Like many of us, I was introduced to Olympic lifting by crossfit. After doing crossfit for a year, I had hit a plateau with my lifts and my gymnastics skills. I was doing the strength portion of my boxes programming but it just wasn’t helping me get over that hump. Some of the problem was lack of technique with the Olympic lifts, but mostly I was just lacking the basic strength to really advance my abilities in crossfit and with my snatch and clean & jerk.
After going to a few small group lessons with Patrick, my technique was improving tremendously, but it still wasn’t enough for me to really progress in my lifts the way I wanted. This is when I decided to start a full training cycle programmed by Patrick that would lead up to a meet.
I’ll admit I had reservations because I thought “I’ll lose my cardio, I’ll lose my gymnastics skills, I’m gonna suck when I go back to crossfitting!” For about 8-10 weeks, I committed myself to this programming and only did crossfit workouts once a week. Now, I have gone back to doing a few CrossFit workouts a week and I am amazed by how much this his program actually helped my crossfit skills!
In the last month, I got my first muscle up, 5 strict pull-ups in a row (before it was 1), 15 unbroken handstand push-ups (before it was 6), increased maxes on all of my lifts, and I suddenly had the strength to knock out 20 pistols! I struggled with all these movements or didn’t have them at all before doing his programming! I am so glad I took the “time out” from crossfitting to do this programming that helped me gain that strength I needed to get over my plateau!
P.S. Also, I didn’t lose my aerobic conditioning either!