Yeah…check this shit out. Lindsey Johnson lost a bet to Neal Maddox…so she had to do 500 burpees. Spencer Hendel was dragged along to do this WOD with her. Check it out:
I thought it was pretty insane cause we just did a WOD yesterday that started with 50 burpees AND ended with 50 burpees. Those 100 alone got me close to breaking. My right quad even cramped up a bit, so I had to lean a bit more towards my left upon finishing each rep.
Aside from the physical strain, it’s once again that mental game that can get to a lot of people with such an intense workout. Seriously…500 burpees? Lots of props to Lindsey and Spencer.
By the way…”Niggas in Paris” at the end of that video? Haha…reminds me all too much of my CrossFit box.
Kip it real, my friends.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
A few times the past two weeks I was asked…
“What’s that one secret to double unders?”
“How the FUCK do you do double unders?”
…and so on.
Honestly, there’s nothing more I can say than “practice.” Everyone’s going to have different issues with their double unders, so the only way you’ll be able to figure out what’s wrong is by learning from your mistakes.
Here’s another sweet video I came across on my Facebook newsfeed a few times recently. It’s an older video with Mikko Salo. There are some pretty helpful tips within this vid, so if you’re still struggling with your dubs, I highly suggest you check it out:
Seriously, if a CrossFitter as elite Mikko struggles with double unders, you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself. Just kip practicing. Make sure you’re learning from each of your attempts.
Kip it real, my friends.
Yeah, this is old and from before the 2012 Games, but I have to say this is an awesome vid with Ben Smith. For a while, I’ve already known he was a pretty cool guy. Then when I came across this video a few days ago, damn…I got nothing but good vibes from watching it.
The kid’s really down-to-earth and seems really normal on the outside. When it comes to CrossFit though, he’s a beast. I remember watching his videos from the 2011 Opens. This one really stood out to me as it was a WOD I struggled with, getting only 9 reps LOL. I had to do squat clean and jerks for this and man did I suck at getting shit overhead at the time. It’d be interesting to see what I can do now.
This was Open Section WOD 3 in 2011:
5 minute AMRAP
165# squat clean thrusters (squat clean and jerks, as I did, were acceptable as well)
That music haha…reminds me of my box’s Pandora playlist at the time…
…because of these videos he made then, I always thought Ben just worked out by himself in his garage by that damn refrigerator. Then when I came across that 18 minute video mentioned at the top of this post, I was pretty stoked to see he had his own bro-tastic workout group.
Seriously, nothing beats working out with a great group of people, especially those that both push you and carry on some good vibes.
When I saw the YouTube comment above, I thought, “Damn, I’m lucky.”
Okay, lots of people out there might prefer working out by themselves in a garage (I used to be like this). That’s cool. However, there are a bunch of people like that YouTube commenter who feel like something’s lacking when they’re just tackling WOD’s on their own.
If you happen to be in that kind of predicament, definitely do something about it. Alright, certain circumstances might prevent you from doing so, but if you have the opportunity to workout at a legit CrossFit box or partner up with another CrossFitter you know, do it.
As I said, I used to be one of those guys who preferred working out alone. In high school, I would hit up Planet Fitness, pizza and bagels galore, by myself. I wanted to go at my own time and do my own “programming” (I definitely have a Word doc with some of my routines on my old desktop…it was definitely shit and full of Nautilus nonsense). Then in college, I would go to the campus gym with roommates. Luckily, most of the guys I went with either gave up and started doing cardio only or they preferred doing their own shit which was rather inefficient (at least not as bad as my high school routines lol).
It was pretty much myself or some partner sessions with my friend who eventually became a CrossFit coach.
Not gonna lie.
Transitioning into the class setting was kinda weird for me at first. I just wanted to workout on my own, dammit! But it was just a better idea of signing up for a class – for logistics and monetary reasons. And you know what? I’m not sure if I could ever workout on my own again…unless I were to do some specialized programming down the road.
Aside from getting a glimpse of Ben Smith’s pre-real world day (didn’t he just open his own box recently?), this vid reminded me how important the class setting has been to my progress.
I’m sure the class dynamic has helped many of you out there as well.
So what do you all prefer? Hitting up a WOD alone? With a partner or two? Or a full-out class? Post in the comments below.
Kip it real, my friends.
Gotta hold off on part 2 of my Garage Games posts. In the meantime, watch this hilarious vid if you haven’t already:
It’s some good shit lol. The vid went INSANELY viral in a matter of 3 days.