"Team Training"
100 Medicine Ball Cleans
150 Medicine Ball Sit ups
200 Medicine Ball SDLHP
Each 2 person team will complete as many reps as they can until all 450 reps are completed.
Chet brought the following to my attention. This is one of the "...buts" I hear often when I tell them or am asked about CrossFit.
"I wonder where the fear of weight training developed. So many of the athletes I work with, or inquire about training here express concern about getting hurt in the gym.
They don't initially see the gym as a place to get strong, improve their performance, or reduce their chance of injury outside. Rather, they think this stuff looks dangerous, and come in worried and tentative.
Then, if and when they do get a "ding" in the gym, they want to cut back, or even quit, or avoid the ding at all costs.
What is amazing about this attitude is how safe the gym is compared to damn near every other sport and especially every mountain sport.
Skiing, climbing, mountain biking - you name it, all these sports have a much higher injury rate than weight training, more severe injuries, and even fatalities.
A novice skier or climber sees these sports as a little "scary," but not "dangerous" - even though they are.
Yet, novice lifters see the stuff we do not as "scary" but as "dangerous."
I'm not saying the stuff we do is gentle. It isn't. It is high impact. We push it, but the most serious injury I've ever had occur in the gym was some stitches in the finger from setting dumbbells down. But here in Jackson, there are probably 10 gainfully employed orthopedic surgeons at the ready to repair torn up knees coming off the ski hill.
And when my athletes do suffer a ding or an injury, in the weightroom or outside, the first thing they cut back on is their training - not their sport. Often, even if the injury or soreness is sport related, they still blame training.
Climbers will have sore knees and or sore lower backs, and ask for workouts to avoid these, yet still climb mountains carrying backpacks.
So you tell me, what has the most impact on a sore knee or back, a 1-hour training session, or a 12 hour day in the mountains with 8,000 feet of vertical gain and loss carrying a 30 pound pack? This is an incredible amount of volume I could never match in the weight room.
Part of the issue is unrealistic expectations we seem to have about training. No skier expects to do their sport, push their limits, and never take a fall. But many athletes expect this in the gym.
If a new skier falls and bangs their elbow, they don't blame the ski instructor. If a rookie climber slips and twists his or her ankle, they don't blame the guide. But, if in the gym, an athlete tweaks his or her wrist doing a heavy clean, somehow the coach, barbell, gym, and weight training all get blamed.
I've gone to telling new athletes to treat joining this gym like it was a martial arts studio or a boxing club. Somedays, you're gonna go home with a bloody nose. It's up to you to get back into the ring.
- Rob Shaul, www.mtnathlete.com"
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Each class will pick a card from the Hopper Deck. What you pull is what you get. Each class will pull their own card. The bigger classes will be split in half and each group will get a card.
