State of Fitness Address 21-3
The State of your Fitness
Fall may be upon us, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t do some reflecting on our summer gains!
This past cycle was a doozy. Many of you were introduced to lifts from the blocks for the first time. Other firsts included the often loathed, but highly effective, Slam Balls (more to follow) as well as some very direct posterior action in the form of Zercher Good Mornings.
New movements weren’t the only firsts, as we had a number of PRs in both weights moved and skills acquired. Congratulations on a successful cycle to round out your summer. If you didn’t PR, don’t sweat it! Remember that the weight on the bar and the number on the clock isn’t everything. If you missed a lift or didn’t get a time you were expecting, your effort was not in vain! Don’t let one day of a three month cycle define the effort and progress you’ve made in your fitness journey. What you do in the gym matters, but there are a nearly infinite amount of factors that can play into hitting a PR or not—sleep, stress, and mental acuity included. Fitness is marathon, not a sprint. Think about where you want to be 5, 10, 20 years from now.
So, what did we do this cycle? First the numbers, then the why:
You Good Morning’d, Lunged and Dumbbell Pressed 1255 total reps and this didn’t even include your Chin Ups, which were unique in number to each of you. You Weightlifted (Block Snatched, Hang Clean and Jerked, 1 1/4 Squated, and Push Jerked) 1010 reps at an average intensity of 82.12%. That is 2265 reps of weighted movement in 3 months’ time!
You CrossFitted for an average of 13:29 and built your aerobic base with 7 hours and 30 minutes of MAP training. Along with this aerobic base, you also set the foundation for your Handstand skill set by spending more time than you probably would have liked upside down on Thursdays.
How did we get there?
Weightlifting:
This cycle was about breaking the lifts down into their parts and making sure that we left no rock unturned in discovering imbalances. The volume and intensity was somewhere between hypertrophy and raw strength.
Monday: Block work! Snatching from the blocks is one of my favorite methods of allowing athletes to really concentrate on each position without completely overloading their CNS (central nervous system). This is accomplished because we take out a large portion of the concentric (going up) pull and the time under tension that’s comes with performing that pull from the ground. This also allows us to set ourselves up perfectly in the position of our choosing. You may have heard me say in the past that the First Pull of the Snatch (from the ground to below the knee) really only serves one purpose, and that is to get the bar into the ideal position for us to add power and speed to it. Furthermore, it adds very little to the finished lift; and most of the time, if we aren’t patient, it only screws us up! The blocks eliminate all of this and highlight how each position should feel. It also creates the habit of creating tension immediately. Often times once an athlete is confident from the blocks this will be their heaviest lift. The Squats, too were meant to highlight positional work. I added the quarter to the bottom to really highlight how to utilize the stretch reflex and keep your positions throughout the drive. I wanted to give you an opportunity to get used to this feeling before we move into the next cycle’s strength work.
Tuesday: Because we got to skip the pull from the Snatch and there was no dedicated pull day this cycle, I wanted to accomplish a couple things on this day. The first was position work and the second was some pulling volume. We checked both of these boxes by working the Clean (sans Jerk) from the hang positions. By taking the Jerk out of the equation, the weight you were able to move ticks up a fair bit. In addition, completing the lift from the hang added in some Clean Deadlift volume. Finally, utilizing the various hang positions allowed us to concentrate on hitting the correct spot in the pull each time—much like the block work did for the Snatches.
Wednesday: Stayed with our theme of push/pull while also getting a bit of extra targeted posterior work. We achieved this via both traditional Good Mornings and the Zercher variation. This was followed up with Dumb Bell Press and Chin Ups. Why the DB? Remember earlier when I talked about wanting to make sure we didn’t miss any imbalances? DBs do an excellent job of showing you exactly that, working each arm independently. The Chin Ups were to target the bicep a little more directly than our normal Pull Up work does. It’s good to shift to different types of pulling. Imbalance is the enemy.
