If you’ve been at Blackbrook for a while, you will undoubtedly have heard me utter the following phrase: “Make It Look Pretty”
But what does that actually mean?
Personally, I believe that we - the CrossFit community as a whole - need to recognise quality now more than ever… With more and more competitions popping up and every other person being a Games hopeful the focus seems to be fixed purely on scores, loads and times…
We need to shift the focus from what is being done to how it is being done… And perhaps equally important: why it’s being done...
Too much focus is put on work capacity and not enough focus is being put on actually doing things correctly. Let's take the deadlift as an example - 21, 15 and 9 reps of correct, pretty deadlifts that hypertrophy the correct muscles are a faster route to becoming a Games athlete than 21, 15 and 9 reps of incorrect, ugly deadlifts that hypertrophy the wrong muscles, grooves a terrible hip extension pattern, drastically increases the chance of injury and retards athleticism in the long run…
[And I’m using the name ‘deadlift’ loosely here - if you aren’t using the correct muscles or if you aren’t in the correct position, then are you really performing the correct movement…? Just something to think about…]
Establishing a pattern where your back fires first for hip extension is both silly and damaging, and getting increasingly more common… Imagine running using your erectors for propulsion instead of your glutes - how backwards is that? And what about performing pull ups with no lat engagement...!?
Focusing entirely on competition - more work performed for time - for 95% of the CrossFit population is simply encouraging slop, and creating poor movement patterns and an abundance of dysfunction. [Entirely being the key word - there's a time and a place for going balls to the wall, but it's best reserved for safe, low skill workouts / movements like the prowler...]
Making it “look pretty” isn’t a result that typical CrossFitters at present give two f***s about, unlike the things that can actually be measured and recorded like scores, times and loads… You don’t get points for firing your glutes first or for setting up correctly during a WoD, but maybe you should… Maybe we should... Maybe those pursuing strength and skills and capacities should be rewarded for injecting their training with quality, attention to detail and virtuosity… Maybe it’s time that we, the “Forging Elite Fitness” crowd, acknowledged that elite fitness can only truly come with a focus on quality… Maybe it’s time that we - the CrossFit community as a whole - revisited CrossFit’s original idea of “Virtuosity” where we perform the common uncommonly well… Maybe it’s time that we all utilized some common sense... “Sit the f*** down and have a beer…”
~ Coach Collins
Copyright 2017
