Was listening to an elite thrower, strength & conditioning coach and author Dan John talk about the concept of the box and bowl...
Where you hips are a bowl and your thorax is a box that sits on top of the bowl... like it is resting on the edges. When the bowl tilts in any direction, the box will slide off of the bowl.
His lecture was interesting... and for those of us who geek out on this stuff, it is fun to create the imagery and analogies! After all, we are all just a system of levers, hinges and pulleys. The science of physiology sort of helps make all of the simple physics make sense... especially when you know how the different systems work, how they recover and when they will no longer offer up a rate of return on your investment of volume and/or intensity.
The simplicity of the box and bowl is also very complex... it makes you think. How often do you stand leaning to one side? When you do that, your box is sliding off your bowl... and that's when things get complex... there is much stuff going on to compensate for that! And years of your box not sitting firmly atop your bowl leads to some of the nagging (dare I say) "injuries" that are experience in the world of CrossFit... where we ask our bodies to hinge, push, pull and squat with heavy loads at high velocity for many repetitions.
All of the due diligence is on the coach who is developing those scenarios. We need to know how shit works, and how to relay that information in 10 different ways to 100 different people who have 200 different goals. That can seem to be a cumbersome task, but it's a task so important that it cannot be taken lightly, or just simply glanced over!
In 2008, I sat in a huge training facility in Virginia Beach... enamored by the presence of Pat Sherwood, Adrian Bozman and Andy Stumpf... thinking to myself that what they were preaching was the holy grail of fitness as I knew it. Much of what they were teaching rings true and has value today, but not without the due diligence of learning the anatomy... understanding physiology... studying energy systems... revisiting the concept of linear progressions and periodization... studying nutrition... learning about life coaching and behavior modification... understanding how to talk to people... all of these things are what make great coaches stand out, and differentiate themselves from "the rest".
One takeaway from my 2008 experience was the "any asshole" approach to programming. A question was raised about putting a workout together... and how to piece together a WOD with aspects of gymnastics, weightlifting and something mono-structural ("cardio"), like rowing or running. That lecture started off with a sample WOD of about 8-10 different stuff thrown together... the slide came up and they said "take a look at this... any asshole can throw a bunch of stuff in a WOD and make it hard... that's the easy part... but you can you explain why the movements are in the order they are in... what the stimulus is supposed to be, and make it safe for 20 different people?"
...all of the due diligence
All of the due diligence in learning & failing, learning & failing... then studying to learn more, failing again... and learning from those failures... all of that work is what I call PASSION.
The great Fitness Coaches put themselves out there... are always learning, and studying from the daily grind in the gym, and from behind the laptop or the inside of a book. They are not afraid to fail, but will never put their experiments in the hands of those who are not ready or prepared to handle the work.
Having true, sincere passion for your work makes all of the due diligence, well, automatic! It's what you do... because you love it, and it's part of who you are.
Any asshole can make you puke with some burpees and a barbell... and possibly an Assault Bike... it's not hard to do that guys!! But not any asshole will do all of the due diligence to make sure to don't puke... and if you do, will have the knowledge and experience to explain why!
RedShed...
all of the due diligence...
...always
shed 4 life
Well said, Coach!
Keep up the awesomeness!
Posted by: J9 | 09/07/2016 at 08:27 PM
and this is why no other gym will do. every time I walk in the door I know that there are decades of knowledge and loads of meaning behind the workouts each week. Shed always!
Posted by: chiara | 09/10/2016 at 11:56 AM
Lovely
Posted by: Hawi Moore | 05/22/2017 at 08:10 AM
informative.
Posted by: maryjane | 06/05/2017 at 05:13 AM
Thank you so much. This is perfect the ideas are coherent and clear. I am sure I'll contact you soon for another essay.
Posted by: Denny | 07/07/2017 at 07:27 AM
Interesting
Posted by: Martin Buuri Kaburia | 09/13/2017 at 09:33 AM