I don’t know why tall CrossFitters keep staring at the floor for their wall walks…
It’s not like somethings going to magically appear that you’ll have to navigate around 🤷🏻♂️
Anyways, I was one of those people as well 😂 and I always wondered…
🤨 why does my lower back hurt after wall walks?
🤨 why does my neck hurt after wall walks?
🤨 why are my wall walks so slow?
I can’t say I came up with this, but one day I watched an Instagram reel just like this one that opened my eyes:
Just look at the wall (or the tape line at the wall if you’re going to the Open standard) right after you got your feet on the wall.
It’ll put your spine in a neutral position from your neck to your tailbone.
And it’ll allow you to be more stacked so your shoulders can work more efficiently and you can take bigger steps.
Save this for your next wall walk session!
Michael Hoffmann - CrossFit
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6’8” CrossFit Athlete 🇩🇪🇨🇦 Redefining what’s possible for tall athletes 🦒
Break Limits, Challenge the Norm.
What’s the reason that tall CrossFitters (or those with long femurs) struggle so much with their squats?
Lately, I hear more and more often that it’s not just gymnastics that give those 6’2”/5’10” or taller the most issues.
Squatting is by far no. 1 on the list!
Either it’s not being able to squat below parallel or lifting their heels and not being able to squat as much weight as they could.
Now, hip and ankle mobility always play a role in this, obviously.
Also, how you squat can be factor as well: are you imitation your squat with your knees or your hips?
But the most common reason for these issues in tall athletes is femur length.
Long femurs mean your hips have to move further back to reach depth. To balance this out, your upper body will have to lean forward (otherwise you just tip over backwards).
With load, your overall weight shifts onto your forefoot and your heels come off.
Nothing beats mobility and strength work, but a reliable fix are solid weightlifting shoes (like the ones from LUXIAOJUN).
They will rise your heels a bit while still maintaining full contact to the floor, allowing you to stay a little more upright.
Change plates or low bar squatting can help too, even though I’m not a huge fan of either of those.
Comment LAB and we’ll fix your squat inside the Tall Athlete Lab.
Ever experienced the toes-to-bar 💀 wobble?
That’s what the “in between” swing is called in the Tall Athlete Lab.
That annoying extra kip swing after hitting your toes to the bar, just to maintain your rhythm…
Great, you can hang on to the bar, but the time under tension adds up.
I’ve been there before. Coaches kept telling me to press down on the bar harder.
So, I pressed. Did it solve the problem? Nope.
Because while “press down” is a big part of getting your toes to the bar, there is another really important piece to the T2B equation:
The “pull back”.
To get from your hollow position (with your upper body behind the bar) into a strong arch position (with your upper body in front of the bar) you need to actively pull back on the bar.
That will keep up your momentum, your rhythm, and puts you right back into that strong hollow position again to reach the bar.
It took me years to figure that out…
Don’t let that happen to you 😅
In our Tall Athlete Lab community, we started a new toes-to-bar cycle this week with ONE goal:
To help you string together bigger sets of T2B!
Every day, you’ll get a short 10-15 minute workout, progression or accessory piece to help you eliminate another weakness.
You can check out the community and the training cycle for free for 7 days - just comment LAB and I will send you the link! (or click the link in my bio)
Last Saturday I almost lost my sh*t…
Another day of working on Ring Muscle-ups, another day of not being able to make them smooth, to make them adhere to the standard I set for myself.
I was fed up. Halfway through the workout I ripped of my grips, and was so close to just throw them across the gym…
Only a few people here have ever seen me play basketball. Not even my wife has ever seen me set foot on a court. That’s how long I have been retired.
But back then, I was a different person…
I was impulsive. I was reactive. I let my emotions dictate my game.
I was screaming, yelling, throwing tantrums… not because of my teammates, opponents or refs… because of myself!
I would get so mad at myself that I completely lost focus.
Saturday was one of those moments where I could feel it come up again.
But before I let my emotions take over, I remembered what I told my buddy Marcus on our Talk Athlete Lab call the day before…
I told him to record as much footage of him training right now as he can. In 6 months, when he looks back at that footage, he will actually see how far he has come.
You see, in the day to day training, it’s hard to see and, more importantly, appreciate progress.
It’s slow. Especially when you’re tall. And sometimes it feels like you’re stuck.
Looking at old footage of you doing skills, lifting weights, and comparing it to footage you just took will open your eyes how far you’ve actually come.
I did the same thing on Saturday. I sat down between sets and scrolled back to my footage from 2022. When I just started attempting muscle-ups.
Yes, my muscle-ups now might not be perfect. They might not be as pretty as I want them to be.
But come on… I haven’t seen many 6’8” swinging around the rings in my life!
Be grateful for how far you’ve come. And make sure you record yourself even when you’re not good yet… it will help you so much more down the road!
We talk about exactly this (and so much more) on our weekly calls in the Tall Athlete Lab Call- the mental side, the movement side, all of it!
Comment LAB if you want me to send you the link to the community and free trial!
08/15/2026
No kidding, raising a pull-up bar by a few inches turned me into a completely different athlete.
Without changing anything in my training, I was all of a sudden able to…
String together big sets of toes-to-bar, pull-ups and muscle-ups!
Move more efficiently and save energy for other movements in workouts.
Protect my shoulders from awful movement patterns I developed to compensate for a broken kip swing chain.
For tall CrossFitter, the height of your pull-up bar is not a minor inconvenience.
It’s a disadvantage at best, and an injury risk at worst.
And the fix could be so simple…
Yet, why are there so many tall CrossFitters in my DMs complaining about not having a pull-up bar high enough?
Are they embarrassed to bring it up with their gym owner?
Do they wait until someone brings it up?
Do the gym owners just ignore it or not care?
I don’t know.
I’m in a fortunate situation where Kaos CrossFit Halifax raised the bar the moment I walked through their doors.
But I also know many others are still struggling to improve their gymnastics, and they’re stuck because they can’t even do one clean kip swing.
It’s a problem that doesn’t need to exist.
Do you have a pull-up bar in your gym that’s high enough so your feet don’t drag on the floor? 👇🏻
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