Like my last post, this one is about progress. One of the great things about our gym is that we draw clients from such a unique background of sports and activities. As our new member John said the other day, the classes are a great way to improve your performance and get motivated because “everyone here is good at different things.” While this provides a great atmosphere for us all to learn from each other, it can also be slightly disheartening. Some people can do muscle ups and double unders by the end of foundations, while others may work for years before getting these skills. Some make jumps in weight on their lifts consistently, others hit plateaus quickly. This can cause frustration over seemingly slow progress when others jump into CrossFit and make gains with ease. It always makes you wonder, how is it so easy for them?

Genetics and Sport

There is a big genetic variance in our species. From hair color to height to coordination and beyond, there is a wide range of differences among everyone on Earth. In the sport and fitness world, the eternal question that’s asked is, ‘are great athletes born that way or are they made?’ Of course this question is a fallacy because an athlete that gets to a world level must have a tremendous amount of innate talent in addition to years and years of hard work.

I think a better question to ask is: which aspects of sport and fitness are better developed through hard work and which are predominantly a genetic blessing? Interestingly enough, I think quite a bit of what we do in CrossFit is based on what we were blessed with genetically. These genetic blessings exist in our physiology and can be tested for in very simple ways. Those blessed with a high capacity for strength and power usually have muscular, mesomorphic builds and can put on muscle and lose fat with even an average diet and training program. They are likely to have a larger proportion of explosive type 2 muscle fibers and thicker bone structure and connective tissue, evidenced by large wrist circumference. Simple testing will show these people to have phenomenal strength and power at young ages. Benedikt Magnusen, the deadlift world record holder, supposedly pulled over 450 pounds in his first workout as a teenager. You can see Benni has another physiological advantage, long arms, which make deadlifting much easier.

Benni Magnusson

At 14 years old, Usain Bolt was only 1 second off the world record 200m sprint. He and Benni Magnusson put on muscle easily and have a very high proportion of explosive muscle fibers. In terms of endurance, the physiological gold standards are VO2 max, lactate threshold, and cardiac metrics like stroke volume. Lance Armstrong, Steve Prefontaine, and world champion rower Rob Waddell have three of the highest VO2 maxes ever recorded. Waddell has the best 2000m time ever on the indoor rower, clocking at 5:36. After winning gold in Sydney in the single sculls, Waddell took 8 years away from the sport then returned to defeat the current world champion single sculler.

Rob Waddell

The point is that even when all of these athletes were very young and untrained, they already had physiological capabilities that a majority of men couldn’t achieve with 15-20 years of training. They could also likely take many years off from training and still be miles ahead of an average athlete in their sport. This shows just how wide the variance is among our species in terms of fitness for athletics.

Genetics and CrossFit

CrossFit presents a very interesting case study for genetics and physiology. All of the athletes I mentioned above compete in sports that involve very specific movements and physiological adaptations. You could say that CrossFit is a combination of all of these sports and more. Lifting, sprinting, and rowing are all major elements of CrossFit. So the ideal CrossFitter is someone who is built to do all of these things (in addition to gymnastics) concurrently. For that, you’d want a muscled frame, to be relatively short with a long torso, a high strength to weight ratio, a good mix of type 1 and type 2 fibers, very high VO2 max and lactate threshold, and good hormonal signaling and metabolism to build muscle and recover quickly between workouts. And you see exactly that in the best CrossFitters…

Mikko Salo - 2009 CrossFit Games Winner

Rich Froning - 2010 Second Place

Hard Work and Your Own Improvement

That’s not to say that hard work and skill aren’t also a huge part of the equation. Every champion I’ve mentioned above has been able to fully express their natural gifts by working incredibly hard at their craft. The more complex a sport or activity becomes, the more dependent it is on practice and hard work than it is on genetics. While someone may be blessed with excellent coordination, balance, and quickness, they’ll never reach advanced levels of sports like gymnastics and tennis without putting in many years of hard work learning the intricacies. Because of the sheer number of movements we do in CrossFit, hard work and skill play a huge role in your improvement over time. You will continue to improve your ability to do strength workouts and met cons concurrently while also getting technically better at the exercises. A great sign of your fitness and recovery is when you can do a hard met con one day then come in the following day for a strength workout and get close to your PR or even set a new one. This happened yesterday when Marcia PR’ed on her deadlift after putting in a great effort on Bulger the day before.

