Getting poor results, thinking of quitting

jasonmstein said:

...This is one of the strengths of the Crossfit system, as well as the O-lifting WODs at Catalyst: they provide either daily in-class or online measurable competition as well as measured/timed/scored workouts repeated as benchmarks and tests.

I know Coach Sommer is hard at work writing the subsequent books and, y'know, COACHING COMPETITIVE ATHLETES that his personal time is limited, but the next stage of evolution for Gymnastic Bodies would be Gymnastic Body Benchmark Workouts, repeated at select intervals, as well as on-line gymnastic "meets" a la 70s Big "Super Totals," Catalyst Athletics' "Totals," or other competitions.

best,

jason

That already exists. In the SSC we should be testing our maxes every 8-12 weeks and revising the work sets. In the WODs, the same WODs show up 2-3x per month, so you should be able to judge any progress by how easily you can replicate your previous performance. Sometimes I don't even get any more reps, but I notice that I am less drained or I have slightly better form than the last time. That's progress!

Triangle, where you're at isn't bad at all for a year of training! The only reason I am where I am is because I already had build massive strength(in certain areas) in the weight room over a period of like 5 years! Just because I've only been here a year and a half doesn't mean I've only been TRAINING for a year and a half. I have literally got a lifetime of training that has allowed me to make fast initial progress and now I am moving forward slowly just like you are. Heck, I'm still on Advanced frog lol!!!

Are you working your FSP each WOD day? From what you said about your planche I am wondering if you are keeping up with your SSC.

What you can do now is beyond what I could do my first day despite that lifetime of training, and as many have mentioned we all develop at different rates. My friend Andrew is like you. 6'2, 170 lbs. I am far, far stronger than he is and I have made faster progress, but he's still making progress. At first he was discouraged by my progress versus his, but we talked several times and reset his mindset. He will never be as big as me without massive amounts of steroids and/or a decade of hypertrophy specific training, because that's not how he is built and it's not how he eats. He will also have a Manna long before I will. I can't even come close to his progress there.

If you feel like something is holding you back, experiment some with the volume! If you look at my WODs, you'll notice that while I do the exercises, I sometimes take more rest and I sometimes do less reps than recommended. I have my reasons for this, and it is because I know how my body works now so I know how to set myself up for failure. As long as I avoid THAT, I can't help but succeed.

I think that a similar process may help you a lot as well.

EDIT: I can't even do 1 FULL ROM HSPU. You're further along than me and a LOT of people here there. You and I are at fairly similar levels on about half of your work, so don't think you're doing things wrong!

Thanks again for all the comments everyone. There are too many since I last posted so I will just comment on some things that a few people have asked:

(1) No, I don't do the FSP in my warm-up everytime. Only when they are in the WOD, I do easier variations. Coach Sommer told me that I didn't need to because I can't do full front & back lever. He said that they will receive sufficient stimulation from embedded and ring strength days. He said instead that I should work on 3x30 sec floor l-sit.

(2) My training back ground: I don't have any records from before I started GB, so I am going off memory here. The following are 1RM unless otherwise noted.

Weight: 160

Low-bar back squat: 245

Deadlift: 285 (pulled 300 about a month ago, so GB made that go up)

Muscle-ups:BW + 25lbs. (I got rings 4-5 years ago because of Crossfit but never went beyond anything fancier than muscle-ups and forward rolls)

Pull-up: BW + 50lbs.

Overhead press: 125lbs.

Anything else you need to know just ask.

(3) Who am I comparing myself to? killroy & alex87 come to mind immediately. killroy is 6'1" and after a year had both front and back lever. alex I have seen do back lever in his 8 month videos. Other names escape me, but I have seen back levers after 6 months. Coach even said in a previous post that you should have a front/back lever after 1 year of training.

(4) Diet and sleep are fine.

