Running Form and Efficiency

We've got some running in this week's WODs, everything from short sprints to distance runs. Depending on the other exercises in a workout, a run can feel like a place to recover a bit from 'heavy' movements - or a place to put the hammer down and make up some time against the stopwatch. With correct form and efficient turnover perhaps we can get both. Here are some points to keep in mind while running:

Head Tilt: How you hold your head is key to overall posture, which determines how efficiently you run. Let your gaze guide you. Look ahead naturally, not down at your feet, and scan the horizon. This will straighten your neck and back, and bring them into alignment. Don't allow your chin to jut out.

Shoulders: Shoulders play an important role in keeping your upper body relaxed while you run, which is critical to maintaining efficient running posture. For optimum performance, your shoulders should be low and loose, not high and tight. As you tire on a run, don't let them creep up toward your ears. If they do, shake them out to release the tension. Your shoulders also need to remain level and shouldn't dip from side to side with each stride.

Arms: Even though running is primarily a lower-body activity, your arms aren't just along for the ride. Your hands control the tension in your upper body, while your arm swing works in conjunction with your leg stride to drive you forward. Keep your hands in an unclenched fist, with your fingers lightly touching your palms. Imagine yourself trying to carry a potato chip in each hand without crushing it. Your arms should swing mostly forward and back, not across your body,between waist and lower-chest level. Your elbows should be bent at about a 90-degree angle. When you feel your fists clenching or your forearms tensing, drop your arms to your sides and shake them out for a few seconds to release the tension.

Torso: The position of your torso while running is affected by the position of your head and shoulders. With your head up and looking ahead and your shoulders low and loose, your torso and back naturally straighten to allow you to run in an efficient, upright position that promotes optimal lung capacity and stride length. Many track coaches describe this ideal torso position as "running tall" and it means you need to stretch yourself up to your full height with your back comfortably straight. If you start to slouch during a run take a deep breath and feel yourself naturally straighten. As you exhale simply maintain that upright position.

Hips: Your hips are your center of gravity, so they're key to good running posture. The proper position of your torso while running helps to ensure your hips will also be in the ideal position. With your torso and back comfortably upright and straight, your hips naturally fall into proper alignment--pointing you straight ahead. If you allow your torso to hunch over or lean too far forward during a run, your pelvis will tilt forward as well, which can put pressure on your lower back and throw the rest of your lower body out of alignment. When trying to gauge the position of your hips, think of your pelvis as a bowl filled with marbles, then try not to spill the marbles by tilting the bowl.

Legs/Stride: Sprinters need to lift their knees high to achieve maximum leg power, Efficient endurance running requires just a slight knee lift, a quick leg turnover, and a short stride. Together, these will facilitate fluid forward movement instead of diverting (and wasting) energy. When running with the proper stride length, your feet should land directly underneath your body. As your foot strikes the ground, your knee should be slightly flexed so that it can bend naturally on impact. If your lower leg (below the knee) extends out in front of your body, your stride is too long.

Ankles/Feet: To run well, you need to push off the ground with maximum force. With each step, your foot should hit the ground lightly and then quickly roll forward. Keep your ankle flexed as your foot rolls forward to create more force for push-off. As you roll onto your toes, try to spring off the ground. You should feel your calf muscles propelling you forward on each step. Your feet should not slap loudly as they hit the ground. Good running is springy and quiet.
(Jane Hahn, Runner's World)


The top three lifts to develop sprinting power? The deadlift, the back squat, and the clean. The explosive power developed in these lifts will translate directly into increased power and speed at the track.

Level Advancement

Some individuals are motivated more by external factors or rewards, others driven internally. I tend to fall into the latter category. Though I really do enjoy the camaraderie and competition of our H.E.L. community(I run faster when someone's on my tail!), ultimately it is my own game, mental and physical, that I square off against each day in the gym or out in the hills. The only ranking which truly holds ground for me is the personal record(PR) and where I measure up against my own capacity. As such, our system of fitness ranking from Recruit(completion of Boot Camp), through Basic, Advanced, Elite and Mutant levels has historically held little interest for me. In fact, I had been resistant to the notion of testing. However, as I have often found when there is something in life I am resisting, there may be a lesson I need from it within. With this in mind I showed up to the Lab on a rainy Saturday morning recently to test my mettle against the board.

As Coach Kevin and I moved through the exercises, he stopped to give me useful input on lifts I knew - subtle inefficiencies in form or mechanics overlooked in the heat of the WOD or a larger group session. On other movements I felt more competent with, we talked about aggressive strategies for elevating performance even further. On one exercise test I even broke a PR with Kevin's encouragement. Now I was interested! But what I surprisingly found most helpful was the overall objective examination of my own abilities across the board: knowing which ones were hard for me, and which seemed easier, this gave me more insight into my own challenges and where to focus my attention in training. I'm still not really concerned with where my name lies on the board or amongst the rankings, but testing out offered me something of value to any athlete, regardless of their motivations: an accurate picture of truth in training.

And a note to senior HEL athletes: as a new crop of recruits graduate from Boot Camp and ABC their eyes are upon you , seeking an example. So if you are not moving forward, then perhaps you are holding back! Go on...GET SOME!!!

Team Week

As this week's WODs focus on team workouts, here are some simple things to keep in mind: These events are not about PRs, but elevating each other's performance and forging bonds within the community as a whole. Find a team or teammate that might benefit from your strength or speed rather than the combo that will get you to the finish line first. No 'A' teams here. This is a good week to ignore the time board completely and instead focus on learning to work together effectively. And anytime a 'penalty' is encountered from a dropped ball or missed cue, remember that this dynamic is created to make each of us stronger, inside and out. So if your ego flares because the guy next to you is creating extra burpees for the team, then perhaps the leader within still has some work to do. Notice what goes on inside your head during this week's workouts and use it to learn more about yourself.

