CrossFit SciCoh
6 weeks to healthier shoulders!
Overview
We spent the past 5 weeks asking a lot from our bodies throughout the CrossFit Open. It’s time to settle in and give ourselves some much needed recovery time. The next 6 weeks will be focused on shoulder health. In order to do so, we will be shifting the daily programming and releasing more content on our website and Facebook page.
3 Benefits for You
- Reduce/eliminate any existing shoulder pain
- Prevent/reduce chances of any future shoulder issues
- Make you better at all gymnastics and overhead movements.
Our 6 Week Goals
- Reduce the amount of stress put on your shoulders and elbows.
- Increase strength and stability of the muscles in the shoulder girdle.
- Increase range of motion of the shoulder.
- Increase ability to maintain external rotation of the shoulder throughout various exercises.
Our Methods
We will be adding more exercises and mobility drills to our warm-ups and pre-WOD exercises that will focus on the above goals. We have also developed a new protocol to help assure that the exercises that produce the most amount of stress on your shoulders and elbows are being progressed properly. This could mean that certain exercises that you have grown accustomed to performing during WODs, you will no longer be doing in order to follow the proper protocol.
For example, if a scheduled WOD calls for pull-ups, but you have not passed our shoulder health tests, then you will be working on your strength, stability, or mobility during the WOD instead of attempting any kipping pull-up variations. You can see a breakdown of this below and we will cover it in classes this week.
This is all extremely important to injury prevention. We strongly encourage you to take note of any aches or pains that have started over the past few weeks and make sure we are actively addressing them before they become an ongoing problem. Avoidance and pushing through pain cannot be the way we deal with these minor aches.
Pull-up Milestones
1. Shoulder Health Tests
We will be administering the following tests during the first week of our shoulder recovery program, beginning Monday, November 18th. You must pass all 3 of these tests in order to move on to the next milestone.
- Strength: Strict Pull-up, perform at least 3 Strict Pull-ups.
- Stability: Overhead Dumbell Hold, while maintaining straight midline, shoulder must stay in external rotation with elbow straight for 30 seconds (50M/30F).
- Mobility: Shoulder Rotation Test, make a fist with both hands and reach them behind your back (one high and one low) trying to reach them together. In order to pass, fists must be within one hand length from each other on both sides.
2. Learn to Kip
Continue to loosen shoulders, practice swing timing, hollow rocks, and supermans.
3. Kipping Pull-ups
Assure correct swing, perfect timing of “hip pop”, finish with strong pull (starting with singles). Next work on stronger kip & finish with pull and practice body control to set yourself up for your next rep. Continue to work singles and begin to work on C2B singles as well by adding an even more aggressive “hip pop”.
4. Unbroken Kipping Pull-ups
When you are confident in your singles and your body control, begin to practice stringing together multiple reps.
Focused Recovery
It is our hope that over the next 6 weeks we can help you recover from the grind of the open and feel better both physically and mentally. We still want to challenge you to push your limits, but with extra focus on making you feel great while doing it. Make sure you check in with our Facebook community page over the next 6 weeks for some great videos and articles on how to take full advantage of these next 6 weeks.
