CrossFit Athletic Group

Remember that the ultimate goal for our training is not just to have a perfect push-up, or an immaculate squat, or a PR on "Helen." The goal is for you to improve your movement and be able to transfer that movement to the real world. We hope that the positions you practice in a controlled workout environment will eventually become your default positions when you're free to move however you need to. One of the ways we can test to see if your movement ability is transferring is to put you in this scenario and see what happens. In other words, we let you play.

What positions do you see Sabal, Jennifer, Emma, and Erika adopting as they play dodgeball? Notice what happens to Erika's back leg and her arm as she prepares to throw, and compare that to Jennifer's positions. They look very different, even though when we train a lunge position or a press, we know their positions will look almost identical. Part of the reason for these deviations is freestyle, or the ability to adapt movement patterns you've learned formally to a new experience. But another part of the deviations is that in this high-speed environment, movement faults become more and more noticeable. 

If you think about the stable positions the shoulder can adopt, you see that Jennifer has both of her shoulders back in a pretty good position whereas Erika is internally rotated in her non-throwing shoulder and her other elbow is pointed way out. What other things can you see? If you can see the connection between the things you practice in the gym and the things you have to do in your sport, it will help you train smarter and become a more technically sound athlete. This will directly improve your performance, as we see when Jennifer dominates the dodgeball court over her older sisters.