Because your place is filthy, OK?
Just kidding, I know sometimes I go off-topic in terms of writing about things other than CrossFit, but your house is probably pretty tidy and even if it’s not, I don’t care. What I’m talking about today is our new Olympic Weightlifting seminar starting tomorrow night at 6:30pm, on Cleans. The cost of the 8-week seminar is $100, which I know is a financial commitment over and above what you are already paying for your membership, but it’s absolutely worth every penny for the amount of instruction you will get, and the gains in strength and skill that will come out of it. Is it really for you? If you find yourself in one of these categories below, it is.
Category 1: You’re new to this whole CrossFit thing
CrossFit is continuing to grow at a rapid rate, with more thousands of people trying it out for the first time on a daily basis. Luckily for us, that growth rate is consistent at CFKI, and we have LOTS of new people that have joined us in the past few months. If you’re in that boat, this program is definitely for you. You don’t have very much experience with weightlifting, or your previous instruction before CrossFit was like my high-school football coach: “Get the weight from the floor to your shoulders. Alright, pretty good. Do 3 sets of 10 twice a week.” Cleans are a high-skill, nuanced movement, and the difference between doing them OK and doing them WELL is huge. If you don’t have too many reps under your belt, you are at the most opportune point to get some high-level instruction so that you set good habits, and then get lots of high-quality practice reps in. With this program, you will improve DRAMATICALLY.
Category 2: You suck at Cleans
I didn’t say it, you did. You’ve said it in your head, or in class to a coach, and you’ve been able to go from not-very-good to OK by practicing it during the warm-ups in class. The thing about CrossFit is that there are so many skills and movements to practice, that if you don’t take some additional time to learn the high-skill weightlifting movement of the Clean, it’s hard to make significant improvement in the short term. Sure, you will improve and become more confident as time goes on, but if you always slide back into the same faults: poor set-up, early arm pull, receiving with a muted hip, then you need some help. Spend 8+ hours working with Coach Jason, a seasoned weightlifter with an eagle eye for these faults and the relentless attitude of “we’re going to get this right before we move on”, and you will come out the other end with a new PR, and a renewed love of this essential movement.
Category 3: You’ve hit a plateau
You consider yourself an experienced weightlifter, and after the standard year or so of setting a new PR every time you lift heavy, that momentum has fizzled out. You’ve been at the same max Clean for a while now, and that is frustrating. I bet there is a small tweak to your technique to be made, using video to break down your movement, that will result in a lightbulb-over-the-head style breakthrough, and some additional poundage added on to your next max. Yayyyy! But the even more likely scenario is that YOU’RE JUST NOT STRONG ENOUGH. It could be in your initial hip extension or the pull, but for most of us it’s the Front Squat. I’ve seen Jason’s program, and guess what – you’ll be squatting at the end of each session, with various techniques and drills added in to keep the strength sets varied. Adding these additional strength workouts to your schedule for 8 weeks will absolutely get you a heavier Squat, and you know what that means for your Clean.
Category 4: You freaking love Cleans!
I can pencil myself into Category 3 as well, but this reason is why I would eat up this Clean seminar! The combination of strength and speed that makes a really solid Clean happen makes it one of my favorite CrossFit movements, to the point that when I used to “do CrossFit on my own”, I would routinely substitute Cleans for other movements I didn’t want to do, like running, rowing, burpees, pretty much everything else. Not a good plan, by the way! But if you’re like me and you love to lift, if you love the feeling of catching a heavy bar in that front rack position and screaming your way to the top of the squat, I can’t think of a more fun class for you to attend.
If you don’t find yourself in any of these categories – if you’ve been CrossFitting for a while and your Clean numbers continue to grow because you’re awesome at them but at the same time you hate lifting (see what I did there?) – then maybe this program isn’t for you. But otherwise, we will see you on the floor for Clean Session #1 tomorrow at 6:30pm. You’re going to crush it!
Ryan
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