MOVEMENTS

Every 2 minutes for 10 rounds complete: 200/250-meter row and 10 medicine-ball cleans at 14 lb/20 lb.

The best way to understand CrossFit and its value as a fitness program is to experience it yourself by walking into a CrossFit gym and trying it. But we understand you may want to know what you’re getting yourself into before you take that step, so here’s a primer on the basics of CrossFit.

Simply put, the jerk is a movement in which an athlete lifts a barbell from the shoulders to overhead. It is the final component of the clean and jerk, which is part of Olympic weightlifting. In addition to weightlifting competitions, the jerk is used in workouts at CrossFit affiliates around the world. We’ll go over the three styles of the jerk in this article: the push (or power) jerk, the squat jerk, and the split jerk.

The clean is used to lift a load from the ground to the shoulders, where frequently the object is being readied for lifting overhead. In the clean, the hips and legs launch a weight upward from the ground to belly-button height and then the lifter drops under the weight quickly to catch it. The full movement finishes with the hips and legs working by squatting the weight and standing up to full extension.

The deadlift is one of CrossFit’s nine foundational movements and is the safe and sound approach by which any object should be lifted from the ground. It is unrivaled in its simplicity and impact while unique in its capacity for increasing head-to-toe strength.

The Teaching Movement course will help you refine your teaching skills and get new ideas about how to run an effective and fun class for every level of athlete. Gain access to a video library of teaching progressions that can be used in group classes or personal training sessions.

"The snatch balance begins in a narrower stance, with feet directly under the hips—the pulling stance that is the starting position for the clean and the snatch (what Coach Burgener often calls the “jumping stance”). The snatch balance requires the athlete to initiate the movement with a strong dip and drive, then dive under the bar and move the feet to land in the slightly wider catching stance with the bar overhead—all explosively and in an instant." (CrossFit Journal, 2005).

CrossFit uses the medicine-ball clean as a gateway movement into learning the barbell clean. The movement patterns mimic those found in the clean, and also are an analogue for the day-to-day movements that require bringing an object from the ground to a position of support. Watch as CrossFit Seminar Staff trainer Eric O'Connor demonstrates a progression for the medicine-ball clean. 

The cardiorespiratory benefit of mixed modal, high-intensity functional movements, a la CrossFit’s WOD, is a better, more useful, broader cardiovascular stimulus than any monostructural activity like biking, swimming, or running—even in combinations.

Though the hip flexors are the primary movers in the GHD sit-up, the abs play a strong role in stabilizing the torso to prevent hyperextension of the spine. This is, in our opinion, a more functional role for the abs than trunk flexion. Carefully introduced and practiced, the GHD sit-up is a potent tool for reeducating the athlete to use the hip flexors more efficaciously and safely.

Dan Bailey offers tips for beginner-level athletes who are learning the double-under.

The muscle-up is a movement that begins from the hang, passes through portions of a pull-up and a dip, then finishes in a supported position with arms extended.

"The lesson we’ve drawn from the GHD sit-up is that in spite of the primacy of hip flexors over trunk flexors, or the abs, in this sit-up it recruits the abs powerfully in two ways. First, the movement takes the trunk from hyperextension to full flexion, albeit with negligible load. (No crunch can match this range of motion.) Second, the role of the abs in this sit-up is powerful and largely isometric—i.e., they stabilize the torso from undue extension."

Two-time Olympian Chad Vaughn dissects his 315-lb. clean and jerk via slow-motion footage.

There is a strong consensus among scientists that our heritage is deeply rooted in both climbing and bipedalism, i.e., both swinging from the trees and functioning on two feet. While nearly all our regular movements today are bipedal, the value to survival, fitness, and combat of climbing skills is critical and largely undeveloped even in "elite" athletes.

"[The dumbbell lunge] serves a couple purposes. First, it is rare that an athlete comes to me with a perfect balance of bilateral strength. Lunges address that difference with a functional, gait-oriented movement. Second, the lunge involves the kind of single-leg support, bilateral transfer of force, and trunk stabilization that are required for most sport, so it has broad carryover." (CrossFit Journal, 2006).

Requiring more stability in the shoulders and the midline, while also increasing depth, the ring push-up is significantly more difficult than traditional push-ups on the floor.

The clean teaches the invaluable skill of bringing any object from the ground to a position of support at shoulder height. More so even than cleaning with a bar, the medicine-ball clean, unrivaled in its functionality, might in fact have clearer application to heaving a bag of cement into a pickup or picking up a toddler to put in a car seat.

To learn more about human movement and the CrossFit methodology, visit CrossFit Training.