One of the most important aspects of our organization is the program. What are the athletes going to do every day when they come through the door? From the first moment class starts until the final breakdown every part of class is planned well in advance. I am going to use this article to talk about how and why we choose to do what we do day in and day out in class, and then next week I am going to talk about how we decide what our supplemental programs will do. I hope that this gives some insight into why we do what we do and shows you that there is a method to the madness.
The first thing to note about our program is that we are basing everything around CrossFit workouts. CrossFit is defined as constantly varied functional movements performed at (relatively) high intensity. You might remember this from On Ramp, but this is just a fancy way of saying that we base all of our workouts around movements that the body was meant to do (functional movements), that our workouts are always changing (constantly varied), and they are meant to be done as quickly as relatively possible. I added the relatively in there because intensity is relative not only to each person but also to how a person is feeling that day, what the intent of the workout is, and many other factors. One important thing to point out here is that although the workouts are constantly varied, they are NOT random. Everything that we do is meant to be a part of a bigger picture. We take into account many factors when determining what we will do each day (what we did the day before, equipment, setup, cycle goals, time of year, how people are feeling, etc.) and just throwing up something randomly on the board every day is a recipe for disaster.
The science of the program comes in to play with the stimulus. What is the intended dose response from a given workout? In other words, should this workout be a fast sprint, a long grinder, or something in between? Lots of things come into play here, like movement patterns, muscles recruited, energy systems used, how different movements play off of each other, and many others. We also have to keep in mind what strength, skill, or olympic lift work we are doing and how that will affect the workout. When we are looking at a program block (we program 5 weeks at a time) we are trying to make sure we hit as many different areas as possible. We want to be lifting light, medium, heavy, and to max effort in different movement patterns, we want to be hitting different energy systems with our workouts (sprinting, going short, going long, etc.), and we want to be working a variety of muscle groups through a variety of stimulus. All of this can be overwhelming which is why we have developed a basic template that we program off if. This template allows us the freedom to come up with workouts, movements, reps, weights, etc., all while still making sure we are not focusing too much on one thing and making sure we are making our athletes as well rounded as possible. The more well rounded that we can make our athletes then the healthier they will be, the fitter they will be, the better their bodies will look, and the harder they will be to kill.
The magic of CrossFit comes from the intensity. The thing that makes the body adapt and change so rapidly is the intensity that comes with doing a workout with someone else right next to you around your level who pushes you to go harder than you could on your own. If you do this over time then you will get results faster than anything else out there. Our goal with our program is to be able to get our athletes to this place as often as we can over a 5 week period without pushing them too hard, doing too much, and leaving them under recovered. This is very hard. We used to do a lot more strength work before the workouts. What we saw, however, was that people were tired when they got to the actual workout and weren't able to give as much effort as they could fresh. Do this enough and you are training your body to go slow, you are constantly beating your body down leaving you more susceptible to injury, and progress will stagnate.
When we are looking at actual workouts we want about 75% of them to fall in the 8-12 minute range. We have found that this is the magic time domain for intensity. This is the range where you can go at that very hard but not all out pace where you aren't sure if you can keep it the whole time. This is called threshold. Ben Bergeron says that the person who spends the most time at threshold will get the most fit and we agree. Now we also like to do short sprint workouts in there as well as long grinders, but 8-12 minute workouts are our sweet spot. This is why a lot of times when we do longer workouts we add rest intervals. We want intensity to be up when we are working so adding rest makes sure we can push harder when we are working.
The final thing to talk about in the science portion of our class is the strength and skill work. The strength prescriptions are laid out 5 or 10 weeks at a time and are meant to build off of each other. We don't just want to go heavy every time we lift-that would be a disaster. We have to balance our heavy days with our light days, and we also have to take into account what else we have done to our bodies. The goal is to hit the heavy days with as much intensity as possible, which is why we only go super heavy in a certain movement about once every 5 weeks (and never more than twice). We also have to balance the different movement patterns off of each other to maximize recovery (for example if we go heavy on a deadlift then we will be most likely going light on our upper body next time). Once again the goal is to maximize intensity and maximize recovery between lifts. We aren't getting stronger when we are working out-we are getting stronger when we are resting.