The key here is to always continue to focus on your own progress and not get discouraged by the feats that others are able to accomplish. We all have such different backgrounds, body types, and genetics that the rate of improvement in CrossFit will be different for everyone. Try not to question yourself or get frustrated if someone comes into the gym and immediately beats one of your PR’s. Be thankful that you have someone that will push your own performance and motivate you to improve.

This morning, Nora showed yet again how amazing the progress can be in the early stages of CrossFit. She ended up front squatting 60kg for a set of 5 and 70kg for a single, both huge personal records for her. With determination and a strong ability to pick up movements quickly, new CrossFitters can make fast progress across the board in their lifting, gymnastics, and conditioning levels. This can be a double edged sword, however, since these early gains will begin to slow down and possibly grind to a halt as you reach more intermediate levels.

The reason this happens is because we train a large number of exercises across the full spectrum of energy systems. To make this point clear, consider Olympic weightlifters, powerlifters, pole vaulters, and discus throwers. They rely on very short bursts of energy that need to be as powerful as possible. The energy they draw on comes mainly from the creatine-phosphagen system and is completely anaerobic (no oxygen necessary). By specifically concentrating on their sport, not only do they excel technically, but their body also adapts by growing in a way that supports their training. This could involve the growth of very explosive type 2 muscle fibers as well as the creation of new nerve fibers that help them recruit more muscle during that short, explosive burst required in their sport. These things all combine to allow athletes in these sports to continue to improve their performance over time for many years. The same is true of endurance athletes on the other end of the spectrum. Their aerobic training not only improves their technique in running, biking, and swimming, but also shifts their body towards endurace adaptations such as improvements in mitochondrial density, VO2max, lactate threshold, resting heart rate, and a greater proportion of type 1 muscle fibers. Similar to the explosive athletes, this specificity allows these athletes to continue to improve their performance over the course of many years.

With this in mind, consider the difficulty of training for the Olympic decathlon. First of all, you’d have to split time between training your skill in 10 different events, a much more challenging task than a track and field athlete who only does one event. Additionally, you’d have to accept the fact that you can’t develop your energy systems in a specific way. A decathlete training power and explosiveness for the 100m dash and the long jump will hinder their ability to improve the aerobic qualities needed for the 1500m run, and vice versa. This isn’t to say it’s impossible to improve at both at the same time, but the improvement will be much less than if they concentrated exclusively on one or the other. This is why the best decathlete in the world wouldn’t even come close to challenging the best 100m sprinter or best mile runner in the world at their respective distances.

Now extend this to CrossFit and think about how many different exercises we learn and the scope of energy systems we use. With all this in mind, it’s no wonder progress starts to slow down after we’ve made those initial gains. Hitting these plateaus can be very frustrating (I know). Here are some tips on how to deal with them:

Focus on Quality with High Skill Movements

One area we see people run into plateaus is with high skill exercises. These include snatches, cleans, overhead squats, jerks, muscle ups, free handstands, and kipping, all of which require coordination, flexibility, explosiveness, and balance (a.k.a. skill). Even doing these exercises exclusively, as gymnasts and olympic lifters do them, takes years of practice before they can be mastered. It’s crucial that you take a long term approach with these exercises and do the correct progressions. If you jump through the dip of your muscle up, always do handstands on the wall, or snatch the heaviest weight you can poorly, it will hinder your progress and you’ll ingrain poor movement patterns. The key is to leave the ego at home and take a lot of satisfaction in small levels of progress. Just mustering up the courage to do a handstand on the floor with someone spotting you is a big step in the right direction. The same can be said for snatching an empty bar and catching it in a full overhead squat. Even if you can power snatch 40 kilos, catching an empty bar in the full squat position is better progress toward learning the full lift.

