The 6 Best CrossFit Videos That Changed My Life

I’ve mentioned a few awesome CrossFit videos before that helped me out with my progress, but here are some others that I’m sure a bunch of you will benefit from. Maybe you want to improve on your CrossFit gym workouts or you’re trying CrossFit workouts from home. Or maybe you want to get into some next-level shit like the mental game of CrossFit. Whatever it is, you can definitely find some golden nuggets in these vids. They’re a few of my favorites that I constantly turn back to. These are 10 of the best CrossFit videos that changed my life:

1) Kipping Knees-to-Elbows by Again Faster

For the longest time, I had no idea how the fuck to kip knees-to-elbows. I was always flopping around like some goof on that pull up bar. While I still struggle with this movement, this was the video that taught me how to string them together.

2) Butterfly Kipping Pull Ups With James Hobart

Another Again Faster vid haha. What can I say? Their Mic’d Instructor series has helped me out for the past nearly 3 years. I believe I’ve posted this video before, but it’s just one of those classics that I had to add to this list.

About 2 years ago, when I finally learned to do some kipping pull ups, I wanted to butterfly. Bad. Normal kipping was just too slow and tiring for me, so I watched a shitload of vids and kept working on various steps of the progression. It was this butterfly kipping pull up vid that got me addicted to the movement, and it pretty much inspired me to come up with the domain name “KippingItReal.com”.

Once you learn to butterfly, you’ll never go back…unless you’re too exhausted during a WOD and form goes to shit. I love doing them so much I even forced myself to learn butterfly chest-to-bars.

3) Again Faster and Double Unders

Yes, Again Faster. They’re too helpful with this stuff. And yes, I’ve already shown this video on double unders before. Even to this day, it was really a game changer for me. I used to be so bad with jump rope work that my coach during my 1-on-1 on-ramp sessions didn’t have me spend too much time on that shit.

“Um…let’s move onto some power cleans…”

Now double unders are just a matter of endurance for me. I hope this vid and my tutorial on dubs help some of you out there.

4) Mobility WOD – Improving My Rack Position Flexibility

First of all, I want to say that Kelly Starrett is the man. For all your mobility-related needs, check out his website and digest his vids.

When I started barbell movements through Starting Strength, getting the bar in the proper rack positioning seemed IMPOSSIBLE. And my push and strict presses always started a few inches from my shoulders. I remember reading the book and looking at the pics of the athletes resting the bar on their shoulders.

Not possible. Me? Flexible? Never.

Thanks to CrossFit and pre/post-workout stretching, I gradually improved on my flexibility. Still…keeping my elbows high during a front squat or when catching a clean was a challenge. Thanks to this vid from K-Starr, I kept doing these small mobility exercises and some others and over time, the proper rack position just happened. Messing up my wrists happened less often, despite a few issues here and there.

As a result, my front squat weight shot up and I finally was breaking the 225# clean barrier with ease. Upping your strength isn’t the only way to improve your lifts. Sometimes all it takes are simple, gradual improvements like with your flexibility.

5) Greg Amundson and Positive Self-Talk

“The greatest adaptation to CrossFit takes place between the ears.”

Even before coming across this video from Greg Amundson, I found the topic of self-improvement to be interesting. It all started with learning about lifestyle design from Tim Ferriss and The 4-Hour Workweek and some other books I stumbled upon. But yeah, this video shows that CrossFit is more than just a matter of conditioning, power, strength, and all that good stuff.

The mental game is huge. And if you can learn to harness that inner game during your CrossFit WOD’s, you can easily transfer that shit to your everyday life. I’m tellin ya…you feel so much better when you understand what you can and cannot control. Check out the video. It’s one of the reasons I jumped down a rabbit hole of books and vids on the mental side of things. I’ll definitely review some of these books at some point. If I were to suggest only 1 book, I’d say it’s Psycho-Cybernetics.

6) The Original Fran YouTube Video

Shit…I’m getting all nostalgic here. So what’s up with this vid? It’s shitty quality (hey…this was 2006 YouTube) and Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” was playing in the background (wtffffff).

This was the first CrossFit video I watched. It’s old school. No one was doing butterfly kipping pull ups. It was just so fuckin raw.

I can picture it now…it was about 4 years ago, sitting at my desk in my on-campus townhouse. My buddy and I came across some article on CrossFit, so we decided to look shit up. Of course I was skeptical. What the FUCK kind of strength and conditioning workout is this? And the music didn’t seem to help.

However, it was this 1 damn video that started it all for me. Even after struggling with those CrossFit Brand-X scaled workouts, I decided to keep at it. Now, friend watching the vid with me is head trainer at his local box and now I’m some douchebag with his own CrossFit blog.

See what happens with some positive self-talk? 😛

Kip it real, my friends.