april 2010 newletter

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April 2010 Newsletter

April Events

Happy spring and Happy Easter to everyone! Get out the sun block and

tanning oil and get some sun. Hopefully

those of you who get a spring break have

the opportunity to do something fun andactive. How about a triathlon, a 50

miler, or spring sports? Golf anyone?

Last month Emalee represented

CrossFit Chula Vista at the CrossFit

Games Sectionals, in attempt to qualifyfor the CrossFit games and receive the

title of Fittest Woman on Earth. Thank

you to all who attended the games andsupported her. She poured her heart out

into all the events and placed 29th out of

41. Check out a video of Emalee at the

games on our website. Click on theFlickr icon to find the video and pictures

from the games. Emalee was the first

CrossFit Chula Vista athlete to competein CrossFit Sectionals. Let CrossFit

Games be a goal for everyone!

Well another opportunity is fastapproaching for CrossFit competition. It

is the CrossFit Affiliate Cup. We have a

6 person team and they are Emalee,

Danielle, Todd, James, Rj, and Ricardo.The tentative date for this event is May

8-9. Let’s all try to come out and cheer

for CrossFit Chula Vista.

We also have a team of people

that will be doing the Baker to Vegasrun. They are part of our CrossFit Chula

Vista Endurance team and their names

are, RJ, Castro, Rudy, Ricardo, andMichelle. They have all endured

CrossFit endurance regiments headed by

Coach Rick and Coach Piper. When you

see these people wish them luck!

IMPORTANT!

Please come on time,

every hour on the hour. We

will be starting a 10-15 minute

group warm up, followed by

the WOD.

The Squat and the

HamstringBy Mark Rippetoe

Proper squats accomplish the

exercise objective of moving more

muscle over a greater range of motion,



allowing athletes to lift more weight and

get stronger. Hip drive engages the

posterior chain. Correct stance and bar placement are essential. In the low bar

back squat, the back angle is much more

horizontal than in the front squat. Theonly way to do a front squat is with an

almost vertical back.

The hamstring crosses two joints

and serves two functions: knee flexionand hip extension. If the hamstring is

already in a short position at the bottom

of a squat, it cannot be a major contributor to further hip extension. But

a more horizontal back and opening the

knee will further stretch out thehamstring. The distance over which thehamstring can contract will be increased,

provided squat requirements are met.

The lumbar spine must stay in extensionand the pelvis must stay locked with the

lumbar spine.

Excerpt from Mark

Rippetoe on Squats, Hip

Drive, and Posterior Chain!

The back squat is literally the

only exercise in the entire repertoire of

weighted human movement that allowsthe direct training of the complex

movement pattern known as hip drive.

“Posterior chain” is a term that refers tothe muscles that produce hip extension

—i.e., straightening out of the hip joint

from its flexed (or bent) position in the bottom of the squat. The muscles that

accomplish hip extension are the

hamstrings, the glutes, and the adductors

or groin muscles, and together these arereferred to as the posterior chain. The

initial movement

up out of the bottom of a full squat is hip

drive, and is best thought of as ashoving-up of the sacral area of the

lower back, the area right above your butt. This is the hardest thing to teach in

my method of squatting, and by

far the most important.This is because

the squat is the only exercise in theweight room that trains the recruitment

of the entire posterior chain in a way that

is progressively improvable,and that is one of the things that makes

the squat the best exercise you can do

with barbells and, by extension, the beststrength exercise there is. These

important muscles contribute to

jumping, pulling, pushing, and anythingelse involving the lower body. The squat

trains the posterior chain more

effectively than any other movement that

uses those muscles because none of theother movements involve enough range

of motion to use them all at the same

time, and none of them work this longrange of motion by preceding their

contraction with an eccentric lowering,

which produces a stretch shorteningcycle or stretch reflex. The stretch reflex

produces a much harder contraction



than would be possible without it, one

that recruits many more motor units than

would be available without theloaded pre-stretch provided by the

lowering phase of the lift. The

conventional deadlift, for example, usesthe hamstrings and glutes, leaves out the

adductors, and starts with a concentric

contraction at a position that places the hips well above the level of a

deep squat. No bounce, no adductors,

shorter range of motion, but very

hard anyway—harder, in fact, thansquatting, due to the comparatively

inefficient nature of starting from a dead

stop—yet not as useful to overall

strength development. Plyometric jumpsmay be deep enough if they’re done

that way, and they may employ therequisite stretch reflex provided by the

drop, but they are not incrementally

increasable the way a loaded barbell

exercise can be, they can be damnedtough on the feet and knees for novices,

and they are not weight-bearing in the

sense that the whole skeleton is loadedwith a bar on the shoulders. In contrast,

the squat uses all the posterior chain

muscles, requires the full range of motion of the hips and knees, engages

the stretch-shortening cycle inherent in

the movement, and can be performed byanybody who can stand up from a chair,

because we have very light bars

that can be increased by very small

increments.

Upcoming Events

Affiliate Cup Regional Qualifiers May 8-9

(tentative)

Rock and Roll Marathon with 4 man

relay team- June 6th 2010

CrossFit Chula Vista

821 Kuhn Dr. Suite 106

Chula Vista, CA 91914

(619) 934-9934

www.crossfitchulavista.com

http://www.crossfitchulavista.com/

http://www.crossfitchulavista.com/

april 2010 newletter

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