The Headstand

The handstand push-up is one of those crossfit skills that requires so much strength, balance and coordination that it might seem unattainable. For me currently, the ablilty to complete HSPUs against a wall doesn't seem to translate into the quantumly more difficult free-standing variety. Obviously I need a handstand first. And to get a handstand, I'd need a solid headstand first. I don't see many HSPUs, handstands or headstands around the Lab so I'm guessing that I am not alone. So a little web searching came up with this...

THE HEADSTAND

For those who are apprehensive about going upside-down in a handstand, the headstand is a good skill to get you used to being inverted. It is a fairly simple skill that you should be able to master very shortly.
First, let's look at the head and hand placement for the skill:

What's important to note here is that the hands and head are NOT in a straight line. That's the mistake seen the most often. Instead of a straight line, you'll want to space your head and hands out so that they make a triangle. Your hands will be a little more than shoulder width apart and far enough away from your head that your arms will be bending at about a 90 degree angle (you'll see this clear in the pictures to come). Your bodyweight should be evenly distributed between your head and each hand. All this will give you better support and balance in the skill. Put a pillow down on the ground if you're practicing on a hard surface.
With this head and hand position, put one knee ON TOP of one of your elbows. If your arms are bent correctly, your knee should sit up there like it's on a shelf.

Bring your second knee up on top of your other elbow. This is a position know as the "tripod".

You should be very stable in this position - just like a tripod. Of you feel like you're falling(especially to your back) then get down and reposition your headand hands to make a bigger triangle.Here is a view of the tripod from the side. Notice how his knees rest on his elbows, and that his arms are bent at 90 degrees.

When you feel comfortable with the tripod, start to lift your legs up and end in a headstand.

From here it's pretty easy to hold the position. If you have to put more weight on any part of your body while balancing, put it on your hands, as they can push and balance you better than your head can. Notice that his body is straight. There's no reason to arch as he has three points of contact with the ground and plenty of balance.


(This tutorial was adapted from James Bathurst, a Washington DC area gymnast and fitness consultant. Check out his website at www.beastskills.com)

Note: Congrats to all the 12:00ers(Ryan Neal, Daniel & Elisif Harro, Josh Hobbs...me too!) - everyone managed a successful headstand with a little practice following the WOD on Friday...next up: the elusive handstand!

Wall Ball Functionality

In celebration of today's 'Karen' benchmark workout, let's take a closer look at wall ball shot mechanics:

* Each rep begins with a rock bottom squat, with feet flat on the floor.
* Keep the elbows down and in.
* Keep the ball low to the chest.
* Don't let the ball obstruct view of the target.
* Launch the ball with little finger roll or push.
* Make ascending and descending movements the same.
* Minimize breathing and ball contact noise.
* Breath deeply and attempt to synchronize breathing to shot rate.

Look back on CrossFit HEL's WOD archives to June 13th and see how well you did. Can your beat your PR? CrossFit 'gold standard' for this workout is 6 minutes - that's 25 shots per minute! How many minutes can you maintain this rate? Try scaling your med ball weight until you can meet this speed, then add weight as you improve.

Weight Gazing

"You've seen the weight gazers on the floor. They're the ones in the middle of a kickass Fran or a raging FGB who feel the need to pause and assess the apparatus they've just spent hard won reps lifting, pulling, or slamming. Why? Because they have fallen into the mental trap of weight gazing. Most commonly they're just coming off a metabolically demanding exercise, and they spend valuable moments pausing before engaging a strength component. In our Fran example, the gazer comes off the pull up bar and stops for 10-30 seconds before starting to negotiate the Thruster. Instead, our intrepid Crossfitter should grasp the bar immediately and crank out as many reps as possible, even if it's only one or two, to break the psychological pause of moving from one exercise to another. Once that positive feedback cycle of exercise / progress / exercise has resumed the athlete can start to accurately assess his or her rest needs. The trap of weight gazing is almost exclusively mental - of course we're tired, but we make negligible metabolic recovery by abstaining from that first rep.

'Rest Smart' - take three to five deep breaths and fire it up again. Utilize this technique and see valuable seconds recovered, intensity retained, and inevitable improvement achieved."

-Ray Kaplan, CrossFit Challenge


*Welcome Daniel, Elisif and all the ABC candidates! And big props going to Jake, Dan, David and Daniel for taking time after Monday's track WOD to come back to the Lab for an extra hour of skills practice. Rockin' the Turkish Get-up!!!

CrossFit Goals

Often at CrossFit H.E.L. we come in, complete the WODs and leave. However many of the movements we use in CrossFit involve complex neuromuscular programming (called 'engrams') which require many slow repetitions and careful attention to mechanics in order to master completely. This sort of training is something that must occur outside of the WOD and away from the stopwatch. John Frieh, one of our top athletes, is currently working towards a true, unassisted handstand push-up. I see him working on it during every free moment of his day: at home, at work, during meetings(!), and of course at HEL. With this sort of dedication surely any of us could attain that elusive prize.
What are your CrossFit goals? A muscle-up? Double-unders? A hands-free rope climb? Whatever they may be, we hope that you will bring your goals along with your best 'A' game to the Lab this week. Any workout time beyond the WODs will be used practice and hone those skills that may be eluding you and keeping you from moving to the next level.

Train your weakness, that it may become your strength.