body.” Sometimes you go there, and as a result, you throw up.

Do you go there on a Saturday partner WOD in a CrossFit group class? NO. During “Fight Gone Bad”? NO. In a qualifier workout for a national competition where four extra reps might mean the difference between qualifying and not? If it happens, it happens. As a community, let’s all celebrate the effort. Not the regurgitation.

More from the Functional Fitness World:

• CrossFitters: Time to Call Ourselves Out on the Shenanigans
• Endurance Is Not a Dirty Word
• CrossFit and the Real Meaning of “No Excuses”
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photos courtesy of Jorge Huerta Photography.

The post A Qualified Defense of Puking in CrossFit appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

On the 12th of November, 2015, two-time CrossFit Games competitor and GRID athlete with the Boston Iron Lindy Barber announced she was moving to Tennessee to join Rich Froning’s team, CrossFit Mayhem Freedom.

Lindy Barber’s announcement as the newest member of team CrossFit Mayhem Freedom via Instagram.

With this announcement, the official era of the CrossFit Games dream team was born. Dream teams have existed for years, but prior to this, it was always a surreptitious affair. No one spoke of it, even though everybody knew it was going on. Now, much like the relocation of individuals to find an advantageous region to qualify for the Games, dream-teaming is breaking into the open and will surely become part of the competition landscape.

A Brief History of Team Competition

• 2009: For a team to participate in the CrossFit Games, all they had to do was hop on a plane and fly to the Ranch on the weekend it was being held.
• 2010: Teams (and individuals) had to participate in the Sectionals process in order to qualify for the Games. The Affiliate Cup was merely an annex of the individual competition (much like the Masters competition is now), and not much attention was paid to the formation of teams. The idea of creating super teams had not yet crystallised because team participation was in its infancy.
• 2011: The online Open was introduced. Teams qualified just like individuals – Open, Regionals, Games. By this time, although the rule book did not address it, dream teams began to form. Some teams found they could be a much stronger unit by assimilating athletes from other local gyms. It was the Wild West back then – everyone was trying to figure out the landscape, and few people gave the idea of super teams much attention because everything was so new.
• 2012: The powers that be at CFHQ began to hear rumblings of dream teams. They rewrote the rules to insist that teams be comprised of athletes who train primarily at the subject box.
• 2013: CrossFit was cracking down. The power of social media was such that as soon as a Regionals team was registered and appeared on the Games website, anything that looked suspicious was immediately looked into. One team member might be a trainer at a box that was, in some cases, 200 miles away. Complaints would go out on social media and to HQ. In one case, that of Brick CrossFit, the team members were disqualified. Since then, numerous teams have been disqualified for the same reason. Most never made the front page because the team simply disappeared.

Following 2013, the new lesson was it was difficult to hide your ringers. Social media was like that kid in your Year 4 class who went and told the teacher the cool kids were playing with a lighter in the toilets. Super teams had to find another way.

Team CrossFit Mayhem Freedom during the Worm Finale event at the 2015 CrossFit Games.

Enter CrossFit Conjugate

CrossFit Conjugate brilliantly addressed the issue in 2014 by assembling a dream team with nearly spotless methods (I will explain the “nearly” part shortly). A year before, CrossFit Conjugate was a brand new affiliate whose Regionals team was disqualified on day one of the Regionals for being unable to complete the requisite number of muscle ups. Yet they rocketed to second place in the world one year later. Quality coaching and programming, you may ask? Not really. You can’t grow a world-class team organically in a single year. Rather, through a so-called serendipitous series of relocations and subtle recruiting, Conjugate assembled a world class roster of athletes:

• Mark Nelson and Hunter Britt were already members of that box. Nelson was a member of the 2013 team. Britt was, and is, an up-and-coming wunderkind whose name you will hear in the future.
• Sam and Jennie Dancer, owners of Q-town CrossFit in Quincy, Illinois, moved to Cincinnati to take up a coach-in-residence position.
• Lindsey Kelly relocated from Chicago about the same time as the Dancers.
• Melissa Doss, a long-time member of a local box in Kentucky about 45 minutes away, was the question mark. There is no question that she trained and coached at CrossFit The Tracks, but she had to carefully create a paper trail of participation at CrossFit Conjugate’s physical location in order to justify her place on the team.