(5) I do BJJ usually 2 times per week, sometimes 3.

slizzardman said:

jasonmstein said:

That already exists. In the SSC we should be testing our maxes every 8-12 weeks and revising the work sets. In the WODs, the same WODs show up 2-3x per month, so you should be able to judge any progress by how easily you can replicate your previous performance. Sometimes I don't even get any more reps, but I notice that I am less drained or I have slightly better form than the last time. That's progress!

Slizzard,

While I understand the sentiment, retesting a static hold every 12 weeks is nothing like completing a Crossfit benchmark workout in which the variables remain absolutely constant, for example weight lifted, rep/set schemes, and measured time intervals.

For myself, feeling "less drained" or having "slightly better form" does not compare at all to knocking minutes off a workout or adding weight to the bar. "Slightly better form" and "less drained" also pale in comparison to targeting your training for a competitive event.

This is what I think would help provide some directional to Triangle's training and perhaps break through what seem to be some plateaus. This would also provide more direction to Coach Sommer's WODs.

Coach Sommer's athletes train following these WODs, but the success of their training is measured in competition ... after which, they recharge, regroup and recover, and then begin again.

Triangle,

My only thoughts would be to take time off, and then plan a return with specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely goals.

I would also consider rotating a few things to back-burner status --- i.e. only perform them when the come up in WODs --- and then attack your favorite and weakest statics, or whatever is interesting to you recently. The plateau busters are simple (i.e. reducing intensity but increasing volume), it's just clearing the time to do it!

I attended Ido's workshops this weekend in Portland, at which he said many interesting (and hilarious) things, one of which was that, in your training, sometimes it's a good idea to hand off the keys of your programming to someone else for a while.

I will PM you the rest.

best of luck,

jason

jasonmstein said:

... retesting a static hold every 12 weeks is nothing like completing a Crossfit benchmark workout in which the variables remain absolutely constant, for example weight lifted, rep/set schemes, and measured time intervals ...

There are no designated benchmark workouts for time in the GB Program. This is not something that I find productive for Gymnastic Strength Training™. Rather progress should be measured by whether or not you have progressed onward to more difficult exercise variations or longer static durations within a particular FBE, FSP or ring strength series.

jasonmstein said:

... Coach Sommer's athletes train following these WODs, but the success of their training is measured in competition ... after which, they recharge, regroup and recover, and then begin again ...

Yes, but the intended analogy is not a completely accurate.

How my athletes' perform competitively in technical gymnastics is not necessarily a clear indication of either progress or lack of progress in their conditioning. They can be, and often are, two different animals. Increasing the capacity of the physical structure does indeed increase the potential for increased technical proficiency; but whether or not that potential for increased technical proficiency actually comes to fruititon is also dependent upon an entire range of other factors as well (e.g. talent, drive, focus, consistency, health status etc).

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Triangle, beyond the front/back lever, what other "bench marks" are you frustrated over?

Felipe said:

3) Concentrate your energies on 2 skills only, one primary and the latter optional

THIS, since you are doing bjj 2-3 a week.

Do basic statics for FL and BL on the other days. With warmup and stretching, that's like a 30 min workout.

Remember the 30 sec intervals between reps until a the 60-90 sec goal, very important. Dont do the next variation if you can not hold the previously for at least 15 confortable seconds.

Don't lose faith in the system. It works well, but only if you carefully follow every detail.

Other members progress must not frustrate you, it must make you even more focus on training and "burn you" to catch them.hs

I often catch myself asking how can be balandin so strong with so light frame, and how can have Gelder a European medal at 24 years of age. THAT DRIVES ME EVEN MORE FOR HARD TRAININGS!!!.

I can tell you I'm the least talented in my team, they (coaches) had laest expectations for me, BUT WE WERE TRAINING LIKE A MAD AND SURPASSED EVERY EXPECTATIONS!!! I know many others would have much better results with such determination and volume of training, but who cares.

coreathlete said:

Triangle, beyond the front/back lever, what other "bench marks" are you frustrated over?

