by Dan Williams | Jun 19, 2012 | Blogs, CrossFit, Exercise, Improving Athletic Performance, Musculo-skeletal Rehabilitation, Programming
A pre- competition taper acts to allow the recovery of central (nervous system) and peripheral (muscular) fatigue. We examine the literature to explore the fine balance between over-tapering (and thus a drop in performance) and under-tapering (leading to over...
by Dan Williams | Jun 12, 2012 | Blogs, CrossFit, Exercise, Improving Athletic Performance, Nutrition
I don’t intend to raise any of my own thoughts or opinions in this post, but rather, to review a small sample of a large body of research into post exercise nutrition with the aim of increasing future performance. For those with access to journal articles...
by Dan Williams | May 25, 2012 | Blogs, CrossFit, Exercise, Improving Athletic Performance, Programming
In CrossFit, there’s generally a limit to the number of movements we see in competition. This is for good reason. There are certain movements that are just better at measuring/testing fitness than others. Prior to a competition, most semi-experienced athletes...
by Dan Williams | May 12, 2012 | Blogs, CrossFit, Exercise, Exercise Philosophies, Programming
1) ‘Functional Movements’: Movements that haven’t been invented. Movements that we would have seen people doing 10,000 years ago. Running, climbing, throwing, dragging, picking up, swimming, shouldering, digging, swinging etc. The exercise equivalent...
by Dan Williams | Apr 22, 2012 | Blogs, CrossFit, Exercise, Improving Athletic Performance, Psychology
The four minute mile is a sporting cliche. It acts as the definitive example of the cascade affect of an individual reaching a benchmark. Roger Bannister cracked the four minutes in 1954. The achievement of this benchmark opened the floodgates. It spawned a global...
by Dan Williams | Apr 9, 2012 | Blogs, CrossFit, Exercise, Health, Improving Athletic Performance, Musculo-skeletal Rehabilitation
If you run with a tight illio-tibial band, you’ll eventually end up with knee pain. If you do 1000 jumping pull-ups after a six month break from training, you’ll get rhabdomyloysis. If you go overhead without sufficient scapula stability, you’ll...
by Dan Williams | Apr 3, 2012 | Blogs, CrossFit, Exercise, Exercise Philosophies, Improving Athletic Performance, Programming
As CrossFitters, we pride ourselves on the universal scaleability of our game. For the most part – this is an infinitely useful thing. It opens up the movements and programming to the masses. We scale weights, reps, movements and time, and we do so to keep the...
by Dan Williams | Mar 14, 2012 | Blogs, Exercise, Exercise Philosophies, Improving Athletic Performance
Efficient, effective, and well programmed exercise modifies variables to ensure mastery across as many different eventualities as possible. We modify weights, time, size, temperature, reps and anything else we can. Yet, somewhat confusingly, we often train at the same...
by Dan Williams | Mar 14, 2012 | Blogs, Exercise, Exercise Philosophies, Improving Athletic Performance, Programming, Uncategorised
Gone are the days of long duration, slow pace running. Long slow runs have become repeated short fast runs. Conditioning has become strength and conditioning. Repetition has become innovation. Boredom has become variation. Sub par performance has become over...
by Dan Williams | Mar 12, 2012 | Blogs, CrossFit, Exercise, Exercise Philosophies, Improving Athletic Performance, Programming, Uncategorised
This isn’t intended to be a post describing the physiological definitions of overtraining. It’s not intended to tell you what you should be doing. It’s purpose is to tell you that you HAVE to overtrain to reach your physical ‘potential’....
