CrosFit_The Russian.s Gymnastic Warm-Up.pdf

JOURNAL ARTICLES

The Russian’s Gymnastics Warm-Up

Many CrossFitters struggle with gymnastics movements, so Leo Soubbotine has

developed a warm-up program designed to put you on the path to muscle-ups,

handstand push-ups and beyond.

Leo Soubbotine

Tuck planche—This movement is the same as the advanced frog stand, but now the knees are not supported by the elbows.

Do not touch the arms with the knees. This is dramatically harder than the advanced frog stand.

The need for a different warm-up arose at CrossFit Evolution about a year ago. Until then, the default daily

drill was 3x10 of the CrossFit Warm-Up, skill practice/movement preparation and then the WOD.

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Gymnastics ... (continued)

The CrossFit Warm-Up is a great tool for strength devel-

opment and greasing the groove on most of the key

bodyweight movements: dips, pull-ups, GHD sit-ups

and overhead squats. The only con is that for a lot of

people—myself included—it’s quite boring to do the

same routine over and over ﬁve or six days a week till

death do us part.

With that, the ﬁrst variation of our CrossFit Evolution

warm-up arose . We used it for about half a year, and

it was fun. It also worked, but it lacked the progression

and periodization needed to elicit the strength and

performance gains the CrossFit Warm-Up is capable of

producing.

Build Competency—and Strength

The idea of a gymnastics warm-up has been stuck

in my head for a long time. And because I’m a “born

gymnast”—6’4” and over 200 lb.—and in love with all

things gymnastics, the natural way was to ﬁgure out the

details, test the program on myself and then apply it in

the gym to see if it could work.

Great help in understanding and systemization of

knowledge was provided by Coach Christopher

Sommer’s Building the Gymnastic Body book and all the

original CrossFit Journal articles by Coach Glassman and

Roger Harrell. If you haven’t gone into back catalog of

CrossFit.com and haven’t seen pics of levers, “elevators”

and so on, look back into the 2003-05 archives. It’s

nostalgic to see Annie Sakamoto getting her ﬁrst

muscle-up and Greg Amundson crushing WODs, plus

you’ll learn a lot.

To structure a gymnastics warm-up, the essential part

was to keep the challenging pieces that will improve us

as CrossFitters yet would not need an hour to be intro-

duced to each athlete. We need to keep it simple because

it’s still a warm-up and not a real gymnastics training

regimen. Strength work went in, and the majority of the

dynamic work went out.

Based on my observations and the general strengths,

weaknesses and goals of my athletes, more emphasis

was put onto upper-body work and less on the lower

body. Generally, CrossFit WODs are quite lower-body

oriented, and most beginners (especially ladies) desper-

ately lack the ability to perform pull-ups and dips, while

more advanced guys aspire to perform dead-hang

muscle-ups, levers, free-standing handstand push-ups

and planches.

Tuck L-hang—Hang on the bar with your knees level with your

hips and your heels directly under your knees.

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Gymnastics ... (continued)

To keep us out of trouble with training ADD and OCD,

variety is minimized for everyone except the advanced

folks capable of HSPU, dead-hang muscle-ups and

pistols. Getting to such a level requires dedication,

patience and self-control, so for them there will be

choices of exercises that will rotate depending on each

athlete’s aspirations.

Another reason for the warm-up is the fact that devel-

opment in gymnastics comes from constant and

consistent practice. Take a handstand: past a certain

competency it does not need to be coached all the

time, but to develop it to the point of being able to walk

50-100 feet and hold it strict and hollow for any amount

of time, the athlete has to inevitably spend a lot of time

on his or her hands. This is similar to the way the snatch

is better developed by daily practice of the Burgener

Warm-Up and not by a once-a-month one-hour snatch

extravaganza.

Let me emphasize that this is not the end-all, be-all

warm-up but rather a template containing some food

for thought. Modify it based on your needs, space,

equipment and athletic or coaching skills.

Athletes are separated into four levels, each with its

own set of exercises and progressions geared toward

achievement of more and more challenging goals. Most

goals, however, are written with CrossFit performance

in mind, so do not mistake this as a program of pure

gymnastics training.