Thursday: Saw the beginning of the next 6 month cycle to improve our Handstand prowess and work towards walks. As with any gymnastics movement, this includes time spent in static positions, along with making sure our midlines are up to the task. Remember, control and resiliency first; then dynamic. Thursdays are your vegetables, and you better eat them if you want your cake!
Saturday: Sticking with our balanced intent, Lunges were on tap to help ensure our legs are evenly matched. In addition, we got to spend some time on the Jerks removed from any pre fatigue caused by the Clean. The Jerk cycle started from behind the neck. BTN work sets the bar up to move in a completely vertical path, generally allowing us to lift a bit more. Kind of like work from the blocks, it puts the bar in an ideal position. Putting a Push Jerk before the Split was done for a similar reason. There is very little room for error with the Push Jerk. If we can set ourselves up with a precise rep of PJ, then the Split should feel even better. Hopefully you all experienced that.
CrossFit: The goal of this cycle was to push the average time of the workouts up a little bit and plug any holes that we may have missed in the Weightlifting.
In order to accomplish this, each day had a theme. These themes were generally meant to be complimentary to the lifts accomplished that day. This is/was done to ensure a full body workout and keep our form in check when doing things at speed.
Monday: Run. Love it or hate it, running is a good way to illicit a pretty large metabolic dose response in a short time frame. Since Mondays had a lot of lifting, this was the ideal day to include a shorter run WOD. Plus it was Summer, so why not get outside.
Tuesday: Longer + Horizontal Pressing. Because we no longer had a dedicated Bench day, these WODs were reserved for horizontal pressing to keep up the Bench gains you got from last cycle. In addition, the time domain stretched out because we only had one lift to contend with beforehand.
Wednesday: Deadlift. To keep up some pulling volume and help prep us a bit for the next cycle, these workouts centered around some sort of Deadlift. Picking something heavy up off the ground is about as functional as it gets!
Friday: MAP 7 and 6. You all graduated through the next couple levels of MAP. We are continuing our march towards the very short with MAP 6 being on the edge of where CrossFitters live. That is a race pace for a 20:00 WOD.
Saturday: High Skill. As is tradition, these workouts are meant to push both your strength and your skill sets, including higher skill gymnastics and heavier barbell work.
What’s next?
Our next cycle concentrates on the traditional: Snatches, Clean and Jerks, Back Squats, and Deadlifts! This will be what is considered our strength cycle. We will begin with some rep maxes and move onto the much anticipated singles! This will be your opportunity to see how all of your hard work over the past year has paid off. Position work and volume is what sets your bodies up for success with heavier singles. The support work will still be there in the form of overhead work. Conditioning will see you move through MAPs 5 and 4. Like the cycles before each day’s Metcon will have a theme, pay attention and I bet you’ll have it figured out in no time.
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Addressing comments and concerns from the last cycle.
I have been made aware that there is frustration about some of the Metcon programming, specifically that we aren’t doing enough barbell cycling, CrossFit “Name Workouts” or Hero WODs; and that the Slam Balls aren’t enjoyable. Let me take some time below to address each of these.
The short answer is the following. There is CrossFit as a sport and CrossFit as a health and fitness program (longevity). I write our program to act mostly as the latter.
