Steve Asks: Years ago I understood that in order to increase muscle size/strength that there was scientific information that instructed us to overload and muscle to failure or almost failure and than to rest that muscle for 40 hours in order to recover. Some new programs have you working the same muscle after only 24 hours. What is the latest info on this training tip?

Greg Says: This sounds like standard bodybuilding protocol, which largely informs the public’s understanding of training in general. If bodybuilding is what you’re doing, than this is reasonable advice, although there is quite a bit of variation within bodybuilding and certainly more than one approach works.

When we’re talking about training in more of an athletic vain, it’s rare to train to failure. This is generally considered ineffective and even counterproductive. Whereas with bodybuilding, the basic idea is to create significant damage to the muscle and then allow morphological supercompensation, athletes are interested primarily in qualities like strength, power and speed more than hypertrophy. When hypertrophy is a goal, more bodybuilding-esque training is often included, and this may involve exercises done to failure or nearly so with less frequency, so this doesn’t really deviate from what you’re talking about.

The rest of the training will still remain focused on athletic qualities. You’re able to walk every day, which is a leg exercise, without detriment. Why? Because it’s such a common, frequently performed “exercise” that your body is entirely accommodated to it and it has virtually no effect anymore. This same thing can and does happen with any other exercise to some extent. If an athlete squats the same weight with the same volume every day, eventually (surprisingly quickly, in fact), it will cease to cause soreness or even much fatigue. When you’re training in a way that involves many similar movements frequently, you develop not only this foundation of accommodation, but the ability to recover more rapidly (again, this isn’t taking the same exercise to failure every day, and certainly not with heavy full-body lifts).

So if you look at a week for a weightlifter, for example, nearly invariably he or she will squat every day in one way or another; this may be actually doing front or back squats every day, or it will be a combination of exercises that involve a squat such as squats, cleans, snatches, etc. These are all “leg exercises”, but aside from the athlete having the ability to manage frequent training and recover more quickly than an untrained individual (or one used to training by the protocol you describe), the exercises vary in a number of ways, from the actual movement to the loading to the reps to the total volume. It’s this modulation that helps makes it possible to train like this.

In short, I don’t know that there’s really any “new” information on this; just different groups of people training different ways that have different effects and consequently different protocols.

Steve Asks: Greg or Aimee, I have been following CrossFit for about 18 months and seen great results. James Fitzgerald is now my coach and I'm trying to really up my game. I have one issue though.... Front Rack position. Do you two have any good suggestions/exercises for me to increase flexibility in this area? Wrist, elbow, shoulder? Also, any movements to increase elbow speed when getting under the bar in the clean. Thanks for your time. Love the blog, it is a tremendous resource.

Greg Says: First, play with your hand spacing on the bar and find the position that gets you the closest with your current flexibility. Often this is wider than you feel like you should be gripping. I generally prefer a wider clean grip for a number of reasons, such as a quicker turnover and better positioning during the pull under, but a wider grip also often makes the rack position easier for people.

Improving flexibility for the rack position is fairly straightforward, but like any other flexibility limitations, it requires consistency and patience. As a start, front squat a lot and consider the exercise a stretch. Emphasize pushing the shoulders forward and up, the elbows up and the palms up above the fingers.

Wrist flexibility is pretty simple: Find ways to push you hand back and hold it. Probably the easiest way to do this is to press your palm against a wall with your arm perpendicular to the wall. Do this both with the fingers pointing up and down. As you loosen up, you can move your arm past perpendicular to close the angle between the hand and forearm further. You can also do this stretch against the floor while in a squat position to combine the two stretches/warm-ups and save time. All the grip work in lifting can make for very tight wrist and finger flexors, so stretch them frequently throughout the day.

The elbows really shouldn’t be stretched per se—they primarily just need to become conditioned to the stress of lifting. Spend time warming them up before training by doing elbow circles both directions while rotating your hand to get the ulna and radius moving as much as possible at the elbow. You can also place a bar on your back as you would for a back squat with your hands close to you shoulders, then lift your elbows high in front of you. Gradually move your grip wider as you loose up.

Being able to move your shoulder blades well is important to get the shoulders up and under the bar properly. A combination of scap push-ups and scap ring rows is a good place to start. For the push-up, from a standard push-up position, with an emphasis on a straight, rigid body and the head in line with the back, keep the elbows locked and let your torso sink down by allowing the shoulder blades to retract completely. From that bottom position, push the shoulders forward as far as possible (scapular protraction). Hold each position for a second before changing directions. The ring rows are the identical movement, but with resistance against scapular retraction rather than protraction. You can alternate the two exercises for 3-4 sets of 10-15.

Finally, you can try loading up a bar in a squat rack a bit lower than what you would use to actually squat from. Get your hands on the bar in the position you would grip for a front squat, walk yourself under the bar in a partial squat position, and pushing your shoulders forward and up and your elbows as high as possible, squat yourself up into the bar. If you have a partner, he or she can assist and lift your elbows further than you can do on your own.

As far as elbow speed goes in the clean, check out this free article on the website.