Tuesday WOD
"Nate"
2 Muscle Ups
4 Handstand Pushups
8 2-Pood Kettlebells Swings
Wednesday WOD
For time:
50 Box jump, 24 inch box
50 Jumping pull-ups
50 Kettlebell swings, 1 pood
Walking Lunge, 50 steps
50 Knees to elbows
50 Push press, 45 pounds
50 Back extensions
50 Wall ball shots, 20 pound ball
50 Burpees
50 Double unders
What About Recovery?
Coach’s Spin
Greg Glassman
At CrossFit’s certification/seminar in Golden Colorado this fall, an event commonly referred to as the “First CrossFit Summit”, several presenters spoke of the importance of rest and recuperation in athletic training and alluded to valuable current trends and research on the subject of recovery.
Chief among those inspired by the conversation were Dan John, Tyler Hass, and Robb Wolf. My respect and admiration for Dan, Tyler, and Robb coupled with my bad attitude and admitted ignorance of “modern recovery techniques” made Tyler’s suggestion to dedicate an issue of the CFJ to recovery an interesting idea - especially if Dan and Robb could be cajoled to help.
For the record, my bad attitude towards any established corpus of recovery information stems from several quirks of my intellectual temperament and the nature of my clinical practice. It has been my professional experience that successful training protocols present themselves over time through superior performance among their adherents. Repeatedly over my career exceptional performance has been easily and quickly rooted out and attributed to the particulars of the performer’s training regimen. A natural process of question and answer mines more potent strategies quickly: “Where does this guy come from; he learns so quickly?” “He’s a gymnast.” “Why are these guys so much stronger than the others?” “They powerflifted for years.” How did she get so lean so quickly? “By cutting her intake of high glycemic carbohydrate.” By watching, learning, asking, and experimenting we have been able to build a successful program whose methods were harvested entirely from elite performers. I want to ask, someday, “Who are those amazing athletes?” to which the answer comes, “the new resters.”
I am waiting for a group, performer, or even a single elite to lay the fruit of his training on superior recovery techniques. If and when an athlete bests Greg Amundson or Josh Everett and differs from them largely in his penchant for cold beers, massage, ice baths, or the company of pretty woman – we’re going to tinker, analyze, and evaluate these predilections with ourselves and then with other athletes. I’m still waiting. I am personally hopeful that pampering and advanced recuperative techniques will make a substantial difference. Wouldn’t that be cool?
The reports, this month, don’t give me reason for encouragement. Stress control, massage, sleep, contrast hydrotherapy, hydration, recreation, stretching, and chiropractic treatment top the list of promising recuperative techniques. While none of these are foreign to us, or even new to sport training, we’ve no evidence that they make measurable differences in accelerating the development of elite performance. I can appreciate the potential these modalities offer to comfort, but I’m not seeing the increased performance.
In spite of this curmudgeonly view of recuperative technologies I must add that our nutritional prescription may be lending it’s value via accelerated recovery. We know, through regular observation, that most fad dieters (low fat/high carb/low protein, chiefly) never stand a chance of surviving our protocol regardless of rest or ramping up. We’ve further noted that close adherence to our nutritional protocol, by initially, at least, weighing and measuring food to establish accuracy and precision to the diet confers an advantage that less diligent compliance cannot match. The suspicion is that our nutritional strategy accelerates recovery allowing for one or two more super productive workouts each week. Over time this creates distinct athletic advantage.
It must be pointed out that while acknowledging hat sleep deprivation, dehydration, and inflexibility are detriments to performance I’ve seen no evidence that sleep, water, or flexibility beyond “normal” levels help performance. Playing basketball in handcuffs will limit your game, but I’m not going to suggest that the removal of handcuffs is the key to increased basketball performance for all basketball players. If we clump the recuperative modalities together as “pampering” what my clinical practice suggests is that the pampered athletes are generally performing below the 50-percentile mark. Those most inclined, for instance, to yoga, meditation, and chiropractic treatment are not our fire-breathers. I don’t think that yoga, meditation, and chiropractic treatment are injurious to performance; I think that self-pampering and longing for comfort are, however, correlative with low drive and success. Why is it that those most inclined to worry and ask about “overtraining” are about as likely to set a new record in the Olympic Decathlon as they are to ever over train?
Full the full Article Please click the link below or ask me later at the gym.
http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/29_05_What_About_Recovery.pdf
CrossFit Journal Article Reprint. First Published in CrossFit Journal Issue 29 - January 2005