Competition Team Preparing Skills

Honing Skills
Your members need strength and speed to make it on the leaderboard at competitions – this is well known. They also need a wide array of competition skills, something that is less well known. As time goes on, the skills required to be competitive at events is increasing. They will get stuck at the first rep of an AMRAP WOD if they can’t get a muscle up. Rich Froning Jr lost to Graham Holmberg in the 2010 CrossFit Games partially because of his lack of rope climbing skills – an area he clearly addressed before the 2011 and 2012 games that he dominated.

It is not just muscle ups and rope climbs befuddling athletes now a days, however. Paralette hand stand pushups, L-sits, double unders, chest to bar pullups, sled pulls, tire flips, precision hammering – even handstand walks – are becoming necessary skills to acquire to be a solid competitor.

Many skills can be broken down into a contiuum of increasing difficulty, allowing your members to scale properly while actively achieving their goals. We’re going to break some of them down for you in this issue, so you can start helping your members check movements off their wish list!

Make sure to check out our custom journals – loaded with checklists, nutritional information and previous Games scores so you can track your progress!

Handstand Pushup
Beast Skills

1. Knee pushups
2. Plank pushups
3. Pike pushups (change the height of your feet to increase difficulty)
4. Tiger pushups
5. Handstand pushups
6. Parallette or ring handstand pushups
7. Freestanding handstand pushups
8. Freestanding parallette handstand pushups

Double Unders
Buddy Lee Video

1. Singles (100 jumps no misses)
2. 5 singles followed by a double under attempt
3. Double under attempts
4. Single-Double-Single-Double….
5. Double unders
6. Triple under attempts
7. Triple unders
8. Weighted double unders

Muscle Ups
Jeff Tucker

1. Banded pullups + banded ring dips
2. Kipping pullups + banded ring dips (thin bands)
3. Dead hand pullups + unbanded ring dips
4. Banded muscle ups
5. Jumping muscle ups
6. Muscle up
7. Kipping muscle ups
8. Strict muscle ups
9. Weighted muscle ups

L-sits
Youtube video Demonstration

1. Bent leg hold
2. Uneven L-sit (one leg in, one leg out)
3. Straight leg hold (L-sit)
4. Piked hold (V-sit)
5. N hold (bent leg hold from the floor instead of on parallettes)
6. Uneven N hold (from the ground)
7. L Hold (from the ground)
8. V hold (piked position from the ground)

Chest to bar pullups
Gymnsatics WOD

1. Ring pullups
2. Banded pullups
3. Kipping pullups
4. Deadhand pullups
5. Weighted pullups
6. Ring pullups
7. Weighted ring pullups
8. Chest to Bar pullups
9. Weighted chest to bar pullups

Rope climbs
Gymnastics WOD

1. Rope climb from squatting position on floor
2. Rope climb from pike position on floor
3. Rope climb with rope wrapped around leg for extra hold
4. Regular rope climb
5. Rope climb in pike position
6. Rope climb in V position
7. Rope climb without feet
8. Weighted rope climb

Next up, gaining competition level strength!