We have talked about the science of programming so now let's talk about the art. This is the part of the program where designing the actual workouts come into play. The first thing that we look at when designing a workout is what the time domain is going to be, how many movements it will be, and how the movement patterns will go together. In our template we have couplets, triplets, longer sessions, partner workouts, and chippers all laid out before hand. This makes sure that we can get as much variety as we can while still giving us the freedom to express our creativity day to day. The first thing I think about when I have determined the amount of movements and time domain is the total reps of each movement. This lets me know about how long the workout will take, what the toll will be on the body, and how it will fit in with the rest of the week. Once I have determined the weights and reps then I will lay out a rep scheme that I think will maximize intensity. I am always trying to pick a workout that will allow people to spend the most time at threshold. We want people constantly moving during workouts. If it's and 8 minute workout where most of the time is spent resting because the weights are too heavy or the skills are too hard then our athletes won't get much out of it. I also look at the movements and how they will play off of each other. A great combo is a squat and a push (front squats and burpees) or a squat and a press with a pull (Fran). The best combos are the ones that allow you to keep you moving (high intensity) throughout the whole workout because the muscles worked are constantly changing. If the majority of our workouts allow for the majority of our athletes to spend most of their workout time at threshold then we have done our job. There is a time and a place for long slow grinders or short all out sprints but we don't want those to be the focal point of our workouts.
Another aspects of the art of programming is the aesthetics of the workout. How does it look on paper? How do the reps look? I love the beauty of simplicity. I love making workouts that look simple on paper because I know that those will get great results. One mistake I see all of the time is workouts that are too complicated. They have too much going on, it's hard to remember what you are supposed to do next, the numbers don't go together, etc. The likelihood of an athlete spending much time at threshold during this workout is pretty low. I want our workouts to look good on paper, to be easy to remember, and to keep our athletes moving throughout the piece.
The next piece or our program is deciding the different versions that each track will do. When deciding this I keep in mind what the goal for each track is. There is no need for fitness track to be doing ring muscle ups because their goal is health and longevity. It is vital, however, that the competition track be doing handstand pushups and handstand walking because their goal is to compete and those movements are crucial for competition. The performance groups goal is competing outside of the gym so we try to avoid the higher risk movements (high skill gymnastics, full cleans and snatches, etc.) with them. Once you know the goal of the track it is pretty easy to determine different movements that still work the same movement pattern and still get the intended stimulus.
The most important overall thing that we look at when we are writing our program is recovery. How much work can our athletes do while still recovering? We talk all the time about the importance of recovery but it can't be said enough. You will only improve if you are recovering. More work is more to recover from so there is a fine line between doing too much and not doing enough. Doing too much is a recipe for stagnation, injury, and possibly regression. When looking at our program we look at the amount of work not only day to day but week to week and 5 weeks to 5 weeks. A few ways we make sure that our athletes are recovering are not overdoing movement patterns, never doing more than two highly taxing days in a row (I would define these days as multiple parts to class and a higher intensity workout). We make sure and vary the intensity on workouts from day to day so that we aren't running our athletes into the ground. We also alternate which lifts we are going heavy on with which ones we are going light on. What all this allows us to do is to keep giving our athletes a high dose response from their workout but not putting too much on them so that they can't recover and get better.
We implemented this new type of program in January of this year and the results have been staggering. We have been blown away by the progress that not only our competitors have made but the average fitness level of our athletes as a whole. We have also seen a drastic decrease in bumps and bruises (sore shoulders, backs, etc.) and a drastic decrease in burnout or overuse injuries. By keeping it simple we have been able to get our athletes to push intensity, increase recovery, minimize injuries, and drastically improve their fitness levels. All of these are huge wins for us and we couldn't be happier with how things have gone.
Next week we will talk about our supplemental work. What goes into the strength, fitness, competition prep, and games prep programs? How does what we do there fit in with the class and why do we want our athletes doing the class first? What results have we seen? Stay tuned.