The Muscle Clean: A Better Option Than the SDHP

But I understand why CrossFit Headquarters included the SDHP in the Nine Basic Movements of CrossFit. They needed an exercise progression that would prepare new athletes for the barbell clean. The deadlift teaches a strong setup and straight bar path. The medicine ball clean teaches how to retreat under a load and receive it in a squat.

What was needed was a second stage, a movement that utilized an explosive extension of the hip and a strong arm pull to elevate the load, a movement that could be taught in a seminar setting, with PVC pipe. The SDHP fit the bill.

The sumo deadlift high pull.

But in CrossFit, where the sumo deadlift is a rara avis and the upright row non-existent, the SDHP really has no transference to any other exercise commonly practiced. There’s a better option to teach explode-and-pull, an unjustly overlooked exercise that does not put the shoulder into compromised positions, affords cleaner execution at high intensity, and has direct carryover to the full clean.

The muscle clean. The muscle clean has the same first and second pull as the power and squat clean, but after the extension of the hips, the athlete remains standing tall, pulling the bar chest high before rotating the elbows in a flash from above and behind the bar (at the apex of the pull) to in front of and parallel to the bar (in the rack position). So there’s your hip extension followed by arm pull, same as the SDHP. Only now the motor patterns truly do help the athlete progress towards more complex movements.

The Muscle Clean Is the Best Way to Introduce the Clean

Pedagogically, the muscle clean is simply the best way to introduce the clean. If a trainee hasn’t mastered the front squat, is dropping under the bar to catch it going to end well? (Short answer: no.) Make it easy on your new athlete, and let him concentrate on the mechanics of the first, second, and third pulls before adding complexification.

Concurrently, he’ll be improving his front squats, and eventually can begin receiving the bar lower and lower (the height of the catch being a function of the load relative to his power), in efficient, aesthetically pleasing positions. This may fly in the face of traditional weightlifting pedagogy, but that’s okay. Our goal is not to create weightlifters, but CrossFitters who can clean and snatch competently.

In terms of metcons, the muscle clean is superior to the SDHP both practically and philosophically. As mentioned earlier, at high reps performance of the SDHP breaks down – knees and hips fail to fully straighten and thoracic spines turn kyphoid – because all that matters is that the bar somehow make it up under the chin.

The muscle clean, on the other hand, ends only one way: knees and hips extended, elbows high. There’s no judgment call to make. The fact that the cycle time of the muscle clean is more or less the same as that of the SDHP makes it a better choice for a workout like Fight Gone Bad. At the same prescribed weight (75/55lbs), scores will be nearly identical.

Cycle rate of the muscle clean versus sumo deadlift high pull.

A Good Muscle Clean Beats a Bad Power Clean

Let us make an assertion. It’s always better to have athletes perform a simpler movement well than a more complex movement poorly. Take a workout like this one:

“The Chief”

Five cycles of

• AMRAP 3: 3 power cleans (135/95lbs), 6 push-ups, 9 squats
• Rest one minute

Strong athletes often pull that 135/95lbs from the floor straight up to their shoulders, with perhaps a perfunctory knee rebend before standing to completion. See the video below for an example. No foot slide from pulling to receiving position, no retreat of the hip, no drop. Is that really a power clean?

No, it’s not a power clean. Not that those athletes can’t perform competent power cleans. The problem is a drop and reset would interfere with the goal of maximizing repetitions during the work interval.

But why do a half-assed power clean when you could do a technically sweet muscle clean and achieve your same goal? Ground-to-shoulder-anyhow shouldn’t and doesn’t cut it. If virtuosity is really what we’re chasing in our gyms, then athletes should discipline themselves to perform a simpler movement – the muscle clean – and display mastery.

This is not to say strong athletes shouldn’t start to power clean as they fatigue or that slightly less strong athletes shouldn’t power clean the load from the start. By all means they should. But by God, make them good power cleans. Don’t be a hack. Not if you can help it. Excellence is its own reward.

Teaching the Muscle Clean to a Large Group

Here’s a cool way to teach the muscle clean to a large group. Note: unlike the SDHP, the muscle clean should not be taught with PVC pipe. Few people can front rack PVC, and as the plastic is virtually weightless, it’s hard to get any sense of how forceful hip extension affects the perceived weight. Each athlete should have her/his own light (15lbs and/or 15kg) barbell for drills.

