I sat down to write a post on stretching but instead I started to read Mads Jacobsens blog. He is one of the coaches at Crossfit Nordic in Stockholm and a hot shot in the world of Crossfit. He is back in the blogosphere after a break and his thoughts on training and crossfit are a great read. One of his posts (read it here) addresses the tendency within crossfit (or among CF atheletes) to favour olympic lifts and to disregard weaknesses and neglecting to work on fundamental elements like mobility and complex but basic bodyweight exercises. It is a topic that I occupies me and that I've been meaning to write about for some time now. What happend was that what was supposed to be a comment on his blog turned into a nearly full fledged blogpost on the matter. As it is somewhat near to what I had planned on writing it will serve as todays reflection:
Regarding the unbalanced fitness of many crossfitters; don't you think that the crossfit boxes and their programming is part of the blame? I hear a lot of talk about the importance of flexibility but never see coaches at boxes put as much love into mobility work (if any at all) as they dedicate to perfecting a clean for example.
In programming, the numbers, reps or times for the wod are usually stated clearly and precisely whereas when it comes to mobility work you are (at best) usually given a sloppy "spend 10 minutes stretching". I imagine that if the mobility work was as precisely prescribed as the wods people would follow it with better discipline.
And would coaches, not only emphasize the importance of mobility, but actually state an example with their own training, I think the atheletes would be sure to follow.
What I would like to see at crossfit boxes is classes dedicated to mobility work and stretching and perhaps other classes with focus on complex movements like pistols, handbalancing and pirouettes. Maybe that's when we become crossfit. For real.
Du har en plats på min kommande box!
SvaraRaderassssss!