Cross Fit Question
I am sure this has been answered several times in the forums, but I cannot find anything. Does anyone do Crossfit? I keep reading up on the benefits of strengthening muscles and the increase in race prep. I am reading about CrossFit Endurance by Brian Mackenzie. I don't want to go overboard with too much training, but I often wonder if a little strength conditioning would help. I am just wondering if anyone does this with EN training?
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Cross fit training has nothing to do with swim bike run and will not make you better at anything other than cross fit exercise.
Aaron,
I typed something for my local tri club when asked about strength training. Here is what I had to say on the matter. I know Rich typed an EN blog post that is probably more thorough than my mumbo-jumbo.
Strength training - I'll separate this from the other post about the USAT seminar. More than one person sent me a private message asking “why” strength training doesn’t make you a faster or better (however you want to phrase it) triathlete. So here are my thoughts…
I’m not saying strength training isn’t great for you because it is. It’s wonderful for your overall fitness. It can address muscle imbalance issues. It can minimize some of the effects of aging, especially in older men. While somewhat debatable, it can aid in injury prevention. Weight lifting, Crossfit, P90X and all that can and will address all those things.
Here’s what strength training won’t do. It won’t make you swim, bike or run any faster or any better. First, there’s the whole aerobic vs. anaerobic conditioning difference. Secondly, there’s the principle of specificity.
A basic understanding of endurance sports performance shows that we are primarily limited by aerobic pathway efficiency, not strength or peak power. Strength training focuses on improving strength and short/intense power and by definition, primarily trains the anaerobic energy pathways.
Strength training can increase peak power and make you faster, but only significantly so in very short sprint-type activities that last for a moment or two. Training the anaerobic energy pathways provides very minimal performance benefits for triathlons, because our ability to perform in a triathlon is fueled almost exclusively by aerobic pathways.
Look at Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake or Carmelita Jeter or whatever 100/200 meter male or female sprinter. They’re built like gods. Now look at whichever Kenyans or Ethiopians that are winning whatever marathons. Look at those Velodrome track cyclists. Now look at Andy Schleck. Notice a difference in the way they look? Sprinting is anaerobic and all about maximum recruitment of muscle power. Running a marathon or riding a stage of the Tour de France or doing a triathlon of any distance is all about aerobic conditioning and very specific aerobic conditioning. Which leads to the principle of specificity…
The principle of specificity in very, very simple terms states that to get better at something, you need to do that something. You get better at swimming by swimming. You get better at cycling by cycling. You get better at running by running. When you lift weights, you get better at lifting weights. Think about this one very simple question. How can you make strength training more beneficial to an activity like running or cycling than just doing the activity itself? You can’t! If you want to get better at a specific skill (and S/B/R are very specific skills), you practice and train that specific skill.
There is no substitute for a discipline that is better than the discipline itself.
Which brings us to how Age Group triathletes train. We’re not professional and we do not have all day to train, rest and recover. We have jobs and families that monopolize most of our time. Training hours are precious and few. Getting in the proper amount of triathlon training to meet our own personal goals is always a struggle. Adding time for strength training to the mix is fine if you’re doing it as part of an overall fitness picture. It’s a waste of time if you think it will make you a better triathlete. The time spent on strength training would be exponentially more beneficial if it were spent on the actual triathlon disciplines. Even a coach like Joe Friel, who is pro-strength training, even admitted that his own studies didn’t back up his opinion on the matter. He continues to advocate it on the basis of overall fitness. And I’m cool with that.
I know someone will bring this up so let me address it now. We are age groupers. We are not professionals and genetic freaks. Spare me the articles about how Chrissie Wellington or Macca or Crowie or Andy Potts or even Ben Greenfield, etc. spoke highly of strength training and how it helped them improve. Those are people that have extracted almost every ounce of potential out of their swim, bike and run already so maybe, just maybe, some strength training might get them that extra 1% that wins a race. We're not talking about elite athletes who sit at the 99.9% percentile of the sport. We're talking about us… mere mortal age groupers. Do you think any of us age groupers have extracted every ounce of our potential out of our swimming, cycling or running? The answer is a resounding no. If the answer is no, then the only way to get better at swimming, biking and running is to actually swim, bike and run. It really is that simple.
(Then why, you ask, am I saying something? While you ponder that...)