Barbell Cycling. This can be defined as Snatches or Cleans (and Jerks) for multiple reps within a Metcon. If you’re used to looking at a competitive CrossFit program, you’ll Iikely see more barbell cycling. I’m going to be honest: I don’t feel that Barbell Cycling is a great option for most athletes that are participating in CrossFit for health and fitness. We do A LOT of barbell strength work. In fact, you all touch a barbell almost everyday you are in the gym. The caveat is that it is mostly done in a controlled setting when you and your CNS are fresh. This is on purpose. Most barbell work is highly technical. If you perform it fatigued, without the appropriate base of support, the results are eventually going to be detrimental. Think about the workout Randy, which is 75 Power Snatches (75/55) for time. Does anyone think that they will set up for these Snatches the same way they would for a 3RM Snatch? Almost certainly not, and if they did, it would completely defeat the purpose of the WOD. To take on a workout like this requires a massive base of properly executed Snatches performed both maximally and sub maximally in a fresh state. Ultimately, these Snatches will turn into a Straight Leg Snatch Grip Deadlifts + a Muscle Snatch. This is not conducive to longterm technical prowess, joint health, or strength. If you had me for your OnRamp, you might remember me telling you not to get frustrated if you didn’t get the Snatch on your first attempt. These are lifts that people spend their entire lives trying to perfect for the opportunity to try 3x in front of judges and they still make mistakes. It’s why we practice them every week and why I don’t normally put them into fatigued settings.
CrossFit Named Workouts: If you read through what I wrote in the body of this message, you can see I spend a lot of time ensuring a balanced flow of work. The Metcons are written with a goal in mind, and normally that goal is to balance out the strength program and act as complimentary movements so that we aren’t overusing any one muscle group. Overuse inevitably leads to injury. Often, the named workouts don’t fit in the goal for that day’s session. In addition, named workouts usually mean one is looking to test themselves. Testing is a good thing and should be done from time to time, but testing too much leads to an overloaded CNS, and performance declines. When using CrossFit for health and fitness, the goal is to come consistently, and when we do that, we need to be selective of when we want to really push ourselves. This is written into the program in the form of our test weeks. We simply cannot come in and push ourselves to 100% everyday or our bodies and minds will not keep up. It will work until it doesn’t. I know this because I’ve experienced it and I’ve seen others go through it.
Hero WODs: These workouts are created for an amazing cause—to remember those who have fallen in defense of our freedoms. However, they are also written to make us suffer a bit in that remembrance. Again, pushing ourselves beyond our limits is good from time to time, but too much leads to injury and most Hero WODs are very intense.
Slam Balls: I understand that the transition from Sand Bags to Slam Balls hasn’t been too pleasant. What I want to highlight here is that the Slam Balls may literally be the most functional thing you do in the gym. Picking something up that is awkward and hard to carry, and bracing and moving it through space is exactly the type of thing you will find yourself doing outside of the confines of the gym: Yard work, moving, loading things into your car, etc. This is an instance where we do what works, not necessarily what is “fun.” It is not my intent to make you all miserable, as hard as that may be to believe 😉 My intent is to make you all more resilient and stronger people outside of the gym. I realize that the Slam Ball is a bit less comfortable than the Sand Bags were, but the Sand Bags were not commercially viable. We have learned through multiple vendors and models that they all fail well before they should and make a huge mess in the process.
Back to the start. There is CrossFit the sport and CrossFit for health and fitness. CrossFit the sport requires things that fall outside of the healthy spectrum, but are necessary to find success in the sport. If it is your intent to compete at local events here and there for fun, then I recommend making sure to hit up the Saturday class. This is where you will find the most opportunities to practice some of these things. If your goal is to compete at a higher level, then I would recommend sitting down with a Coach to plot your path forward. There are members at the gym who participate in CrossFit for sport, but it requires a much more individualized approach because of the volume and calculated risks it requires.
So the question remains, is there a middle ground? Like, “What if I can’t make Saturdays but still want to dip my toe into the competitive waters?” Or, “What if I want to test myself before the end of 3 months.” Well you’re in luck! Staring in November, Coach Cole will be adding an appropriate “Rx+” workout each week and a named workout around once a month. If this is something you plan on trying out, I advise you to review my answers above and make sure it’s the right choice for you and your goals. Better yet, speak with a Coach!
If you have any questions about programming my “door” is always open. Everything has a purpose.
Thank you for taking the time to read and for choosing Town Athletics for your fitness journey. Until the next one!
Stay Rooted
Coach_ARK