Wine Country CrossFit

I want to take a moment this morning to talk about bar selection.  As most of you know we have 4 different weights of bars at WCCF:  6lb “kids bars” (with red stripes), 22lb “training bars” (the short ones that stand upright in their rack), the 35lb women’s olympic bars (smaller diameter grip with pink tape on the collars) and the 45lb men’s olympic weightlifting bars.  What I have seen lately is a rush among some of us to use heavier and heavier bars, and I would like to give some guidelines as to how you should select your bar for any given day.

The 6lb “Kids Bar” – This bar should be used if you are learning a new movement or are not comfortable lifting 22lbs to begin any given day.  Weight should only minimally be added to this bar as it is not strong enough to bear the force of many plates on the PVC collars.

The 22lb “Training Bar” -This bar should be used on any movement where your max will be below about 100lbs.  These bars work fantastically up to that point.  I prefer to see this bar used instead of the women’s olympic bar for a few reasons:  1: If you max at 70lbs, you are already starting your warm up with 50% of your max.  This is too high.  2: In the olympic lifts, we want to get bumper plates onto the bar right away so that we can pull from the floor, which means on the 35lb bar, you would need to be comfortable jumping right to 55lbs.  3: If you max at 90lbs and we start you at 35, and then 55, for your first two warm up sets, we run out of warm up and skill training room very quickly approaching your max.

The 35lb “Women’s Olympic Bar” – Based on the criteria above, grab this bar if your max will be over 100lbs and you are comfortable moving directly to 55lbs in your warm up sets.

The 45lb “Men’s Olympic Bar”  I would give this bar the same caveats as above but recommend that men use this bar and not the women’s bar.  The reason being that the diameter of this bar is larger, and you want your hands to adapt to the larger diameter bar, not get used to the women’s bar and then have to work to become comfortable again on a new bar.  Plus, Coach Kris makes fun of guys who use “girl bars”  (I’m kidding!)

-Ryan

P.S.  What if roles were reversed at a typical commercial gym?

In A Parallel Universe

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Monday’s Benchmark WOD:

CrossFit Total

Athletes have three consecutive attempts to complete their highest 1 rep
attempt at the following three lifts:
Back Squat
Press
Deadlift

*To count as Rx, athlete must squat below parallel (hip crease below top of
knee) and Deadlift must be pulled conventional (no sumo)

Compare to:
6/27/11
10/31/11
4/9/12
8/13/12