I am a big advocate of functional strength training, which is not to be confused with xfit in that the goal of functional strength training is to continually maintain/build core strength and continually correct for muscle imbalances so as to prevent injury. It makes you a faster triathlete indirectly because, done correctly, it prevents injury, which enables consistent training over the long season, year after year.
On the wiki, under Self Coaching / Core Strength, are some good exercises to explore...
http://members.endurancenation.us/Resources/Wiki/tabid/108/Default.aspx?topic=Self+Coaching
I build in a set of functional strength and core strength exercises 2x weekly, and it definitely helps.
I started CrossFit last Nov at a local "box" and was going 5x week before starting the OS in Jan. I was also doing a lot of rowing on the C2 in Dec too. I have done strength training for past six years but wanted to add intensity and learn new stuff. My goals were twofold: 1) Don't get hurt and 2) Get strong. I learned a lot of new exercises and certainly got stronger/better at CrossFit exercises. I also started using body builder type protein shakes (Syntha-6 by BSN 44g protein) as recovery as part of my get strong strategy.
There was about a 2 week adapation period where I was very sore. I think biggest benefits are from core and posterior chain work. How does this effect SBR? I don't know. But, it was a lot of fun and I like doing it. So, I will continue to the extent it does not effect my downstream SBR workouts.
As to CrossFit Endurance, how many AG podium spots at Ironman have been achieved using it? There also seems to be a lot of negativity there towards the outside triathlon training community. Not for me.
Good discussion and insights. For us its about where is the best place to invest your limited time. I can tell you from experience that it's VERY easy for a triathlon coach to schedule, or a self-coached athlete to schedule, 3x swims, 3x bikes, 4x runs, 2x strength training sessions, yoga sounds good so I'll do some of that too...without really considering how it all fits together and, more importantly, how activities over _here_ force compromises over _there_ and what _that_ means for your ability to SBR faster.
Personally, I need to get off my ass and do my 3-4x/wk routine of core work, pushups, situps. Not for any triathlon benefit but because I'm afraid of losing my nighly arm wrasslin' contest with my 120lb wife. But whatever I do, I make sure it doesn't impact my ability to SBR to the best of my ability the next day.
I always refer back to this article when asked about xfit and tri:
www.scienceofrunning.com/2012/01/cr...s-and.html
I'm not espousing either doing it or not. I've done it before, and had some fun in doing so.
I highly recommend Cross Fit for all my age group peers! I would rather they get better prepared for the Cross-Fit games or maybe a 5K "Warrior" Run than spend precious time actually training for long course triathlon. Better yet, I am counting on them to get injured doing that stuff. I also notice that Brian Mackenzie hasn't claimed his fine results on Athlinks.com but I'm pretty sure his results are the guy from CA who was 39 in 2012...meaning he hasn't done a triathlon since 2004 and it looks like he has completed a combined total of 5. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he knows what he's talking about -- NOT! X2 on everything Bob said.
I like it for OS. I could see cfe working for sprints perhaps. Or to shake up an endurance athlete who had hit a plateau by training in a more traditional manner.
The swim programming won't work for a new swimmer. But I surer did look better in my swimsuit when I was spending time at cf.
I made big progress in terms of body composition at cf. fat just seems to come off me there faster than sbr alone.
I just came across this latest article about CFE:
http://www.outsideonline.com/fitnes...eresy.html
Here's the best quote in that article:
“The law of specificity says that if you want to be good at something, you have to do that thing,” says Jay Johnson, a former assistant track coach at the University of Colorado and a contributor to Running Times. We spoke in September 2011, not long after Patrick Makau had run a world-record 2:03:38 in the Berlin Marathon. “Here’s the deal,” Johnson said. “No Kenyan has ever seen a kettlebell.”
Robin Clevenger, quoted in the article was an EN member (a couple years ago?) a raced IMCDA with us:
"That seems like common sense, and CrossFit follower and veteran triathlete Robin Clevenger would probably agree. In 2009, Clevenger, then 45, planned to train for two triathlons strictly using CFE. She tested herself at that year’s City of Portland Triathlon, and she ran out of gas. After an hour and a half—which was the maximum time I’d trained—my body said, ‘You know, this is about it,’” Clevenger told me. She finished with her second-slowest Olympic-length-triathlon time in 23 years. “I agree that if you do CFE to the letter you can complete an Ironman,” Clevenger said. But she called it a recipe to “complete, not compete.”