In the By the Numbers (BTN) system, the muscle clean is broken down into seven positions that are taught one at a time and then drilled in small sets. Only once all positions and drills have been mastered are the pieces joined and smoothed into the complete movement. BTN requires athletes to master the muscle clean before learning the power clean, and then mastering the power clean before attempting the full clean.

One caveat: If you have an athlete who was struggling with the front squat rack position due to mobility issues, don’t teach him the barbell clean. You’re just setting him up for injury. Instead teach the clean variations with dumbbells or kettlebells, and assign a whole mess of mobility work to help the athlete develop a decent front rack.

How to Teach the Muscle Clean By the Numbers

Let’s start by reviewing front rack position, because that’s where you’re going to catch the bar at the end of the muscle clean.

Take a clean-width grip on the bar (about thumb’s length from the edge where the gnurling meets the smooth central section of the bar) and curl it up onto your shoulders. Elevate your shoulders and lift your elbows until they are pointing straight ahead. Let your fists relax and the bar to roll back on your fingertips. Ideally, the elbows and wrists should be in line. Remember, the bar should be resting on your shoulders, not in your hands.

Rack position

Following our principals of best leverage and best efficiency, in the muscle clean the barbell travels in a straight line up the torso before coming to rest on the shoulders. We’re going to rehearse that bar path.

Lower the bar to waist height.

At this point let’s establish what we’ll call “reset” position: feet under the hips (six to eight inches apart), midline braced, shoulders back, arms internally rotated so that the elbows point outward, and wrists curled under. When “reset” is called, return to this position.

Reset position. Feet hip width, midline braced, shoulders externally rotated, arms internally rotated, wrists flexed.

Shrug your shoulders up and back, elevating the bar but keeping it close to the body. This is Muscle Clean Position 5, also known as “finish.”

Muscle Clean 5. Weight in heels, knees and hips fully extended, shoulders shrugged up and back, arms straight.

Now lift the bar by pulling your elbows to parallel and slightly behind the shoulders. The bar should remain within an inch of the chest. This is Muscle Clean 6, also known as “scarecrow.”

Muscle Clean 6. Elbows high and back, pulling bar to sternum.

Finally, spin your elbows around the bar to park it on your shoulders in front rack position. This is Muscle Clean 7, “rack.”

Muscle Clean 7. Full stand, bar racked up on shoulders with elbows high and in front.

Muscle Clean positional drill “Reset! Go!”

Reset. Now, squeeze your butt tight, and flare your knees out so that you sit down about two or three inches. Keep your weight back on your heels. This position should be familiar to you. It’s the dip from the push press. Now, though, the bar rests about three-quarters of the way up your thighs, right where the pockets of your jeans would be. This is Muscle Clean 4, or “pockets.”

Muscle Clean 4. Weight in heels, knees flared out, sitting down 2-4”, bar brushing leg at pockets height, torso vertical, arms straight, shoulders behind bar.

Driving through your heels, stand explosively and shrug simultaneously into Muscle Clean 5.

Now 6!

“7! Fast elbows!

Did the bar feel lighter that time? It’s because the powerful extension of your hip put momentum on the bar that effectively makes it lighter, and thus easier to pull up onto your shoulders. This aggressive extension from 4 to 5 is the heart of the clean.

Reset. And here we go again…

4!

Etcetera. Repeat until you feel your athletes are getting the hang of it.

Muscle clean positional drill “4! Go!”

We’re now going to work on pulling from the floor. Understand that each new stage we’ll look at it is only setting you up for that explosion at Position 4.

Ok, reset.

We’ll practice as if we have bumpers on our bar. The bumpers we use have a diameter of eighteen inches. This is standard. An eighteen-inch diameter means the bumpers have a radius of nine inches. Squat down behind the bar until it’s about nine inches off the floor.

Unlike the set-up for the deadlift, when setting up for the clean, allow the bar to travel out from the shin until it’s over the point at which your big toe meets your foot. Usually, about where your laces begin. The weight is evenly distributed across the foot, the knees flared out. Arms straight, shoulders directly over the bar, the spine in “absolute” extension, gaze forward. This is Muscle Clean 1, or “floor.”

Muscle Clean 1. Feet hip width, weight slightly in front of center of foot, bar out over foot, arms straight, shoulders over bar, back in strong extension, gaze directed forward.

