Archive for May 6th, 2009
Thursday
Flexibility is the range of movement at a given joint. So someone can have poor flexibility or good flexibility depending on the range of motion at anyone of their joints. An individual can be very flexible in one joint and lacking flexibility in another. We as CrossFitters are interested in maximizing that range of motion in all of our joints and increasing our overall flexibility. The most common joints which So we train flexibility, or at least we should!
The most common form of flexibility training is stretching. Most of us are familiar with static stretching, holding a limb in a position for a while to help stretch the muscle and increase the range of motion of that joint over time. There are also a number of methods to increase flexibility. Dynamic stretching or stretching muscles by moving the joint through its range of motion is another common method.
Dynamic stretching can be incorporated into your workouts. As you’ve heard from me over and over in your training it’s all about range of motion and partial reps build partial strength. So taking your lifts and exercises through you full range of motion is a form of dynamic stretching. Catching your clean in a full depth front squat or catching your snatch in the very bottom of an overhead squat will help to increase the flexibility of your knees, hips, ankles and shoulders. Not bad. Stretching is important.
You never hear anyone bragging about their best stretch down at the pub and you never get to write on the board how many centimeters past your toes you got your fingers past your toes but stretching is important. Limited range of motion in any joint increases your risk of injury in that joint and decreases you strength. For every muscle that moves a joint there’s an antagonist muscle on the opposite side of the joint it’s simple to see that if one muscles antagonist is tight the muscle not only has to fight any weight being moved but also the tightness of this antagonist reducing its overall strength. When we’re interested in performance as we are as CrossFitters flexibility becomes important.
So the next time you’re going to pay off stretching at the end of a WOD because you’re just too tired or you’re cheating on range of motion just to get it over and done with thin again. It’s all about flexibility.
TODAY’S WOD
Daniel Hansen
Daniel Hansen
“Hansen”
5 rounds for time of:
30 dumbbell swing, 32 kgs
30 Burpees
30 Glute-ham sit-ups
Marine Staff Sgt Daniel Hansen died February 14th in Farah Providence, Afghanistan when an IED he was working on detonated. Daniel is survived by his mother Sheryll, his father Delbert, his younger sister Katie, and his twin brother Matthew (also a Marine).
Wednesday
Deadlift, good for what ails you!
Strength is pretty straight forward the ability for someone to apply force to an object using their muscles, the higher the force the stronger the person. There are two determining factors of strength.
The first is the cross sectional area of muscle fibres recruited by the contraction. That is, the larger the muscle the more muscle fibres it has to contract and apply force to an object. Therefore, the bigger the muscle the stronger the muscle is. You would all know or have seen the smaller person who can move more weight than their larger counter part so there must be another factor that determines strength.
The second factor determining strength and therefore how much force a person can apply to an object with their muscles is the force of the contraction. So the more intense the contraction combined with the amount of muscle fibres used determines the strength of the muscle. That is why our legs are stronger than our arms, bigger muscles and more forceful contractions. We can see then that training, depending on the individual, will have a bigger impact on strength development than hypertrophy.
We train strength by teaching our nervous system to more forcefully recruit and contract muscle fibres. We train it to do this by lifting heavy weights. The majority of strength when you begin lifting comes from practice and your body learning how to more efficiently move and recruit muscle than form any new muscle growth. So how do we train strength?
We train strength my moving weights which we find heavy. Strength WODs do this most effectively where we choose a weight that we can lift for only 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 repitions depending on the workout. This forces our body to become more efficient at recruiting muscle fibres contracting them in the right sequence and moving the weight, this makes us stronger. Also the microscopic damage caused to our muscles when we move heavy objects is repaired after a time leading to stronger and larger muscle fibres thus increasing the cross section of our muscles. So by liftng heavy weights we are training both the intensity of the contraction and increasing the size of the muscle.
