Why CrossFitters Must Be Strong
(11)
„Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.“
Being Stronger:
1. Lays a Foundation
2. Prevents Injury
3. Keeps Your Technique Clean Under Fatigue
4. Builds Power and Speed
5. Improves Your Strength Endurance
Strength
Before we can talk about why strength is so useful for crossfitters, we have to define what physical strength is: Strength is the physical ability to overcome an external resistance via force production thereby causing movement.
Hence, the heavier of a weight you pick up from the floor the stronger you are. This is why strength is usually measured by performing a 1 repetion maximum. If you can lift an object 100 times it's not heavy, it might be fatiguing, horrible and hard, but not heavy.
Crossfit
The goal of Crossfit is to become a well-rounded athlete. Strength, endurance, explosiveness and coordination are just a few of the many attributes crossfitters seek to improve. Many sports specialise in one of these abilities, but this comes at a cost. Weightlifters are masters of getting a heavy weight overhead quickly, gymnasts have amazing body control and 800 meter runners breathtaking endurance. The only problem is that each athlete would perform poorly at the others events. This is not a problem if your goal is to be the best at one specific ability. But if your goal if to be generally fit, so you are prepared for anything life might throw at you, being a well-rounded athlete might be more useful than being a specialised one.
This is why Crossfit prides itself in preparing trainees for the unknown and the unknowable. A 120 kg weightlifter will have big problems trying to climb a rope when an emergency requires him too. A 60 kg gymnast would probably have trouble picking up and carrying a wounded person for prolonged periods of time. This article will show how basic strength is the most important attribute a crossfitter can seek to develop at the beginning of his training career, because it has great carryover to many other aspects of Crossfit.
1. How Strength Lays a Foundation
Building a strength foundation by doing heavy deadlifts will teach you to keep your back straight on snatches and cleans. Deadlifts are the most basic movement when it comes to developing pulling strength of the floor. Afterall it's impossible to clean or snatch a weight that you can't deadlift or squat. Having a strong squat will build a base for your front squat and creates a strength foundation for high rep box jumps or lunges.
Developing a decent overhead and bench press enables you to jerk heavier weights once you learn the right technique. Weighted chin ups will prepare your elbows for doing legless rope climbs and make muscle ups much easier to learn. Even kipping pull ups will be easier and at the same time your tendons will be protected from possibly injury. This is because the lowering part of a kipping pull up puts about twice your bodyweight on your connective tissue, which can be bad news for an unprepared shoulder (1).
Now I am not saying become a powerlifter, I am just saying at least run a novice linear progression on the basic lifts until you are fairly strong. After all the brilliance of Crossfit lies in trying to be an all around athlete and not a specialist.
2. How Strength Prevents Injury
First of all weightlifting is one of the safest sports you can do. Statistically it is 3000 times more likely you get injured during soccer than during weightlifting (2). Just like a weightlifter, a crossfitter is in complete control of his body and his movements. There is no opponent that could unexpectedly slide into your feet while injuring your knees in the process.
In general the higher your absolute muscle strength is, the more force it takes to shove your joint into a position of derangement and injury. Of course factors such as mobility and technique play a role in injury prevention too, but once those are taken care of, strength is a major factor in preventing injury when unexpected positions arise (3).
Like the famous strength coach Mark Rippetoe likes to say “Strong people are harder to kill and more useful in general“. This might sound like an insult to people who are not very strong naturally, but in fact it means the opposite. Strength is trainable no matter your genetics, so it's your responsibility to develop a level of strength that is significantly higher than before you started working out. If done right, this shouldn't take more than a couple of months to achieve.
3. How Strength Keeps Your Technique Clean Under Fatigue
A strong weightlifter can clean and snatch higher weights than a weak weightlifter if their technique is equal. He can also do high rep cleans and snatches at light weights without form breakdown, which is crucial for Crossfit performance. At high level Crossfit competitions a good strength foundation is a major predictor of success: For games athletes the average deadlift maximum is 234 kg for men and 155 kg for women. The squat average is 132 kg for women and 203 for men:
(4)
These number are not going to win you a weightlifting or powerlifting competition, but they are much stronger than many people assume crossfitters need to be in order to be competitive.
4. How Strength Improves Power and Speed
In exercise science power is defined as (force x distaSnce) / time (5). In other words, power is strength displayed quickly. Now the bad news is that the time it takes to recruit your strength is largely depending on your genetics (fast to slow twitch muscle fiber ratio).
On the other hand the good news is, that the force aspect of the equation can be increased through training independent of your genetic endowment. This means that even if you are not the “sprinter type“, taking you deadlift from 100kg to 200kg will increase your clean, even if your technique stays the same (6).
The same principle applies to speed. When you are sprinting you might not be able to improve the time between strides, but getting stronger legs will improve how much force you can put into each foot contact with the ground. The end result, a faster sprint (7).
Of course technique is still king when it comes to olympic weightlifting, which is why it's such a beautiful sport in the first place. But the best technique in the world won't help you if you are as weak as a kitten. Snatching and cleaning is strength displayed quickly with precision and timing. Little strength means no impressive cleans or snatches.
Even in gymnastic events strength is an advantage. Once legless rope climbs have become easy for you, they will be much faster than using your legs as can be seen from this video:
(8)
Dr. Mike Stone (9):
„There is a good deal of evidence that among relatively weak athletes getting stronger will increase power output and explosiveness. Once reasonable levels of strength are attained (about 2 x body mass parallel squat for example) injuries are decreased with increased strength – as power tends to increase with strength as well – increases in power tend to reduce injuries.“
5. How Strength improves your strength endurance
Strength improves your strength endurance because every repetition is a smaller percentage of your 1 RM. This means you can either go longer at the same pace before you get tired, or you can do more reps in the same amount of time.
An athlete with a 120 kg squat will finish 50 bodyweight lunges faster than one with a 60 kg squat. This is because each lunge is „easier“ in relation to his maximum strength. Provided of course, they both have a well developed endurance capacity as well (10). Become strong first, and than improve your strength endurance with safe and controlled technique.
How Do You Get Strong ?
It's so simple it can be summarized in one sentence: Train heavy 5rep sets in the deadlift, squat, bench, overhead press and chin up three days a week, increasing weight each training while being in a small caloric surplus.
Coach Georg
Sources:
1 https://tim.blog/2016/05/09/the-secrets-of-gymnastic-strength-training/ 46:19
3 https://startingstrength.com/article/strength_and_prevention_of_injuries
4 https://games.crossfit.com/article/what-separates-games-athlete-regional-athlete
5 https://journals.lww.com/nscascj/Citation/1993/12000/EXERCISE_PHYSIOLOGY__Strength_and_PowerA.3.aspx
6 https://startingstrength.com/article/strength_fitness
7 https://startingstrength.com/article/strength_fitness
8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYacCeioG7k
9 http://speedendurance.com/2012/05/04/dr-mike-stone-interview-5-questions/
10 https://startingstrength.com/article/strength_fitness
11 http://thebarbellspin.com/functional-fitness/sam-dancer-brooke-wells-clear-deadlift-ladder/