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Benefits of stiff muscles

Lower Body Tightness For Crossfit Athletes: Good or Bad?

As an athlete when you hear stiffness you automatically associate it with negative consequences such as nagging pain, dehydration, and overtraining and these are all correct assumptions, but there are times when stiffness in certain areas of your body can actually work to your benefit.

Back in 2017 a research article was published that looked at the effects of lower extremity stiffness relating to performance results and injury risk and here is what the found:

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THE GOOD

“The cumulative body of evidence indicates that increases in lower extremity stiffness are associated with heightened performance in athletic tasks such as hopping, jumping, throwing, endurance running, sprinting, and changing direction.”

Research Gate

“An athlete who can appropriately use greater stiffness characteristics will potentially store more elastic energy at landing and generate more concentric force output at push-off, possibly reducing the onset of fatigue and increasing running speed.

Consequently, if a strength and conditioning coach is able to advance their athletes’ ability to act like a “stiff spring” across an array of sporting movement patterns, performance enhancement may occur.

Semantic Scholar

The benefits of lower extremity stiffness however are not just for bodyweight or endurance movements but also include strength training.

Stiffness, specifically in your ankle causes effective storage and re-utilisation of elastic energy in stretch-shortening cycle activities.

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Stretch-shortening cycle: refers to the ‘pre-stretch‘ or ‘countermovement’ action that is commonly observed during typical human movements such as jumping. This pre-stretch allows the athlete to produce more force and move quicker. – Science for Sport

Basically it facilitates a maximal increase in muscle recruitment over a minimal amount of time.

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What this means for the Crossfit athlete

Every time you bounce out of the bottom of a squat you are utilizing the stretch-shortening cycle. That is why it is easier to bounce out of the bottom rather than do a tempo or pause squat at the same weight.

In Crossfit squats in their many forms are the most important movements in the sport and its not even close. You will want to take advantage of the stretch shortening cycle in back squats, front squats, overhead squats, squat snatches, squat cleans, air squats, goblet squats, etc.

Along with squats jumping, endurance running, sprinting, and changing direction are all aspects of fitness that are valuable to the Crossfit athlete as you could be required to do any of those movements on any given workout.


THE BAD

Now that we’ve discussed how lower body stiffness can help your performance in multiple ways are there any consequences to having your muscles tight for long periods of time such as injury?

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“Evidence suggests that an optimal amount of lower extremity stiffness is required for successful athletic performance, as too much or too little can be detrimental and possibly injury inducing.”

Semantic Scholar

“Relationships with injury are less conclusive because both excessive and insufficient limb stiffness have been postulated to increase risk. Thus, the “optimal” level of stiffness seems to be dependent on the anthropometry and physical capabilities of the athlete, in addition to sport- specific activity demands.”

Research Gate

A Crossfit athlete that previously played sports with a lot of running, jumping, and explosive movements will probably be able to handle a little more stiffness than others as their body is more accustomed to these sport specific demands.

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Both the lifelong athlete and the newer athlete as well as the professional and the novice should be aware of how stiff their legs are from time to time and determine based on their coming demands if they should stretch or foam roll in order to alleviate stiffness and avoid injury.

Summary: lower extremity stiffness is beneficial to the athlete as long as it is not at extremely high levels.

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