The last of these points is not news to the mainstream endurance community. The overall intensity of typical cross-fit training is simply too high to allow sustainable progress over the long term.Some movements (especially those borrowed from Olympic lifting) put the athlete under significant injury risk when quickly decelerating a load.Crossfit workouts utilize ‘big muscle’ integrated movements that (providing they are performed at the right intensity) elicit sufficient O2/metabolic demand to improve aerobic function across the whole body.As these muscles whittle away triathletes become very good at developing funky compensations that still allow them to swim, bike, run for a period but ultimately, lead to a ‘leaning tower of Pisa’ foundation that is a sure fire route to decreased economy and injury. Variety in planes of motion: Triathlon is a sagittal plane sport leading to over-development of those muscles that move us forward and underdevelopment of those crucial stabilizing muscles that move us (or prevent us from excessively moving) up, side to side and backwards.This leads to an over-specialization that can result in serious postural dysfunction and can lead an athlete very susceptible to injury. Full range of motion movements: Most of our work as triathletes is done in sub-optimal positions where we are completing muscle contraction after muscle contraction with our muscles in a perpetually shortened state.I talked about the importance of this for athletes participating in an inherently catabolic sport here Sufficient force demands to elicit some level of hypertrophy or, at the very least, maintain sufficient muscle mass for the endurance athlete.So, let's delve into the pro’s & con's of a Crossfit-like strength regimen for the endurance athlete. I want to attempt to clear that up with this post. Athletes at the top of their field know this to be the case for swim, bike, run and yet are often susceptible to confusion on the strength side of things. You don’t ‘get good’ without practicing ‘over a prolonged period of time’. Despite priding itself on being ‘hardcore’, when you strip away all the hype, fundamentally, it is another ‘seven minute abs’ shortcut philosophy: "We’ll make you a top triathlete in only x number of hours per week." This neglects the reality that is endurance sport.Įndurance – the ability to produce a relatively high level of output over a prolonged period of time. However, Crossfit Endurance, like most popular fitness systems suffers from one weakness (that is also its commercial strength). Crossfit style training, fits the bill here in its emphasis on non-specialization. In this regard, we could learn a lot from just how literally the Eastern Bloc countries interpreted "General Preparation" for their athletes. Early specialization is rife and it leads to unbalanced, fragile athletes. The 'love' part comes from the fact that I firmly believe that variety in movement patterns and force demands is something that is missing from Western sports on the whole. I have a love-hate relationship with the Crossfit idea that comes down to one thing: Despite the fact that Crossfit prides itself on variety, it is very one sided when it comes to energy system development: Everything is done hard, i.e. Crossfit Endurance is the endurance athlete ‘arm’ of CrossFit that deals with using crossfit training methodology to prepare endurance athletes. That long winded ramble, leads me to one of the conversations that took place this weekend on the merits of Crossfit Endurance. It’s a good wake up call that there is a whole world of different athletic and coaching perspectives out there and that I will become a better coach by looking beyond my little, specialized, very homogenous world. It becomes clear to me, after spending some time with these people just how specialized my niche is. For whatever reason, there is always a great variety in coaches that attend, both in the ‘way’ that they coach and the populations being coached. While I attend these clinics as a presenter, I always feel I learn far more than I teach. I love these opportunities to get coaches together to learn. This past weekend, Endurance Corner hosted our annual coaches clinic. Alan Couzens, MS (Sports Science) Dec 10th, 2014 Sensible Crossfit for Endurance Athletes.
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