Those are the main two, since they are gateways for a lot of other exercises. Bump those up and it will go a long way to bumpng me up on other things. Other than that, my HS pressing is very weak (I can't do wall HS press).

Felipe said:

Felipe said:

3) Concentrate your energies on 2 skills only, one primary and the latter optional

THIS, since you are doing bjj 2-3 a week.

Does anyone think that BJJ is interfering with my GB? I sometimes do them on the same day, but always with many hours spaced between.

I don't think it is interfering. This is actually what Robb Wolf does (or did) alongside gymnastics training.

jasonmstein said:

slizzardman said:

jasonmstein said:

That already exists. In the SSC we should be testing our maxes every 8-12 weeks and revising the work sets. In the WODs, the same WODs show up 2-3x per month, so you should be able to judge any progress by how easily you can replicate your previous performance. Sometimes I don't even get any more reps, but I notice that I am less drained or I have slightly better form than the last time. That's progress!

Slizzard,

While I understand the sentiment, retesting a static hold every 12 weeks is nothing like completing a Crossfit benchmark workout in which the variables remain absolutely constant, for example weight lifted, rep/set schemes, and measured time intervals.

For myself, feeling "less drained" or having "slightly better form" does not compare at all to knocking minutes off a workout or adding weight to the bar. "Slightly better form" and "less drained" also pale in comparison to targeting your training for a competitive event.

This is what I think would help provide some directional to Triangle's training and perhaps break through what seem to be some plateaus. This would also provide more direction to Coach Sommer's WODs.

Coach Sommer's athletes train following these WODs, but the success of their training is measured in competition ... after which, they recharge, regroup and recover, and then begin again.

To be fair, measuring endurance on a regular basis is much easier on the body than measuring maximal strength, which is what we are all building in the basic strength phase. It is also much easier to measure much of what Crossfit wants to measure than it is to measure the progress here in the GB program. Doing ANYTHING for time is primarily a measurement of work capacity, and after that muscular endurance. It doesn't tell you very much about maximal strength, and that's what triangle is trying to build, at least with the statics and all that.

But you're right, to many people it is more satisfying to knock 45s off of Cindy than it is to have much better form in their muscle ups. I think that's why there are very few people that are true crossfitters that also build high levels of strength, and why there are so many people injured. There are an awful lot of crossfitters who wreck those WODs and fail miserably at ours, because what we do requires FAR more strength and what they do requires FAR more endurance. I will, however, say that despite not practicing what they do I can walk into a crossfit gym and perform in the top 20% for pretty much any WOD. I won't be the top, since I don't train that way, but what we do here builds an excellent base, and to be fair I already have had (in the past) a very good endurance base. I don't think that everyone here would find they could do the same, but I am willing to bet that everyone who's followed the WODs for 1 year could perform above the average in just about any crossfit WOD, while the reverse would not be true. The programs are just too different for there to be equal crossover, and we do a lot more low-leverage work.

Triangle,

My only thoughts would be to take time off, and then plan a return with specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely goals.

I would also consider rotating a few things to back-burner status --- i.e. only perform them when the come up in WODs --- and then attack your favorite and weakest statics, or whatever is interesting to you recently. The plateau busters are simple (i.e. reducing intensity but increasing volume), it's just clearing the time to do it!

I attended Ido's workshops this weekend in Portland, at which he said many interesting (and hilarious) things, one of which was that, in your training, sometimes it's a good idea to hand off the keys of your programming to someone else for a while.

I will PM you the rest.

best of luck,

jason

Jason, I would LOVE to receive that PM as well, if you would be so kind!

I've definitely noticed that working low intensity versions of things that I'm weak at have resulted in fairly rapid improvement. I've started doing HeS presses for a few reps a day, relatively easy scapular work in the major planes/vectors, and a few basic lifts for a few reps, and I see improvement in a LOT of areas. I'm really not even focusing on anything all that much and everything is improving fairly well. It's pretty awesome, and a lot of that easy stuff can be done while my eggs are cooking or whatever. I wish Ido was coming closer to Atlanta and that I had money lol! I'm super broke

Slizzardman, thanks for the explanation of Crossfit vs. GB. I had wondered at it before and you clarified it for me.

