Running for CrossFit Athletes

Athletes who have been with CrossFit 718 for some time know what’s coming as the weather turns warmer. For those of you that are new athletes, you may be in for a surprise. Warm weather means one thing around here: more running.

Running is a deceptively easy exercise. However, proper technique is the cornerstone of every athletic movement, whether it be the overhead squat or muscle-up. Running is no different. So in order to run faster, run longer, avoid injuries and reduce impact on your body, you need to improve your technique!
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CrossFit 718 is located in Brooklyn, NY and offers regular Running Workshops with Coach Iz, to find out more please visit http://crossfit718.com

Training for an 8K with CrossFit Full Circle Endurance

By Catherine Brigham

“Slow runners make fast runners look good. You’re welcome.”

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with running. Mostly hate. Running to me was always just part of training for other sports. Running for the sake of running was a foreign concept. I had to be doing something else, whether it was dribbling a soccer ball or basketball. When I was young and in shape, my fastest mile time was under 7 minutes. Yowzah! Now, my most recent mile test was around 8:30. Not terrible, but definitely not something I could sustain for multiple miles. Plus, I would always get a side cramp, which discouraged me from pursing anything longer than a mile.

Since starting CrossFit over a year ago, most of my running took place as part of the WODs. I would occasionally see the Endurance classes in the morning but never took the plunge to sign up for one. Some other time, perhaps.

Then over the summer, Full Circle started advertising their Endurance training program for the Richmond Marathon/Half/8K races. Maybe now was the time, and while 26.2 or 13.1 miles were out of the question, the 8K seemed manageable. I had never run that far in my life, but I went for it.

The Endurance training program was set up with group workouts on Tuesdays and Thursdays and a long run on your own time over the weekend. The group workouts consisted of short and long interval trainings to help build speed and stamina.

 

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CrossFit Full Circle is located in Richmond, VA and offers Full Circle Endurance program, to find out more please visit http://crossfitfullcircle.com/endurance/

You Run Like Sh*t: My Pose Journey

“You run like shit.”

Not exactly something anyone wants to hear. If you’re currently in the process of running 80+ miles a week, this kind of news can be devastating.  I stared blankly at the 50-inch flat screen placed precariously in front of our small group— maybe 16 people—and wondered why I looked so bad. 

The full breadth of my stride was on display here; one foot trailing behind my body and the other reaching in front, driving forward.  This was how I was supposed to look.  This is how “good” runners look.  All those Nike ads and pro-runner’s Instagram feeds had burned the images into my mind.  I didn’t understand.  All these people I emulate run like shit too?

There was clearly a disconnect here.  The smartest man in the world of running, Dr. Nicholas Romanov, was tracing a laser pointer across the TV screen, advancing my lumbering body frame by frame to show everyone in attendance why I couldn’t run.  In increasingly specific terms, he shredded my gait from top to bottom, eventually concluding that if I was going to run like THAT, I should probably just save my energy and not run at all.

As I sat there, disillusioned, disheartened and incredibly embarrassed, I realized this was, in fact, exactly what I wanted.  Did I really spend a shitload of my money and time to fly to Miami (in August!) so I could hear Dr. Romanov tell me that I run perfectly?  That’s an expensive ego boost, even if it is coming from The Most Interesting Man in the World. No, this was a good thing. It was time to figure out what I had been doing wrong.  It was time for my education to begin.

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About the AuthorBryan Jolly is an ultra-runner and a Cross Country + Track and Field coach in Santa Monica, CA. Among his other notable experiences and credentials is the NCAA Division III All-American at Claremont McKenna College, 2nd Place 2015 Santa Barbara Marathon and 3rd Place 2016 Bandit 50k. Contact Coach Bryan Jolly for more information and training. 

A Logical Look at the “Endurance Base”

It is my belief that, when boiled down to their essentials, all sports have the same core principles for training and development. Coach Glassman and a few coaches before him have addressed the physiology side of this with the process called General Physical Preparedness (GPP); noting that there are certain movements and conditioning sequences that, no matter what sport you play, would render itself useful to all athletes. Some (Coach included) even argue that GPP is a more potent training tool that sport-specific strength and conditioning; claiming that most of the sport specificity an athlete needs comes from regular practice in that sport.

That discussion, however, is for another post. But more than the weight room training, I also think this thinking applies for the practice and performance of the sport, itself. I played five sports growing up, three in high school, one in college, and have coached athletes and talked to coaches from those sports and many more during my time as a CrossFit coach. And I have noticed a few underlying principles that seem to be obeyed by coaches of every group. One of these principles relates to building a “base” during the pre-season/beginning of the season. This base usually is comprised of two parts: skill and strength. You need to get used to the specific movements and techniques of that sport (skill), and you need to develop the positions and muscular endurance that will need to last the entire season (strength.)

For example, in the first few weeks of a season, a basketball coach might spend a majority of their time doing reps on the basics of how to defend a pick-and-roll (skill), as opposed to going over 10 different offensive sets that include a pick-and-roll. After that, the team would likely scrimmage with an emphasis on running a pick-and-roll every time down the court so the defense could apply what they have been drilling. Other sports are similar – whether that is football athletes doing routes/footwork during practice and weight room after, or softball players getting used to grounders and fly-balls after an off-season of nothing. Either way, every group seems to follow the same formula of quality technique > volume or strategy. That is, every group save for one:

Track People

Many distance runners and coaches I am familiar with have the exact opposite approach to early-season training. Their belief is that the best preparation for a season of long distance running is… long distance running. A lot of it. An example could be a 1600m runner would spend the first few weeks of practice running 2-5 miles per day to build their “base.” For running, I believe the formula should be the following:

CrossFit (strength) + Long duration Pose drills (skill) = Endurance Base.

 

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About the AuthorChris Sinagoga is the owner of the Champions Club/CrossFit Athletic Group in Madison Heights, MI, whose obsession with coaching CrossFit is only surpassed by his obsession with the game of basketball. Chris is heavily influenced by MGoBlog and Hip Hop and writes for the Champions Club website. Among other prestigious credentials, he has achieved certified master status in both Pokémon Red and Gold versions. Contact Coach Chris Sinagoga for more information and training. 

The Track and Field Experiment

Champions Club Chronicles vol. 2

Coaching track in high school might be the simplest job in all of sports – despite what “track people” make it out to be. There are no plays. There are no defenders standing in your lane. There are no pre-snap reads. There are no curveballs. And there is no contact.

Track is literally just Pose, Fall, Pull. Then practice at your race-speed to get a desired stimulus; unless you need to slow it down to focus on one particular area of the Pose, Fall, Pull continuum. And if possible, do CrossFit to support the foundation.

With this formula, Brian Hassler and I conducted an experiment over the course of four seasons: can lacrosse, softball, and CrossFit athletes be molded into good track runners? It soon became our job to find the best athletes in the school from other sports and bribe the hell out of them to run for us. We talked to parents, coaches, teachers, and students offering a Nike track bag, spikes, and three months of sunshine and daisies for anyone good who wanted to come out. This, as it turned out, was a horrible idea. Not only did the best athletes decline, but the ones who ended up joining carried a lovely aura of entitlement with them. Ugh, it’s not their fault though; I was desperate.

 

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About the AuthorChris Sinagoga is the owner of the Champions Club/CrossFit Athletic Group in Madison Heights, MI, whose obsession with coaching CrossFit is only surpassed by his obsession with the game of basketball. Chris is heavily influenced by MGoBlog and Hip Hop and writes for the Champions Club website. Among other prestigious credentials, he has achieved certified master status in both Pokémon Red and Gold versions. Contact Coach Chris Sinagoga for more information and training.