The 4 Pillars: We Got It Backwards

Weekly Wisdom - Episode 37

April 11, 2026

Not throwing shade on CrossFit here. CrossFit has proven an amazing program for producing incredible fitness results. But the CrossFit programming assumes some basic movement fluency.

In the beginning, when most of the early adopters were coming from other sports and fitness training backgrounds, this was largely true. But since then, CrossFit has trickled down to the general population. Everyday folks looking to enjoy the same health and fitness benefits as the athletes. And why not?

Problem is, as the years have gone by, a greater percentage of our members come to us without the basic underlying body mechanics, strength or awareness fundamental to optimizing their CrossFit training progress.

So, my wife asked me, given what we’re seeing today, what I would do differently. And I have my answer, but you will not like it. In fact, I bet I would go out of business very quickly if I tried to implement it. Because, the truth is, people don’t love the fundamentals.

The basics may work, but they are boring. Everyone wants to get straight to the barbell and the cool stuff that looks good on social media. But if I were starting over, I wouldn’t put a barbell in your hands until I was convinced you had the movement mastery required to move a barbell safely and effectively.

What does that look like? Well, in my perfect developmental program, here is where you would start:

The 4 Pillars

1. A squat hold

The squat is a default resting position for your body. Or at least it should be if your body is working correctly. Can’t comfortably hold a deep squat for 5 minutes? You are lacking strength and/or mobility in critical places. And you are not alone. Most of the population we see these days falls into this category. The problem is, absent strength and mobility, the moment we put you under load your body will need to compensate for the strength and mobility deficit in ways that do not support your best fitness outcomes and will almost certainly expose you to increased risk of injury.

I would start you with a supported post squat (this is how I started too back in 2005 when I first discovered CrossFit). When this became easy, we would progress you to an unsupported squat hold. I would want to see you comfortably hold that position for at least 2 minutes before we ever considered loading.

Only once you owned that position would we add load. We’d start with a one-minute kettlebell goblet squat hold, gradually increasing the load until you could easily sit in that squat for a minute with two-thirds of your bodyweight demonstrating a solid foundation of strength and mobility.

2. Hanging hold

Yes, your shoulders and posture are ruined from years of sitting over keyboards. This is why shoulder injuries are among the most common injury across all sports and why frozen shoulder plagues even people in the sedentary population. Hanging helps strengthen proper shoulder posture.

We might start with your feet on the ground and gradually work toward a free bar hang. Once you can hang for a minute or more, we would begin exploring brachiating (think monkey bars) to really develop the shoulder strength and functionality that is your birthright. Absent this capacity, your shoulders will always be susceptible to injury in overhead positions.

3. Get Ups

You never appreciate a thing until it is gone. The ability to easily get up and down from the ground is a skill most of us take for granted until we wake up one day to find with surprise that we have lost it. If I could give you one skill to see you through a long, healthy life of independent living, this would be it. Retain the strength and mobility to get up and down off the floor throughout your lifetime, and you will be in the 99th percentile.

We would begin unloaded with the goal of eventually being able to get up and down off the ground without the use of our hands. And when that is easy, I would load you with sandbags. You would not get to touch a barbell until you could spend 2 minutes getting up and down off the ground holding a sandbag equal to 50% of your body weight. At this load, you now have strength and mobility through a broad range of awkward positions, making your body resilient to injury. This is a solid foundation of movement competence upon which greatness can be built.

But before we handed you a barbell, I would still want you to demonstrate the ability to get up and down off the ground with a kettlebell held overhead. A kettlebell Turkish Get-Up at one-quarter body weight demonstrates superior shoulder and hip mobility, stability, and proprioceptive awareness. Between this and the half bodyweight sandbag get up; I am convinced you are ready for a loaded barbell.

4. Crawling

There may be no movement more effective for developing full-body integrated strength and coordination than the crawl. This was your original strength development program; the one nature designed you to follow. There’s three pieces here:

A. Coordination

I need to see you move contra laterally coordinating opposite hand and foot in a smooth, fluid fashion. Until this gait pattern is internalized, you will not be safe to move loads.

B. Strength

Leopard, lizard, bear, crab, and monkey crawls demand core strength, cross-lateral stabilization, shoulder and wrist strength. These are all prerequisites to loading. Until you can perform an unbroken two-minute leopard crawl without your body shaking apart, you are not strong enough to entertain the thought of a loaded barbell.

C. Mobility

As great as the above crawls are for bullet-proofing your body and teaching core bracing, they do not train spinal fluidity. Stiff, brittle spines are endemic to the fitness space, which is full of athletes who can pull a bodyweight deadlift off the floor but tweak their back, pulling up their socks. Our focus on loaded bilateral movement has created this.

A basic hands and knees crawl performed in a serpentine fashion where you train your spine to be supple and follow the hips and shoulders can help retrain your dynamic spinal movement. Another way to accomplish this is through rope flow. Either way, for a pain free back, we want fluidity, not just rigidity.

Stage 2

Only once you’ve mastered the four pillars would we move on to loaded movements. But before we progress to barbells, we would first master the kettlebell. We’ve already begun incorporating the kettlebell into your squat holds and Turkish Get Ups but here’s what’s next:

1. Squats

Now that you own the squat hold, we could get dynamic performing kettlebell goblet squats for reps. As we developed your shoulder mobility and stability (see #2) we would add kettlebell overhead squats. Single arm and double in order to rid you of imbalances. Yes, I know one side of your body moves better than the other. We want to fix that before we load it. And when you own the squat and the overhead position, we would progress to dynamic movements like kettlebell thrusters single and double.

2. Overhead presses

There is a rotational component to the kettlebell press that fully develops the shoulder girdle. It is absent in the dumbbell and barbell press variations. Also, the kettlebell, unlike the barbell, allows your shoulder to press through its natural range of motion without the fixed hand position necessitated by the barbell. I would incorporate some clubbell rotational work and some ring stability drills with this to fully develop your shoulders.

3. Carries

Sandbags and kettlebells both offer a variety of loaded carrying options. Because we have one, we’d probably throw the sled in here too. These are incredible for developing core and full-body strength.

4. Kettlebell swings

We would use the basic Russian swing to master your hip hinge mechanics before ever turning you loose on a barbell. We would progress to CrossFit-style overhead swings and kettlebell snatches, both of which will help prepare your shoulders for dynamic overhead movements.

By this time, you are strong and coordinated through every range of motion. You now possess superior body awareness in every position and are ready for the barbell. In fact, barbell skills are going to seem easy now by comparison.

It’s not sexy or fast, but it is a system that sets you up for long-term success. I’m not sure it’s marketable, but if you want to take me up on it, drop me a line at [email protected]. If you’re committed to doing things the right way, I am committed to helping you achieve bulletproof fitness!