A new focus

Nick | 01/04/2015 | 1

With the arrival of the new year, many of us set resolutions/goals/intentions for the next 365 days.  Asking yourself where you see yourself at the start of 2016 is a great way to focus your training towards who you want to be.  We encourage you all to ponder this and to ask your coaches for help choosing both long term goals as well as the short/medium term goals that can act as stepping stones to the long term.  These can (and should) be very personal, so I invite you all to think about what brought you through our doors in the first place and talk to us about how we can get you there.

Our new cycle will offer many ways to help us all work towards our goals, whatever they might be.  These goals tend to be quantitative, that is, they can (and should) be measurable.  That’s how we know if we achieve them or not.  It’s why we track our numbers, whether it be in a lift or in a WOD.

These numbers don’t always tell the whole story, and sometimes distract us from a more potent point of focus.  If, for instance, we only track the load we are able to squat but don’t also note how we squatted (the quality of our form), we might miss improvements that are happening but not immediately increasing the weight we’re able to squat.

So to help with this, each week we’ll have a more qualitative focus that we’ll apply to the WOD and each day we’ll have a specific thing to focus on for the strength/skill portion of class.  Think of these focuses as skill development.  For instance, this week we’ll be focusing on how we breathe.  This can be applied to both the WOD and to our lifts/gymnastic strength movements.  While there is definitely no one “right way” to breathe, there are certainly more and less effective ways, depending on what else is going on.  If nothing else, the very act of being aware of how we breathe in any one setting can lead to improved performance.  Here and here are a couple articles to get you started thinking down this path for those of you who like to do homework.  There will be many more throughout this cycle.

For our squats today, the focus will be on what exactly our squat stance should be (and why) as well as our general set up for this lift.  We like to have a consistent loaded squat stance for all of our squat based movements so our ability in one type of squat translates to ability in another.  While we are back squatting today, it’s important that our stance is set at a width that we are also comfortable overhead squatting in, otherwise the strength we build here doesn’t translate as well.  Our set up will be a lot about finding tension and stability in the right parts of us so that the movement comes from the right places.

We’ll also have a couple of underlying themes throughout these six weeks.  One will be spinal awareness, alignment, and control.  Our spine is an amazing and complex structure.  Tiny changes in how we engage and think about it can have large impacts on our abilities.  Making these changes starts by building awareness, which can be harder with our spine than with other parts of us because we can rarely see what our spine is doing and instead have to feel what it is doing.  Aligning what we feel with what is actually happening can be eye opening to say the least.

A second underlying theme will involve pulling strength.  For this cycle, unless otherwise started, our scale for pull ups will be some type of ring row.  While there are benefits of doing jumping or banded pull ups, they are mostly metabolic and fall short in building pulling strength when compared to properly executed ring rows.  So for those of you who really want to get your pull ups stronger, this cycle is for you.

We’ll be talking about all of these elements during class.  If nothing else, a change of focus can often lead to surprising advances.  And as always, if you have any questions on any of this don’t hesitate to ask your coach.

STR:

Back Squat

5-5-5-5-5

Focus – setting a consistent squat stance, set-up

WOD:

AMRAP 12

8 Russian KBS (2/1.5)
8 Goblet Squats (2/1.5)
1 Wall Climb

Focus – breathing: try to keep your breathing even throughout the WOD – avoid holding your breath for tension.  Breathe faster before you are out of breath