Blog by Kim
With your help at the fundraiser, I recently attended The Gymnastics Course Level 1 at CrossFit Juggernaut in Cape Town. Thank you to everyone who contributed and helped get me there.
It was a great opportunity to step outside our box, meet other coaches and athletes, and see how they do things. The course is run by BirdBox Coaching, an international organisation focused on helping coaches become better coaches.
I came home with plenty to work on myself, and some ideas I want to bring into our training. Here are my three biggest takeaways.
1. We tend to bias the barbell
In our normal CrossFit classes, we tend to bias the barbell. Think about how much time we spend on cleans, jerks, snatches, squats, deadlifts and presses. There’s loads of depth in those movements, but we keep coming back to the same handful of skills.
Compare that with gymnastics: hangs, supports, rows, pull-ups, push-ups, dips, balances, handstands, rolls, L-sits, levers, and plenty of progressions in between. There’s a whole world of movement we’re missing.
When we bias the barbell too much, we can miss out on foundational bodyweight strength. We see this when we can deadlift 150 kg but struggle with a pull-up, or perform a powerful split jerk but can’t control a pike push-up. Getting stronger with a barbell doesn’t automatically develop all the strength we need to move and support our own bodies.
Gymnastics also offers real value in daily life. Moving your upper back and shoulders after sitting at a desk, reaching overhead, getting up from the floor, carrying children or lifting shopping bags all involve strength, mobility and body control that we can develop through gymnastics.
And there are so many ways to make each movement easier or harder. Whatever your starting point, there’s something to work on and a way to progress.
2. My midline was humbling
Core strength was a real wake-up call for me. I struggled to hold basic positions for more than a few seconds.
Midline control means managing the relationship between your ribs, pelvis and spine while you move. The hollow hold is one way to practise it: lie on your back, tuck your pelvis slightly and draw your ribs down so your lower back stays on the floor. Bend your knees to make it easier. If your lower back lifts when you extend your legs, shorten the lever again.
The first goal is to hold that shape while breathing. Then we work on keeping control as the arms and legs move. That control carries into lifting, pulling, carrying and everyday tasks. Different movements need different trunk positions, and we want to get stronger at managing those positions.
This is where isometrics and eccentrics deserve more attention. Isometrics are holds. Eccentrics involve controlling the lowering part of a movement, like slowly lowering from the top of a pull-up. Both give us time to build strength in positions we might otherwise rush through.
Start with a hold you can manage and measure how long you maintain it well. Do a few short holds with rest between them. Gradually build your total time, then try a harder variation. What counts is time spent in a good position with steady breathing.
A longer hold, a slower lowering phase or better control is progress, even if it doesn’t look particularly exciting.
3. Getting the rep is just the start
This one is called the RX trap. It’s when we treat the RX movement as the goal rather than a skill we keep developing. We settle for “I can do it” and stop asking, “How well can I do it?”
It’s easy to watch Games athletes and think that’s what our training should look like. Their competition rewards speed and completed reps, and what we see doesn’t show all the foundation work underneath.
We celebrate your first muscle-up. Of course we do. But being able to do it doesn’t mean you’ve mastered it. There’s still plenty to work on: better positions, a smoother transition, more control and consistent reps. The same goes for toes-to-bar, handstands and everything else.
I want us working towards mastery. CrossFit uses the word virtuosity: doing the ordinary extraordinarily well. That means giving a basic hollow hold as much care as a muscle-up.
Competency is a milestone. We’re aiming beyond that, towards the best quality we can achieve, even though there will always be something to refine.
If we only ever repeat the version we can get away with, we keep practising the same limitations. Scaling, slowing down and revisiting the basics give us a chance to improve them. Better control and consistency give us a stronger foundation for adding reps, difficulty and speed.
Putting it into practice
Alongside the holds and controlled lowering work above, here are a few practical ways to give your gymnastics more attention:
Choose one skill and find your starting point.
Ask your coach for a progression that suits where you are now. If you’re working towards a pull-up, that might mean controlled ring rows before adding more difficult pulling work. Stick with the progression long enough to improve it.
Make your setup repeatable.
For ring rows, notice where your feet are. For elevated push-ups, use the same height. This makes it easier to see whether you’re getting stronger and moving better before changing the difficulty.
Practise before you’re exhausted.
Arrange a few minutes of focused practice with your coach while you’re fresh. Rest between attempts so you can make adjustments and keep the quality consistent.
Write down more than your reps.
Record the variation you used, the assistance you needed or the time you held a good position. Those small improvements are easy to miss if you only count whether you got the RX movement.
I’ve started a gymnastics class to help us put this work into practice, spend more time on the foundations and explore that whole world of movement.
Join me on Wednesdays at 6am at CrossFit Alberton.
Whatever your starting point, there’s something to work on and a way to progress.