Be Content With Smaller Increases in Strength

As I talked about before, building strength and endurance concurrently can be a difficult thing to do. Doing longer metabolic conditioning workouts will both tax the recovery ability of the body and limit your ability to adapt in ways that best express strength. That said, it’s still possible to make progress in both, but the progress will be smaller and less frequent. For instance, say you came in for a 5×5 back squat workout after taking 2 rest days and a great night’s sleep. You might push your last work set up to 100kg for a 5 kilo PR. 3 weeks later, you might come in for the same 5×5 back squat workout after two days of training including the Filthy Fifty the day before. On that day, your last set might be a struggle at 90kg. This doesn’t mean you’ve gotten weaker in the past 3 weeks, but rather that your recent training and recovery didn’t allow you to express your strength on that given day. This is why the mental outlook is extremely important in CrossFit. If you allow yourself to get overly fixated on short term PR’s, then a few days of substandard performance might get you in a mental funk that will really start to affect your training. Try to approach every PR, even if it’s a single kilo or a single second, as a significant achievment to be celebrated, rather than taking it for granted as an every day occurence.

Remind Yourself How Well Rounded You Are

Though it can be difficult to make progress when you concentrate on many different things as in CrossFit, specificity definitely comes with a price. Powerlifters make huge progress in the squat, bench, and deadlift, but they usually have to put on a huge amount of bodyweight, often tear muscles and ligaments, and are not in good cardiovascular shape. By the same token, endurance athletes develop stress fractures and postural problems, and have relatively poor flexibility, bone density and muscle mass compared to people who lift weights. So even if you’re frustrated with plateaus in performance, remember that your current fitness level is very well rounded and gives you the opportunity to do tons of sports and actvities outside the gym that rely on endurance, flexbility, strength, and conditioning.

An Option: Get More Specific

If you’re really enjoying a particular aspect of CrossFit and want to improve it, we highly encourage it. The great thing about the skill intensive exercises I mentioned in the first section is that they won’t really tax your recovery. If anything, practicing them will serve as a great warm up for a CrossFit workout. If want to get better at snatches or muscle ups, come to the gym 10 or 15 minutes before class and get some practice in. I’d be happy to watch your form and help out before class. For more focused work, come to the gymnastics classes or optional skill training nights.

“When you have completed 95% of your journey, you’re only halfway there.”

- Japanese Proverb

Father and Son Training Together (yes, it is an OLD photo)

Happy father’s day to all dads. I hope everyone had a great day with their kids. Unwearable ties and other gifts aside, the time spent with family is the big deal. I was able to head over to the east bay to have dinner with my parents.

My father has given me my even keel temperament. Nothing ever seemed to phase my dad. If my dad got to the point of yelling it was because my brother and I crossed a line big time. Sure we’d get disciplined for all the little stuff, but my dad was always calm about it. I even remember tearing holes in the roof of his convertible Corvair because we were climbing on it and we’re still alive to tell about it. I’m not sure how he remained calm with that one. My fascination with physics, and the hard sciences comes from my dad. He was just into reading and talking about these things. I remember sitting and watching Nova with my dad. Thanks dad. I owe a LOT to you.

I’m privileged to know a huge number of great dads through CrossFit Marin. I have witnessed dads doing the best they can for their kids, often sacrificing their own personal gains. I’m honored to be able to witness this on a regular basis.

Last year I posted about the responsibility that we have as dads. I’ve read and studied a lot about childhood development, starting at infancy, and throughout the teen years. I try not to get too caught up in it because it all basically comes down to if your kids are messed up, its your fault and there are very narrow windows of opportunity to teach/develop/impart broad knowledge, abilities, aptitudes and if you miss them, then you’ve blown it. Oh great. I now have the responsibility to ensure that these little beings grow, thrive in life and reach their potential. Now, here’s the deal, this task is impossible. At least the task of accomplishing this to the degree that much of us initially think we can, or desire to. We can not possibly teach our kids everything we’d want them to know, expose them to all of the opportunity we’d like them to have and spend quality time developing the self-confident, socially conscious, environmental defenders that we picture. And we’d totally mess them up in the process if we tried to pull it off. Bottom line is we just need to spend time with our kids, let them know we love them every day and include them in as much of our lives as we can. Dads, we have a huge responsibility, and the biggest part of that responsibility is simply being there for our kids.