What if my kids want to compete?
This week coach Con talks CrossFit, his son, and the importance of encouraging kids to learn and play new sports from a young age.
Jerks with a pause in the dip
This is a great exercise to reinforce correct drive of the jerk. If your athlete struggles with their leg drive or dipping forward, try adding in these to your program. By taking out the immediate transition of the dip to the drive the athlete becomes more aware of their body when driving the weight. The weight can be between 75% and 85% of your best jerk.
Clean Pulls with an eccentric lowering
Pulls are a MUST in any Olympic lifting programming. Clean pulls are so great in the fact that they allow us to go through all the positions of the clean and reach full triple extension at the top. To make this even better, we include an eccentric lowering. The athlete will do a clean pull and then from the top lower the bar back down through all the correct positions slowly. This builds great strength through all of the correct positioning and also creates body awareness through the positions. These can be done around 80-90% of your best clean.
Neutral Head Position on the Pull
Has your coach ever told you to keep your eyes straight ahead throughout the lift or to keep your head neutral? There is solid reasoning behind this. When the head is thrown back at the top of the pull the traps cannot fully activate. Keeping the head in a neutral position allows for more force to be utilized from the traps. Watch the video to find out exactly what a neutral head position can do to help you shrug under the bar.
What you need to know about training alone
There are many of you who train alone, whether it be at your garage gym or at an affiliate, there are days when you will feel beat up, drained and tired. With no external motivator to keep you driven through the training day how do you find motivation when training alone? How do you get through the days were you don't "feel" like training? Coach Adrian Conway gives you quick tips on how to keep your accountability high and assure that you are getting the most out of your workouts.
Variations of the Overhead Squat
When performing overhead squats most of us think of just push pressing the weight overhead and squatting with it. This is a key exercise to build your overhead strength, but consider the fact that there are many variations of the overhead squat, all of which can be used to master certain aspects of the snatch.