Not There Yet: CrossFit's Steepest Climbs

The whiteboard does not lie. Neither does the WOD.

You know the feeling. You walk in, you check the whiteboard, and something on it makes you pause. Not dread exactly. More like a very honest conversation with yourself about where you actually are versus where you would like to be.

Four years in, I still have that conversation regularly. And I think that is the point.

CrossFit has a category of movements that sit permanently on the horizon for most athletes. Not impossible. Not out of reach forever. But perpetually in progress, always demanding more than you currently have to give. Some of them I have cracked. Some I am still working through. And some I have learned to approach differently than I would have at the start.

This piece is an honest account of where I sit with seven of the steepest climbs in the sport. Not a technique guide. Not a tutorial. Just the real story of what these movements have asked of me, what I have managed to give, and what I am still figuring out.

I. The Olympic Lifts: Strength is Not Enough

The Olympic lifts are where CrossFit humbles experienced gym-goers most completely. And I say that as someone who walked into the box with years of barbell work behind me and immediately made the classic mistake.

The clean looks familiar to anyone who has spent time with a barbell. Pull a bar from the floor, get it to the shoulders. Surely the strength transfers. It does not. The clean is a completely different movement built on timing, precision, and leg drive, and the gap between knowing that intellectually and actually feeling it in your body takes longer to close than most people expect. I wrote about that particular lesson in The Veteran Rookie. Suffice to say, the ego took a hit.

But if the clean humbled me, the snatch has kept me humble. It is the most technically demanding lift in the sport and it is also the one that has taught me the most about working honestly within my limitations rather than against them.

The snatch demands a level of hip mobility and overhead stability that exposes every physical limitation with no mercy whatsoever. The catch position alone requires a deep squat with the bar locked out overhead, a position that calls on hip flexibility, thoracic mobility, and shoulder stability in equal measure. The honest truth is that my mobility is not what it was. Not a complaint, just a fact. The body changes and the snatch has a way of making that very clear, very quickly.

So I work with minimal weight. Not a consolation, but a deliberate choice. Because the alternative is not heroic. Forcing load through a compromised position on a snatch is one of the more reliable ways to end up side-lined. And nobody, regardless of age or fitness level, signs up to CrossFit to spend three weeks on the sofa googling their symptoms, booking sports massages, chasing down specialists, and watching the expenses stack up alongside the frustration. The snatch will wait. The technique will come. And until it does, the bar stays light and the work stays honest.

II. Kipping: The Art of the Hip

Most people walk into a CrossFit box without a strict pulling base. The kipping pull-up is their first mountain and they climb it without the baggage of already knowing how to do a pull-up a different way. And for most women in particular, strict pull-ups are genuinely hard. Assisted versions are the norm, not the exception, and there is no shame in that whatsoever.

I came in the other way around. Strict pull-ups were a problem I had already solved, though it took close to ten years of consistent effort before they felt reliable. I happen to be disproportionately arm dominant for someone of my size, which helped eventually, but it was not a shortcut. Neither version is inherently easier; a strict pull-up is a pure test of dead-weight strength, while the kip removes that load only to replace it with complex timing and rhythm. By the time CrossFit arrived, strict pull-ups were in the bank. The problem was that none of it transferred the way I expected. When you already know how to do a movement, the instinct is to build on what you have. With kipping, that instinct works against you.

Kipping is not a looser, faster version of a strict pull-up. It is a fundamentally different skill that requires you to set aside what you already know and start from a different place entirely. That different place is the hip. The hip drive generates the momentum, the swing creates the rhythm, and the arms are almost passengers until the very top of the movement. Until that concept lands in the body rather than just the head, kipping feels wrong. Inefficient, flailing, nothing like the controlled movement you are used to. And for someone with a strict background, that feeling of going backwards is genuinely frustrating.

And then one session it clicks. The swing connects, the timing lands, and suddenly you are stringing reps together in a way that feels almost effortless by comparison. From there, the family expands. The kipping pull-up leads to chest to bar, which demands more height and a different timing on the pull. And then butterflies, which add a forward and backward cycling motion that turns the whole thing into something faster and more rhythmic again. Each one is its own learning curve, built on the same underlying principle but asking something new of you every time.

The kipping pull-up, chest to bar, butterflies. Each one arrived eventually, and none of them arrived quickly. What I have also come to understand is that the hip is not just the key to kipping. It is the key to almost everything that comes after it. A lesson I am still applying, and one that will come up again before this piece is done.

III. Toes to Bar: Strict First, Then Let Go

Toes to bar is one of those movements that looks deceptively simple from the outside. You hang from a bar and you get your feet up to it. How hard can it be.

Quite hard, as it turns out. And hard in different ways depending on which version you are attempting.

The strict version is a pure core and hip flexor movement. No momentum, no swing, just the ability to control your body from a dead hang and drive your feet all the way to the bar. It is demanding and it takes time to build, but the path is relatively straightforward. You get stronger, the movement improves. Progress is honest and linear, which is reassuring when so much of CrossFit is neither.

The kipping version is a different conversation entirely. The hip comes back into play, as it always does. The swing generates the momentum and the timing of the hip drive determines whether the feet arrive at the bar with control or not at all. But the piece that took me longest to find was the arms. At the top of the movement, pressing down on the bar with straight, locked arms is what creates the rebound and sets up the next rep. The arms are not just hanging on. They are actively working. It is the same principle that will come up again when we get to muscle-ups, and worth filing away now.

