CrossFit Survival

Bob Takano, a renowned Olympic Weightlifting coach has a wonderful free newsletter he publishes monthly. Here is an excerpt from the most recent newsletter. His website address is listed below. I sincerely encourage any of you who are serious about CrossFit to subscribe to it. The more you can learn about Olympic Weightlifting, the better an overall athlete you will be.

Case in point, at Team CrossFit Academy, where I train, ALL of the athletes who made our affiliate cup team are also on their Olympic Weightlifting team. And with the exception of one female runner, all of their fastest runners are also weightlifters.

 Think you don't need to learn these lifts? I guess it depends on whether or not you care about athletic excellence.

"KOBE BRYANT CREDITS OLYMPIC LIFTS FOR HIS SUPERB CONDITIONING

A recent interview with Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant that appeared in Men's Fitness revealed that he credits Olympic lifts with being the majority of his off-season weight training that provides him with the conditioning to excel at the professional game. He list snatches, clean pulls, deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts and back squats as the key exercises. Kobe feels that these movements allow him to play many minutes per game at a very high level.

Kobe's affinity for the Olympic lifts is no surprise since the first person he hired after being drafted out of high school by the NBA was the then Philadelphia '76ers Strength and Conditioning coach, Joe Carbone, a former nationally ranked Olympic lifter. This is how Joe came to be in Los Angeles, and eventually joined my weightlifting club. I coached Joe to his best finish ever at the Nationals in 1998. You can hear Joe's thoughts on training pro athletes in the interview at the Takano Athletics website. Check it out by going to www.takanoathletics.com and click the downloads."

WOD

Burgener Warmup 

Snatch Test for Max