I think it is good for people to explore their motivations for working out and the methods they use because as you point out sometimes the method employed won't get you to where you want to go.

trianglechoke7 said:

coreathlete said:

Triangle, beyond the front/back lever, what other "bench marks" are you frustrated over?

Those are the main two, since they are gateways for a lot of other exercises. Bump those up and it will go a long way to bumpng me up on other things. Other than that, my HS pressing is very weak (I can't do wall HS press).

Felipe said:

Felipe said:

3) Concentrate your energies on 2 skills only, one primary and the latter optional

THIS, since you are doing bjj 2-3 a week.

Does anyone think that BJJ is interfering with my GB? I sometimes do them on the same day, but always with many hours spaced between.

For the FL, just doing some of your pull ups with weight will help a lot. Between that, hollow hold and body lever practice you should see slow but steady progress.

I have personally seen much better progress in everything since I started doing the FSP warm up program I'm doing, which is based off of how Coach has his athletes trained and scaled for my current development. I do think that this is a fairly generalizable result to expect, since higher frequency training works better for most athletes as long as the intensity isn't too high.

I don't know how much your BJJ practice might be taking out of you since there's a big difference between skill work and rolling vs all that PLUS whatever calisthenics the class does. If you're doing a bunch of calisthenics then maybe it IS interfering some.

Still, it appears that you ARE making progress. It may not be ultra fast, but it's there and that's what matters. Keep in mind that Coach is primarily working with very light and fairly young trainees, and even then these things take time! We are past the most plastic part of our development and it's going to take us longer to reach the same goals than many of the athletes he trains. Keep in mind that even Dillon, who is quite the freak of strength for one thing, took some time to build certain abilities. Coach got him "really late" at the age of 15, and he really is a gifted young man, physically speaking. He's also 140 lbs or and not quite as tall as you, I don't think. It took him 3 years to get his biceps tendons conditioned to where he could do more advanced straight arm work without pain. I know, there's nothing in there about FL stuff. My main point is that even these guys who are right near the top of the natural physical ability curve take time to be able to do some stuff. Those of us who are further behind on that natural ability scale can still get there, but it takes a lot longer.

Jason is absolutely right that you may need to just focus a bit more on those two things if they are driving you absolutely mad! You can slightly dial back your intensity on the WODs so that you can do more low intensity work on your FL and BL directly and still have energy for a few weighted pull ups a few times a week. Eventually you'll be able to move your WOD intensity back up without affecting those things, but maybe right now that would be the best way for you do alter your training if you just can't get past that frustration.

As far as the HS pressing stuff, I'm finding that I'm having some great success by doing 1-2 short sets of pike or straddle HeS pressing every day. It's pretty easy when I'm only doing 3-5 reps for one set, and in the past week I've gone from pike being hard to pike being easy. I think the constant movement is the key factor here. My muscles may be strong but my nervous system doesn't know what the heck to do, and as it learns and adapts I get better! Now I just need to stretch all the time and I'll be ok lol!

I've started doing that too. When I'm waiting for my train I just do standing pike and standing straddle pike, and maybe some splits work for rest. I'll get anywhere from 5-15 minutes in a day on those just waiting at the train station, and I remember that this regular work is how I got into splits back in the day, so I'm fairly sure it will go a long way towards me building the flexibility for the presses. Still, it's going to be a while lol!

How are you feeling now that you've vented a bit?

EDIT: You may be interested to know that Dillon finds building endurance to be his biggest challenge. He hates endurance work with a passion because it is very hard for him. All of us, even the most gifted ones, have our challenges.

jl5555 said:

Slizzardman, thanks for the explanation of Crossfit vs. GB. I had wondered at it before and you clarified it for me.

