You’ve heard the coaches incessantly remind you to make sure every one of your reps count. But what does that mean? It means full range of motion on whatever movement you’re doing.
Technique is different than range of motion. One has nothing to do with the other. While not completing an exercise with full range of motion is not likely to injure you, completing a rep with poor technique likely WILL. Even if you don’t feel injured at the time, I can assure you that your body is in fact taking a beating. Over time, repetition of an exercise with poor technique will have an adverse effect. Take, for example, performing a squat without your knees properly tracking over your feet. At first glance, the move might appear solid, with the weight in the heels, the chest up, and a good range of motion in the depth of the squat. However, the problem is that the outward angle of the feet and the inward angle of the knees causes a lot of stress to your knee joint. You can probably get away with this for several years, even as your lifting weight increases. However, somewhere down the line you are going to develop knee issues. Not to mention that without fixing something this seemingly small and subtle, you will never reach your maximum weight potential in any of the squat lifts.
With technique out of the way, full range of motion for a squat requires that the crease of the hip be below the top of the knee at the bottom of the squat and that your hips and knees are extended and fully open when standing at the top of the squat. Sounds pretty simple, right? Right. So if you’re not doing this, you’re not getting full range of motion, and therefore your rep doesn’t truly count. Take heart if you’re slowly working your way up to this ability, however! You’ll get there, and when you do, all your carefully executed reps will be top quality.
For a pullup, full range of motion begins when you hang from the bar with your arms straight and ends when your chin clears the bar. If you do not fully extend the arms at the bottom of your pullup, or if you do not get that chin clearly over the bar each time, I’m sorry to tell you that your reps don’t count. Just ask the people at the gym who recently competed in the CrossFit Winter Games and found this out the hard way! However, if you keep working to ensure that the few reps you can perform at full range of motion are top notch, eventually you will be able to perform at this level with all your reps.
Likewise, you begin a pushup in a plank position with arms straight and your chest must touch the floor at the bottom. While it may count as a pushup in some circles, it isn’t sufficient for our CrossFit standards that the arms only just barely break 90 degrees on a pushup. Go to the floor! If you can’t get to the floor, scale to your knees from plank position and try it again. Keep practicing and you will inevitably get stronger, and will soon be able to get to all the way to the floor from plank position.
Most importantly, educate yourself about what full range of motion is for each exercise. Listen to the coaches in class times, and also do some research of your own. Watch videos of good athletes doing CrossFit workouts. Please note that the fastest times are not completed with poor technique, although sometimes the fast times are completed without full range of motion. Therefore, not legitimate. The solid and noteworthy CrossFit performers maintain decent technique through just about the entire workout.
Learning to move with good technique is essentially learning to move efficiently. Even though it may not feel like it, you can get faster by first slowing down and making sure to move better. You can also lift more weight by lifting with better technique, rather than sloppy, poor technique.
We want you all to stay safe and not get injured during your WODs! That means you must be smart and sometimes might need to slow down more during a workout to think about how you’re moving. If you can commit to doing this, and check your ego at the door, you will be pleasantly surprised by both the short term and long term results.
Today’s Workout:
Buy In – Block run; make sure you are nice and warm before starting the WOD
WOD – “Angie”
* If you are doing the Kelly Challenge tomorrow, scale appropriately*
For Time:
- 100 Pullups
- 100 Pushups
- 100 Situps
- 100 Squats
Zone 3: Modified pullups and pushups
Zone 2: 50 reps of each and modify as needed
Zone 1: 25 reps of each and modify as needed
Cash Out – 500M or 1000M benchmark row
Running WOD
Rest or recovery run (5K to 8K)
Please post in the comments when and where you are doing your run if you would like people to join you!
100 Day Burpee Challenge:
Burpees today: 74
Buy-in: 2775