Higher Standards

Chris Spealler - FAST, ACCURATE, and legitimate reps!

Hey Team,

As you know, we're always looking to achieve a certain range of motion on each movement that we do. Key points like getting full depth (hip crease below knee) on squatting movements, chin clearly above the bar for pullups, or hitting the right line on the wall for wallballs are standards that are set for a few purposes.

First and most importantly, consistent standards allow us to judge our individual progress accurately. If we vary our depth every time we do a squat workout, we can't compare any of the results we get, and therefore can't determine if we are improving. Likewise if we count pullups that don't go high enough or toes to bar where your feet don't touch the bar, you can't say if a faster time or better score is the result of higher fitness or simply lower standards.

Second, we do have a community of people who like to have friendly competition amongst each other. If someone "wins" a workout but has poor standards, others that are looking to measure their relative performance will not have an accurate basis to do so. Yes, we want you to go quickly and push your individual limits, and finishing near the top of a leaderboard feels great, but we need to hold ourselves to a high degree of accountability at the same time.

Third, full range of motion on exercises gives you the best workout possible. Shortening your range not only results in less work, it also results in a suboptimal stimulus for forward progress of fitness. For example, by squatting (safely) down to full depth, you develop the musculature in your lower body to a much greater degree than by shorting your range of motion.

Lastly, if you have poor standars IN the gym, you will likely have poor standards OUTSIDE the gym in terms of competing at local or regional events. There is nothing worse than getting no repped in a competition, and believe me, you WILL get no repped if you don't hit the standards and you're out on the competition floor. At that point, it may be too late to adapt your range of motion to what is required.

So along with looking to gain strength and skill, we should be looking to develop full range of motion on all movements. This can be a slow process, and you should do so safely... but the rewards are significant. After all, there is nothing more impressive than someone completing a workout FAST and looking great doing it.

Let's work together to get our standards as high as possible team, we owe it to ourselves and our community!

Cam

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TRAINING WEDNESDAY THURSDAY

WARM UP:

Reverse Tabata assault bike (8 rounds of 10 sec work, 20 sec rest) at light to moderate effort

Then

2 rounds of 15 plate floor to overhead and 8 cossack squats

STRENGTH: DEADLIFT WAVE LOAD E2M

3-2-1-3-2-1

Try and make your second trip through 3, 2, 1 heavier than the first.

Example; 225, 245, 275 then 235, 255, 285

WOD:

Every 4 mins for 16 mins do:

Goblet Walking Lunge, 50/35 lbs, 50 ft

16 Dumbbell Hang Power Snatches

8 Toes-to-bars

Focus on quality work and relatively unbroken reps on the toes to bar. Aim to get your work done in 2 min or less. If you're quite a bit under that, look to increase the demand by moving up a scaling level or by adding reps to the hps and ttb

FG3: 25/40, half reps ttb or double reps hkr

FG2: scale db as needed, hkr

FG1: no db for lunges

CP1: 20 hps, 12 ttb

CP2: 50/70lb db, plus higher reps hps and ttb