Crossfit
- josephplatt1979
- Sep 17, 2021
- 11 min read
Updated: Jul 14, 2022
WHAT IS CROSSFIT
CrossFit is a fitness routine that personal trainer Greg Glassman developed over several years in the mid- to late-1990s. The benefits of CrossFit are designed to improve your overall physical abilities, including your endurance, strength, flexibility, speed, coordination, balance, and more. CrossFit is a constantly varied functional movement performed at high intensity. Functional movements are movements you perform every day like lifting objects, squatting, jumping, or stretching exercises.
A CrossFit workout takes these everyday movements and leverages them for a workout by adding higher weights, faster movements, or longer distances. The constant variation provides a different stimulus for the body each session, which results in a constant increase in fitness levels.
Many of us have sedentary jobs however, so CrossFit workouts provide a way to maintain regular exercise while moving with power and efficiency. The movements are performed at high intensity because intensity is essential for fitness to improve. This means getting out of breath and feeling fatigue during the workouts performed.
BENEFITS OF CROSFIT
Most CrossFit workouts are already perfect for fat burning and muscle building due to them being high intensity, fast-paced, and are built around compound exercises. Many of them involve proven fat burning methods, such as high-intensity interval training. Also, those compound lifts are a perfect way to stimulate muscle growth. Overall cross fit combines cardio and strength to give you a complete workout.
Apart from helping to build muscle and helping with weight loss, benefits of CrossFit can also include improving aerobic fitness, improve agility, balance, and flexibility, burns calories to manage weight and best of all CrossFit is great for improving mental health.
NINE MAIN FOUNDATION MOVEMENTS
Most cross fit training sessions would incorporate 9 types of movement. Combining all these movements transfer or compliment the majority of exercises found in workouts. There are other exercises that involve these movements but these 9 are the core to get the benefits of CrossFit. These movements would involve either a barbell, kettlebell or dumbbells.
The Push Jerk - The push jerk in the pic above , also known as the power jerk, is a compound exercise performed by lifting a weighted bar overhead with an explosive movement. Begin the push jerk exercise by grabbing a barbell with a grip that’s slightly wider than shoulder-width. Hold the barbell right above your chest in a front rack position with your elbows slightly in front of the bar. Keep your feet hip-width apart. Bend your knees before pushing your feet into the floor, using the upward momentum to lift the barbell until your elbows are at a full extension. Catch the load overhead with your lower body in a partial squat position.
The Air Squat - Air squats in the pic above are also known as bodyweight squats, basic air squat has you with your feet shoulder-width apart with toes pointing straight out. As you squat down your hips should move down and back while still maintaining your lumbar curve, and keeping your heels flat on the floor. As your hips descend, they go lower than your knees. This is not always the case with a weighted squat. Then you have to go as low as you can while maintaining the proper form which may or may not go lower than the knees. Then, you have the rising motion where you drive up pushing through your heels and using your glutes to move back into your standing or beginning position.
The Medicine-Ball Clean - The pic above shows how to do a medicine-ball clean. Start standing with feet hip-width apart, medicine ball between feet, laces facing outward. Put both hands on the sides of the medicine ball, fingers facing down, in a quarter-squat position. Make sure your shoulders are just over the ball, chest is up, and back is flat. In one fluid motion, keeping arms long, pull the ball up from the ground, and stand up straight. Stand up quickly, as if you were jumping towards the ceiling. The aim here is to be explosive, so engage your butt and squeeze those glutes. Immediately shrug your shoulders to your ears, shoot elbows forward, rotating hands around the ball, and drop into a squat. You should end with the ball in a front-rack position and stand up to finish.
The Sumo Deadlift High Pull - The pic above show the sumo high deadlift. Using a sumo deadlift stance and grip, stand until the barbell gets to mid/upper thigh height. Without stopping the upward momentum of the bar, violently extend the knees and hips. Finish the movement by flexing the elbows, pulling the barbell upwards until it reaches neck height. Elbows should sit above the bar at the end of the movement. The knees and hips must extend before the arms ever bend.
The Deadlift - Deadlift shown in the above pic, Stand with your midfoot under the barbell, bend over and grab the bar with a shoulder-width grip, bend your knees until your shins touch the bar, lift your chest up and straighten your lower back, take a big breath, hold it, and stand up with the weight, Hold the weight for a second at the top, with locked hips and knees. Then return the weight to the floor by moving your hips back while bending your legs. Rest a second at the bottom and repeat.
