If Strong Is Wrong I Don't Want To Be Right

I don't know if I have ever really talked about my opinion on exercise mainly because I didn't think most would want to hear it but my thoughts on nutrition and the way I prescribe nutrition plans and macros go hand in hand with the way I think you should exercise so here it goes.

First let me say I don't disagree with Crossfit but the real reason I stopped coaching Crossfit is because most boxes are trying to kill you with cardio. It's metcon city and some twenty something year old who thinks they got what it takes to make it to the games is the mayor. They program metcon after metcon of twenty or thirty minutes in length because they don't know how to fill an hour of real instruction with strength being the focus with a short 5-10 min (or even shorter) metcon to finish the workout. In towns where several Crossfit gyms exist it's more important to be the gym which is the most crossfitty not the one who has the most effective results based programming. Crossfit is supposed to be a mixture of ALL training methods. If you mixed a workout program with strongman, powerlifting, olympic lifting, kettlebells, pull-ups and dips and threw some jump rope, running, biking, and rowing in you would have Crossfit but the focus is never where it should be. You should be attempting to get people as strong as you can in the movements in these areas first and foremost instead of 100's of repetitions in the 50% range of their 1 rep max everyday. That's just cardio with weights. It burns calories and makes people sore but it doesn't make them better and the job of a coach is to make people better not make them happy. Ask yourself this question. How long I have been crossfitting and how many workouts can I complete RX in the time cap that requires weight on the barbell? If you have been doing this for a few years and your answer is zero then your gym is failing you. It doesn't matter where they start it doesn't take years to get someone to 135 lbs on the barbell and then have them do 30 clean and jerks in 3 to 4 minutes (which is respectable but not fast). Newbie gains would get you there in under a year if it were done correctly.

My point, I need to get to my point. My point is always want to and strive to have more strength and more muscle. Ask your gym for more strength training! More muscle directly improves your metabolism which allows you to eat more. More muscle improves your insulin sensitivity which allows you to eat more. Eating more allows you to lift more and allows you to recover faster which helps creates more muscle. See a pattern? More muscle also makes you better at the metcons. Let's take Grace for example. The 30 clean and jerks for time I mentioned earlier for the people reading that aren't crossfitters. You should be able to fly through this workout if the prescribed weight is roughly 50% of your 1 rep max. The prescribed weight is 135 lbs for men which would make your 1 rep around 265 lbs. Is your gym always trying to make you better and stronger and this movement? Are they breaking the movement up and focusing on the individual movements that make up the clean and jerk like the overhead press, deadlift, or hang power clean and power clean? Getting stronger in these individual movements would greatly improve your Grace time and the weight you use but not if you only saw them in metcons every week. Metcons five or six days a week of 100's of repetitions are not making you better. They are giving you overuse injuries and a good calorie burn at best. If you want a good calorie burn do a spin class. If you want to move some weight and have some muscle definition then move some damn weight and build some damn muscle. If your gym doesn't do it find one that does. You are paying them good money to make you better they should be doing it.