The second your feet hit the floor on a clean, your hands should be open, elbows up with the bar fully racked on your shoulders. Developing this timing should be one of the first things you focus on when performing cleans.
Do You Know the Difference Between Exercise and Training?
By David Osorio
In a Huffington Post article at the beginning of 2014, noted strength coach and author Mark Rippetoe discussed the differences between training and exercise. Read the full article here, but in essence, Rippetoe says:
Training involves “directed physical stress,” and is “the process of going from where you are now to where you want to be later for the purpose of meeting a specific performance goal.”
“Exercise is physical activity performed for the effect it produces today—right now. Each workout is performed for the purpose of producing a stress that satisfies the immediate needs of the exerciser: burning some calories, getting hot, sweaty, and out of breath, pumping up the biceps, stretching—basically just punching the physical clock” (Practical Programming, 3rd Edition).
While some debate ensued regarding other specifics in the article, the real value of this discussion, in my opinion, is the standardization of semantics when discussing the effectiveness of a program. These definitions are useful because most people have no idea what the difference is between training and exercise—and as an affiliate owner or coach, I believe it’s important that you guys know why Barry’s Bootcamp or SoulCycle are not actually training.
If our goal is to get good at CrossFit—which means increasing work capacity across broad time and modal domains—then there are certainly more and less effective ways to approach programming. No one could argue that someone blasting out 30-minute metcons day-in, day-out without ever lifting heavy or practicing skills is expressing CrossFit as effectively as someone with a balanced, thoughtful program. A good CrossFit affiliate should understand the differences between exercise and training, and bias practices that lead toward training such that we can see long-term quantifiable progress among both novice and advanced members.
Below is a list that further differentiates between the two ends of the spectrum between exercise and training. This list is valuable for easily differentiating where a program might fall on that continuum.
Characteristics of workouts that fall on the far end of the spectrum toward exercise include:
- No specific, long term performance goal(s)
- Non-quantifiable work output
- No standardization of range-of-motion in the exercises
- Inadequate intensity/stimulus to catalyze an adaptation
- Arbitrarily designed workouts which don’t fit into a larger plan
- No control or consideration of additional variables (recovery, nutrition, etc.)
Characteristics of workouts that fall on the far end of the spectrum toward training include:
- Pursues a specific goal or adaptation
- Quantifiable performance outputs
- Standardized range-of-motion in exercises being used
- Specifically-programmed intensities to develop or maintain physical capacities
- Each workout is part of a larger framework organized to achieve the specific goals of the program.
- Considers additional and complementary variables (recovery, nutrition, etc.)
Yesterday, we published the full version of this article on my blog Inside the Affiliate. The article goes on to discuss all aspects of training at CFSBK—from Strength Training, Olympic Lifting, Calisthenics/Gymnastics, and Conditioning—and addresses even more of the why behind the how. Read the rest HERE, and learn more about how CFSBK biases our programming toward training.
_____________________
This Aerobic Video Wins Everything
Why We Sleep Together The Atlantic
Get Ready to Pay More to Ride the Subway WNYC
USA is Ready CrossFit
What training goals are you currently pursuing?
