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example, froning, games, practice in Motivation
example, froning, games, practice in Motivation Oh Shit Movements
by, Emma | Monday, February 3, 2014 at 2:00PM
Emma | Monday, February 3, 2014 at 2:00PM
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Setting the scene: it's 2010 and Willow Smith's "Whip My Hair" is blasting across the nation. The CrossFit games are a mere 3 years from conception at that random ranch. Young blood Rich Froning, a college baseball athlete, has just burst onto the scene and taken the small community by storm. It seems like nothing can stop him from taking the top prize as the final event starts.
And then that something does happen.
The final event for men and women had consecutive rope climbs in it. The crowd watches as Froning begins his rope climbs. Not too efficient but it looks like he's strong enough to climb it all arms (although I'm sure everyone wondered why he would). Then it sinks in...Froning doesn't know how to rope climb. He has absolutley no technique. His final attempt ends in him plummeting to the ground before he reaches the top, falling along with his hopes of a first place finish. Instead, Graham Holmberg, a daywalker from Ohio, bypasses Froning and takes first.
In CrossFit, it is literally impossible to be good at every single exercise. There is nothing more humbling than the programming put out by the wonderful people at Crossfit.com. How many of you have heard a workout and immediaitely gone in your head (or out loud)..oh shit. It's easy to ignore those oh shit moments and just hope that double unders or push ups never come up in workouts again. Unfortunately, that's when they start appearing 3 times a week.
Even though I don't advocate Games athletes as role models for movement, I do admire Froning for what he did next. He came back in 2011, proudly displaying this technique:
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The rest is history. Three-peat Games Champion. So now the big question...what's your rope climb? That beautiful movement that makes you go..oh shit. Post them to the comments, and make that your movement that you take extra time to practice beore/after the workouts, or if you finish the warm up early. Maybe one day you'll look forward to having your oh shit movement in the workout.
Reader Comments (9)
I have a lot of these oh shit movements, but I would say my biggest one is overhead squats
My biggest ones are either split jerks and dips.
Definitely thrusters.
mines definitely sumo deadlift high pulls
Abmat situps have always been my arch nemesis (as Coach Kim would put it). When I would work out with Brian, any kind of Overhead press seemed to fatigue me more than him. Nowadays, anything relating to exercise more than 3 or 4 reps would be an Oh Shit movement. I'm out of it!
In basketball, my spot-up three ball was never on point consistently. I could never get it in rhythm and that always bothered me. For football, it was throwing out patterns to my right. I didn't always step into it and the ball would sail.
Obviously cleans of all types are my oh shit movements. Though no weight squats are up there too.. And wall balls go along with that.
good article...I think you can take this further (kinda like chris did) and relate it to your sport. Sometimes it is the basic skills that will provide the most benefit, but athletes tend to dismiss stuff life free throws, opposite hand lay-ups, route running or even knowing the route tree correctly, warm-ups, starts out of blocks, etc...Crossfit for instance throws a lot at you and people get caught up in putting the horse before the cart often instead of focusing on basics first. So I might suggest to have a big steaming Oh shit movement like the snatch or muscle ups and to have a small stepped in goose shit movement like the pull-up, air squat or push-up to focus on also.
Just my 2 cents...
Anything with a lot of running, I literally say, awwww shit! or with push ups.
There's so many movements I could list... uh pushups, dips, clean and jerks, snatches, basically anything overhead, uh burpees, running, and rope climbs......... I need special help.. but I really like this post Emma! It reminds me that I'm not the only one who struggles with things and that we all have our strengths and weaknesses