Nugent Coaching Systems

I go back and forth on this topic.   Babygate isn’t quite out of my system…  Clearly I need to pick a side.

Or do I?

Redemption

This morning I had the opportunity to workout with a friend who used to be a member of CrossFit San Jose.  He took a pair of my garage-manufactured rings down to Argentina while traveling and used them to keep himself (and others) in shape.  Most of his workouts in Buenos Aires were of the bodyweight kind: box jumps, pull-ups, push-ups, ring dips, etc.

Last week he emailed CrossFit San Jose to get some pictures over to me with the rings in use.   He also asked about dropping in for a few workouts at their new box.  He didn’t get a response.   Not surprising since the owners are holding down more than one job.  They’re doing their best without the benefit of a membership admin.  Well he still didn’t get a reply so he pinged me to see what was up.  I told him he was welcome to come over and get in a workout at the Nugent garage if he didn’t hear back from them.

This morning we worked out.

It was fascinating getting caught up on his travels and what he experienced in the barrios in Argentina.  He clearly had a heightened sense of his surroundings and I could tell he’s been living one life altering experience after another.  I was honored to have him workout in my garage.

Our workout:

Front Squat 5-5-5-5-5

Followed by:

Stoner Helen – 3 Rounds of:

• 400 meter run
• 21 Kettlebell Swings with a 24kg bell
• 12 Atlas Stone Shoulderings with a 95# stone.

The whole workout (with warmup, recovery and travel talk) took about 90 minutes.  A little longer than my usual hour, but again, we were getting caught up.

The thing that humbled me was that he was planning on coming back for the rest of the week!  Very cool.

What was even cooler: my faith in the CrossFit community and it’s work ethic.

It’s one thing to pull up a workout and do it by yourself in the backyard or garage.  It’s another thing entirely to do it with a friend and push each other.

I’ve got new found respect for my friend Mike, CrossFit, and my atlas stones.  Those babies are COOL. 

Let’s just say I am embarrassed.  Granted, it’s not about what I have done.  Not this time.  It’s more along the lines of an affiliate photo that has me wondering if I will ever recommend someone to check out the crossfit.com mainsite page again.

I’m not going to talk about what they did wrong:  (http://www.crossfit.com/cf-affiliates/2011/08/tuesday_110816.html)

That picture speaks for itself.

No, this is about me.

I don’t want to be associated with that kind of fitness philosophy.  There.  I said it.

Why?  Well… let’s start with why I started down the CrossFit path in the first place.  My kids.   I got into CF because I no longer had the luxury of 3 hour training days, long weekend rides, runs, paddles and swims.  No I needed something that would allow me to keep my foot in the game of adventure racing.

CrossFit has allowed that to happen.

So, why would I want to disassociate myself from that?  Again, that picture speaks volumes about what’s wrong with the mentality of the ‘Extreme Athlete’.  It happens in triathlon, adventure racing, and I’m sure it happens in any potentially competitive environment.  You lose sight of what’s important.  It’s clearly happened in CrossFit.

Seeing that picture of a dad recklessly endangering his own child so he could get a 5 minute blip on internet fame and also prove to the world that he could still get his workout in, makes me ill.

I don’t care if that wasn’t his intention.  It’s how it came across.  It’s how myself and apparently a LOT of other people saw it.

Back to CrossFit and Kids.

While the original intention of doing CrossFit at home was so I could get a workout in and stay close by (I have a great garage and backyard setup now for CF), the motive behind the workouts have a new flavor.  It’s now important to me that my kids SEE dad and mom workout.  Lead from the front right?

As a fitness obsessed dad, I get it.  You need to get your workout in.

Here are some ways you can use your kid safely in a workout:

• Goblet squats – hold your infant with your hands.  Baby bjorns are lame.  Hold your kid, use your HANDS
• Push-ups – when they’re old enough to hold on, have them climb onto your back.  Instant dynamic weight
• Thrusters – kids LOVE this.  Full squat, stand and push your kid into the sky.  Need a crossfit WOD to feel better about this?

• 21-15-9  Kid’s a weight:

• Kid Thruster
• Kid on back pushups
• Kid on back lunges

Or you could just play with your kids.  Call me crazy.

Back to why I am embarrassed:

• Cult psychology appears to be rampant – (I know, it’s a GOOD cult.  I don’t care!)
• Gushy motivational montages.  This is NOT what got me into CF.
• Softball throw?  Nah, this is not as embarrassing as the crazies claiming to be elite.  Throwing also fits within the scope of the CF fitness definition.
• The major disconnect crossfitters have with people who are NOT crossfitters.  It shouldn’t take a public outcry to realize that putting a weight over your head with a baby strapped to your chest is a bad idea.  At the very least, have the empathy to know that this picture is  going to resonate with… I am drawing a blank.  WHO WOULD LOOK AT THAT AND SAY TO THEMSELVES:  “oh I remember doing that with my kids, awww…”

What to do now:

I am at a loss.

No I’m not.  I train how I want to train.  I have goals.  I don’t put my kids in danger.  If one day I happen to do a CF WOD, so be it.   If I do something from Pavel or Dave Whitley, so be it.  If it’s something I thought was cool from Rob Orlando, who cares?  I’m going to try it.  Just as long it doesn’t involve strapping an infant to my chest.

Forgive the Wagners.  This was clearly not their intention, and if you have been a parent of any child during that infant period, you are not getting enough sleep, and your decision making ability is impaired.

Which is why it’s probably a good idea to skip CrossFit for a while until you are getting good sleep

Be smart people.  Stand up for yourselves and know when to say “BAD IDEA”, stop the madness or simply walk away.  Come back to do something that makes the world a better place, that inspires others to make the world a better place.

