CrossFit trainers often use progressions to help athletes learn new skills. For example, most people don’t walk into the gym for the first time and nail a push jerk. They develop the skill by working on its component parts — jumping, punching, and landing — before working the full movement.
And then something happens when we do finally nail the movement: We forget to go back to the basics and keep perfecting the skill. But progressions can prove helpful for athletes of any experience level.
A workout like Skill Speed Medley demonstrates the value of continuing to work progressions. Individual athletes took on a bracketed workout that advanced through a progression from single-unders to double-unders to double-under crossovers. The catch: The singles and doubles had to be unbroken if athletes wanted to get a piece of the novel movement in the progression, the crossovers.
As the names of the athletes who would advance from the single-under round to the double-under round were announced, a surprising name was missing from the bracket. Five-time Fittest Woman on Earth Tia-Clair Toomey, who tripped on her singles in the Quarterfinal Round and had to start the set of 75 again, would not advance.
Practicing single-unders is valuable even when you have doubles. Working strict pull-ups and dips when you have muscle-ups can improve our technique in countless ways.
Even movements that have not been trained recently will improve with the technical reminders found within a solid progression.