Training by Mark Twight
Living by Moynihan Institute
Notes : Mark Twight is my hero in climbing, writing, and training. I admire him because he deserves it. He has worked hard and is better at all three then I'll ever be. He has a similar issues as me with short-duration, high-intensity work. It will make you good but never great. Crossfit is the best program I have found but does not deliver on all it's claims. For example, CrossFit's motto is "Forging Elite Fitness." One of it's elite fitness standards is a pull up with 1 X bodyweight. Recently the workout of the day was Weighted pull-ups 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 reps. I did not find one person pulling 1 X bodyweight. The closest I found was .85, good but not elite. Moynihan Institute reminds of an old story: " There are three types of people. Some people you can tell them something. Some people you can show them something. Other people have to pee on the eletric fence themselves." I'm interested in being told and shown. I'm not into pissing contests.
Living by Moynihan Institute
Notes : Mark Twight is my hero in climbing, writing, and training. I admire him because he deserves it. He has worked hard and is better at all three then I'll ever be. He has a similar issues as me with short-duration, high-intensity work. It will make you good but never great. Crossfit is the best program I have found but does not deliver on all it's claims. For example, CrossFit's motto is "Forging Elite Fitness." One of it's elite fitness standards is a pull up with 1 X bodyweight. Recently the workout of the day was Weighted pull-ups 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 reps. I did not find one person pulling 1 X bodyweight. The closest I found was .85, good but not elite. Moynihan Institute reminds of an old story: " There are three types of people. Some people you can tell them something. Some people you can show them something. Other people have to pee on the eletric fence themselves." I'm interested in being told and shown. I'm not into pissing contests.
7 comments:
Maybe I'm not understanding this:
"He has a similar issue as me with short-duration, high-intensity work. It will make you good but never great."
For me to believe this would mean disregarding most, if not all, the athletes I look up to, including but not limited to:
Ed Coan
Fred Hatfield
Bernd Zangerl
and most sprinters, powerlifters and Olympic weight lifters I can remember.
I believe short duration, high intensity training is so stressful and intimidating, requiring so much focus and discipline that it is beyond the potential of all but the most talented and committed athletes. Consider, the longer the duration the more dominant individual athletes become at specific Olympic events and the more often these same athletes compete in multiple events. This is the case with Eric Heiden, Mark Spitz and Dara Torres, each winners of at least 5 Olympic Gold medals. Rarely does the same person win consecutive Gold at sprints such as the 100m in track or the 100m for swimmers. Before Aleksander Popov it was 60 years since such a streak in the 100m freestyle. This kind of inconsistency makes sprints more interesting, I feel. And makes them brutal to train and contest. I'm sure that's what most people encounter when they attempt high-intensity training. It's not ineffective, it's just difficult. And that's no reason to not try something.
I'm having an incredibly bad Monday morning. Forgive me that one blog comment; my attitude is not what it should be. You do good training and you are a formidable athlete. Keep up the noble work. You too, Mark.
elijah
I appreciate the comment. The posts are meant for thought and discussion. I think I understand where you are coming from. Part of the issue is definitional. SD/HI in this context means do X rounds for time or as many rounds as possible in X time. It does not directly refer to hard lifting or working hard boulder problems.
I'm talking about using SD/HI as your primary training modality. In contrast to doing sport specific work. Crossfit popularized the concept. It is very effective, up to a point and for limited goals. If you want to do multi-day mountain climbs or race in the Tour, you need to train long to go long. If you want to bench 600lbs or climb V16, you need to train power to be powerful.
Crossfit claims that you will get "elite" endurance and power from it's methods. I argue you will get "better than average" endurance and power from it's methods. There is world of difference between "better than average" and "elite."
Too right. I figured this would be an issue of semantics. As you know, I'm a little sensitive to what I interpret as "power bashing", the social stigma toward pure strength enthusiasts. Though I don't count myself or you as members, I admire that small group of athletes committed solely to pure power events. As you say, and I agree, our chosen sports require more well rounded characteristics, such as strength, stamina and flexibility to name a few. And we both hesitate to describe anyone as "elite", reserving that declaration for only the most rad. I'm comfortable saying, even having no experience with the program, Crossfit is not turning out elite performers in droves. If it is, it'd be the first. Good posts - blogging the way blogs are supposed to be blogged. I hope someone else jumps in so we can call them pussy.
Interesting post. But there seems to be a huge misunderstanding here about what CrossFit is and isn't.
When I have more time, I will clarify this comment in depth on my blog.
I have thought about the issue. Here are my thoughts, they will probably change in an hour. There are at least two separate parts to the issue. One part is the sport specific aspect. Crossfit will help correct imbalances and provide general conditioning that will improve your specific sport. The second issue is "Can Crossfit create elite fitness?" Crossfit is the best program I have found, but the jury is still out. I have looked unsuccessfully at the message boards at crossfit.com for an answer to the second issue.
This CrossFit video is rad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjuULPqI-WY&eurl=http://jenkinscrossfit.blogspot.com/
That makes CrossFit look good. I'm not going to start doing it though. The stuff I'm in to now is too weird, I think. Unless they promote elite ridiculousness.
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