CrossFit Conjugate was true to the letter of the law. In theory, as long as a team meets the rule book requirements, there is not a damn thing wrong with assembling its component parts from around the country.

However, it takes a hell of a commitment to relocate from Quincy, Illinois to Cincinnati, Ohio for a year just to be part of a CrossFit team. It shows just how far some gyms will go in order to make it to the Games. Plenty of teams have been disqualified in the past few years for rule violations. And then there are the dozens of teams that were never caught, despite the relocations, the bogus Facebook “check ins,” and the workout logs. All to make it first to Regionals and then possibly, the Games. But for what exactly? How much value does the Affiliate Cup really hold?

The Future of CrossFit Team Competition

Apparently, the answer is a lot. Why else would Lindy Barber, a fine athlete in her own right, make the 180-mile move from Louisville to Cookeville, Tennessee? I can only assume that Froning actively recruited her, which means he is piecing together his 2016 hand-picked team. As if we didn’t already know this, Froning loves to win.

But Froning is hardly alone, and oddly, there is little to win – some money, a bit of residual notoriety, but that’s about it. Nevertheless, the desire to make it to the big show is huge.

The only difference between the Conjugate method (see what I did there?) of 2014 and the Mayhem method of 2016 is that Mayhem openly admits their assembly of a super team by way of Barber’s post. Conjugate had to operate in the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” era of pretending it was all staffing-related and happenstance.

Team Verdant Green during the Big Bob Drag Race event at the 2015 CrossFit Games.

We’ve entered a new era of the Affiliate Cup. I suspect a flood of similar announcements will follow. Right or wrong, it’s the landscape of the team side of CrossFit now. There will always be gyms like Diablo CrossFit, which prides itself in its teams being homegrown and home-trained. But the genie is now out of the bottle, and with Barber’s announcement, CrossFit gyms across the globe will likely now begin a heavy recruiting effort. The original purpose of the Affiliate Cup, to “Find the Fittest Gym,” no longer applies. The spirit of the law was corrupted for a while, and now the letter of the law is, too.

And that’s fine. It’s merely the reality of the way the sport has morphed. However, it certainly makes the team side of the Games less appealing, at least in my opinion. It’s tantamount to PEDS being legalised and all the top competitors admitting they are taking them. Suddenly, the achievement is less about fitness, programming, skill, and community, and more about who’s the best puppeteer.

You’ll Also Enjoy

• I Have a Dream (Team): When Winning Is The Only Thing That Matters
• The Moment Grid Became A Sport
• The CrossFit Games is Broken, Part 3: Team Competition and Leaderboard Shenanigans
• New on Breaking Muscle UK Today

Photo 1 courtesy of Lindy Barber’s Instagram.

Photos 2 & 3 courtesy of CrossFit Inc.

The post The CrossFit Dream Team: A New Era of the Affiliate Cup appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Lindy Barber’s announcement as the newest member of team CrossFit Mayhem Freedom via Instagram.

With this announcement, the official era of the CrossFit Games dream team was born. Dream teams have existed for years, but prior to this, it was always a surreptitious affair. No one spoke of it, even though everybody knew it was going on. Now, much like the relocation of individuals to find an advantageous region to qualify for the Games, dream-teaming is breaking into the open and will surely become part of the competition landscape.

