“It allows members to take a step away from the day-to-day race to get stronger and faster, and concentrate on the skill base required to form a base for consistent, sustainable improvement.”
Coaches at CrossFit Reading in England are offering a new class that focuses on honing skills and improving strength.
The free weekly session, branded Ironwork, is run in a workshop-style format.
“It allows members to take a step away from the day-to-day race to get stronger and faster, and concentrate on the skill base required to form a base for consistent, sustainable improvement,” Chet Morjaria says.
Morjaria created the class earlier this year along with fellow CrossFit Reading coach, Gareth Doody.
The programming is focused on the Olympic lifts and gymnastics movements.
“What better combination of these two elements of CrossFit movements than the Olympic lifts — a large proportion of our programming and practice is on the snatch and the clean and jerk,” he continues. “We also believe that strength is a skill and devote time to training both strength movements themselves, but also looking at how to train strength and get stronger.”
In terms of high-skill work, they often practice the more complex CrossFit movements such as handstand work and ring work, as well as movements requiring agility, balance and coordination.
“Doing this regularly allows us to not only ensure the members perform ‘perfect practice,’ but also that the concept of ‘perfect practice’ is instilled in the mind set of all,” Doody adds.
Word has spread in the local CrossFit community and the box has received inquiries from non-members — both from other boxes and even those new to CrossFit.
“It seems that the format of highly coached drills followed by an intense 'practice' session provided a low-intimidation environment that captures the attention of those that do not feel ready to join in open sessions,” Morjaria says.
Now two Tuesday Ironwork sessions are a compulsory part of the two-week on-ramp process at CrossFit Reading. Retention rates from the on-ramp improved by 20 percent as on-ramp graduates could go straight into a weekly session with which they were familiar and comfortable.
“This seemed to whet the appetite of our regular attendees for something even more focused and thus we introduced monthly three-hour Ironworkshops for our existing members and both classes are constantly evolving as the coaches learn and understand more about how best to serve the ever-changing needs of their athletes,” Morjaria says.
With more interest and demand in Ironworks, CrossFit Reading recently enlisted the help of three additional coaches in the weekly sessions and divided the content down into on-ramp, foundation and open.
“Each group will learn about the same movements with a slightly different focus. For example, the open group — consisting of our more advanced members — will often work on efficiency of a movement in a WOD setting to help members take their training to the next level,” Morjaria explains.
“We feed this ethos of constant learning to our members and find that it helps to create a circle of feedback that keeps us all evolve as coaches, athletes and people.”
Regular Ironwork attendee Ian Chilton says he enjoys being able to concentrate on a specific exercise for the session.
He explains: “This means I can make greater progress than when it is part of the usual hour class, which will include a WOD and another skill.”
