@Ryne Sullivan great notes, thank you! Agree that the majority of the year would be pretty basic conditioning on top of strict gymnastics and barbell strength. Especially with the more modern open you need to be more worried about 150 burpees in 9 minutes than you do ring muscle ups. All class members need better strict pull ups and strict handstand pushups. Barbell cycling is stupid until you can power snatch and power clean heavy enough weights. And I hope you like rowing.

@Kyle Ruth I agree that sprinting would be great to incorporate, I just don’t know about the best practices to keep it safe. Also, how fast should someone’s 400/800/1600 be before you worry about true sprint training? If they aren’t top 5 in a more typical distance, should you even worry about shorter distance sprints?

Wall facing is a bit more of an incline bench style movement. Less balance, less wrist stretch, can kinda cheat it with use of the front of forehead, can get hands really wide because you don’t need to balance as much but feels a touch slower for big sets Regular is the opposite, more shoulder and tricep, but if far enough with hands can really bounce and slide the heels up the wall I feel like wall facing goes away quicker because the muscles involved are used in other crossfit movements, and it’s a longer cookup and cycle so the risk reward is higher

@Francesco Chemello I have pretty little data on it, and they haven’t been tested a lot at the Games for us to make big judgements. A more experienced coach would probably have better info my guess is that some people find when you’re starting fresh, a wall facing strict hand and push-up easier because it is a less challenging position to get into on the wrist and shoulders and it lets you recruit more muscle mass than the typical strict handstand push-up. However, because there are different muscles being used that tend to be used up in other crossfit movements and it is a position that takes longer to get into and maybe requires a little bit more challenging of a bracing position, I think they tend to go away faster and the speed at which you can do repeated reps seems a little slower. For example, if I was going to have a workout where it is sets of 20 strict hand stand push-ups for let’s say three rounds versus sets of 20 wall facing strict hands and push-ups for three rounds. I know that I’m gonna have to pace the workout differently and I’m going to have to approach my sets in the wall facing differently because it’s a much longer kick up and the muscle fatigue feels a little bit more global almost whereas the strict handstand push-ups is more about just making sure that my triceps feel fine. I can kick up and just bounce my head a little bit and then I can kick back down. The cost for those reps and the cost for the kick up is not as bad so you’re allowed to pace the workout a little bit differently. Almost like the difference between Ring muscle ups versus bar muscle ups? Technically both are muscle up, technically both use fairly similar patterns and things, but the cost and risk for performing bar muscle ups versus ring muscle ups is just different even for an athlete who’s good at both pulling movements

The thing that I love about CrossFit is how effective it is. A well done class program, with maybe a competitor extra, seems to give you about 75% world class fitness in about an hour to 90 minutes. The kinda funny thing is that as soon as you wanna push to the higher end of the sport, you almost completely go away from something that looks like that session. To be in the top .0001% you may not even do a “CrossFit” workout every day, or week. The boring answer for “do we have best practices” is probably no, but we can imagine that they will be athlete centered, individualized, and data based, utilizing a team of people to help that athlete succeed. It won’t be any one thing, or philosophy, or sauna session etc. It will be finding people who are genetically gifted and motivated, then working with them to develop against the field for years and years, adjust things up and down, and hope they get lucky. We have some historical data that tells us we need to be a certain speed and strength and skill level, but because the sport is not fixed we have the joy of doing our best to read tea leaves and star charts as to how the fittest on earth will be tested at a given event. That is not a very marketable answer though. It is like the classic coach answer of “it depends”.

@Kyle Ruth adding onto mechanics, whether she is tapping the floor with the same hand as the lead leg, is she alternating sides with each turn, is she tapping vs brushing the floor etc. Also, how is she warming these up? The shuttle run is kind of unique as it is our only “cutting” movement typically so it can be pretty dynamic if just jumping into it. I used to get pumped out because I think I was trying to be way too fast vs just fast enough. What helped me a lot was doing really boring intervals of like 20/40/60/40/20 shuttle runs with a goal pace that started easy and increased over time. It’s mindless but it helps you understand the Goldilocks speed for the movement. When I warm up I do a lot of low back hinge stuff in the positions of the shuttle, kinda like shoo the cat, just to make sure I let my back know it is gonna be in the position and let it get warm. And then in the workout think about dropping hips, not just back, kinda like if back blows up during db snatches because you are purely bending at the waist.

2 things I think about when doing legless as a non elite 1. Fast hands, when my hand speed slows down I know I’m gonna dig a hole that will require a big break, only jump when ready for fast hands 2. Reach far. I practice rope pull ups with hands about a foot apart to get used to covering distance vs hand over hand. If you have time, probably the highest bang for buck if rope climbs are possible is just practicing hitting various top implements to eliminate no reps. Everyone can start a Legless, but no repping the top of a Legless is catastrophic

@Kyle Ruth love the limited pull drill. Regardless of how high you get practice 4 pull or 6 pull etc. When I’m scared I practice a standard climb up, practice 1 hand gripping and touching top with feet, then without, to get over the mental hurdle.