2/8/10

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.

1 comment:

  1. First off...135# Clean and Jerk is gay. If that is all that you can do, then you need to get off your rump and work on clean and jerks.

    Second off 30 135# clean and jerks is 30 times gayer. work on building up your 1 rep max and your universe will become aligned.

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