Friday, July 13, 2007

On ramp to crossfit

Tabata squats in the middle of a WOD...

The "ON RAMP" to getting to doing crossfit wods on a 3 on 1 off fashion , or 5 on 2 off fashion (the most common things that people are doing) is an interesting one..... different athletes have different needs.. the best thing about being a novice athlete is that you recover the fastest from any physical effort you make.... the unfortunate part of that is that the effort you make is much further from your human potential... as we approach our human potential we will require more recovery time from these efforts.
for my standard athlete I will have them do what I call an active rest day: so after a WOD they will go 3 times through the warm-up then do some stretching and call it a day. This for some people will be all they do for a couple weeks... once some form of capacity is built, to doing this, it will assist in doing the wods. I start people by doing 1 wod/wk and then goto 2, 3, and then doubles 2 on 1 off and so on to build to doing the weekly capacities.
For some people it may be required to do the wod but just not consider time as a factor, just completion of exercises as this will also build in capacities. The mental toughness to complete the workout must be there is all athletes, as I WILL push their limits.
The Idea behind an on ramp is that we dont beat down the new athlete to much and that what happens in the workouts needs to be repeatable... if it's not repeatable why waste the persons time!
and is someone slips on the on ramp they start one step before they fell not at the next step.. this is an important step for me, that nothing be missed in training and that the athlete not be allowed to advance without the proven track record... believe me a coach always knows if the athlete has been doing the Rx'd workouts