Aug 26, 2009 78
What About Abs?
Push Press, 3×3
followed by:
Two rounds for time of:
100 ft Walking lunge, carrying 25 pound dumbbells
24 inch Box Jump, 30 reps
Pull-ups, 20 reps
“We don’t do abs,” Coach Glassman exclaimed on a recent CrossFit video clip posted on the CrossFit main site.
What kind of fitness program doesn’t do abs? The answer: A fitness program that is concerned with helping people to achieve functional fitness.
What Coach Glassman meant when he made this statement is that CrossFit does not encourage exercises that work the abs in isolation from the rest of the body. Isolating your abs and working them without being conscious of how their development fits into the bigger picture of the way in which your body works together is shortsighted at best.
CrossFit instead focuses on “midline stabilization.” The midline, Coach Glassman explains, is the “line that trisects the spine and bisects the pelvis.” He goes on to say that “Maintaining rigidity while engaged in functional movement is the essence of midline stabilization. This is the standing definition of core strength, of which abs and ab strength is but a portion.”