Next: driving with the legs, not with the hips, stand until the bar to just touching the bottom of the knee cap. The back angle should be maintained from Muscle Clean 1, flaring the knees out wide as the bar rises, instead of pulling them back, helps. Be patient! This is Muscle Clean 2, “hang below the knees.”

Muscle Clean 2. Bar rises to bottom of knee cap, back angle same as Muscle Clean 1.

From 2, push with the legs while simultaneously sweeping the bar back into the body. Your hips will rise, and your shoulders will come out slightly in front of the bar. The bar will rise several more inches up the thigh. This is Muscle Clean 3. 3 puts tension on the hamstring, which is vital for the explosive hip extension to come.

Muscle Clean 3. Shins vertical, bar swept in and 2-3” above knee, shoulders in front of bar.

As the bar reaches mid-thigh, shift the torso to vertical while simultaneously sitting straight down over the heels. This returns us to Muscle Clean 4.

Now, on my command, execute a muscle clean from the high hang: positions 5, 6, and 7. Go!

Muscle Clean positions 1-2-3-4-5-6-7

Muscle Clean positional drill “1! 2! 3! 4! Go!”

“4! Go!” becomes “3! Go!” becomes “2! Go!” At “1! Go!” your athletes are executing a smooth muscle clean. An explanation should be made that the shift from 1 to 2 is relatively slow and deliberate, 2 to 3 to 4 is an acceleration, and 4 turns into 5 at maximum velocity.

Reinforcing Good Motor Patterns

When they are in a weightlifting training session or using the muscle clean to get the bar up to their shoulders before doing thrusters in a workout, our new trainees are required to perform the muscle clean in this segmented fashion (“1! 2! 3! 4! GO!”) until they can hit each position accurately with unconscious competence. Only then do we have them start pulling from the floor at speed or using it as a conditioning tool.

Up to that point, we substitute kettlebell swings for muscle cleans. After all, what’s the point of having someone do dozens of muscle cleans if they’re going to be performed badly? That only reinforces poor motor patterns and ultimately retards your athletes’ progress in CrossFit.

It helps to think of WODs as a demonstration of capacity, a type of performance. If you were a musician, would you want to walk onstage and attempt a song you can barely play? Heck no. Far better to perform a song you know you can rock.

Think about it. And stop doing sumo deadlift high pulls. The muscle clean rules!

Photo 1 “CrossFit Kandahar” by Kandahar CrossFit ANZAC Day. Attribution-NonCommercial License.

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I’d be lying, of course. But if I told you that studying the principles behind what you’re watching on the screen could you make you a better CrossFit instructor, then I’d be telling you the truth.

Movement as Animation

Whether you’re watching Looney Tunes, a Pixar movie, or virtual soccer, it’s all animation. And as Greg Glassman wrote in the April 2004 CrossFit Journal, back in the early days of CrossFit:

We were convinced that animation could most powerfully and effectively depict the movements we were eager to share with the world… we still believe that animation would be the best medium for depicting movement, process, and cause and effect.

The process of animation begins with an animator carefully analyzing the movement to be depicted. He or she then breaks it down into its most extreme points of action – its key poses. These key poses are rendered, by hand or with computers, into a series of still images which, when playing at a rate greater than 25 frames per second, fool you into perceiving seamless motion. It’s really quite a trick, what Walt Disney called the illusion of life.

But these key poses must be correctly chosen and portrayed. If what we see on screen doesn’t match what we’ve observed of people and animals running, jumping, or falling, then the illusion of life is lost. It doesn’t take any training to recognize bad animation. It simply doesn’t look right.

Figure 1: Key poses of a jump and land.

To look right, the key poses must have the aesthetic qualities of energy, rhythm, and balance. For characters, this means bodies are depicted as assuming geometric shapes, rather than organic. Think arms and legs at sharply defined angles. And those are precisely the shapes the body assumes when it is moving most efficiently.

Figure 2: Dynamic poses in art.

Figure 3: Dynamic poses in real life.

CrossFit by Numbers

So, if you haven’t guessed, before I was a gym owner, I worked as an animator in the videogame industry. This background, coupled with seven years of coaching experience, has led me to develop a system of instruction that applies the principles of animation to the teaching of CrossFit. We call it By the Numbers.

