Consistency is king, Variety is Queen
CM2 Coaches Rob & James change things up with some of their students by exploring a new training environment. The shipping container usually stores the equipment, but today it became the equipment.
When it comes to developing your physicality, variety is important. We all have a friend who loves to go running and it’s tempting to label that person “super fit”. In reality she is just good at running. Don’t get me wrong you can reap tons of health and fitness benefits from such a habit. But if you want more than just a basic level of vitality, if you want to realize your physical potential, then you need to practice a wider variety of skills. The human body is the most complex and adaptable tool on the planet. When it comes to movement, we are more amazing than any sophisticated robot or any other animal for that matter. You might argue that chimpanzees are stronger than us and better at climbing, or that dolphins are much better swimmers. These animals are specially adapted to their environments, but human beings are generalists; we are capable of surviving in many different environments through our ability to learn a vast array of skills. Our physical practices should be an arena for exploring our learning potential. If you already have regular physical practice why not try something completely unrelated? Activities / sports are containers for movement; football and rugby contain a lot of the same movements; running, jumping, & kicking. Ice hockey and rock climbing in comparison do not contain a lot of the same movements; because there is very little overlap they stimulate the body and nervous system in different ways. This variety is the ultimate nourishment for the brain and body. Take a rugby player and teach him salsa dancing and you have a more capable human being and a better rugby player. The other way to get more variety of stimulus is to choose activities that contain lots of different movements. Most field-sports, CrossFit, & BJJ all contain more variety of movements compared to mono-structural activities like rowing, swimming or cycling.
Variety of movement at CM2
If you’re local to Chelmsford or Essex then check out our Class Timetable. We offer over 40 weekly coached classes in a wide array of disciplines including:
Olympic Lifting
Gymnastic Strength Training (aka Calisthenics)
Hand-balancing
CrossFit
And more…
This selection allows you to simultaneously develop multiple skills and ensures you are constantly training a variety of different movement patterns and modalities. This variety keeps your body in the best possible shape and ensures you are ready for whatever life throws at you.
In Olympic Lifting class the barbell is our tool and we use it to pull, squat, press, clean, jerk & snatch. (Saturday’s at 8am.)
In Handstand Class the floor and the wall are our tools and we use these to develop your inverted and proprioceptive awareness, balance, alignment, & strength & control of the handstand position. (Wednesday’s at 18:05)
In Gymnastic Strength Class the tools include gymnastics rings, parallettes, and pull-up bars. Here you are pulling and pressing your own body weight using both bent-arm and straight-arm varieties. We also develop midline stability & compression strength (aka core), and lower body strength & mobility during these classes. Think L-sit holds and single leg squats. Sounds hard? Anyone can do it; we have scaled versions off ALL the movements to suit your level. (Tuesday’s at 18:05 & 19:10)
Our CrossFit Classes include movements from all of the disciplines above. We use barbells, kettlebells, dumbbells, medicine balls, plyometric boxes, gymnastics rings, rowing machines, ski ergs, assault bikes, stationary bikes, sandbag, sleds & more. In addition to the movement patterns we’ve already mentioned, the CrossFit Classes include kipping, throwing, jumping, running, rowing & cycling. (Multiple classes each day - see timetable link above)
What Can CM2 Athletes do to develop a more complete physical practice?
Firstly and most obviously come to as many of the speciality classes as possible. The CrossFit classes do a great job of developing you across the board, but dedicating an hour each week to specific disciplines really helps to drive progress. This can often mean stepping out of your comfort zone, but guess what, that’s where the true progress lies.
If you have already nailed the habit of coming to 4-5 classes per week but want to add a new challenge or more variety to your physical practice try learning something completely different like juggling, playing a musical instrument, or playing a sport that requires you to react quickly to your teammates or opponents. Juggling, slack-lining, or play guitar are great options for a cross fitter because they are not intense in the same way CrossFit is intense; they may require intense focus, but they are comparatively less taxing on the energy & musculoskeletal systems. If you decide to take on a sport like tennis, BJJ, or netball then keep in mind that, because these options are also very taxing on the body and energy systems, overall training volume needs to be considered.
