LATEST ARTICLES
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Shut Up, Flexibility
Greg Everett
| June 12 2013 |
Training: General
A couple weeks ago, I sent out a newsletter in which I talked about the secret to flexibility being no secret at all, but simply commitment over time to work and consistency. In other words, there are no magic tricks or secret formulas or fancy gadgets that will suddenly increase your flexibility without any work. I think a lot of people waste inordinate amounts of time reading, watching videos, planning programs in their heads, and doing everything other than actually stretching, and find thems...
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Train Like A Champion: Technique, Habits and Positivity
Greg Everett
| February 25 2013 |
Training: Weightlifting
Possibly the biggest mistake I see people making with regard to technique training is simply not investing enough time into the training itself. With the easy and usually free access to an abundance of information about weightlifting technique now, it’s easy to spend hours and hours searching, reading and asking about technique, technique training, exercises, corrective drills and then whatever tangential topics sprout out. Yet when it comes to actually applying that information, athletes ...
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Squat Stance & the Olympic Lifts
Greg Everett
| November 13 2012 |
Training: Weightlifting
With the Olympic lifts, it’s easy to wander a little too far down the rabbit hole and find yourself lost amid overwhelming detail. There are times when such detail is necessary and helpful, but at other times, the best course of action is to simplify. Sometimes this just means reassessing a problem with a perspective guided by simplicity—that is, returning to the basics to fix the complex.
If you’re struggling to figure out why your snatch and clean receiving positions are u...
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From the Performance Menu Journal - Issue 101
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Vitor Belfort and the UFC’s TRT Dilemma
Cameron Conaway
| June 1 2013 |
Combat Sports
At 36-years-old, UFC light heavyweight Vitor Belfort is the best mixed martial artist he’s ever been. On May 18th, he knocked out Luke Rockhold, a 28-year-old rising star who had won nine straight, with a spinning heel kick that will go down as one of the greatest knockouts in UFC history. But this heel kick isn’t what’s firing up the MMA community. It’s Belfort’s bod...
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Programming CrossFit NYC
Jason Lapadula
| June 1 2013 |
CrossFit
When I began coaching at CrossFit NYC in the Flatiron district of Manhattan two years ago, we had around 500 members. This made us one of the biggest CrossFit boxes in the world. Since members only ever appeared in groups of 10 to 300 in classes, it still felt cozy. Today, with membership verging on 1300, on any given night there will be upwards of 110+ people milling about between those WODing an...
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Supplemental Bodyweight Training
Matthew Miller
| June 1 2013 |
Olympic Weightlifting
As the owner of Horsepower Strength and Conditioning and creator of the Powerology training system, I work with athletes of all levels, ranging from complete beginners to professional athletes competing at the highest levels. No matter which client I am working with, my programs are focused on barbell training, jumping, sprinting and bodyweight training.
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This Lifter Has No Talent. Now What?
Matt Foreman
| June 1 2013 |
Olympic Weightlifting
I was pretty fortunate in the beginning of my weightlifting career because I got to meet Dragomir Cioroslan not too long after I started the sport. For those of you who don’t know, Dragomir is a former Olympian from Romania who became a coach after his competitive career ended. He was hired to take over the USA resident weightlifting program at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs...
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Providing Feedback to Your Coaching Peers
Kyle J Smith
| June 1 2013 |
Business
In the past year at CrossFit NYC, our membership has more than doubled, as has our coaching staff. As new faces join the coaching crew, we have looked for ways to organically teach and indoctrinate the noobs. One approach we are experimenting with is quite simple: as a coach, you can take any others coach’s class and provide them with feedback when it’s over. In order for the class and...
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Ask Greg: Issue 101
Greg Everett
| June 1 2013 |
Ask Greg
Rob Asks: Recently at our local crossfit box, we were practicing the push press. Our trainer politely corrected our flaws and then we did a 7x3 at a fixed weight. One of his pet peeves was that people’s heels came off of the ground as they generated the hip extension. Looking at your poster (hanging in my garage gym) and then watching your demo video clearly sho...
