CrossFit For Athletes

Earlier I wrote about how CrossFit can benefit "broken down runners" (like me).  The reason is that runners typically have glaring weaknesses in strength, power, flexibility, agility, balance and accuracy.  CrossFit exposes these weaknesses, then fixes them. 

But runners aren't the only athletes with weaknesses.  In fact, all sports that demand great amounts of some components of fitness, and neglect others, result in serious imbalances, and all people benefit from improving all 10 components of fitness.  Doing so results in a fitter, healthier person.  An increasing number of coaches and athletes realize this, and therefore, an increasing number of coaches and athletes are turning to CrossFit.

Arguably, the most successful of these is Olympic rower, Erin Cafaro.

In 2007, Erin Cafaro had been rowing for three years and had been on the U.S. national team for a year and a half.

The next year was an Olympic one, and Cafaro needed to get stronger. Through her brother, she discovered CrossFit. Not only did Cafaro make the team, but her team won gold in Beijing.

The team won gold again in 2012.  That's two gold medals for Ms Cafaro training with CrossFit.  Of course, it helps when you have Kelly Starrett and Brian MacKensie training you. 

Olympic sailor, Anna Tunnicliffe also incorporates CrossFit in her training.

My workout schedule varies every day, but we sail three to five hours a day and I do CrossFit five to six days a week. CrossFit can include absolutely anything. Today, I did 150 wall balls, taking a 16-pound medicine ball and throwing to a target 150 times, as fast as you can. Tomorrow, three rounds of 800-meter runs, 30 pull-ups and 30 clean lifts.

Every day is something completely different than the last time. Overhead squats, rowing … I enjoy it because you never know what you're going to get. I did a regular weight [lifting] program for years, but it got boring and I didn't get anywhere. 

Kiwi boxer Shane “Mountain Warrior” Cameron (29-2 — 22 by knock out) is using CrossFit to prepare for a world title bout against Australian Danny Green.

Cameron is outside of his comfort zone when it comes to CrossFit, he freely admits. Years of boxing have left him with a hand injury that makes gripping barbells and other CrossFit movements difficult.

  

“The beauty of CrossFit is its scalability,” Milne says. “You can take someone as flexible as a steel bar and build a program to fit their specific needs. If the athlete puts in 100 percent, (he’ll) get results every time.”

“Shane doesn’t know what I’ve got planned for him before he comes into a training session. One day he might be pulling his truck around the parking lot, on another day we might concentrate on Olympic lifting or a pure burst of bodyweight exercises,” Milne says. ”Keeping Shane on his toes is super important in preparing him for a big fight.”

Speaking of Kiwis, Ben and Owen Franks of New Zealand's national rugby team, the World Cup Champion All Blacks, not only incorporate CrossFit into their training; they train others in CrossFit.

In addition to their sports-specific training, both brothers are dedicated CrossFitters and run their own affiliate: Reebok CrossFit Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. For them, both rugby and CrossFitting are a family affair; their father Ken is the director of coaching for Reebok CrossFit Canterbury.

How about motor sports?  They don't require much athleticism, right?  The machine does all the work, doesn't it?  Not if that machine is a motocross bike...

Now, after seven months of CrossFit, [Lance] Coury says the training methodology complements freestyle motocross.

“When you throw a weight up and you’re moving it around, you need to have control with the weight, and you need to have control with the bike,” he explains. “They seriously work hand in hand.”

Or even a road racing bike.

Kendal says he was drawn to two-wheeled racing because it involves the entire body. “The way that you hold and position yourself determines the way that the bike turns, how much lean angle you have to use and how fast you can take a corner,” he says.

Pacing himself is also important in sport-bike racing, he says. “A lot of people don't realize how physically demanding road racing is,” he explains. “Being in good shape can be the difference between making up positions in the last few laps, or losing places because you don't have the stamina to keep riding at the same pace.”

But what about the pit crew?

She was also coming close to the times of the pro pit-guys. A seasoned pit-crew pro member can remove five lug nuts in 1.2 seconds, while an average person would take up to five seconds. On Abbott’s fourth attempt she removed them in 1.7 seconds.

Abbott is working with a pit-coach four days a week, once or twice a day in addition to CrossFit workouts. She knew nothing about NASCAR and is getting a crash course in the sport. “The pit is parallel to CrossFit: mechanics, consistency, intensity. All of the 10 physical skills come directly into it," she says.

OK, that last one was cheating.  Rather than an athlete using CrossFit to improve in his/her sport, Ms Abbott is a CrossFitter applying the fitness she achieved through CrossFit in a sport that was completely unfamiliar to her.  But that is even greater evidence that competency across all 10 components of fitness is useful for all athletes, regardless of their sport.

The most encouraging development is that an increasing number of high schools are incorporating CrossFit.

“This was a whole new type of conditioning,” Moline High School head football coach, Crick Sant Amour, says. “Usually we run back and forth and do sprints. Lorentzen and his trainers came in and had the kids lunging across the field while holding 45-pound plates overhead, stopping and doing burpees every 10 yards.”

“We got into our first game (two seasons ago) and I had never seen our team in as good a shape as they were,” Sant Amour says. “So I said to Josiah, ‘For next season, let’s put all the conditioning and weightlifting with you guys.’”

“They’d never been involved in a strength or conditioning program that pushed them as much as this,” Sant Amour says. "They were dying. They'd say that was the toughest one yet, but at the same time, they liked the challenge."

“I loved that it was a different workout each time we went in,” 17-year-old outside linebacker, Devin Earnest, says. “That way we were not used to any of the workouts and we were pushed to a different level each time. I feel like CrossFit taught me and my teammates that when things get tough, you have to become tougher.”

Those kids probably don't know how fortunate they are.  I wish I'd discovered CrossFit at that age!  Building a solid foundation of broad, functional fitness at that age will benefit them for life, whether they continue in football or not.

Sometime soon I'll write about how to incorporate CrossFit into training for different sports, even those that require a high degree of specialization.