Workout For Intent, Intensity, and Technique
Written by Kyle Ligon - MovementLink.FIT Head Coach
Epiphany #1: No exercise, even the squat, is inherently functional. You must use functional movement patterns and no gear for an exercise to be functional.
Epiphany #2: Our focus tends toward what we are measuring and if we measure the wrong things, we will have the wrong focus.
These two epiphanies combined to clarify our focus during workouts and ended up producing better results than we ever imagined. Let’s say we are exercising, but we have picked the wrong things to measure. Here are a couple of examples of how it can lead to inefficiencies and wasted efforts relative to your real goals:
Measuring a Max Back Squat - In powerlifting and CrossFit, this is commonplace, but measuring a back squat purely off of the highest barbell number you can produce may not lend itself to the best results. Context is everything and we must keep at the forefront of our minds, why we are working out. As discussed on our site before, a powerlifting program is designed to specifically maximize one’s ability in the 1 rep max back squat, bench press, and deadlift. There are very specific rules in a powerlifting competition that define what gear you can wear and standards for what counts as a completed rep. CrossFit is similar with their own set of rules. Although the tests in the sport of CrossFit are much more broad than powerlifting, CrossFit events tend to have a lot of exercises, which in turn will come with their own competition standards of what counts as a completed rep. When competing in these exercise sports, scores are the only thing that matters. The assumption being made by many is that better scores equal better results…but is this actually true? The gear, technique, and strategies we may choose to perform a back squat to maximize our back squat score in an exercise competition are not the same choices we would make if our goal was to maximize the carry-over into the life we want to live. For a sport, we may wear special shoes, a weight belt, widen our stance, turn our feet out a little more, and even change the bar position on our back to produce the highest score while performing a rep that would technically count in competition. There is a reason that weightlifters, powerlifters, bodybuilders, CrossFitters, and Soccer players all squat differently. It’s because they are squatting in a way that maximally benefits their sport. You should squat not in the way that maximally benefits your life.
Let’s also look at how taking a score can drastically change how a workout with kettlebell swings and push-ups is performed. If you ask me to do a certain number of rounds or reps or ask me to get as many reps as possible in a certain amount of time, then I am going to play the game. That game includes choosing techniques for these exercises and strategies for the workout that maximize score as opposed to choosing techniques that would maximize carry-over into real life. I would put the minimal amount of power into each kettlebell swing possible to save energy. I would take advantage of every loophole I know of to make each push-up easier…there’s a ton of tricks here that would all technically count in a competition. Instead of focus on a score, if my focus was using these exercises to get maximal results, I would perform kettlebell swings with a jumping movement pattern with high amounts of power and as perfect as possible technique in the push-ups. Each of those choices would make reps more difficult in the workout and would hurt my score…but scores are not what is important to me, results are.
If we measure the wrong thing, we can not only morph what could be a functional exercise like the squat or a kettlebell swing into something else, but we can lose the intent of the workout stimulus. That’s why we are very particular about what we measure, and why we rarely take scores, instead doing most workouts For Intent, Intensity, and Technique (FIIT).
FIIT - For Intent, Intensity, and Technique
Although I love the core of most of CrossFit’s principles, in my opinion, even though most CrossFit affiliated gyms talk about improving technique, by putting so much emphasis on testing and taking scores in workout, they vastly overemphasize in-the-moment choices at the detriment of long-term development and results. Instead of competing all the time by taking scores in every workout, we strongly believe that most workouts should be for intent, intensity, and technique, which provides me yet another opportunity for a cheesy acronym - F.I.I.T.
Intent - Identify the purpose of the workout and of the exercises and make that the priority. Rarely should the purpose be to test your abilities and instead your purpose should be to improve your abilities. The way you would perform reps for building speed/power and strength is different than muscle growth and muscle endurance, and are both very different than if you were doing them to get the best score possible in a workout. You should workout and perform reps to optimize the stimuli, not the score. You must leave your ego at the door as sometimes maintaining the intent of the workout or the intent of the exercise when things get hard and you are very fatigued will be more challenging than simply focusing on intensity and getting the work done. We use full ranges of motion and functional movement patterns for our exercises which creates a foundation of quality movement and skill that transfers into other exercises and sports. We do not “game” our technique for scores.
Intensity & Technique - Also called threshold training, you should strike a balance between these. You should work at the highest intensity possible with really good technique. When technique is almost perfect, you need to dial up the intensity: First by increasing the speed of the exercise, then by increasing the weight or by selecting a harder variation. If technique starts to break down in a small way, you should hold intensity steady and work to improve that technique issue. When technique breaks down too much, you need to dial the intensity back down to a level in which you can improve your technique before dialing it back up. Threshold training is at odds with taking scores. As a coach, if I want someone to work on an aspect of their technique which may cause them to slow down and I am going to write their time and weights used on a whiteboard for everyone to compare, they are going to optimize for the immediacy of that day’s whiteboard every time.
Here’s my favorite example that shows this - Hang in there with me through the jump workout…
Imagine your workout was 100 Jumps for Time. If I was going to write your name and your score on the whiteboard after this, your primary motivation would be to complete the workout as fast as possible. To do this, you’d jump as low as possible with the least amount of energy possible. That may produce an aerobic stimulus but would do almost nothing to improve your jumping. What if I told you to do 100 jumps for time, but make each jump as high as possible? Would you actually do it? If instead of putting 100% effort into every jump, if you put 95% effort, then you’d be able to get a faster time. The less effort into each jump, saves energy for faster times. If we choose to measure the wrong thing, time in this scenario, then what we measure can be at odds with what would maximally benefit us. This happens constantly with workout scores.
What if instead, I asked you to do 100 Jumps FIIT and told you that the intent was for you to jump as high as possible on every rep and to get it done as quickly as possibly with good looking reps? You would perform this workout in a very different way and would actually do it the way it was intended.
Now, the jumps for time example is ridiculous I know, but 100 box jumps for time or 100 Russian Kettlebell Swings for time may be things you’d see in a scored workouts. When this happens, the game gets played and you would jump with the minimal effort possible to get onto the box or use your use the least amount of effort possible on the KB swing which may even change your technique away from a jumping pattern. These are speed and power exercises and taking scores would motivate a class away from actually putting power into the exercise. Slow reps do 0 to develop speed and power.
Contrary to what those who are used to taking scores think, working out FIIT does not mean working out slowly and is not lacking intensity. FIIT allows us to put our efforts into the right things and our workouts are much more effective because of it.
Not only is the stimulus compromised, but the techniques are too!
Why do I perform the kettlebell swing differently than the “kettlebell gurus” who compete in Kettlebell Sport? Yes, just like CrossFit, powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, etc. are competitions using exercises, kettlebell sport is a 10 minute strength endurance competition where athlete perform as many KB clean and jerks as possible in an event and as many KB snatches as possible in another. Again, we see the sport and the score get in the way of someone who has an end goal of real world fitness instead of KB Sport-specific fitness. Because of the design of the competition, it is similar to the 100 jumps example and minimizing effort on each rep is at a premium. So much so, the the technique even changes. The movement pattern used to perform the most reps in 10 minutes is more of a hip hinge pattern where the movement pattern used to transfer a kettlebell swing into real world fitness is more of a jumping pattern.
This show up in practically every exercise used in the gym, so keeping the intent of your technique choices top of mind will ensure maximal transfer to your goals as opposed to some exercise sport you may not be interested in.
