3/5/14: Deep Movement

I want to say thanks to everyone who has reached out to me with their progress. As a coach, my number one goal is to help people achieve things they weren’t able to before.
Yesterday was one of my favorite lessons in regards to body positioning/movement. I wanted you understand the importance of the small, yet very important pieces that quickly add up to help us achieve a very challenging task. Hopefully by now you understand that no matter what we are doing physically, there is an optimal position that will make us the functionally strong and efficient.  Now we have to get you to ask yourself before any movement “what is the best position to be in?” and then know how to accomplish that position.
Understanding that we all have different movement flaws, leads me into your skill work for today. Todays goal is to work on a movement you have the most trouble with and that is will the goal to do so in a fully connected state. If its butterfly pull-ups then really drill the hollow to arch throughout the rotation of the movement. If its muscle ups (which I know almost everyone can improve on) then only attempt a muscle up if you have successfully established the H/A from the beginning….
The sooner we concentrate on the quality of every movement, the better you will become. Everyday I want you to walk into the gym with this understanding. So many crossfitters work day in and out without much purpose other than to get more fit. They want to go from zero to hero over night (we all have seen it) but inevitably they fail. The top crossfitters in the world are always working on the small things. Corrective movement is addressed daily because they know that if they don’t, someone else will. The start of the 2014 Open has been a wake up call for a lot of competitors. I think everyone truly understands how competitive this sport is becoming because of the number of people involved. Rich Froning said it the best “consistency is king”, especially when one rep makes the difference of someone qualifying for regionals or not.
skill: while warming up, spend 5-10 minutes on a movement that needs cleaned up.  Work on connectivity throughout the entire movement and do so until you have made improvement!
Fight the good fight,
Coach Poppa