A Brief History of Team Competition

• 2009: For a team to participate in the CrossFit Games, all they had to do was hop on a plane and fly to the Ranch on the weekend it was being held.
• 2010: Teams (and individuals) had to participate in the Sectionals process in order to qualify for the Games. The Affiliate Cup was merely an annex of the individual competition (much like the Masters competition is now), and not much attention was paid to the formation of teams. The idea of creating super teams had not yet crystallised because team participation was in its infancy.
• 2011: The online Open was introduced. Teams qualified just like individuals – Open, Regionals, Games. By this time, although the rule book did not address it, dream teams began to form. Some teams found they could be a much stronger unit by assimilating athletes from other local gyms. It was the Wild West back then – everyone was trying to figure out the landscape, and few people gave the idea of super teams much attention because everything was so new.
• 2012: The powers that be at CFHQ began to hear rumblings of dream teams. They rewrote the rules to insist that teams be comprised of athletes who train primarily at the subject box.
• 2013: CrossFit was cracking down. The power of social media was such that as soon as a Regionals team was registered and appeared on the Games website, anything that looked suspicious was immediately looked into. One team member might be a trainer at a box that was, in some cases, 200 miles away. Complaints would go out on social media and to HQ. In one case, that of Brick CrossFit, the team members were disqualified. Since then, numerous teams have been disqualified for the same reason. Most never made the front page because the team simply disappeared.

Following 2013, the new lesson was it was difficult to hide your ringers. Social media was like that kid in your Year 4 class who went and told the teacher the cool kids were playing with a lighter in the toilets. Super teams had to find another way.

Team CrossFit Mayhem Freedom during the Worm Finale event at the 2015 CrossFit Games.

Enter CrossFit Conjugate

CrossFit Conjugate brilliantly addressed the issue in 2014 by assembling a dream team with nearly spotless methods (I will explain the “nearly” part shortly). A year before, CrossFit Conjugate was a brand new affiliate whose Regionals team was disqualified on day one of the Regionals for being unable to complete the requisite number of muscle ups. Yet they rocketed to second place in the world one year later. Quality coaching and programming, you may ask? Not really. You can’t grow a world-class team organically in a single year. Rather, through a so-called serendipitous series of relocations and subtle recruiting, Conjugate assembled a world class roster of athletes:

• Mark Nelson and Hunter Britt were already members of that box. Nelson was a member of the 2013 team. Britt was, and is, an up-and-coming wunderkind whose name you will hear in the future.
• Sam and Jennie Dancer, owners of Q-town CrossFit in Quincy, Illinois, moved to Cincinnati to take up a coach-in-residence position.
• Lindsey Kelly relocated from Chicago about the same time as the Dancers.
• Melissa Doss, a long-time member of a local box in Kentucky about 45 minutes away, was the question mark. There is no question that she trained and coached at CrossFit The Tracks, but she had to carefully create a paper trail of participation at CrossFit Conjugate’s physical location in order to justify her place on the team.

CrossFit Conjugate was true to the letter of the law. In theory, as long as a team meets the rule book requirements, there is not a damn thing wrong with assembling its component parts from around the country.

However, it takes a hell of a commitment to relocate from Quincy, Illinois to Cincinnati, Ohio for a year just to be part of a CrossFit team. It shows just how far some gyms will go in order to make it to the Games. Plenty of teams have been disqualified in the past few years for rule violations. And then there are the dozens of teams that were never caught, despite the relocations, the bogus Facebook “check ins,” and the workout logs. All to make it first to Regionals and then possibly, the Games. But for what exactly? How much value does the Affiliate Cup really hold?

The Future of CrossFit Team Competition

Apparently, the answer is a lot. Why else would Lindy Barber, a fine athlete in her own right, make the 180-mile move from Louisville to Cookeville, Tennessee? I can only assume that Froning actively recruited her, which means he is piecing together his 2016 hand-picked team. As if we didn’t already know this, Froning loves to win.

But Froning is hardly alone, and oddly, there is little to win – some money, a bit of residual notoriety, but that’s about it. Nevertheless, the desire to make it to the big show is huge.

The only difference between the Conjugate method (see what I did there?) of 2014 and the Mayhem method of 2016 is that Mayhem openly admits their assembly of a super team by way of Barber’s post. Conjugate had to operate in the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” era of pretending it was all staffing-related and happenstance.

