20/08/12 – Quality Over Quantity

Just a quick observation from the first month of training at CFR.

Firstly well done to everyone, we are delighted to see that people are turning up ready to train and taking on every workout with a great attitude. People are mobilising and practicing and most importantly picking up good habits that will make them excellent athletes in the future. A key point to remember is that every time you train in the gym, you are training and developing habits and what is most important to us is to ensure you develop good ones.

In the last month we have seen one very dangerous habit slowly starting to rear its head. I highly believe that competition is healthy and it is one of the great parts of Crossfit. However there is a dark side of competition in CF and that is when people start sacrificing range of motion, technique and form in the name of competition, a very, very dangerous path to go down.

I speak from my own experience when I say some of the bad habits I have picked up over the years have been very difficult to undo and have caused countless frustrating workouts where I would ask myself “why am I not getting stronger or fitter?”, and the simple answer was I wasn’t doing the movements properly. I was too concerned about the quantity of my reps instead of the quality of them.

One of the main things I took from the Olympics this summer was the key difference between the people who took home the golds and the ones who didn’t and that difference was their technique. Listening to all the TV pundits describe the top athletes, they always went on about their skill and technique whether it be a swimmer or a high jumper. The same is true in Crossfit, the athletes with the best technique and skills are the ones winning the medals.

So continue to train hard but train within your limits. Always remember quality is better than quantity and bad technique is the devil!!

We’re looking forward to another great month in the gym.

Cheers

CFR

Here are some great articles from around the Crossfit World that will hopefully add to my words above.

https://www.againfaster.com/en/blog/2012/08/17/two-paths/

http://crossfitoneworld.typepad.com/crossfit_one_world/2012/08/technique-and-crossfit.html

A. Push Press – 3, 3, 3, 3, 3

B. 10min Amrap

7 Hang Power Cleans and Push Press 42.5/30kg

11 Pushups

15  Doubleunders (Scale with attempts or triple singles)

C. Finisher