One of the things that all of us newbies in the CrossFit world, especially the more deconditioned we are, experiences is the fact that our bodies don’t know how to move the right way. It sounds weird, but trust me, as a professional I spend a large portion of my day looking at how people move and it’s easy to understand that people just stop moving properly.
So, part of getting the body back in shape is not only getting tougher, developing muscle, losing weight and all that tangible stuff we can really see, but it’s also about neurologically re-learning (or in some cases learning for the first time) movements that are fundamental to other movements. The other really important aspect of this is that if you can’t do the full movement a certain way in CrossFit we SCALE the movement (lighter weight, an easier version of the movement, etc). The critical thing is that the scale has to use the same pattern of movement or it will create fundamental flaws in all the movements the basic one builds upon.
This video is a great illustration of this concept. Kelley Starrett of Mobilitywod is explaining something as “simple” as a pushup and what to look for when coaching and performing one, as well as why a common scale for the knee pushup (what most of us referred to as “girls’ pushups” because PE teachers always seemed to tell girls to do this, setting them up for subsequent failure) should NOT be done.
This is five minutes LOADED with great information and I know I have a lot of work to do on my pushups now (even more than I did before I watched this video)!
CrossFit for Fat Guys 