New Gym Rules Effective Immediately

I have noticed a steady increase in injuries in the last 3 months in the Den. Especially in the back. I have thought long  and hard and reviewed our programming in that time period to see if I can pull some trends. This has led to a few new rules in the gym.

1. No more heavy deadlifts in a conditioning environment. I was not really big on this anyways as it would always light up my back, however seeing how many gyms incorporate this I thought I needed to. We had at least 5 athletes who were sore after the last heavy deadlift running workout and that is far too high a percentage. Now this is not to say we aren't going to be doing heavy deadlifts, because you can bet your ass we will continue to do a ton of them, we just won't be doing them in a times environment. Now if you are a competitive CrossFitter who enjoys the unique hit that the dead can provide in metcons you are welcome to sprinkle them into some workouts that we do. I am happy to help you with that. 
2. If your form breaks down on the deadlift / heavy clean and you haven't PROVEN to me that it will not hurt you (aka Robyn) than I am immediately shutting you down. If its in the strength portion of the workout than you can lower weight and do another set. If its in the conditioning environment than again you can either lower weight or I will give you a different exercise to finish off that workout. This is for your own good. For too long when athletes are at the end of their workouts and are ripping hard to finish I have let poor form go for the sake of speed. No longer. 
3. If you have had a prolonged break from your normal CrossFit routine than you are to scale back at least your first workout, if not your first couple. Scale back means no more than 75% of what your usual weight would be for that exercise. Lets say we are doing 135# power cleans and you usually do RX but you have been away for a week, I want you to do the workout at 115#. Even if that feels light, it doesn't matter. Lets take that same example except this time you are an athlete who wouldn't normally do 135# cleans, you would do 95#, than I want you to use 75#. This point I believe is the biggest reason why I have noticed an increase in injuries in the gym this summer. People are generally training less but still coming in and trying to put down RX workouts. RX is for the active elite and the RX weights should be respected as such. I think I have done a pretty good job and making sure people aren't going too heavy with their loads but were I have failed is scaling that back even further if you have been inactive. At the end of the day this responsibility will fall on the athletes shoulders and they can't be afraid to have an "easy" workout once in a while if they haven't been after it in a little bit. Also if you are someone who comes 2 days a week or less this rule will always been applicable to you. 
4. Every athlete is expected to follow "The Mobility WOD" which is put up daily right now by Kelly Starrett, CrossFit's guru on mobility and flexibility. Go to http://mobilitywod.blogspot.com/ for the mobility wod. I suggest everyone goes back to the beggining and does a few of them per day until we all catch up. In a few months I'm sure we will have covered all the exercises and we can add them based on our programming. As of right now he is loosely based them on .com programming. This will help all of us. I will do my best to try and include some time after each class to do this but as you know we are already pretty presses in our hour. 

Now this being said, injuries are a reality in CrossFit because of the intensity we train in and the sport environment we create. Train long and hard enough and it will eventually happen. I don't see any gaps in our programming and on the flip side I think we have done a lot to try and limit injuries in the gym. Full dynamic stretch before each class, thursday and sunday as rest days and a lot of midline strength training. I will continue to try and provide us with the tools to try and stay injury free. Nothing I hate more than to hear someone has hurt themselves while training.

Saturday WOD: 
A. Muscle Snatch 5x2
B. Hang Squat Snatch + Snatch Balance + Squat Snatch -- light weight, work on technique
C. Snatch width deadflift - 5x5
D. Team WOD TBA (10min workout)