Me No Likey High Reps

I just got an email from our beloved, creepy-grinned Ryan Hackett asking, in the spirit of our Olympic lifting phase, can we do "Grace" for tomorrow's metcon? "Grace" is 30 clean & jerks for time. Here is a video of her. (Sidenote: This video was filmed at the original CrossFit Santa Cruz and Spencer was actually there for his Level 1 Certification. You may be able to see him somewhere in the video.)

Anyways, when Ryan asked if we could do "Grace," here was my response:

Absolutely not. My reasoning...

1) Olympic lifts are fun

2) Olympic lifts are highly technical - the most technical movements in CrossFit

3) To properly develop and culture technique in these lifts, especially in Bulgarian-style programming, we stick to low rep schemes (typically 3 or less)

4) "Heavy"** high rep O-lifts, while crazy anaerobic/aerobic, typically lead to form breakdown, mechanical errors, and bad habits

5) I'm not saying "Grace" is a bad workout. It's short/heavy/intense which I prefer for metcons, but if you watch videos of people doing it, it usually looks pretty goddamn ugly by rep 30 - sometimes by rep 3

6) It will benefit you (and everyone else) more to build proficiency in the lifts before tackling something like "Grace"

Long story short: you're better off getting strong/efficient with improved technique before high rep Olympic lifts cause you to develop bad, hard-to-break habits, ya dig?

~Q~


**I put "heavy" in quotation marks because 135lbs really isn't heavy.