Transverse Plane: The Missing Piece?

Last week I shared Jujimifu’s Hard Core Home Gym Tour highlighting the commonalities between a diverse group of accomplished legends in the world of strength sport.  Several of them mentioned the importance of training in the transverse plane (rotation) and suggested it as the key to injury prevention and building a strong core (for more on this see Tim Anderson’s Original Strength).

Most strength and conditioning systems including CrossFit focus primarily on movements in the sagittal plane with very little rotational work (and no, I do not agree that Russian twists are the solution to this problem and if you want to hear me go off on a rant just ask me why I think they are a stupid and hazardous exercise).

So what’s going on here?  Did industry changing thought leader Greg Glassman, founder of CrossFit overlook this important piece of the puzzle when he created CrossFit?

Let’s take a look at his “Fitness in 100 Words”

World-Class Fitness in 100 Words:

Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.

Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast.

Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow.

Routine is the enemy.

Keep workouts short and intense!

Regularly learn and play new sports

CrossFit was created as a strength and conditioning program intended to provide general physical preparedness for athletes in every sport.  It was never intended for sport-specific preparation but is best thought of as your off-season training or training to balance out the pieces neglected by your sport specific training. 

What often gets missed in Glassman’s famed recipe for world class fitness is the final line: “Regularly learn and play new sports”

Early adopters of CrossFit came from various athletic backgrounds and used CrossFit as a tool to improve, not replace, our athletic performance.  Almost all throwing sports, combat sports, field sports, paddle sport or court sports already include a huge amount of rotational work both in practice and at play.  As such, it would be redundant and possibly even detrimental for a general strength and conditioning program like CrossFit to add more transverse plane movements to our training.

Of course, Glassman never realized how popular CrossFit would become or that it would one day be considered a sport.  He couldn’t have predicted that millions of people worldwide would use CrossFit as their primary fitness regimen.

So I’m here to tell you that CrossFit is not enough.  Original Strength has proven a very complimentary training program that can be used on recovery days to simultaneously develop strength, mobility and vestibular health while achieving the core-protective benefits of transverse training.

Though they are considered sports today, CrossFit, running, cycling, weightlifting are more accurately categorized as strength and conditioning programs.  They may be essential to achieving optimal athletic performance but they do not in and of themselves develop athleticism or complete fitness.  CrossFit is measurably THE most effective general strength and conditioning program but it was never intended to be used as a complete, stand-alone activity. 

Monday

Warm Up
1 min each:
Deadbugs
Windshield Wipers
Glute Raises
Bird Dogs
Elevated Roll to Sit Through
Full Body Rocks
Banded Twists

Tech:
Hip Extension

WOD
3 Rounds:
200m DB Farmer’s Carry
40 Hip Extensions
40 cal Row  

Finisher:
400m Suitcase Carry