By the Numbers breaks down all the exercises CrossFit utilizes into a series of discrete, numbered positions. Exactly the same poses an animator would choose if he or she were to create an animation depicting that exercise. We teach and drill these positions one at a time, working slowly and carefully from static pose to static pose. Each pose must have its own energy, rhythm, and balance. Only when the poses have been mastered (or best approximated) do we have our trainees smooth them into the exercise as usually performed.

This confers five advantages:

1. Working pose-to-pose improves athletes’ proprioception, as holding a pose gives them time to make sense of the relative positions of limbs and trunk.
2. Holding poses aids in trainees’ forming muscle memory of proper positioning, expediting their progress from learning basic mechanics to being able to perform an exercise with consistently good form.
3. Teaching poses allows corrections to be made real time, while the errors are occurring.
4. Pose-to-pose is a powerful tool for instructing large groups, especially in complex movements like the clean or Turkish get-up.
5. It standardizes instruction, so all of your trainees are getting the same information and cues, no matter who happens to be teaching.

In CrossFit, we strive for virtuosity. Virtuosic movement is beautiful movement. You could analyze film of a world-class athlete executing her event and at any point find energy, rhythm, and balance in her positioning. At my gym, the training cadre is striving to get every one of our athletes to hit aesthetically pleasing positions in every rep of a movement. And even if we’re working not with pencil and paper or 3D renders but nervous, headstrong, inflexible, eager, deconditioned, or clumsy individuals blessed with free will, we are animators willing them to be always in the right place at always the right time.

Is it a tall order? You bet. But it’s how we’re going to reach our goal: to have the best-moving general population gym in the world. 

A Script for the Squat

By the Numbers works with everything: Turkish get ups, GHD sit ups, kipping pull ups, you name it. Here’s how it works with that most fundamental of movements, the air squat. Mindfully executed, even the plain old air squat can be a thing of beauty.

This is the basic script we use:

Set your heels shoulder width. Turn the toes out slightly. Screw your feet into the ground, right foot clockwise, left foot counter-clockwise, by contracting your quads and glutes. Brace your midline by squeezing your glutes and contracting the abs to lock your ribs to your pelvis, and setting the shoulder blades back and down. The position is the start and finish of every rep. We’ll refer to this as Air Squat 1, or just 1.

Figure 4: Air Squat 1.

Next, push your butt back, causing you to hinge at the hip. Make sure your shoulders and abs stay set; your torso should be a straight line from hip to shoulder. As you hinge back, push your knees out. Your knees bend, but do not come forward; shins stay vertical. You should feel tension in your posterior chain. This is Air Squat 2.

Figure 5: Air Squat 2.

Finally, keeping your weight back on your heels, sit straight down until the crease of your hip is below the top of your knee. Push your knees out to track over your toes; keep thinking ‘screw in the feet’ or imagine spreading apart the floor between your feet. Keep your weight back toward the heel, and lift your hands as high as you can to help keep your torso upright. Keep your gaze neutral. This is Air Squat 3.

Figure 6: Air Squat 3.

Return to 2.

Return to 1.

Figure 7: Full sequence: Air Squat 1-2-3-2-1.

Now comes the coaching. We begin by reviewing the poses one at a time. The pose number is called, and the athletes hold the position while the instructor makes her corrections. We encourage our instructors, through study and experience, to construct a mental model of what a perfect squat looks like – one that they can see so clearly that they can draw it correctly with simple stick figures.

In actual practice, the instructor imagines this idealized position superimposed on what he or she is observing, and adjusts the athlete until the abstract and the concrete match – sculpting, essentially. The process continues until the instructor is satisfied with the result. We encourage our instructors to take their time and get it right. This is art, after all (please read that as [semi] ironic).

Introducing Positional Drills

As noted earlier, this is a lot more effective than having the athletes execute a movement and trying to fix mistakes of position or load sequencing after the fact. Working pose-to-pose, instead of, “You broke at the knees too soon, so at the bottom of the squat your weight went to the balls of your feet, next time hinge back first,” it will be, “Show me Air Squat 2. Okay, in Air Squat 2 your hips are back, but your shins are still vertical, like this (makes adjustment). Now go back to 1. 2. Better. 1. 2. Okay, good.”

Now the athlete has a much clearer understanding of what went wrong, and thus much improved chances of doing it right the next time. All positional mistakes – knees turning in, weight on toes, loss of lumbar curve, etc. – can be fixed (or at least improved) at this point, using whatever you have in your trick bag in terms of visual, verbal, and tactile cues.

