There may be lots of different ways to get strong but as far as I can tell there are only two flavors of strength.  The first kind of strength comes into play when you need to overcome the inertia of an object at rest.  That’s where your static lifts like the deadlift and shoulder press come in.

The second kind of strength is what you need to make an object in motion stop moving.  The second kind of strength is harder to develop because it involves an element of timing.

The olympic lifts like the snatch involve both kinds of strength which is why they’re so challenging – especially within the context of CrossFit where we continually put your technique under duress.

Here’s an example: imagine the timing you would need to position yourself under a flyball, get your glove into position and make the catch – all without falling backwards onto your butt.

Now imagine that the baseball weighs 135 pounds, instead of 5 ounces.

Now imagine catching the 135 pound baseball thirty times as fast as possible.

That’s basically the problem space of a CrossFit workout like “Isabel”.

In the real world, timing matters. And you can’t develop timing on a pec deck.