The Push Press - shown in the pic above, Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and grip the bar with your fingertips, elbows pointing forward. Rest the bar on the front of your shoulders. Drop down into a shallow squat, centring your weight under the barbell. Press up through your heels. Drive the bar directly above your head until your arms are straight. Lower the bar down to your chest. Maintain a neutral arch in your spine throughout the move.
The Shoulder Press – in the pic above, the wider apart your hands are on the bar, the weaker you will be and the less weight you will be able to lift. Aim for a grip with hands no wider than shoulder-width apart and keep your elbows directly underneath your wrists to keep you in the strongest mechanical position possible for the lift. The better the starting position of your wrists, the more able you are to initiate the move with a strong push. Better mobility will also allow your elbows to flare out slightly towards the sides as you press upwards. The bar starts across your upper chest below your chin, so your head must tilt backwards slightly as you push the bar up in the straightest line possible to avoid hitting your chin and nose. As you press the bar up, tilt your head backwards so that the bar just misses your nose on the way up. You need to keep your chest up during each rep to maintain a strong and stable upper back, which in turn allows better and smoother movement patterns of all the muscles and joints involved in the lift, especially the shoulders, which are one of the most easily damaged joints in the body.
The Overhead Squat - in the pic above, Start with the barbell placed overhead, with the grip set wide. The grip is typically taken with a snatch grip; however, this can vary based on the goal, athlete’s mobility, and strength. The key is that the barbell should be placed over the back of the neck, with the biceps in line with the ears. The wrists should be slightly extended, with the elbows straight and ribs pulled in. As you begin to descend, be sure not to extend the lumbar spine, but rather keep the core braced and the hips neutral. This squat should be patterned in the same manner a high bar back squat would. Once you have reached full depth, the hip crease should be slightly below the knees, with the full foot down. The lifter should keep the core tight and be sure to actively push against the barbell to keep it into the correct positioning overhead. From here, work to keep the barbell overhead and the chest up as you ascend out of the squat. Be sure to keep the core tight and actively push up against the barbell to aid in standing up from the overhead squat.
The front squat - shown in the above pic, Front Squats are similar to Back Squats, however the barbell is placed across the front side of your shoulders instead of your upper back. This shifts the center of mass forward, which allows for a more upright posture, making it a spine-friendly lift. It also shifts some of the work from your glutes to your quads, making this one of the most effective quad strength and size builders. The barbell should sit across the front side of your shoulders close to your neck. A good way to tell if the bar is positioned correctly is to do a straight-arm test. Place the barbell across your shoulders and straighten your arms forward so they’re parallel to the ground. Keep chest up and raise the elbows high, Stabilize the midline taking in a deep breath, Keep the feet flat on the ground pushing down through the heels, Squat down until the thighs are below parallel., Keep the chest up, back tight, and the elbows high when coming out the squat aggressively drive the elbows up to come out of the hole.
Protein and recovery supplements are vital for growth and recovery after a grueling workout. Make sure you get the nutrition to feed your body after a tough workout.
USING THE MOVEMENTS IN A WORKOUT
There are many different ways you can use the 9 types of movement in a single workout. Also, you can throw in different types of movement on top of the main cross fit exercises to combine a quality workout. Other exercises like press ups, sit ups, pull ups, exercise bikes, rope climb, dips, burpees and kettlebell swings are examples to combine with the main 9 cross fit movements for a killer workout. Here are six of the most popular types of CrossFit workouts you can use to break up the monotony of body-part splits and make you see the benefits of CrossFit.
EMOM Stands for “every minute on the minute”. It means that every minute you must start the movement. The concept of EMOM is simple and straightforward. At a particular time, you complete a specific exercise for a pre-ordained number of reps. After doing so, you then take the remainder of that minute as your rest period. ENOM workouts are short with most usually lasting only 10 to 20 minutes and are an ideal way to work on conditioning by working on one exercise during even minutes and a different one on the odd ones.
EMOM workout in 10 minutes:
5 push press
5 Air Squats
5 Push-ups
5 sit ups
Every minute on the minute perform all exercises in the order given. Aim to finish with about 7-10 seconds to spare, if this is not possible, reduce the number of reps. If to easy then up the reps
AMRAP stands for “As many rounds as possible”. Complete a given exercise combination as many times as you can within a given time. If the goal of the workout is to complete “as many reps as possible,” you’re simply trying to move through as many repetitions of the workout as possible. In this case, your final score is the total number of reps you completed in the allotted time. The good thing about AMRAP is by pushing your body’s limits, it uses up the carbohydrates that it can quickly access. This triggers biochemical responses that lead to muscle growth and more efficiency.
