Madman Donny Shankle doing the Shankle complex, which is, to put it lightly, serious business.

200 kg is a lot of weight to be stringing together movements with. I love it, despite having the flimsiest shadow of his strength.

Here is a very interesting article from Josh Hillis’ blog. It’s an extensive look at what many have considered the downsides of Crossfit, including Greg Glassman.

It’s easy to bash Crossfit, so I don’t want to get into that. I know many Crossfit athletes and trainers that I have great respect for. If you’re curious as to the background of any of the claims surrounding what you’ll read on Josh’s blog, there’s a helpful “source” link to the right of each item.

Quite a story.

K.

I think this 2400 lb hip lift is an impressive display of strength, but my favorite thing about it is just how many plates there are on that giant’s dumbbell.

K.

Just in case you haven’t seen anything today to convince you that you’re not very strong or skilled with kettlebells, here’s a video of Master of Sport Sergey Rudnev.

If you want to go straight into the most jaw-dropping bits of the video, start at about 3:40. The pistol squat with the other leg held all the way up in the air is incredible, something I’d expect to see from a professional dancer.

The Turkish Get Up rollout near the end both impressed me and made me laugh. He seems to be having a good time with all of this. What could be better?

K.

If you have a Facebook account there’s a good chance you saw this week. Just in case you didn’t, I also want to share what is perhaps the greatest Taekwondo fight of all time.

How can that do anything but make you smile?
K.

I saw this video posted by about a zillion people today on Facebook. I would agree with those who said that this form is not Crossfit specific–and that Crossfit itself is not to blame for what is happening here.

Others disagree. For instance, I first saw it posted by John Sifferman from Physical Living under the title “Crossfit at its Worst.”

I’ve been fortunate to know many Crossfit coaches who are able to coach micro and macro movements with great skill and with each individual lifter’s build and history in mind. They’re not in this room, however.

It definitely changes things when you start working with an axle in a fast movement like the clean, but not this much. Plenty of complicated movements look ugly at first, but there’s never any need for it to look this bad, in my opinion.

If you go to youtube to see view it, take a look at the discrepancy between likes and dislikes. Good grief!

Who can compete with a jedi?

Were any of you the instructor of this promising weight lifting Jedi?

Here’s a very cool Reg Park tribute, featuring a speech by Arnold Schwarzenegger. There aren’t that many guys who get spoken of with such great reverence and admiration.

There are a lot of very good article about Reg Park Training and Reg Park workouts out there. If you’ve ever seen one the movies where he played Hercules, it’s not hard to see why.

I’d recommend The Complete Keys to Progress for the most in-depth look at Reg Park’s routines that I have found so far.

As far as my quad development goes, the leg press treats me better than just about anything. I’m very tall and every time I back squat, my lower back gets a workout while my thighs just sit there, laughing at me.

Front squats work better, but nothing so far works as well as leg pressing.

Not that I’ve ever pressed with 23 45 lb plates before.

For those of you who have tried a set of 20 rep squats, have you ever tried it with 462? Monstrous work here.

And now it occur to me that I want some bumper plates, apropos of nothing.

Have any of you read the book Super Squats?