The CrossFit Football Pyramid

CrossFit Journal (Video)

It begins with nutrition.

“Nobody ever got strong out of a vending machine,” says CrossFit Football seminar staffer Ben Oliver. “Training makes you weaker.”

It’s rest, recovery and food that make you stronger. Next up on CrossFit Football’s pyramid is strength and conditioning. In other words, Oliver says, “conditioned enough to survive our training.”

He adds: “You can’t really get conditioned for your sport in the weight room.”

Then it’s on to the Olympic lifts and other barbell movements.

“This is where we develop speed in the weight room,” Oliver says. “This is where we know that we can teach people how to be explosive.”

From there, the next level of the pyramid is gymnastics/body awareness. Finally, the pyramid’s point contains the sport itself, which is split into the game (about 1 percent) and sport practice (about 99 percent). Still, religiously following the pyramid doesn’t necessarily guarantee results, he says.

“At the end of the day, if your training’s awesome but you actually just suck at your sport, you will never play.”

9min 11sec

Additional reading: Sport-Specific Training Using CrossFit Fundamentals by Kevin W. Cann Jr., published May 14, 2011.