"Press with Conditioning"(8.31.2011)
Jenna hitting Level 3 on "Gorilla Unit". Very Proud of this girl!
*New Speciality Class will be added to the Vagabond CrossFit Schedule starting in September: I am happy to announce that Vagabond CrossFit will now be offering a Yoga Class for all Vagabond CrossFit Members starting in the month of September on Saturdays @ 10:15 am. More news and updates will follow! Be Excited!*
*Vagabond CrossFit is currently putting together a brand new layout for our webpage, to better equip all members with easier access to the webpage, and so you can have an easier time searching through the webpage. Keep your eyes peeled and you should be impressed by the new changes.*
*The Labor Day Schedule will be out by Thursday, so please check the webpage for updates on the weekend holiday schedule.*
Back Restoration Exercises after a tough workout. Allowing healthy fluid back into your spine can only be accomplished through mobility movements! So take care of yourself and your BUSINESS!
I. Conditioning Workout of the Day:
A. Perform the following as fast as possible and with a heavy load for weight:
Push Press x 5 repetitions
Run 800 m
*Rest 3:00 Minutes*
Push Press x 3 repetitions
Run 800 m
*Rest 3:00 Minutes*
Push Press x 5 repetitions
Run 400 m
*Rest 1:00 minute
Push Press x 3 repetitions
Run 400 m
*Your Push Press should be heavy and near your maxes on each lift. Your Run should be as fast as possible. Each movement is at maximal effort, as you have a substantial amount of rest time between each set.*
How Do you Get Sore?? Slow Exercises! by Eric Cressey.
III. Eric Cressey from Cressey Sports speaks on the object of soreness:
Scenario 3: The Precious Commodity
An athlete who can’t afford to be sore.
I’ve gotten pretty good with this one, mainly from working with more baseball pitchers. They have four to five days between starts to get a solid training effect (or ideally, two). Meanwhile, they also have to deal with significant, asymmetrical soreness from the start.
We usually get ’em right after starts (either that night or the day after) and then again on the same day they throw their easier bullpen session (which is two days before their next start). Most of the principles below are used in that second session. Meanwhile, there are thousands of morons running foul poles, but that’s a whole other rant.
If you want to prevent soreness, you need to know what causes it. Here’s the CliffsNotes’ version:
Unfamiliar exercises — This one’s a no-brainer. The first time you do a new exercise, or the first time you return to an exercise after a long hiatus, you’re going to be sore. I’ve generally seen that the second time you perform an exercise within a 3-14 day period, the delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS, is markedly reduced or absent altogether. This is known as the “repeated bout effect.”
Slow eccentrics — Look at any of the research that examines potential ways to reduce DOMS, and they all induce it in the first place with eccentric exercise. If you don’t want to be sore, don’t lower the weights too slowly.
Decelerative exercises — In reality, this one falls under the eccentric section to a degree, as deceleration involves eccentric muscle actions. Higher-velocity deceleration with bodyweight-only as the load isn’t typically a problem, unless you’re dealing with guys who haven’t been playing their sport very much. This is out of the way by the early preseason.
However, lower-velocity deceleration is an issue, and the best illustration of this in a resistance training context is seen in dynamic single-leg movements. A forward lunge involves quite a bit of deceleration, whereas a reverse lunge is predominantly acceleration.
Specific exercises — In the upper body, horizontal pulling and vertical pushing tend to cause less soreness than vertical pulling and horizontal pushing. In the lower body, the more hip dominant the movement, the more soreness it will provoke. For example, a box squat will generally make someone more sore than a front squat.
Researchers really don’t exactly understand the mechanism behind the repeated bout effect, although neural, mechanical, and cellular theories have all been proposed. One postulation is that it has to do with increased recruitment of slow-twitch fibers in subsequent efforts.
In other words, the first time you do an exercise, the unfamiliar stress is thrown on a small number of “select” active fast-twitch fibers. When you come back to it, thanks to adaptation, you’ve got more motor unit activation, so you use more slow-twitch and fewer fast-twitch fibers to get the job done.
However, research has shown that you can get the repeated bout effect with electronically stimulated muscle contractions (no neural adaptation), so there’s still a flaw in this logic. It does seem to make sense that fast-twitch dominant muscles (such as the hamstrings) tend to get more sore than those that are classic slow-twitch (like the quads). But I’ll let the scientists take care of the science and I’ll keep working on the heavy lifting part.
All that said, there are some good, “safe” exercises for getting a solid training effect when you’re looking to avoid soreness:
Most overhead pressing
Horizontal pulling
Plyo push-ups
Medicine ball throws
One-leg squats to a bench or box
Step-ups
Anderson front squats (from a dead stop on pins or chains)
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