I recently had a conversation with a trainer with a great deal of experience in the fitness world. She has tenure in the industry and, to be frank, she isn’t happy with the explosion of CrossFit on the scene. Not knowing where my allegiances lie, she described her disgust.
“I mean they’ve got all these people doing movements that are just crazy. They’ve got people who don’t have experience doing Olympic lifting. You don’t need snatches.”
‘The Nation’
Her choice of words intrigued me. I’d like to think that I’m far from just a sheep in the world and that I’ve got some perspective and reasoning behind that which I believe. So, I thought.. What do we “need?”
According to her we don’t need snatches. But, do we need sit ups? How about squats? Running? I mean while we are at it, do we really “need” anything at all?
I’d argue that someone needs to clean and jerk just about as much as they need to visit Europe. I think people need to split jerk about as much as they need to try chocolate milk. I mean, I guess it would be nice to do all of these things, but let’s be honest we don’t need to do any of it.
I guess if you needed to get something heavy from the ground to overhead you might need a snatch in your life. If you needed to build speed, power, and strength a clean and jerk would be useful. But man, I can’t really look any of you in the eye and tell you that you need anything, push ups included.
If you need to get strong, however, That’s a different story. then, you might need to be able to know your way around a barbell. If you need a flat stomach, you might just need to give up eating or run to Albuquerque and back. See where I am going with this? We do this stuff for a reason. We seek to improve endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy.
If you’ve got other needs, our training may not apply.
Logan Gelbrich
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Thursday’s Workout:
AMRAP 5
10 Sandbag Ground to Shoulder
10 Over the Bag Jumps
-Rest 1 min-
AMRAP 3
Run 400m
Max KB Swings
-Rest 1 min-
AMRAP 5
10 OH Walking Lunges (25/10)
10 Russian Twists