I think it is good for people to explore their motivations for working out and the methods they use because as you point out sometimes the method employed won't get you to where you want to go.

No problem! They really do have such different focuses that it's very hard to make a direct comparison. The one thing I can say with absolute certainty, since I can reference physiology and exercise science books for it, is that building muscular strength takes a lot longer than building endurance, and that in the strength building process ALL muscle fibers that are trained get stronger. The endurance is partially mitochondrial density and partially increased sugar storage, and your mitochondrial density is altered extremely quickly. Sugar storage is a bit slower, since your muscles do have to literally make more room inside and that involves structural alterations, which simply take longer to complete.

Because of this, all that work the crossfitters do gives them excellent endurance and reasonable work capacity but they never concentrate on specific strength work and a lot of their WODs are about numbers and not form, so not only do they have less myofibrillar hypertrophy but many of them are not reinforcing the best motor patterns, and I think that has a bit to do with why strength gains, while certainly present, are not ideal, and why they have such a hard time with what we do here. What we do is neurologically much more complex AND requires a bit more brute strength, but on the whole what we do is not as endurance oriented. That's not to say that we don't build excellent endurance. Even when I'm underfed and thirsty I can outlast pretty much everyone in the grappling club, which was not the case when I was training a year ago, and even in sparring the only thing that gets tired is my left shoulder because I jab a lot and I'm not used to that again yet. My first sparring session was a good 7-8 minutes straight and I really wasn't even winded despite keeping a pretty fast pace. I absolutely credit the pace of the WODs with that, because I have not intentionally been working on endurance.

Starting sometime next year I'm going to start going alphabetically through the Crossfit WODS and posting my times and videos of the WODs, just to show that you don't have to do those workouts all the time to completely roffle-stomp them.

The adaptations produced by each training modality are very different, but it will take you less time to build endurance than strength no matter who you are or what your limits are. You will reach your endurance potential YEARS before you reach your strength potential. For whatever reason, that's how our bodies develop. I will make a guess and say that, on the whole, historical survival has always been more about endurance than strength, though both are very important, and so our bodies simply build endurance quickly as a survival trait. I don't think there's any way at all for me to try and tie that to science, so lets just take that as my personal opinion!

slizzardman said:

Doing ANYTHING for time is primarily a measurement of work capacity, and after that muscular endurance. It doesn't tell you very much about maximal strength...

Slizzard,

This is not true.

Performing sub-maximal loads for AMRAP 20 minutes, for example, will increase your max strength, as the Crossfit people will attest.

Outside of the Crossfit world, both Charles Staley's Escalating Density Training and, to a certain extent, Wendler's 5-3-1 program both demonstrate this.

For the record, I don't practice Crossfit, and I don't want to become a Crossfit apologist here.

However, you are mischaracterizing it as purely muscular endurance, when a look at the main page website falsifies this claim. Yesterday's workout was max split jerk, 7x1. I see some of the dudes put up more than 300#.

The other benefit to adding a clock to a workout is to increase intensity, which is often at cross-purposes with some skill-specific gymnastic work.

I think we all can appreciate the value of targeted, focused training, which is one of the benefits of competition.

So one way to circumvent burnout and reap the benefits of competition would be to simulate competition within the structure of the WODs themselves, perhaps by creating benchmarks.

Is this possible with gymnastic-style workouts without reducing movements to pull-ups, dips, and push-ups? I don't know.

best,

jason

No, not pure endurance, if I characterized it like that I was wrong. It is, however, heavily endurance oriented.

You will gain strength almost no matter what you do, but the degree of strength that could be gained is somewhat limited by the extreme volume and frequency. Crossfit is simply a very, very high workload.

I really DO think that one's performance on a timed AMRAP workout is not going to be a powerful indicator of their maximal strength, because there are a ton of powerlifting guys who can lift multiples of their bodyweight yet probably can't perform all that much better than a well-conditioned crossfitter on one of those workouts. I'm not saying crossfitters are weak, that's just silly.

