Guest Blog from TrueFitness: HITT: High Intensity Tempo Training

Some of you out there might be familiar with CrossFit: a style of training based on high-intensity timed exercises, for the most part, which revolve around compound exercises and working to improve your time each time you do that same workouts.  Believe it or not, CrossFit did not invent the high intensity tempo style more commonly known as HITT, high intensity tempo training, CrossFit simply brought it to the masses.

Today’s commentary is not about the marketing of a workout style, but instead about the pros and cons of the CrossFit style of training.  We will discuss the potential benefits for athletes and the prospective drawbacks of a CrossFit program for sports performance.

CrossFit workouts are designed around compound exercises and workouts that are all out to improve.  Compound exercises, as we have discussed before, are exercises that involve multiple joint movements such as squats, bench press, power cleans, and pull-ups.  Doing these exercises consistently has a benefit for sports performance, because they help to train the body as a whole.  When lifting weights to improve at sports, we want to integrate as many joints and muscles into each movement as possible, so we become more efficient and effective at using our entire kinetic chain.  The intensity of max effort is also very important in developing sports performance, since athletes need to work out at the speed of sport in order to improve.  These two components (compound exercises & max effort/intensity) are part of CrossFit and will help athletes become better.

However, CrossFit style workouts do have their drawbacks and limitations for sport performance training.  CrossFit exercises only train forward and backward movement, always staying in the sagital plane.  This is limiting for sports performance, since sports are done in all three planes (sagital, frontal, and transverse), with variable movement patterns in multiple directions.  For example, lateral and rotational exercises are never included in CrossFit workouts, because these movements are in the frontal and transverse planes, respectively.  CrossFit also does not take into account proper rest-to-work ratios that are present in every sport.  For example, football has an average play of seven seconds and a rest of 40 seconds, so a proper work-to-rest ratio for football training could be 1:4. This approach will improve recovery and performance, since the adaptation to such type of training would be directly related to the sport.  Another limitation for CrossFit is the complete absence of speed and agility training.  CrossFit simply never accounts for the need of sports to improve footwork, all-out speed and acceleration and deceleration skills.  It is of utmost importance in sports to be able to stop and start quickly, which can be the difference between victory and defeat.    The last potential drawback we will discuss, for now, is power.  CrossFit is about finishing more and more quickly due to the tempo aspect of its protocols.  Well, if fatigued, the body is not producing maximal power and not improving max power is extremely limiting for sports performance. Power must be trained with full intensity and with as close to a full tank of energy as possible to improve our potential power output.

These are just a few of the pros and cons of CrossFit.  Although CrossFit can be a great and very intense workout and should help to lose weight and burn calories, while also possibly getting a 6-pack, simply does not train for sports performance improvements.

For more info and education on sports performance training be sure to check out our group page on Facebook, TrueFitness Performance Conditioning.  You will learn valuable lessons to be your best and improve your athleticism.
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Anyone in the San Diego area is welcome to drop in at our studio at 2949 Garnet Ave. 3rd floor, Pacific Beach, CA.  We would love to put you through our workout.   Please feel free to call or email Spencer Aiken,CSCS  (951) 296-7993 email:spencer@truefitness.biz

Article written by Spencer Aiken, CSCS, CEO, TrueFitness

Edited by Clarissa Constantine, FitToPublish.com