Team Verdant Green during the Big Bob Drag Race event at the 2015 CrossFit Games.

We’ve entered a new era of the Affiliate Cup. I suspect a flood of similar announcements will follow. Right or wrong, it’s the landscape of the team side of CrossFit now. There will always be gyms like Diablo CrossFit, which prides itself in its teams being homegrown and home-trained. But the genie is now out of the bottle, and with Barber’s announcement, CrossFit gyms across the globe will likely now begin a heavy recruiting effort. The original purpose of the Affiliate Cup, to “Find the Fittest Gym,” no longer applies. The spirit of the law was corrupted for a while, and now the letter of the law is, too.

And that’s fine. It’s merely the reality of the way the sport has morphed. However, it certainly makes the team side of the Games less appealing, at least in my opinion. It’s tantamount to PEDS being legalised and all the top competitors admitting they are taking them. Suddenly, the achievement is less about fitness, programming, skill, and community, and more about who’s the best puppeteer.

You’ll Also Enjoy

• I Have a Dream (Team): When Winning Is The Only Thing That Matters
• The Moment Grid Became A Sport
• The CrossFit Games is Broken, Part 3: Team Competition and Leaderboard Shenanigans
• New on Breaking Muscle UK Today

Photo 1 courtesy of Lindy Barber’s Instagram.

Photos 2 & 3 courtesy of CrossFit Inc.

The post CrossFit Super Teams: A New Era for the Games appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

On the 12th of November, 2015, two-time CrossFit Games competitor and GRID athlete with the Boston Iron Lindy Barber announced she was moving to Tennessee to join Rich Froning’s team, CrossFit Mayhem Freedom.

Lindy Barber’s announcement as the newest member of team CrossFit Mayhem Freedom via Instagram.

With this announcement, the official era of the CrossFit Games dream team was born. Dream teams have existed for years, but prior to this, it was always a surreptitious affair. No one spoke of it, even though everybody knew it was going on. Now, much like the relocation of individuals to find an advantageous region to qualify for the Games, dream-teaming is breaking into the open and will surely become part of the competition landscape.

A Brief History of Team Competition

• 2009: For a team to participate in the CrossFit Games, all they had to do was hop on a plane and fly to the Ranch on the weekend it was being held.
• 2010: Teams (and individuals) had to participate in the Sectionals process in order to qualify for the Games. The Affiliate Cup was merely an annex of the individual competition (much like the Masters competition is now), and not much attention was paid to the formation of teams. The idea of creating super teams had not yet crystallised because team participation was in its infancy.
• 2011: The online Open was introduced. Teams qualified just like individuals – Open, Regionals, Games. By this time, although the rule book did not address it, dream teams began to form. Some teams found they could be a much stronger unit by assimilating athletes from other local gyms. It was the Wild West back then – everyone was trying to figure out the landscape, and few people gave the idea of super teams much attention because everything was so new.
• 2012: The powers that be at CFHQ began to hear rumblings of dream teams. They rewrote the rules to insist that teams be comprised of athletes who train primarily at the subject box.
• 2013: CrossFit was cracking down. The power of social media was such that as soon as a Regionals team was registered and appeared on the Games website, anything that looked suspicious was immediately looked into. One team member might be a trainer at a box that was, in some cases, 200 miles away. Complaints would go out on social media and to HQ. In one case, that of Brick CrossFit, the team members were disqualified. Since then, numerous teams have been disqualified for the same reason. Most never made the front page because the team simply disappeared.

Following 2013, the new lesson was it was difficult to hide your ringers. Social media was like that kid in your Year 4 class who went and told the teacher the cool kids were playing with a lighter in the toilets. Super teams had to find another way.

Team CrossFit Mayhem Freedom during the Worm Finale event at the 2015 CrossFit Games.