Figure 8: Valgus Knee Fault / Ideal Position 3.

Figure 9: Loss of Lumbar Curve in Bottom / Ideal Position 3.

Once the athlete can, on command, hit all poses to standard, then it’s time to introduce positional drills. Positional drills are how we transition athletes from segmented, mechanical positional work to the full, smoothly executed movement. Positional drills are also the best way to address motor control or load sequencing issues.

A positional drill is simply a series of poses performed in sequence. For the air squat, we might do “3! Go!” Which in practice, works like this: “One. Two. Three. Go!” and on “Go!” the athlete moves at speed through Air Squat 2 back to Air Squat 1.

Or we might use, “2! Go!” In this one, the athlete is directed to hinge back into Air Squat 2, holding long enough for us to make sure he’s positioned correctly, and at “Go!” he sits down into 3, and then up through 2 into 1.

Figure 10: Squat Initiated With the Knee – Position 2 Fault.

As mentioned earlier, this approach makes teaching large groups a snap. By putting an example athlete at the head of the class and forming your trainees into ranks and columns, rather than the traditional circle, you can scan a couple dozen athletes at a glance, easily picking out those whose position does not conform to the ideal standard you’ve established and making corrections as necessary. Obviously many people initially aren’t capable of a beautiful squat. Experience and mercy will govern how much of a stickler you should be.

Positional Drills 

A Simple System for New Athletes

All these steps to teach a simple movement like the squat might seem like overcomplicating things, but this careful, one-pose-at-a-time approach makes it a lot easier for new athletes to pick up more complex movements.

For instance, when learning the thruster, if the athlete understands that after moving from Thruster 1 (same initial pose as air squat, but with a bar racked on shoulders and held in a push press grip) through Thruster 2 to Thruster 3, he must stand up into Thruster 1 – knees and hips fully extended, bar still seated firmly on shoulders – before the bar goes overhead. This prevents the common error of pressing the bar off the shoulders before the squat is completed.

Next time, we’ll look at the way the “By the Numbers” system organizes movements into hierarchies of complexity, insists on the necessity of mastering one level before attempting the next, and how to teach a large group the muscle clean, pose to pose. 

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“Annie”

Have you ever witnessed the horror of a half-hour “Annie”? I have, back in April 2008. My gym, Pioneer Valley CrossFit (PVCF), had been open for three months. Most of my members were still struggling with the basics of CrossFit. I wanted to introduce CrossFit’s famous benchmark WODs, and “Annie” seemed like a safe way to begin.

“Annie”

• 50-40-30-20-10 reps for time of
• Double unders
• Sit ups

If you have double unders, “Annie” is hard, fast fun requiring seven minutes or less to complete. But if you’re just learning double unders, this good-time girl can turn into a real bitch, as my man Mike discovered.

Challenges or Tests?

When Mike saw “Annie” on the whiteboard, he was jazzed. This would be the first WOD he’d be able to perform as prescribed. But twenty minutes later he was only halfway through his set of thirty double unders. By this point he was screaming and cursing on every missed rep. It was both excruciating and hilarious to watch, and I’m pretty sure there’s still a black cloud of obscenities hanging over PVCF’s first location.

“Annie” took Mike almost 28 minutes. (This was 2008, “Death before DNF!” was the rallying cry for many CrossFitters, and mea culpa.) I knew something wasn’t right about that. He’d completed all the work, sure, but the benchmark “Girls” workouts were supposed to be intense. Half an hour of flailing may have been grueling, but it was hardly intense.

A guy like Mike took 150 double unders and sit ups on the whiteboard as a personal challenge, I realized. There was no way he was going to quit until he was done. But what if instead of a challenge, he was presented with a test? One with a time limit?

Ten minutes seemed a reasonable cut-off. Based on that limit, I figured a logical way to schedule double under and sit up couplets of 50, 40, 30, 20, and 10 reps. Next time I programmed “Annie,” it looked like this:

 “PVCF Testing Annie”

• AMRAP :90 double-under attempts. If you accrue 50 successful double unders before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :90 sit ups. If you get 50 before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :75 of double under attempts. If you get 40 before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :75 sit ups. If you get 40 before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :60 double under attempts. If you get 30 before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :60 sit ups. If you get 30 before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :45 double under attempts. If you get 20 before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :45 sit ups. If you get 20 before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :30 double under attempts. If you get 10 before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :30 sit ups. If you get 10 before time is up, you’re done.