As for the split jerk, first off I want to say that 300 lbs + is pretty awesome. I think the olympic lifting is one of the best parts of crossfit. I will say that form is a big, big part of the jerk, and there are people who are weaker than me in terms of pure force production who can jerk far more than I can simply because I have never jerked, ever. Regardless of all that, 300 lbs overhead is pretty awesome. I don't care who the people are, that's HOSS! I think it should be noted that there are always going to be some people who are moving big weights, but the majority do not. That's not meant as an insult, it is meant to point out the fact that most people in the cross fit program are not building enormous strength, they are building enormous work capacity and endurance. They are going to build strength, just not to a particularly high degree when compared to strength-oriented programs. I don't mean to sound like a hater, and I know I do.

I wonder, honestly and seriously, how many of those people putting up large weights are a bit more focused on the olympic lifting aspect of cross fit. It would be really cool if a number of them were just regular crossfitters. If they built that strength and technical proficiency through specialized work during or before crossfit, those results can't be attributed directly to the program, much like my early results on this program were not 100% due to the program here, but rather due to a combination of the strength I had built up until that point and my nervous system getting used to the movements. At THIS point, my progress here is almost entirely due to the program, as I had to literally start all over again, and there are things I can do now that I couldn't do back before I got hurt.

I'm definitely not saying crossfit is trash, just that they are absolutely much more focused on endurance and work capacity. Look at the the Crossfit games! I can't find an event listing for 2010 games, though the 2009 games were 8 events and only 1 max event, the Snatch. The only other one that came close was the deadlift, where you had to do 1 rep starting with 315 and add 10 lbs until you hit 505 (for men). To successfully complete that entire sequence is no joke. That takes a good bit of work capacity, as well as strength. 505 is a good deadlift in my book. It's almost my PR. The other 6 events were all endurance or AMRAP. Nothing wrong with that, but I have to use that to support my statement that they are not focused on strength. Does that make sense?

You've obviously been giving this benchmark concept some thought, what have you thought of so far? I'm not against the idea. I think it would be extremely hard to make valid benchmarks since what we do is so low leverage, and all that depends much more on individual physiological differences in muscle attachments and bone lengths than high leverage work. The differences are magnified.

I definitely think it would be fun to make up some kind of challenges, but every time I think about them I start thinking about WODs! They just seem more or less the same. I suppose we could clock Coach's athletes on THEIR WODs and compare our time to theirs. That's the closest thing I can think of that wouldn't be losing the intent of the program.

What do you think?

You're frustrated? I'm @#$%! frustrated that I can barely hold a decent straddle FL even though I can do full BL, straddle PL and almost iron cross... this just motivates me to work 10x harder on my pulling and FL.

I would have to say my improvement has shot up dramatically after starting the WODs. The programming there is nothing I could ever come up with on my own. So I'm sure if you had been doing a year of the WODs this would not be a conversation. I would say stick with the WODs for another good time frame and if you're still not happy then by all means move on.

I don't know if this matters to you but has things in your life become easier since starting GB? I know for myself this is most important. I don't care much about being able to do a full lay out back lever, but the strength that comes from trying to get there sure makes everyday tasks easier. I work in a warehouse and as a delivery driver and as such I am constantly moving heavy-ish loads in awfully awkward positions and working the de-leveraged stuff in GB has made me way stranger in this regard than my previous year of CrossFit did. It's way easier to pick up 100lbs if youre directly over it than it is to have to to extend your arms out and lean over something and pick up that same 100lbs. Suddenly the deadlift is not so relevant.

While it is subjective and I really have no way of measuring this, I would say my performance at everyday random tasks is improving at least at the same rate as I did with CrossFit, and moving awkward loads in awkward ways is way easier than it ever was before and didn't start improving until I started GB. Barbells travel in straight paths with high leverage. Generally real life loads do not. Anyways, like I said, I don't know if it matters to you but it sure has improved my quality of life. CrossFit always talks about "being prepared for the unknown and unknowable" and how that improves your quality of life and from what I've experienced GB is just as effective at this and in certain instances even more. Maybe this is something to consider when deciding whether to keep training GB?

slizzardman said:

No, not pure endurance, if I characterized it like that I was wrong. It is, however, heavily endurance oriented.

