73019 Simple, but not-so-simple ways to avoid injury

Heavy Day//

Back Squat

7-5-3-3-5-7

If you want to stay injury free it, the most important thing is to know your spots and have an intimate understanding of how your body feels through different movements. It doesn’t take long to know your spots. “My knees commonly feel creaky.” “My left shoulder is going to blow up if I do these handstand push-ups.” Etc.

Knowing your spots is simple! You deal with them daily. The not so simple way to ensure that those spots don’t become full blown injury take some extra effort.

  1. Communicate! You’re paying for a coaching service and it includes a knowledgeable coach to choose or help you choose an appropriate scale. Never will we ever be upset or annoyed that you asked for a different exercise that doesn’t cause any pain. We would actually much prefer you to stay healthy and keep training consistently (it’s how we pay the bills!)

  2. Prepare your body! Firstly, you should do the warm-up intentionally- doesn’t mean we don’t want you to socialize and have fun- it means make the warm-up an actual part of your workout like it matters. Secondly, understand that the warm-ups we design are specific to the workout, not you personally. If you know your spots, you can start prepping them before class or take extra reps in the warm-up. eg. the other day a coach asked the class to do the Snatch landing portion of the Burgener warm-up and someone commented, “why didn’t we do any squats first?” Ehh, we’re squatting now, if you knew that squats are a struggle, you easily could have squeezed some in before class!

    If you’re at the gym even two or three minutes early, that’s plenty of time to ask a coach for some prep ideas and to even do them!

  3. Follow the CrossFit charter, which is- “Mechanics, then Consistency, then and only then intensity.” The not-so-simple part of this actually has to do with our egos! Load the bar appropriately, move at an appropriate speed, don’t compromise your health to just “git’er done!” See the big picture and beyond today’s WOD!

Devin Jones