Once that clicks, toes to bar stops being a movement you manage and starts being one you can use. The kipping version is significantly faster than strict, and when the timing is dialled in you can string reps together efficiently enough to make a genuine dent in your WOD time. That shift, from surviving a movement to deploying it, is one of the more satisfying progressions in CrossFit.

It is a quiet one. No drama, no ceremony. Just a movement that eventually made sense and now mostly behaves itself.

IV. Double Unders: It's Just Skipping. Or Is It?

Everyone has skipped a rope. As a child it was effortless, rhythmic, almost meditative. You jumped, the rope went round, you jumped again. Simple.

Double unders are not that. They are what happens when someone takes the childhood version, strips out the forgiveness, and demands that the rope pass under your feet twice per jump instead of once. Same basic concept. Completely different execution. And the gap between those two things is wider than it has any right to be.

The jump itself is not the problem. Most people can get the height. The problem is the rope speed. To get two passes per jump, the rope has to move significantly faster than a single under, which means the wrists have to work in a way that feels unnatural at first. Small, fast, precise flicks rather than the big arm circles that the childhood version allowed. Until the wrists find that speed and that economy of movement, the rope catches. Constantly. On the feet, the shins, occasionally somewhere more unfortunate. And every catch breaks the rhythm and you start again.

The wrist flick was the unlock for me. Once I understood that the power was coming from the wrists rather than the arms, something shifted. Not immediately, and not cleanly. But the direction became clear.

The moment it really started to come together was during the skill portion of a regular WOD session. Fifteen minutes committed entirely to double unders, built into the programme before the conditioning piece began. No clock counting down on a workout, no pressure to perform, just the rope and the work. That kind of structured skill time is where the knowledge base gets built. The WOD is not the place to learn a skill. It is the place to use one. Open box filled in the rest, practicing on my own terms and at my own pace until the rhythm started to stick.

They are still a work in progress. Consistent on a good day, variable on others. But the wrists are faster now, the rhythm holds for longer, and the rope catches less. The whiteboard still gives me pause on double unders. Just a shorter pause than before.

V. Inversions: The Wall, the Walk, and the Fear

There is a logical progression to most CrossFit skills. You build a foundation, you add complexity, you repeat until it sticks. Inversions follow that logic up to a point. And then they ask you to turn upside down and move, which is where the progression gets interesting.

Wall walks are hard in a way that is easy to underestimate. The movement is controlled and methodical, which suits me. What is less controlled is what happens to the breathing by rep four or five. Anything above five in a row and the cardio becomes the limiting factor rather than the movement itself. Something still to work on, and worth being honest about.

Handstand push-ups come in two versions and they are not the same movement. Strict handstand push-ups are raw pressing strength with no assistance from momentum. They also require a range of motion that not everyone can access straight from the floor, and some additional padding and elevation makes the difference between a movement that works and one that does not. That is a practical reality more people share than tend to admit. The kipping version is a different animal. If the kipping pull-up lives in the hip, so does the kipping handstand push-up. It is essentially an inverted kip, the same drive and timing principle appearing again in a completely new context. By the time you get here, the logic is familiar even if the application is not.

Handstand walks are where the section gets honest. About a year to eighteen months ago, practicing them led to a back flip. Not the intentional kind. The position was not locked, the balance went, and I went with it. The bruising faded. The wariness did not entirely. Because the risk is real. Without a properly fixed position overhead, the margin between a handstand walk and landing on your back is smaller than it looks from the outside, and that is not something you forget in a hurry.

So I am not throwing myself into open space just yet. But I am not done with them either. There are plates near the wall, handstand holds, and a few steps walking into the wall rather than away from it. The wall is still the safety net. Open floor, no safeguard, that is still ahead. But the work is happening, quietly and consistently, in the background. The muscle-up is the main event right now. The handstand walk is waiting in the wings, and it knows it has not been forgotten.

VI. Muscle-Ups: The One That Gets Its Own Article

The muscle-up has been my obsession for the better part of two years. I say that without embarrassment because anyone who has chased one will understand exactly what I mean.

I invested in personal trainers to work on it specifically. I went to a CrossFit boot camp with it as the primary goal. I failed more times than I can count, and I kept making the same mistake every time, reverting to a pull rather than committing to the press-down and push-through that the transition actually requires. The band became my safety blanket. Reliable, forgiving, and not quite the real thing.

There were one or two unassisted reps, over a year ago now. They happened, they were real, and then some personal stuff got in the way and I found myself back on the band. That is the honest version.

The obsession has abated somewhat. Not because I cracked it, but because life served up a few plot twists that put a CrossFit movement firmly in perspective. The band remains. We have an understanding.

The full story deserves its own space and it will get it. Consider this a trailer, not the film.

VII. Rope Climbs: A Story That Deserves Its Own Read

Rope climbs I have written about already, in more depth and with more honesty than I could fit here. The J-hook, the S-wrap, the legless version that removes all the borrowed leverage and asks you to earn every inch on grip and composure alone. If you have not read that piece, it is worth your time and not just for the climbing.

You can find it here

The Honest Summary

Seven movements. Four years. A back flip I did not plan, a band I am not quite ready to let go of, wrists that are finally getting faster, and a snatch that will stay light until the body says otherwise.

I started CrossFit thinking fitness was fitness and that what I had built would transfer. Some of it did. A lot of it did not. And the gap between those two things is where most of the interesting stuff has happened.

The list of things I am still working on does not feel like a failure. It just feels like Tuesday.