Can Tai Chi Improve Your CrossFit? Part 2: Muscular Effort

This is the second installment in a planned series of blog posts addressing ways in which I think Tai Chi principles can be beneficially applied to CrossFit. Part of the fun in engaging in different physical pursuits simultaneously is observing surprising connections between various movement activities. CrossFit metcons are generally performed as fast as possible (while adhering to good form) with a kind of full-throttle intensity. In contrast, Tai Chi practice is generally very slow-paced with its intensity derived from trying to produce slow, smooth, continuously controlled movement. Suffice it to say that I did not expect to incorporate Tai Chi movement principles into my CrossFit practice, but I do with good result in my opinion.

One area in which I have found Tai Chi principles particularly helpful is in terms of allocating muscular effort. In Tai Chi, we focus a lot on only using only the amount of muscular effort necessary to execute a movement and ideally no more. Another way to say this is that Tai Chi practitioners try to eliminate unnecessary tension in the body by ceasing to engage muscles which are essentially extraneous to the task at hand. For example, in Tai Chi, if I am lifting my arms out in front of me to shoulder height, there is certainly no reason to engage the neck muscles, the triceps too are likely not much needed, and the muscles of the forearm can be relaxed and just along for the ride. So in Tai Chi, there is this constant process of winnowing out unneeded muscular engagement.

Now, it may sound crazy to tell CrossFit people to minimize their muscular effort, but in many movements doing so contributes to better form and reduces overall fatigue. For example, take the basic kettlebell swing. The movement is coming from rapidly opening up the hips and the arms are mostly along for the ride. My coaches sometimes tell people that the arms should be like ropes, and this really resonates with me from the Tai Chi perspective of minimizing muscular effort. Also, if you are tensing up your arms, particularly the upper arms, in the kettlebell swing, then you are unnecessarily using up strength that you might soon need for another movement, like a round of push-ups to follow your swings.

In terms of the kettlebell swing, you might also want to rethink that death-grip on the horns of the bells, is all that tension really needed to hang on? Grip strength is a precious commodity in CrossFit since it relies on a group of relatively small muscles which are often among the earliest to tire. Doesn’t it make sense then to figure out whether you are tensing the grip more than necessary to accomplish the task at hand. (Rowing is another prime example of where an individual may be over-gripping.)

Once you begin to look for extraneous tension, it can be found in the execution of many CrossFit movements, like air squats (think shoulders and arms), running (again shoulders and arms), jump-roping (grip, shoulders, and neck), and kipping skills (grip, over-extension). That said, there are certain lifts where you want/need to tense essentially everything in order to obtain maximum power and stability, and I am not suggesting otherwise. Still, there are many other movements in the CrossFit repertoire where less is truly more in my view. If you can identify extraneous tension, these movements should also become lighter, faster, feel freer, and be less exhausting. But go slow and experiment carefully in trying to incorporate the less-is-more approach, especially in weighted movements.