Enter CrossFit Conjugate

CrossFit Conjugate brilliantly addressed the issue in 2014 by assembling a dream team with nearly spotless methods (I will explain the “nearly” part shortly). A year before, CrossFit Conjugate was a brand new affiliate whose Regionals team was disqualified on day one of the Regionals for being unable to complete the requisite number of muscle ups. Yet they rocketed to second place in the world one year later. Quality coaching and programming, you may ask? Not really. You can’t grow a world-class team organically in a single year. Rather, through a so-called serendipitous series of relocations and subtle recruiting, Conjugate assembled a world class roster of athletes:

• Mark Nelson and Hunter Britt were already members of that box. Nelson was a member of the 2013 team. Britt was, and is, an up-and-coming wunderkind whose name you will hear in the future.
• Sam and Jennie Dancer, owners of Q-town CrossFit in Quincy, Illinois, moved to Cincinnati to take up a coach-in-residence position.
• Lindsey Kelly relocated from Chicago about the same time as the Dancers.
• Melissa Doss, a long-time member of a local box in Kentucky about 45 minutes away, was the question mark. There is no question that she trained and coached at CrossFit The Tracks, but she had to carefully create a paper trail of participation at CrossFit Conjugate’s physical location in order to justify her place on the team.

CrossFit Conjugate was true to the letter of the law. In theory, as long as a team meets the rule book requirements, there is not a damn thing wrong with assembling its component parts from around the country.

However, it takes a hell of a commitment to relocate from Quincy, Illinois to Cincinnati, Ohio for a year just to be part of a CrossFit team. It shows just how far some gyms will go in order to make it to the Games. Plenty of teams have been disqualified in the past few years for rule violations. And then there are the dozens of teams that were never caught, despite the relocations, the bogus Facebook “check ins,” and the workout logs. All to make it first to Regionals and then possibly, the Games. But for what exactly? How much value does the Affiliate Cup really hold?

The Future of CrossFit Team Competition

Apparently, the answer is a lot. Why else would Lindy Barber, a fine athlete in her own right, make the 180-mile move from Louisville to Cookeville, Tennessee? I can only assume that Froning actively recruited her, which means he is piecing together his 2016 hand-picked team. As if we didn’t already know this, Froning loves to win.

But Froning is hardly alone, and oddly, there is little to win – some money, a bit of residual notoriety, but that’s about it. Nevertheless, the desire to make it to the big show is huge.

The only difference between the Conjugate method (see what I did there?) of 2014 and the Mayhem method of 2016 is that Mayhem openly admits their assembly of a super team by way of Barber’s post. Conjugate had to operate in the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” era of pretending it was all staffing-related and happenstance.

Team Verdant Green during the Big Bob Drag Race event at the 2015 CrossFit Games.

We’ve entered a new era of the Affiliate Cup. I suspect a flood of similar announcements will follow. Right or wrong, it’s the landscape of the team side of CrossFit now. There will always be gyms like Diablo CrossFit, which prides itself in its teams being homegrown and home-trained. But the genie is now out of the bottle, and with Barber’s announcement, CrossFit gyms across the globe will likely now begin a heavy recruiting effort. The original purpose of the Affiliate Cup, to “Find the Fittest Gym,” no longer applies. The spirit of the law was corrupted for a while, and now the letter of the law is, too.

And that’s fine. It’s merely the reality of the way the sport has morphed. However, it certainly makes the team side of the Games less appealing, at least in my opinion. It’s tantamount to PEDS being legalised and all the top competitors admitting they are taking them. Suddenly, the achievement is less about fitness, programming, skill, and community, and more about who’s the best puppeteer.

You’ll Also Enjoy

• I Have a Dream (Team): When Winning Is The Only Thing That Matters
• The Moment Grid Became A Sport
• The CrossFit Games is Broken, Part 3: Team Competition and Leaderboard Shenanigans

Photo 1 courtesy of Lindy Barber’s Instagram.

Photos 2 & 3 courtesy of CrossFit Inc.

The post A New Era of CrossFit Dream Teaming appeared first on Breaking Muscle.