Deadlift Burpee WOD From CF Games 2008
5 Rounds For Time:
5 Deadlifts 275/185
10 Burpees
You may not drop deadlifts on this WOD. You must keep your hands on the bar until it is back on the ground. If you drop a dead, it must be repeated. On the burpees the ear must be showing in front of the arms when you clap overhead.
Many of you were surprised to check the blog yesterday, or walk into the gym, and see the benches set up and ready to go. We have you so brain washed (this is good) that you think everything from traditional fitness is bad (this is not so good.)
The real question here is whether or not the bench press is a functional movement. Well by my understanding of functional, it meets the main requirement of moving a large load over along distance quickly. Most all of the men were able to bench press you own body weight, or close to it yesterday, and the women were hitting around 3/4 BW. Pretty damn good for non-experienced benchers. You moved your body weight the full length of your arms with multiple joints moving at once in a couple seconds. So we have good power output, especially if we drop the weight down to a sub-maximal amount and do reps for time.
Where the functional aspect of the bench press might break down is the fact that it really doesn't occur in nature. You could probably try and create a real life version of the bench press, like laying under a car on your back and trying to lift it, but let's face it, that's not really going to happen is it? So since supine presses don't really occur in real life, the conversation shifts to transferability. In other words can bench pressing improve capacity in more real world type movements, and will it help us become better CrossFitters?
The reason Travis and I have decided to bring the bench press into our program, is that we believe it will improve our capacities in other more real life type functional movements. Trav and I both bench pressed religiously from the time we were 12 years old until we started CrossFit 3 and half years ago. We were both able to step right into CrossFit and perform the hardest of CF gymnastic movements without ever having tried them. Handstand push ups, ring dips, and muscle ups to name a few. Why were we able to do things that seem almost impossible to so many others. The answer lies in upper body strength and muscular development. The bench press in considered by many to be the mother of upper body strength exercises. So if we can use the bench to improve your gymnastic capacities and your overhead strength, then it's a no-brainer. Let's do it.
Travis has wanted to bring benching in since we opened. I have been resistant partially because of the space they take up, and partially because my biggest bench press ever at 345# occured after a month of leaving behind everything I knew in the gym and dedicating myself to the .com program. My previous max on the bench was 315#, and I added 30# to that without touching a bench for a month. I did it by doing CrossFit. The difference I had to realize between my experience and yours is that I had 14 years of bench pressing experience to build on. CrossFit just added to my capacities in ways that I had been lacking.
I was super impressed by how much you all were able to lift yesterday with no experience. BW is a good lift, especially for females. This tells us that what we have been doing has made you all quite strong, and that the strength we have built doing CrossFit is transferable to a unique challenge… once again this shit works. But you are still all relatively weak compared to what is possible. Body weight is good, but Travis can do about 85# over his body weight, and I can do about 130# over my body weight. This staggering difference between us and you guys may be the difference between you all not being able to do a handstand push up, and us being able to do sets of 30. Brooke had the best female lift yesterday at 140# and she just happens to be the only female in our gym who can do multiple legit handstand push ups. She also has past experience with the exercise.
So think of this bench press thing as an educated experiment of sorts. We want to see if bringing in this traditional exercise, that I would argue IS a functional movement, will improve all of you in other capacities. We believe that it will, and we believe that by adding this to the program we are giving you all another tool that will be useful in making you all stronger athletes. Only time will tell, but if we didn't know this is gonna work, we wouldn't waste your time, so bench on brothers and sisters. Just please don't go walking around with air lats asking people, "How much do you bench?"