The purpose of the warm-up is to develop basic

body-weight competency for beginner athletes

while improving ﬂexibility and strength. For the more

advanced athletes, the purpose is to keep them focused

and excited while they master the simpler gymnastics

movements and start delving into the realm of more

advanced gymnastics strength.

Tripod—Put your hands down by the mat (head slightly in front of the hands) and get the knees on the elbows.

Press hands into the ground to prevent all load being held by the head and neck.

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Gymnastics ... (continued)

The warm-up consists of Day 1 and Day 2 programming

for each level, to be alternated each training day.

Someone training twice a week might do Day 1 on

Tuesday and Day 2 on Thursday, while someone training

four times a week might alternate Day 1 and 2 from

Monday to Thursday. If an athlete ends the week on Day

1, the next rotation should start with Day 2.

Each day’s programming will be based on exercises

appropriate to the level of athlete and will follow this

pattern:

Day 1: upper-body pressing (A) and lower-body (B).

Day 2: upper-body pulling (A) and core/low back (B).

Each day will have a Part A and a Part B. A is to be done

ﬁrst, and both parts are done in a super-set fashion with

small breaks of 20-30 seconds in between exercises.

The difﬁculty of the exercises should be sufﬁcient to

elicit progress yet light enough to allow movement from

one to another in a timely fashion. The entire warm-up

should last 15-20 minutes—an extremely important

time frame for an afﬁliate).

Each athlete will have a level based on performance.

Athletes of any level must be able to complete all

requirements of the levels below.

Levels and Requirements

Basic

No requirements. Everyone can start here.

Intermediate Minus

3 dead-hang pull-ups, handstand (against a wall),

3 ring dips, overhead squat x 15 reps (45/33 lb. for

men and women, respectively).

Intermediate

1 muscle-up (kipping, partial ROM), partial HSPU

(against a wall).

Advanced

1 muscle-up (dead-hang, full ROM), HSPU (full

ROM, against a wall), pistol.

Butterﬂy kip—Watch the Butterﬂy Kip Tutorial on YouTube

for instructions.

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Gymnastics ... (continued)

Overhead squat—Use PVC or training/women’s/men’s bar.

Push your knees out the entire time during descent and ascent. Lock the elbows hard.

Athletes can only advance to the next level when all

the requirements are completed. If there’s only one

requirement left to allow movement to the next level,

it’s that much more of a reason to emphasize it and

complete it. Once there’s only one thing left to complete,

more time can be allotted to practicing that element. If

you can easily do all requirements for one level but fail to

qualify for the next level, continue at the current level of

ability while focusing on the weakness until it’s no longer

a weakness.

Example: an Intermediate athlete can perform 5 sets of

3 reps of a given movement with 35 lb. For the warm-up,

such an athlete should use 15-20 lb., which will not be

impossible and will not leave him drained. After 4-6

weeks—depending on progress—the weight can be

increased.

To keep OCD and ADD in check, no exercise should be

adjusted in difﬁculty/weight in less than four weeks.

If you start developing any overuse injuries, such as joint

pain, aches and soreness, look closely at your diet. Have

you introduced new foods that are causing inﬂammation,

or are you falling off the Paleo wagon and blaming

training for pains/aches instead of improving your diet?

If the diet is impeccable and soreness remains, lay off

the exercises that aggravate the tender spot for 7-14

days. If you’re starting to feel like not training or doing

the warm-up, or if you’re dragging in general and your

diet is impeccable, you’re overreaching (a mild case

of overtraining) and should take 4-6 days off training

completely.

Remember: this is still a warm-up—a practice of all

the various CrossFit gymnastics movements—not

a workout. Best results will be yielded by keeping

intensity low, breaks short and consistency high. After

the warm-up you should be energized and ready to hit

the WOD, not drenched in sweat, tired and ready to go

home. Keep form excellent and reps perfect.

Because it’s a warm-up, we will not use the standard

protocol of adjusting difﬁculty in the middle as the

exercises become easier, which will allow us to avoid

overtraining and fatigue. The exercises will be chosen to

be moderately difﬁcult, and the athlete has to stick with

them with no modiﬁcations until they’re easy (generally

4-6 weeks).

What follows is the complete prescription of exercises

for all levels. If you have questions, concerns or a success

story, e-mail me at leo@crossﬁtevolution.com .

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