Do as many rounds as possible in 10 minutes:
10 burpees 20 air squats 10 sit ups 10 push press 10 burpees 10 sit ups
you'll be performing several exercises back-to-back with as little rest as possible between exercises and rounds.
Tabata is a type of HIIT workout that aims to yield the most benefits in a short amount of time. For each exercise, you do eight rounds of 20 seconds of strenuous exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest. Tabata is a highly efficient method to achieve maximum results by helping you burn fat and build muscles. While the workout is short, the 20 second bursts of exercise are so intense that many consider Tabata to be one of the most gruelling, yet rewarding, exercises they have ever tried. A fat-eviscerating finisher.
With a running clock in 16 minutes:
pull ups
push ups
sit ups
air squats
Perform a Tabata Interval (eight rounds of 20 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest) for each movement – for a total of 32 intervals. The first 8 intervals are pull-ups, the second 8 are push-ups, the third 8 intervals are sit-ups, and the last 8 intervals are squats.
There is no additional rest between movements. Score is the total reps performed in all of the intervals.
RFT stands for “Rounds for time” meaning completing a given number of rounds of a circuit as fast as possible. The short rest periods help develop long-lasting muscle endurance.
Complete as much as possible in 20 minutes of:
10 Pull-ups
20 Push-ups
20 air Squats
10 push press
20 Push-ups
20 air Squats
10Pull-ups
20 Push-ups
20 air Squats
10 Pull-ups
20 Push-ups
20 air Squats
10 Pull-ups
20Push-ups
20 air Squats
Ladder is one or more movements, increasing or decreasing the workload over time, hence up or down the ladder. In a ladder workout, the rep scheme is designed to ascend or descend with each set, while the load stays constant. For example, in an ascending ladder you might do one squat, then rest, then two squats, rest, three squats, rest, and so on up to, say, 10 reps. In a descending ladder, you might start with 10 reps and decrease by one in each set. Most ladder workouts alternate between one cardio and one strength-training move.
This two-exercise ladder workout follows a descending ladder rep scheme: You'll start with 10 front squats and 10 push press, followed by 9 of each, 8 of each, 7 of each and 6 of each until u reach 1 of each.
Make sure to rest and recover between sets but push yourself. If you begin to fatigue and feel your form start to break down, make your rest intervals a little longer.
Chipper is a one-round series of exercises, usually with high reps, to be completed in the fastest time possible. A high-volume, muscle-building grind. A chipper involves a number of different movements (usually between five and 10), performed at high volume, in succession, until the workout is completed. All repetitions of a single exercise are completed before moving to the next exercise and “chipping” through the workout. while trying not to keel over.
40 Box jumps
20 pull ups
40 Kettleball Swings
40 walking lunge no weight
40 Knees to Elbows
40 Push Press
30 push press
50 sit ups
30 Burpees
20 deadlift
Protein and recovery supplements are vital for growth and recovery after a grueling workout. Make sure you get the nutrition to feed your body after a tough workout.
BOTTOM LINE
There are a lot of things to like about CrossFit as It packs a big workout into a short timeframe. It's built around interval training and weights, which are known to challenge muscles and build fitness. It also gives you a lifestyle with cross fitters competing with and motivating each other. Another beauty of CrossFit lies in the ability to train anywhere with a variety of equipment or without equipment. You can also do these workouts in a class or on your own in the gym or at home. Some days you can focus more on cultivating skills and on other days you can even do some functional bodybuilding or regular weight sessions.
Benefits of CrossFit can also have positive mental and emotional effects, It teaches people that they are capable of more than they think. Gaining mental toughness and pushing yourself to new heights in a CrossFit class can trickle down to other parts of your life and give you confidence to tackle the unknown. A minimum of 2-3 times a week is enough to make serious progress, but if you really enjoy CrossFit, you can go 4-5 days a week. Find your optimal training frequency and stick with it.
Remember, you don't always have to push yourself to the limit. Some sort of beginner or foundations class is highly recommended for newcomers. In these classes, they'll learn the basics and improve fitness at their own pace. Once they learn the basic foundational skills and build their confidence, they can move into regular classes.
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