Love a Double Under

Either you love’em or you hate’em…  we all know Geoff hates them!

When Double Unders (DU) appear in a workout I always cross my fingers and hope that today is going to be a good day.  On a good day I can bash out 50+ unbroken DU without a sweat, and on a bad day I’m lucky to link 10 of the suckers.  So what make the DU so difficult?

The DU takes a lot of determination to master. Speed, agility, coordination, balance, accuracy and stamina (when you get good at them) are all key physical skills need to master the DU.This is why they are very suited to the world of CrossFit.

Here are Momentums top six tips to help improve you DU:

1. The right rope – you didn’t learn to drive a car by jumping straight into a Ferrari and you’re never going to get a DU if you go straight for the super thin high-speed wire rope.  These ropes are for ninjas only and most rookies will simply end up whipping themselves to pieces.  Personally, I’m not a fan of being whipped, but you might be?

When first learning to do DU I strongly recommend you use one of the thicker PVC ropes.  A thicker rope is not only easier to see, but it’s also easier to maintain the tension on the rope.  Once you learn to keep tension on a thicker rope and perform unbroken DU you can then move to the thinner and faster wire ropes. Some people will argue that this is not true, but I’m willing to bet they are still struggling to link high numbers of DU together.  Trust me, if you can master the thicker rope you will kick-ass when you progress to the thinner one.

2. Rope length – The main objective in achieving DU success is to learn how to control the rope and your body.  Rope control will help you coordinate your jumps to the whipping of your wrists (point 4).  The length of the rope if very important because:

• It is a lot harder to maintain rope tension if the rope is too long
• A longer rope also has further to travel in each revolution
• The shorter the rope, the faster it will go
• If the rope is too short you will constantly trip up

Play around with the rope length and find out what works for you.  If you are serious about smashing out unbroken DU’s it’s worthwhile investing in your own rope so other gym members don’t continually change your rope length.

Also note that if the WOD contains pull-ups, push-ups or other exercise that will tire out your arms, you may want to adjust the rope length to be slightly longer. As fatigue set in most people slowly let their arms move away from their bodies.  Doing this will shorten the radius of the rope arch as it passes under your feet.  (See point 3 video)

 3. “The Position” – (If you have access to the CrossFit Journal, Carl Paoli and Kelly Starrett have an excellent series of videos about “The Position”).

Body – With your shoulders relaxed and your body in a “globally flexed” (hollow rock) position you will form a solid base from which your wrists can flick the rope quickly to maintain tension and increase speed.  Kicking your feet out in front of you (salmon dance) or donkey kicking your feet behind you may give you the ability to achieve DU’s, but the energy required to do this is far greater than the hollow position. Keep your feet & legs together, with knees pretty straight, jump on the balls of your feet (point 5), and trying to see the tips of your toes just out in front your body.

Hands – Ideally we want the rope to hit the ground out in front of our feet and already be on its way “up” when you initiate the jump.  Believe it or not, the rope does not actually need to complete two full revolutions if it hits the ground out in front of you (crazy but true).  By holding your hands in front of you body, with elbows tucked by your sides and your palms facing each other you will improve your DU efficiency.

4. It’s all in the wrist baby – the movement of the rope needs to initiate from your wrists and you need to be able to keep tension in the rope at all times.  A sloppy rope in never going to hold speed, if you have the rope length correct you need to start thinking about “angry” wrists.  Spin your wrists hard, fast and under control to maintain tension and increase the speed of the rope. Carl Paoli from http://gymnasticswod.com/ has some excellent DU progressions in the following videos.  In part 3 he demonstrates a very useful drill to improve your wrist action.

5. Stay on your toes to be agile – Ninjas move on the balls of their feet. DU’s are about coordination and if you can learn to “bounce” on your toes to the rhythm of the rope you will become a badass ninja in no time (minus the samurai and ninja stars.)

6. Be patient and practice as often as possible – DU’s are nasty little f*ckers and sometimes the rope just refuses to cooperate. THIS is the main challenge of the DU. It’s not whether you can move the rope fast enough (point 3), it’s more a question of can you put aside your frustration to learn to dance to the rhythm of the DU beat.  Get good at doing singles and maintaining the tension in the rope.  Then progress to doing a few singles, one DU and then back to singles.  As you get better you can then try to ling DU’s together.

“The fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road; long before I dance under those lights.” Muhammad Ali

The goal is to take some of the simple movements that we use in CrossFit and see how they translate into the other movements.  CrossFit is a tool, that when correctly used, can expose our individual weaknesses.  Something as simple as the push-up, air squat, or pull-up can quickly reveal an athlete’s weaknesses.  If you can not maintain a hollow rock position while performing DU, I’m guessing you will also lose position while doing KB swings, pull-ups, and pressing weights overhead.  The goal is to learn the movement patterns before challenging the movement patters.

Practice the technique to master the skill!

Once you’ve mastered the DU we can then stat to focus on the Triple Unders