training the unready

[faustin]

This was a note I wrote to myself, unedited.

Many people need to be pushed, and pushing them really is exactly the right thing to do. There is an occasional rare instance when it's not the right thing to do, hence this note to myself:
10. Beware of the boy who cries wolf. You'll end up pushing him hard. The trainer always tries to find balance on

Comments

[faustin]

I don't see your tenacity in crossfit training too often, mostly because the exercises we use to achieve intensity are very potent: eg., running gives you a ton of variability in intensity; heavy back squats do not. Doing 20 back squats at 225 pounds will floor any wild animal; attempting 3 rounds of it, alternating with 15 pullups, and you know that even a beast has hit his limits and will not be casting about for another experiment. Thrusters, OHS, GHD situps, handstand pushups all tend to have this effect. Executed with good technique, the athlete hits strength and metabolic limits and it's pretty safe, with the sole remaining issue (except for other weird medical conditions) of rhabdo.

So - if you come to me and exhibit good technique, we'll turn you into a monster. That's what happened with Luke. When he came to us, he couldn't deadlift 225 lbs. When he left, he deadlifted 345 for a set of 3. He was already an experienced triathlete, and yet we improved his 5K, 400 meter and 800 meter times significantly.

The danger was simply overtraining -- and this did in fact occur with Luke. I should have seen it sooner, but Luke, unlike all my other clients, never discussed how he was feeling with me, and never complained of pain/soreness/exhaustion, and it took me more than 10 days to diagnose his overtraining.

I do have a guy who has exhibited tenacity like yours, and I was overly conservative with him one night. I started teaching him to do handstands, AFTER his workout. I let him make about 7-8 attempts, then called him off. He refused to be called off, and persisted. He must have made more than 30 attempts... and his progress was HUGE. He was successfully doing handstands and holding them with pretty good form before he left. He did about 6 of these successful handstands.

I would have called him off long before -- and if he had listened to me and done what his trainer said, he wouldn't have gotten his handstand. Perhaps not for another week or two or more. This is a good example of the cost, the consequences, of a trainer being too risk averse and conservative. But I don't know how I could possibly have read him differently, and I would make the same mistake again today, and I would expect any trainer working for me to make the same mistake.

[roadriverrail]

Oh, trust me...I hit real physical limits. I hit them fast. Hell...I can only safely do the prescribed workouts for women. Well, when I was in better form, anyway...I've since atrophied (life chaos has been too strong for me to work Crossfit back in).

With the running, or with wall ball or a few other exercises, my larynx will seize up and I can't breathe. But, I will still run headlong into it. It was good for me, actually, because it gave me time to be mindful about the feeling of inflammation in my throat, and I could make a game out of toeing that line.

With the lifting, someone was invariably having to catch my final reps, which I'd then still keep trying to push through. I mean, if I'm going to suffer, I might as well just go all out, right?

I think the big worry, though, is that the exhausted and tenacious are the ones likely to drop a barbell where it might hit someone else or otherwise do stupid things. I've seen someone throw a kettlebell into a tibia that way.

[faustin]

I see. That is definitely extreme. I have heart but I don't push myself that hard.

Kettlebell --> tibia, ooooouuuuucchhh! Yuck. I tell people all the time: weird shit happens when people are fatigued, it's hard to predict what's going to crash or how or when. (Oh, and I design our equipment/gym around it. No jump boxes (tires instead, rounded rubber). No angles allowed under pullup bars. I still get freaked out every time I see kids swinging upside down, though.)

[roadriverrail]

Well, I push, but it's because I have a chip on my shoulder. I assure you, if I didn't think I had to bust my hump just to get up to what I consider "respectable", I might be nicer to myself. Hah. Now I'm missing the Crossfit gym even worse.

Does jumping up on a tire reduce the number of trips or something? I had a bad tendency to catch my toes on the top of the box.

When you say "no angles", what do you mean?

And yeah. A kettlebell bouncing into a tibia hurts. It was my tibia, so I know. I'm just glad it didn't fracture.

[faustin]

box jumps are one of the simplest exercises in a crossfit gym, but they very clearly have the highest rate of injury. the edges on the wooden jump boxes can make severe cuts on peoples shins, knees, thighs, ribs, chests, and especially the arms and forearms, and all those injuries happen way too often. Box jumps aren't even that important. using a tire eliminates most of the threat from these falls -- the rubber and rounded edges, wider surface and shape, all are far safer.

angles -- in most every crossfit box, you'll see people putting the jump boxes under the pullup bars, to get on and off the bars and other such stuff. occasionally, someone will fall off the pullup bars onto said equipment. my rule is: no sharp corners or angles under the pullup bars. becca borawski, trainer at crossfit LA, is an example of a crossfit trainer flying off the bars and badly breaking her ribs on a jump box.

I have built and will continue to build my pullup bars at variable heights, to assist in avoiding problems like these, as one small example.