Putting the kids to sleep had me reading a little “Naked Warrior” tonight. No not to them, they had their stories.  I read them “Power to the People” and a little “Viking Warrior Conditioning”

Tonight the section I spent time in covered tension in three areas:

• Hands
• Abs
• Glutes

With those three dialed in, strength goes up.  A lot.

15 minutes later, with the kids asleep, I venture out to the living room.  First I do a few warm-up push-up reps.

Then I layout my stack of books to help with a reduced OAP(one-arm push-up) attempt.  (I’ll explain the technique later).

I do two scaled OAP’s on each side.

Next is the 5 sets of max handstand reps for time.  I decide on 1:10-1:15 for the rest interval.

My reps looked like this:

• 6
• 4
• 2
• 2
• 2

Or you can see  BTW entry.  It’s been a while since I’ve practiced these!

The key to getting these movements down, if you’re low in the upper-body strength category / endurance athlete such as myself, is mastering tension.  The Naked Warrior is a great book to do that.

At first it comes across simple, almost too simple.  But, as you know, the simple things usually have the most depth.  You just have to try applying it.

DROM – Dynamic Range of Motion

If you’ve been in any training session with me you have been through DROM during the warm-up.  Part ritual, part preventative maintenance, there’s more to meets the eye than a bunch of arm-waving and hip gyrations.

Here’s the DROM I usually do:

10 – 2o reps of each

• Head up-downs
• Ear to shoulders (keeping shoulders down)
• Head turns – right to left
• Shoulder circles forward
• Shoulder circles backward
• Back taps
• Hula-hoops (10 -20 hip circles each direction)
• Knee circles (feet together, knees together, hands above the knees)
• Ankle circles
• Wrist circles
• Shoulder dislocates
• Bayonets

Equipment needed:

• PVC or long closet dowel

Why do this?

One reason is to prime the nervous system for movement.  Kind of like turning on all the switches to a complicated piece of machinery.

The second reason is that you’re doing a pre-flight check of your body.  There are times where you are sore or tight, and you may not know it.  Marching through DROM will allow you to find it (usually) and prepare for the WOD (workout of the day).  If you find yourself tight in an area, you can spend a few more minutes doing mobility work on that section.

Some may think it’s about getting blood flow to the muscles, well maybe.  I don’t look at it that way, but I suppose it could be true.  The other oft-quoted reason is to get fluid in the joints and warm them up.  Sure.  Why not?

The primary reason I do DROM, is that it sets my body in motion for a good workout.  It’s largely ritual, but it’s an important part of the mental prep.  If done regularly, it becomes a familiar friend and chief information source for your muscular/nervous system well-being.

Try using DROM in your next warmup and let me know how it goes!

Happy Training!

-Brandon

Recommended Reading:   “Super Joints” By Pavel Tsatsouline

Let’s just say I am for it.

While it’s true that the standard for the CrossFit kettlebell swing is the overhead, often referred to as the “American Swing”, there is room for application of the neck level, “Russian Swing”.

What’s even more important is not that the RKC endorses the neck level swing, it’s the approach to strength training.  The RKC is a school of strength and it’s not necessarily about the kettlebell.  It just happens to be the tool of choice.  Several RKC’s have backgrounds and expertise in areas such as Olympic Lifting (Geoff Neupert), Track and Field (Dan John), strongman events (Jedd Johnson, David Whitley), among others.

The idea that it’s only swings and getup is mistaken.

How can CrossFit benefit from the RKC?

How can the RKC benefit from CrossFit?

What’s missing from CrossFit that the RKC has?  Well I am sure there are people that will fill me in on that.  I’ll say that the concept  of teaching tension hasn’t been discussed in enough detail in the Level One Seminars (I’ve been through two now).

What’s missing from the RKC that CrossFit has?  This is much harder to answer.  I’m not going to say I wish the RKC would use medicine ball cleans…  (that was a little joke).  The RKC has the concept of intensity.  It has strength covered.  Even endurance and VO2 max conditioning are there.  Body weight training and mobility work is there too.

From a program perspective both groups seek to do the simple things well.  Virtuosity right?  Do the common, uncommonly well.  Movement.

The biggest difference is in the execution of the training.  There are RKC’s that are less inclined to focus on movement and more about entertaining (fortunately I haven’t personally met one yet).  There are CrossFit trainers that are more about doing Clean and Jerks than executing constantly varied, high intensity, functional movement.  It happens.

With CrossFit, there is a trust that the system will right itself.   The thought is that bad trainers will simply cease to train, and if they injure someone, the customer (or the legal  system) will take the trainer out of circulation.

The RKC takes it more personally.  If you pass the RKC, you are representing the entire organization.  If you injure someone, it’s reflected not just on you, but on your methods, your approach to training and the RKC system.

Passing the RKC is much more difficult than passing the CrossFit Level One Trainer course.  Although I have to admit the exam that the Level one trainers have to pass is NOT easy.  I didn’t pass it the first time and decided that taking the Level One Course again after two years couldn’t hurt.  It was a good experience and I encourage more CF trainers to do the same.  It’s always a good jolt to the system!  I passed the exam on the second try

Here’s where I think a more combined approach of using RKC and CrossFit methods would be most beneficial:

• Train your body for success – don’t teach it to go to failure (unless you’re competing, and then all bets are off )
• Learn to use your hips – the kettlebell swing, once mastered will teach you that and you can apply it to other movements
• Learn tension – strength lifts will go up, bodyweight training (pistols, handstand pushups) will get easier…

The RKC is not a system that will likely integrate CrossFit methodology into its training core, rather, it’s a school of thought that can easily be absorbed by CrossFit as an approach to reach a wider athlete base.

Perhaps that’s the beauty of CrossFit is that it’s structured to learn and absorb from a wide variety of sources.  It may not become an RKC kind of organization, but it will learn from it.