During your time at Outlier there have probably been a few questions that have ran through your head. Like, why do we do high bar back squat versus a low bar back squat? Why does country fried Friday seem to happen on Wednesday sometimes? Why do we mainly do standard deadlifts versus straight leg or sumo deadlifts? Does Vlad actually have a house or does he spend so much time at the gym because an air b’n’b visitor is squatting in his cottage and he can’t get them out? Well, maybe you have lost a little sleep over these questions and today we are going to discuss some of them.

Let’s talk about the squat and the deadlift. The overlying reason why we mainly do squats and deadlifts the ways that we do is because we want the strength that comes from the practice to transfer into as many other movements as possible. In the case of the squat, we typically practice high bar back squats, where the bar sits on top of the traps at the base of your neck and the feet just outside shoulder width. This position forces the lifter to stay more upright. The legs will have the demand of the lift spread across the anterior (front) and posterior (back) muscle groups pretty evenly. Whereas the low bar back squat has the weight sitting on top of your shoulder blades. This lower position of the bar forces the lifter to lean over a decent bit, this coupled with a wider foot stance forces the majority of the tension to be sent to the posterior chain (glutes, hamstrings and adductors/inner thighs.) Typically with practice the low bar back squat has more potential for lifting the most weight. I know you may be asking, “If i can lift more weight with a low bar squat… why aren’t we practicing that?” The answer is linked to what I mentioned earlier. We want to do movements that help make other movements better. The high bar back squat strengthens a body in a position that is very similar to other movements that we do. Being able to high bar squat 300lbs in a very vertical bottom position is going to help your wall balls be more explosive, your overhead squats more stable and your ability to catch a heavy power clean smoothly. If your position of strength is very hinged over like a low bar back squat and you are going for a max snatch, clean, power clean etc etc your body will naturally hinge over for the olympic lifts and throw off your movement patterns. So we choose the high bar for the flexibility and the strength in the position that it delivers.

The deadlift is a very similar case. For a lot of people, sumo deadlifts when practiced on a regular basis can easily surpass the conventional deadlift in max weight potential. The range of motion of a sumo deadlift where the hands are closer and the feet are very wide is much shorter, so more weight is achievable by many people. You will see us use this move for accessory strength days where we use higher reps to help pinpoint weak spots in the body and make you better. Our main focus for building overall strength is going to be the conventional deadlift. Its starting position where the feet are under the hips is much closer to the pulling position for a clean, snatch, even to the bottom of a kettlebell swing. Pushing our sleds down the alley, pulling calories on the rowers and pedaling your heart out on an assault bike have more in common with a standard deadlift versus a sumo. Like I said before, we want movements that have as much carry over as possible to other movements.

One of the key things to remember about CrossFit is that we want what we do here to help your daily life and physical ability as much as possible. We want the fitness you develop here to be as broad as possible and make you as capable as you can get. This is why we choose the movements that we do for the bulk of our training. We also make use of some more odd lifts, like squat variations, deadlift variations, kettlebell moves like windmills and turkish get ups. Movements that challenge your strength and flexibility. Movements that challenge your coordination, like snatches and split jerks.

If you ever need to test the usefulness of fitness we develop… just ask a group of us to help you move… you will never see your things get from point A to point B in such a speedy and organized fashion!

Coach P