Proper Form

[mhlawther]

Someone left the book "Weightraining for Dummies" in our work out area and I was thumbing through it one day and came across the section on squats. It says that you should never go down further than parallel and you should come back up when you feel you body start to lean forward. First off, if I came up when it felt like I'm starting to lean forward, I wouldn't hardly go down at all. Secondly, every coach I've ever had for any sport in my entire life considered going down to parallel as a minimum and on all the cross-fit videos allot of the guys are going down well beyond parallel. Just wondering what your thoughts are on this.

Also, when I'm doing lifts during the WODs should I try to scale back the weight to get good form or should I keep the wight and try to improve my form overtime? I think I read somewhere that in cross-fit, because of the intensity, having your form about 90% correct is acceptable, but how do I know where the balance is? Again, your thoughts are appreciated.

[scskowron]

Yeah nothing wrong with having your squat go down below parallel.

Greg Glassman (CF Coach) has said that if your form isn't breaking down then you're not keeping the intensity high enough. Which exercises are you having trouble with form on? For many of these workouts, work capacity is the primary goal, and you need to break down your form a little bit to maintain high work capacity. The "Grace" for example requires 30 clean and jerks at 135#. It doesn't really matter whether or not your clean has good form on this workout, because the point is to just get the bar over your head. But for things like pullups, pushups, etc, if your form is breaking down then you're not doing the full work required by the exercise, and thus your work capacity decreases.

In other words, lifting 135# over your head is the same amount of work no matter how it's done, good form or not. A pullup with bad form is not the same work because you don't go the full distance, and work = force * distance.

[mhlawther]

Thanks for the response. Mostly, I am a little unsure of my olympic/power-lift type stuff. When we do cleans and jerks I know my form isn't perfect, same with overhead squat. Basically I was unsure of weather I should be lightening my load in order to get good form or, if I should keep the load and as I get better at the exercise my form would improve as well. What you said about work = force * distance makes sense and I will definitely be considering that in the future.

[sam7596]

If you can perform the workout with perfect form

you are doing it wrong and you're intensity is not high enough

If you can perform the workout with relatively good form, but it's starts to break

THEN you are getting at the intensity level you need to be at

Grace for example: C & J 135, 30 reps, If you are going to for sub 3 time, your form is eventually going to break from being picture perfect

Remember, if you're doing Cindy and you only get 20 rounds because you are making your chest touch the deck on every pushup, and touching the medicine ball EVERY rep, then you might need to amp up the intensity and just break parallel on the pushups and squats

Then you might be the >25 round cindy club