Supplemental Strength: presented by Coach Matt

First off – who am I?

• My name is Matthew Asmundson, I am 21 years old, I am a 4th year Kinesiology student at the U of M. 
• I am a CrossFit Level 1 coach at CrossFit Niverville and spend most of my time coaching the Silvers program. I am also an Assistant Strength and Conditioning coach with Bison Football. I am a CSCS-NSCA candidate (certified strength and conditioning specialist) and CEP-CSEP candidate (certified exercise physiologist).
• I believe strength and conditioning should be holistic, professional, personal, inclusive, and methodical, which this program will reflect. 

Program information:

• Cap at 10 participants to provide high levels of instruction and coaching.
• Runs for 6 weeks – Feb 24 to Apr 2 
• All programming will be designed and monitored by myself for each participant.
• Results will be culminated and presented to each participant at the end of the program.

Tried and true strength building movements will be utilized such as, but not limited to – squats, deadlifts, bench press, press, upper body pulls to establish a strong base for performance and fitness improvement.

Training variations will be utilized for intermediate lifters such as, but not limited to – tempo training, accommodating resistance and dynamic training. 
Movement specific preparation including bracing and activation patterns.

The importance of strength:

Just as nutrition is the base of CrossFit, strength or force development is the base of performance and/or fitness. CrossFit defines fitness as “work capacity across broad time and modal domains.” The “work capacity” part of the definition is key, and is what we people who have knowledge of biomechanics like to call  POWER OUTPUT.

Power = FORCE x distance / time 

A few sentences ago, I said strength is FORCE development, do we see the connection now? If we increase force or distance, we increase our power output and fitness. If we decrease time, we increase our power output or fitness. Now lets look at how we can break this formula down….

Distance  pretty tough to increase distance in a squat or push-up. So lets just ignore this variable as it really only applies to monostructural activity and box jumps.

Time  this will go down as we improve our fitness, but that only happens for so long, and the variable that dictates time, is FORCE, let me show you how….

Lets look at Fran. If person A had a 1RM front squat of 200# and Fran calls for a 95# thruster, that is 47.5% of their 1RM front squat. If person B had a 1RM front squat of 150# and Fran calls for a 95# thruster, that is 63.3% of their 1RM front squat. Now, who do you think (with this limited amount of information), will have a better Fran time? Surprise  the stronger person. They have to do less work per thruster to force the barbell overhead. 

The correlation between FORCE development aka strength and the time to complete a workout is just too strong to ignore. This is a gaping hole in 99% of CrossFitters performance. Force/strength is the most important mathematical variable in CrossFit. If it is not increasing, neither is your fitness. 

What is the key to strength training? Oh, I know, fancily named programs with words like undulating, waves, accommodation, blah, blah. Well for world-class power lifters, yes, those are critical variables that any good strength coach should know how and when to implement. For the other 99.9% of the population, it is time-consuming, confusing, unimportant and stupid. What 99.9% of the population needs is 3 things that CrossFit teaches us L1 coaches at our certification and what any good strength coach understands (and actually implements): MECHANICS, CONSISTENCY, INTENSITY.

This program will hone in your mechanics, making sure that the proper mechanics and most potent, strength-gaining movements show up on a consistent basis, which then and only then, will we add intensity to further drive adaptation. 

My programming will result in more weight being lifted, making WOD’s mathematically easier (therefore faster) and you inherently “fitter”. But the true value will lie in the acquisition of knowledge each person will receive. Throughout the program, participants will gain understanding of rest intervals, the importance of consistency to strength, breathing patterns, stabilization, movement specific preparation and how important strength is to CrossFit and life (a rant on this is coming in the near future). 

There is much more to talk about with regards to strength, force development, strength programs and much more – which I will discuss in the future and will probably rant about during the workouts. But I hope this gives you valuable insight into the importance of strength, and why you should give this program a shot so that we can expand the program with longer cycle times and run more specialized programs in the future to further improve your fitness, our box and our community. 

I often hear people attribute genetics, natural talent or luck to fitness. To that I leave you with this – “luck is the illusion created by the hard work you did not see,” lets do more of this invisible hard work for at least 6 weeks and see where it takes us. 

Yours truly,

Matt