Kelly Frankson DOT COM

People have often asked me why Crossfit is so expensive and why you can’t just do it on your own, and my response has typically been that it the price it is because people are willing to pay for it (Crossfit Vancouver has almost 300 members right now) and its not that you can’t do it on your own, its that most people won’t/don’t do it on their own at the level of intesnity required to produce the results.  But after reading through the Crossfit.com Forums, I have realized the huge advantage Crossfit Vancouver clients have-You have experienced trainers watching your every move and adjusting your technique flaws before they become nasty ingrained habbits.  The following is one of many posts on .com about people trying to copy the technique that they have seen others use without realizing that it is not proper technique for them:

“I’m 5′10″ tall, and I have a 30″ inseam, so my legs are very short for my body. When I do back squats, it’s very difficult for me to avoid butt wink even with just 135 lbs. When I do front squats, by contrast, I can do 345×3 with perfect form. Since it’s not safe for me to back squat, I only front squat heavy. I’ve been trying to back squat correctly for almost a year, but I’ve never been successful. I stretch regularly, so I don’t think it’s a flexibility issue. Could it have something to do with my freakishly long torso?”

There were several responses blamming flexibility-which tends to be the static “text book” excuse.  However, being a personal trainer at Crossfit Vancouver has exposed me to a wide variety of people with a wide variety of body shapes and one of the first things that you learn at the certifications is that not everyones squat will look the same-however the majority doing crossfit online is trying to repolicate the SAME squat.  This was my sugestion:

“Length of the torso definitely does have something to do with it because of the position it puts the bar in. If you have ever gone to a Riptoe cert or read his book you will you will have it drilled into your head that the bar should stay centered over the midline of your feet-for regular proportioned people this means there needs to be a slight forward lean in your torso to move the bar from behind your feet to the center. However, when long torsoed people try to replicate the same position (have the same amount of forward lean) they actually bring the bar in front of their feet throwing off their center of gravity and eliminating the structural alignment needed to efficiently come up out of the whole.

Rather than copying the typical images of people doing back squats, try doing them with your Torso a little more upright and make sure that bar is never passing in front of your feet. If you are comparing back angles of a short and long torsoed person doing back squats they should be different, so don’t try to be like everyone else, find the alignment that works for your body!”

…and the result:

“Kelly, your advice might help me a lot! At home tonight, I could get really good form squatting with a broomstick on my back while keeping my torso almost vertical. Stupidly, I always thought I should lean forward more on back squats because that’s what almost everyone else does. After making sure that my torso was closer to vertical, I did 225×5x10 tonight with almost perfect form. My workout partner watched closely and said I only lapsed on a couple of reps. I don’t know what my form will be like with heavier weights, but I’m really happy about this progress. I was always told that the perfect bottom position of a back squat is similar to the stretch where you squat down, put your hands together, and spread your knees apart with your elbows while keeping your back arched. For someone with a long torso, that position puts the bar over the toes instead of the middle of the foot. Thanks everyone for the help.”

So come in, get trained, then you can go off and do it on your own!