Monday 100125

Mike squats deep to pick up a 100 lbs. of "oddness".

Taking Responsibility – Part I
I would like to say that there are no injuries that ever occur at MBS – that our safety record is flawless. I would like to say that doing CrossFit is perfectly safe and that everyone can jump into a constantly-varied, high-intensity program and only experience muscle-growth, fat-loss, and increased flexibility without ever experiencing fatigue, soreness, tightness, and injury. But, to say that you can experience all of the highs without any of the lows would not be the truth. The truth is that CrossFit is hard. People do get banged up, cut, and tears well in the eyes occasionally. The truth is that the high-intensity aspect of CrossFit isn’t for everyone…not initially anyway.

Here at MBS, your safety is our number one concern. We have systems in place that are meant to safeguard you from injury. At the same time that we want to see you “push hard” through the workout, we want you to do it safely. In a couple (hopefully short) series of posts, I want to cover a few topics that will help keep you free from (stupid) injuries.

Part I of taking responsibility is to take responsibility of your warm-up. The warm-up, when done correctly, will alleviate a great percentage of common injuries that can occur in high-intensity training. In order to do the warm-up correctly, you cannot just “go through the motions”, you have to know what your are trying to do in order to do it right. So, here is the objective of the warm up. Hopefully in seeing this, there will be some ah-ha moments and you will gain some insight to a proper warm up.

Warm-up Principle #1:Increase Core Temperature: What this means is to get your blood pumping to your major muscle groups. Elevating your core temperature reduces muscle stiffness, increases elasticity, and increases reaction of motor units inside muscles. Jogging, jumping rope, and rowing are all good ways to increase core temperature.

Warm-up Principle #2: Facilitate Mobility and Flexibility: Dynamically taking limbs through a range of motion after the core temperature has been elevated helps to maintain and increase mobility and flexibility.

Warm-up Principle #3:Progress from General to Specific: Static and patterned ROM drills, push ups, lunges and situps are good as general warm up, but you need to progress the warm up into specific exercises according to the workout you are intending to do. For example, if the WOD includes any Olympic lifts, a warm up consisting of barbell movements would make better sense than a warm up consisting of push ups and pull ups.

Warm-up Principle #4:Increase Neural Efficiency and Motor Unit Recruitment: This sort of goes along with the principle above, but if you are doing CrossFit, where most WODs are at a high intensity, you must warm yourself up to about 80-90% of the intensity you are about to do. You cannot just go one speed through the warm up, say at about 50%, and then expect to load a bar up and go 100%! That is a recipe for disaster. Wake your muscles up, get all those nerves firing for the movement you are about to do, then 3,2,1 – go!

This is by no means an extensive list of all the ways to go about a thorough warm up. However, this provides a basic understanding of what we run you guys through in the first 15 minutes of every workout. As we run you through the warm up routine, you must understand that it is YOUR responsibility to do the warm up correctly. It is easy to “go through the motions” and make it look like you are doing the warm up, but a whole different thing to fully prepare yourself for the upcoming workout. In summary, arrive on time and prepare to give 100% to your entire training session. Warm up included.

Workout
21, 18, 15, 12, 9, 6 reps for time:
Goblet Squats 53 lb./35 lb.
Ring Pushups
Situps

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