You will gain strength almost no matter what you do, but the degree of strength that could be gained is somewhat limited by the extreme volume and frequency. Crossfit is simply a very, very high workload.

I really DO think that one's performance on a timed AMRAP workout is not going to be a powerful indicator of their maximal strength, because there are a ton of powerlifting guys who can lift multiples of their bodyweight yet probably can't perform all that much better than a well-conditioned crossfitter on one of those workouts. I'm not saying crossfitters are weak, that's just silly.

As for the split jerk, first off I want to say that 300 lbs + is pretty awesome. I think the olympic lifting is one of the best parts of crossfit. I will say that form is a big, big part of the jerk, and there are people who are weaker than me in terms of pure force production who can jerk far more than I can simply because I have never jerked, ever. Regardless of all that, 300 lbs overhead is pretty awesome. I don't care who the people are, that's HOSS! I think it should be noted that there are always going to be some people who are moving big weights, but the majority do not. That's not meant as an insult, it is meant to point out the fact that most people in the cross fit program are not building enormous strength, they are building enormous work capacity and endurance. They are going to build strength, just not to a particularly high degree when compared to strength-oriented programs. I don't mean to sound like a hater, and I know I do.

I wonder, honestly and seriously, how many of those people putting up large weights are a bit more focused on the olympic lifting aspect of cross fit. It would be really cool if a number of them were just regular crossfitters. If they built that strength and technical proficiency through specialized work during or before crossfit, those results can't be attributed directly to the program, much like my early results on this program were not 100% due to the program here, but rather due to a combination of the strength I had built up until that point and my nervous system getting used to the movements. At THIS point, my progress here is almost entirely due to the program, as I had to literally start all over again, and there are things I can do now that I couldn't do back before I got hurt.

I'm definitely not saying crossfit is trash, just that they are absolutely much more focused on endurance and work capacity. Look at the the Crossfit games! I can't find an event listing for 2010 games, though the 2009 games were 8 events and only 1 max event, the Snatch. The only other one that came close was the deadlift, where you had to do 1 rep starting with 315 and add 10 lbs until you hit 505 (for men). To successfully complete that entire sequence is no joke. That takes a good bit of work capacity, as well as strength. 505 is a good deadlift in my book. It's almost my PR. The other 6 events were all endurance or AMRAP. Nothing wrong with that, but I have to use that to support my statement that they are not focused on strength. Does that make sense?

You've obviously been giving this benchmark concept some thought, what have you thought of so far? I'm not against the idea. I think it would be extremely hard to make valid benchmarks since what we do is so low leverage, and all that depends much more on individual physiological differences in muscle attachments and bone lengths than high leverage work. The differences are magnified.

I definitely think it would be fun to make up some kind of challenges, but every time I think about them I start thinking about WODs! They just seem more or less the same. I suppose we could clock Coach's athletes on THEIR WODs and compare our time to theirs. That's the closest thing I can think of that wouldn't be losing the intent of the program.

What do you think?

CrossFit from my experience is an excellent conditioning program(nothing more), done for 2 years, did SealFit for 4 months(thats another whole other thing haha).

Very well said on your part though; kudos to you.

I started about a year ago now with a lot of injuries and used a lot of these methods scaled down to re-strengthen my joints and after a year have only gradually managed to build up to 2negative pistols, 9 negative pull-ups and 10 negative push-ups. Before I started 2leg squats, easy rows and even push-ups on knees caused me joint pain when I started. If I'd made your progress I'd be absolutely f**king ecstatic! I used to feel a bit bitter at first about how well everyone else seems to improve on this site, but like other user have said, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the users on this site are amongst the strongest in the world. The only person you should want to beat is yourself.