At 10:00, two experienced athletes, who had stayed ahead of the clock, had legit “Annie” times: 5:42 and 6:05. The rest, having recorded their efforts each round, had data: total double unders and total sit ups. When “Annie” came around again, they could compare their new score against that days to see if they’d improved.

Measuring or Training?

As time passed, this new approach helped me out with another problem. My athletes, it seemed, were growing obsessed with doing the “Girls” as prescribed. It didn’t matter to them if they were slow or if their form degraded. They weren’t swayed by my appeals to math and physics. “Decreased time,” I’d tell them. “Increased power!” They didn’t care. As long as they were using the weight written on the board, they were happy.

I went looking for validation of my position. In Greg Glassman’s original article on the benchmarks, he said “Fran,” “Elizabeth,” and “Diane” should each take about four minutes. On the other hand, he went on, there was nothing wrong with taking a full hour to complete one of these workouts, if that was required. I found that confusing. Were we supposed to be chasing intensity or what?

As far as I could see, going heavy often meant a “Diane” that took twenty minutes, as an athlete ground out doubles and then singles at 90% of deadlift 1RM. That would be fine in a strength training session, but against the clock? As Col. Kurtz once murmured, “The horror. The horror.”

The more I thought about it, the more I grew certain that the Girls weren’t for practicing. If these workouts were actually to be used as benchmarks, then they should be treated as a measure of current capacity, not as training. Once I started structuring the Girls as tests, rather than simply timed, slapdash workouts, my athletes slowly came around to my way of thinking. We prioritized movement quality, time domain, volume, and load, in that order.

“Testing Fran”

As an example, here’s how we program “Fran.” “Fran” tests your ability to crank out 45 barbell thrusters and 45 pull ups in a certain amount of time. For the developing CrossFitter, the appropriate load and movement choice is whatever allows them a fair shot at accomplishing that goal. Greg said the time domain should be about four minutes. After experimenting with that, we’ve found that for our general population a six-minute version is a lot more doable.

“PVCF Testing Fran”

• AMRAP :75 thrusters. If you get to 21 reps before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :75 pull ups. If you get to 21 reps before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :60 thrusters. If you get to 15 reps before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :60 pull ups. If you get to 15 reps before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :45 thrusters. If you get to 9 reps before time is up, move on to…
• AMRAP :45 pull ups. If you get to 9 reps before time is up, you’re done.

The first time a new trainee is exposed to “Testing Fran,” we hand them an empty barbell. If you have a more experienced athlete who has never done “Fran,” but who’s obviously strong enough to use more than an empty barbell, have her establish a thruster training max and then use 50% of that weight. Time constraints still apply.

“Just the bar?” they complain. “Trust us,” we tell them. And indeed, six minutes later, they are hurting. Not to the extent the experienced athlete who went as prescribed is hurting, but at a level appropriate for someone new to training.

If our new athlete beats “Testing Fran” by getting, say, all 21-15-9 thrusters and ring rows, then the next time “Fran” comes up, he can put ten pounds more on the bar and use a more challenging pull up sub. Eventually he’ll work his way up to using prescribed movements and loads – when he’s actually ready to handle them. If he didn’t get all 45 reps of each, then he’ll repeat at the same level of challenge until he successfully completes the WOD in six minutes.

A Logical Progression

Structuring the benchmark Girls as time-constrained tests provides a method to help your athletes slowly, but surely mature into accomplished CrossFitters. It works for all of the Girls. Simply determine a desirable time domain for the WOD, break it down in a logical manner, and then challenge your athletes to complete the prescribed volume under those constraints.

People tend to forget that ten years ago these WODs were considered beyond the pale. Though these days they are sometimes performed back-to-back-to-back by CrossFit Games athletes, being able to perform the Girls as written is a considerable athletic achievement for the average CrossFitter. And for most people, it’s at least a two-year endeavor. And that’s okay! There’s no rush.

Teach your athletes to approach the Girls with respect, to move with integrity, and improve incrementally. When they finally jot “as Rx’d” next to their times, they’ll have truly earned it. 

Photos courtesy of CrossFit LA.

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