State of Fitness Address 21-2
The State of your Fitness
After many stops in your Snatch, bonus Front Squats with your Cleans, and presses with your pecs, you made it through the second cycle of 21. Even better, we graduated all of the COVID phases WA has to offer and we are running outside again!
There were many PRs that fell over the last cycle, including some gym PRs. We have consistently been breaking our attendance records over the past few months, clocking 80+ members on multiple days. Thank you all for taking your health and wellness seriously, and for picking Town Athletics to help you on this journey. Attendance = dedication and dedication = progress. Like we tell you on day one of your No Sweat Intro, succeeding in fitness means just continuing to show up. Our program and coaching will take care of the rest.
Speaking of coaching: You will notice a few new faces in the coming months. We are continuing to build our team. Coach Ashlee took an opportunity to continue pursuing her Fire Fighting career by joining a volunteer department and could not split the time between us and them. We wish her the best. In her place, we hired Coach Kim and Coach John. Kim’s first solo classes were just last week. And Coach John will begin his training this coming week. Keep an eye out for their bios to learn a bit more detail on who they are and where they come from. Until then, remember rule #3, Be nice. Say hello and introduce yourselves! You all have been doing a great job of building a welcoming community. We see proof of this at the gym and on the weekends at Beer Star.
Now what you all came here for—the numbers.
You Benched, Zombie Squatted, and Push Pressed your way to 844 reps at an average intensity of 80.42%. You Weightlifted (Snatch, Clean and Jerk, and Snatch and Clean DLs) 1241 reps at an average intensity of 81.82%. In other words, you performed some version of a “lift” over 2000 times in the last 3 months!
You CrossFitted for an average of 11:39 and you started back at the beginning of our Maximum Aerobic Power programming to accumulate 9 hours and 6 minutes of lung-building prowess.
Last but not least, you climbed a Peg Board (likely for the first time since at least grade school, if not ever) and learned how to control your body from the ground to standing with a Barbell Get Up.
How did we get there?
Weightlifting:
This cycle was about Volume. We set out to create volume and hypertrophy in each of our lifts. But we wanted to do it in a slightly more creative manner than just adding reps. With this in mind, read below to see the breakdown of each day’s work.
Monday: How do you create the effects of volume on a Snatch without just adding reps? By increasing the time under tension throughout the lift. This is manifested in the “stops” we incorporated into your pulls. This gives you the benefit of more time under tension while also slowing down and practicing what is arguably the most technical portion of the lift—the pulls. In addition, we completed our first real run at drop sets in the Back Squat. Drop sets allowed us to get touches on higher intensity lifting (= higher percentages) that you wouldn’t normally be able to do with higher volume. The rule is normally the higher the volume in a lift, the lower the intensity needs to be. Drop sets are a hack to have your cake and eat it, too. Based on feedback and numbers, I think this was a success.
Tuesday: Given the amount of time spent in the pulling position of the Snatch on Monday, I didn’t want to overdo the pull again on Tuesday; especially with the relative increase in intensity of the Clean weights vs the Snatch. In order to still hit our desired increase in volume, I added a Front Squat to go along with your clean. This gave us volume in the legs and also some practice at hitting jerks while the legs were fatigued. If your technique isn’t dialed, the Jerks were likely a challenge to hit. That is why we practice! And why we practice under fatigue. It helps highlight issues that could otherwise be hidden by compensation when fresh.
Wednesday: A classic Pull/Push day. To give you all a break from the CNS demands of the standard Deadlift, I incorporated Clean and Snatch Deadlifts. Again, this gives us more time to solidify our positions off of the floor in the lifts but also not completely abandon our pulling prowess. Even more importantly (for some of you 😉) we ran through our yearly Bench cycle. This was a bit off of our normal path for this cycle in that we lived in the lower rep ranges, but I figured if you all only get to Bench one cycle out of the year you would want to shoot for the 1 reps vs 5+. I heard about some crazy Bench PRs ~ 40#+!? So it seems you all responded very well to this approach.
Thursday: We wrapped our pulling-dominant Thursday cycle. This was a continuation of quarter 1. While not as sexy, I did get to see many firsts here, be they on the Peg Board or big weights on the Get Up. The positions and static strength you all build on Thursdays cannot be over-valued. These are the things that keep you injury-free when CrossFitting or just living your lives.
Saturday: Saturdays stayed true to their origin—to give all of you who are hardy enough to make it out on a weekend a bit more in the way of supplementary work to help improve your weightlifting. In addition, the WODs are always a bit more challenging. This cycle’s Saturday found the addition of the Zombie Squat, a lift I utilized with some of my Individualized Design clients and found great success with. I’m sure you all picked up on it, but the lift is not only an additional touch on squatting—it’s a self correcting movement. If your positions are not where they should be, then the lift will be next to impossible. I love it for this reason. It forces you to take note of where your body is in space. I think this will ultimately lead to much improved Clean and Front Squat positions and strength.
On to the CrossFit. The goal of this cycle was to move out of Open prep movements and into some more creative endeavors. This means odd objects, KBs, and anything else I can come up with that we normally don’t see in the Open.
Just like the lifting, each day had a theme. These themes are based on what our lifts included that day as well as anything I believe we are missed out on. We can only fit so many lifts in a week which means some things need to be put into a metabolic format vs a static one.
Monday: Upper Body Pull and Lower Body Unilateral. With the lack of strength-based unilateral work, I wanted to make sure that our legs didn’t miss out on maintaining a balance.
Tuesday: Odd Object. Odd Object movements will be some of the most beneficial lifts you’ll do in your time with us. How you move Sandbags in the gym will be how you move potting soil and grocery bags at home.
Wednesday: Kettlebell work. While the Open gets all the Dumbbell love, the off season is for Kettlebells. Each has their merits but I’m sure you’ll agree the KB is a bit more unruly. Much like Odd Objects, the better we are at moving things that are unruly, the better we will be outside the gym with real world objects.
Friday: As mentioned at the top, we started back at the beginning of our MAP Macrocycle. This meant loooong time domains and lower skill repeatable movements. What made this a little more unique was the bodybuilding spin I tried to incorporate into each AMRAP. Who says we can’t get a pump while also building our lungs? Summer is here and I wanted you all looking your best!
Saturday: High Skill. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Just an opportunity to try your new found strength and skills within a metabolic format.
What’s next?
Our next cycle concentrates on longer conditioning pieces and block work. Monday we are busting out the Pound Pads and makeshift blocks to give you an opportunity to really concentrate on each segment of the Snatch Pull. We will also continue to build on our Squats with some positional work and practice utilizing our stretch reflex in the form of a 1 1/4. Tuesday will continue the positional practice with Hang Cleans. Wednesday our posterior chain will be improved by some direct work in the form of Good Mornings and Zerchers. And we won’t abandon our press gains as we will be hitting some strict DB presses. Technique Thursday will mark the beginning of our next Gymnastics Macrocycle, highlighting all things handstand and shoulder. Our MAPs will continue their march towards the short by cycling through #s 7 and 6. Finally, Saturday will bring back unilateral strength work along with segregated Jerk work.
Thank you all for taking your fitness seriously! I hope this finds you enjoying that fitness in the summer weather.
Stay Rooted
Coach_ARK