Pardon our mess while we update The Huddle over the next couple days. The Huddle 3.0 begins next Tuesday, March 16th, 2010. Thanks — Ben & Andy

The Huddle

Part I

by Xi Xia

Introduction

Before I started CrossFit in April of 2007, I was recovering from post ACL rehab (my surgery was in December of 2004). I had been playing at pick up games, tryouts, and a few tournaments and the confidence in my knee had not completely returned. After CrossFitting for a couple of months, my on field confidence was restored. My back squat max had returned to high school football days and I was laying out again. CrossFit renewed confidence in my knee as if the injury/surgery never happened, increased stamina on the field, better body control, and made me more explosive. What really confirmed my own observations is when my peers in my Ultimate community saw a change in my body composition and my explosiveness on the field.

The CrossFit Program and How It Applies to Ultimate

Almost any athletic explosive movement (i.e. starting, jumping) is dependent on rapid, forceful hip extension and a coordinated whole body contraction. It is not by accident that the largest muscle in the body, the gluteus maximus, is the prime engine for hip extension. CrossFit exposes you to so many different ways of hip extension with different loads and rates of speed. You learn the tried and true barbell lifts utilized in strength and conditioning centers to increase an athlete's ability to generate force—squat, deadlift, clean, jerk, snatch, and the many different variations of these movements. Improving your performance in these lifts is correlated with vertical jump and sprint performance.

"I don't need pull ups on the Ultimate field."

CrossFit will also develop a well-rounded athlete with a high level of General Physical Preparedness (GPP). A well-rounded, high GPP athlete has developed a solid base for specific sport Ultimate training by increasing muscle size, increasing connective tissue strength, and developed better coordination for body weight movements (basic gymnastics). High GPP also means having a high work capacity to tolerate high volumes/high intensity Ultimate training and being able to recover quickly and train again. Having a high GPP reduces your weaknesses, reduces your risk for injury, and greatly supports any Ultimate training you might be pursuing.

Set goal of back lever hold, tracked progress, three months of consistent training

If you are serious about your training for Ultimate, you have to set measurable goals and evaluate if the training is working or not. CrossFit has helped me set goals and critically evaluate whether or not I am moving towards them. Here is my workout log. Have you heard the quote, "The very definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results?" This has happened to everyone, including me. We train year after year and we think we are getting stronger or we "feel" stronger. We never started with a measurable goal, like 40-yard sprint time, and then tracked our training and re-tested later to see if anything had changed.

What is CrossFit?

CrossFit Inc. has been described as a grassroots fitness company, a fad, a cult, an emerging sport, a dangerous activity, and the hardest workout you could do. CrossFit was started by Lauren and Greg Glassman in the late 1980's and the exercises they used were the basics—push ups, pull-ups, squats, deadlifts, running, box jumps, Olympic lifts and anything else whole body. They stayed focused on the tried and true tools used by athletes in multiple disciplines throughout history.

The CrossFit program is designed to build an athlete with an elite level of fitness that is broad, general, and inclusive. Crossfit's goal is not to specialize in any particular area. CrossFit's mantra for world-class fitness is in 100 simple words:

"Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports."
—Greg Glassman