We hear a lot of comments within our gym (either directly or indirectly) about the volume of strength work we do so I thought I might list some things to consider before you make a (possibly ill informed) decision on how much is too much.
1. The volume, variety and frequency of exercises we perform in our gym is purely dictated by average cross section of abilities within our membership. The large majority of our members have not performed any useful strength work prior to CrossFit yet most have done at least some cardio. If we start to become inundated with new members that are already strong you can expect to see a different bias – I wouldn’t hold my breath.
2. It’s easy to lump anything that involves a barbell or dumbbell as simply strength work. This is a simplistic view point. For the large majority of our membership the Olympic lifting we program is far more focused on developing flexibility/mobility, coordination and speed. It’s not until you have developed these skills to a sufficient level that you could consider Olympic lifting as strength work – until that point, consider it Yoga with a barbell.
3. The person who wants to be fit (as defined by CrossFit) should approach their training with an open mind and be happy to perform any activity that will cause a positive outcome towards their overall fitness. This requires you to trust in our knowledge of training and agree with CrossFit’s definition of fitness. If you don’t, then you are probably in the wrong place.
3. Strength development takes a long time and requires patience, consistency, the ability to retain information. It’s easy to discount (either consciously or subconsciously) the importance of something that takes a lot effort and somehow I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that the thing that requires the most work to achieve is often seen as the least important.
4. Strong people never have an issue with the frequency of strength training.
5. Results speak for themselves – the strongest people in our gym are at the top of the results on our white board on a daily basis regardless of whether it’s a cardio or strength focus.
We are always available to discuss the facts on our training approach and hope that you would give us the chance to do this before you make your own judgement on what’s important or not in the development of your fitness.