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Learning From Setbacks: 12 Process-Based Lessons
Yael Grauer
| June 1 2013 |
Health & Wellness
Let me fill you in on a secret. Hidden away in a folder on my laptop is a hit list of sorts. (Don’t worry; it’s not what you think.) Allow me explain. A big part of writing for and editing the Performance Menu is trying to land the best interviews we can find. These are names that come up again and again in reader surveys or on the forums, or people that I feel would be uniquely poised...
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Recipes: Issue 101
Scott Hagnas
| June 1 2013 |
Recipes
Fish 'n Mango
Time: 15 minutes
• 1 lb. cod or similar white fish (shrimp or scallops work too)
• 1 Tbsp. coconut oil
• 1 large mango, peeled, seeded, and diced
• 4 green onions, chopped
• 4 stalks celery, chopped
• 1 cup cabbage, chopped
• 1 Tbsp. fish sauce
&...
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Program Design: Feelings vs. Planning
Greg Everett
| September 3 2012 |
Training: Weightlifting
There are a lot of different ways to train as a weightlifter, but two broad categories can be described by either planning and prescribing all the numbers (e.g. weights, reps, sets) or training by feel, which can mean making decisions on everything from weights to reps to the actual exercises performed on a given day.
Personally I like it all—nothing to extremes. I believe strongly that there needs to be planning, both short and long term, of an athlete’s training, particul...
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When to Move on, and When to Punch Your Missed Lift in its Stupid Little Mouth
Greg Everett
| May 28 2012 |
Training: Weightlifting
There are times in a lifter’s life when lifts aren’t made. These times are, of course, the absolute worst, and in those moments following a missed lift, athletes can generally find indisputable proof that they’ll never again succeed, why their abilities have already peaked and they’re finally and terminally on the decline, and why, being in such a stage of life, they no longer have any value to the world.
There are two basic responses following a missed lift: To accep...
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Starter Program for Catalyst Athletics Online Workouts
Greg Everett
| May 21 2012 |
Training Programs
The following is a 4-week training program that can be used to get started with the training program posted on this website. This is a good cycle to start with if you have not previously been doing the Olympic lifts frequently in your training. Ab work should be done every training day, along with any supplemental work, e.g. back extensions, upper body beach work, etc that you want to do. If you plan to do the conditioning portion of the program, add brief conditioning workouts 2 times per ...
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Grip Strength Program for Weightlifting
Greg Everett
| April 30 2012 |
Training Programs
I've written about grip strength for weightlifting before, but have remained fairly vague with regard to actual training protocols. This time, I’m going to give you a simple program that you can start using right away as is, or modify a bit to suit your training schedule or individual needs.
When it comes to grip strength for weightlifting, really what we’re talking about is the snatch. It’s unlikely that anyone would be able to hang on to the bar well in the snatch but not ...
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Six Truths of Olympic Weightlifting Technique
Greg Everett
| February 14 2012 |
Training: Weightlifting
When it comes to weightlifting technique, there are disagreements. Some are legitimate, some are questionable, and a few are downright silly. But when you sift through it all, there are a few universal Truths when it comes to the snatch and clean. If you can make these following six things happen with a given technical style, you can probably make it work for you.
Truth 1: The lifter and barbell system must remain balanced over the feet.
This is pretty simple. If the balance of the system do...
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Catalyst Athletics: Our Warm-up is a Warm-up
Greg Everett
| November 8 2011 |
Training: General
Somewhere along the line, warming up became remarkably complicated. And for some, the line between warming up and training has faded to the point that I find myself compelled to say things like the title of this post.
Whenever you start getting confused about what to do, a reliable course of action is to ask yourself a simple question: Why? What is the purpose of this? What am I trying to accomplish? If you can answer those questions, chances are you’ll be able to work it all out just f...
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