I know many of the athletes on the competition side are looking for a broad overview much like the one we did for the weightlifting side. Some of the information I can give you is going to be a bit watered-down as there are so many moving parts in competition CrossFit training. In Weightlifting there really is one sole focus, your total. In the sport of CrossFit you have to be strong but you have to be able to maintain strength over different time domains AND you have to move with precision throughout. Not to mention the necessity for aerobic capacity, lactate buffering, and simple muscular endurance. There are multiple facets that need to be developed to create a well-rounded CrossFit athlete. With that in mind, there are multiple different cycles overlapping and integrating with each other inside of a well-rounded competition CrossFit program.
This week was a bit of a down week on the weightlifting end starting next week you’ll see a massive emphasis on bar position and precise movement in the snatch and clean and jerk. I’m going to severely limit the amount of snatch and clean inside of a conditioning piece over the next 12 weeks in order to really refine and perfect those movements on the weightlifting end;. I believe that perfection of movement will inevitably carry over to the conditioning pieces once you create good movement patterns. The lifts are so complex that there is no real way to develop them with any sort of precision inside of a conditioning piece. We will also be following (and have already started) the weightlifting squat template to some degree. While the weightlifting template has lifters going to max effort on the back squat for reps every week, the competition side will cut you short of rep failure. With the amount of squatting already in the conditioning pieces, there’s just no necessity for that volume of squatting. Remember the goal is dual-purposed with weightlifting when considering it inside of a CrossFit competition program. Not only do we want to be strong at the top end for one rep but that must be paired with an ability to be strong through 30 or more reps as well. For that reason, the volume on your weightlifting will always be less than an actual weightlifting template.
From the skill side this is the time in the season when we are practicing and perfecting some of the more advanced skills in the sport of CrossFit. Muscle ups, hanstand push-ups, and handstand walks are some of the skills we are currently developing. However, it is important to be using some of those movements inside of conditioning pieces even at this point in the season for the sake of your muscular endurance. These skills will show up in one of two ways each week. They will either show up in a strict, skill only set in which we are you developing strength or precision for that specific movement. A good example would be the muscle up. You will see the muscle up strength developed inside of a skill set with weighted chest to ring pull-ups or weighted ring dips for example. You also see the movement patterns for the muscle up developed inside of the skill set through EMOM style work and specific skill development exercises. However I will not limit the muscle up and other skill elements to only these type of sessions but you will not have a week where these high-level skills are included in both skill sessions and conditioning pieces. For example one week you may have hanstand push-ups, muscle ups, and pistols inside of a singled out skill session and in that same week you may have chest to bar pull-ups, ring dips, and rope climbs inside of the conditioning piece. The next week that would all be rearranged.
On the conditioning side we obviously have a focus on aerobic threshold right now. That has been our focus since the conclusion of the Open. With that in mind, you will see at least two workouts a week with a specific goal of increasing your V02 Max and aerobic threshold. Some weeks there will be three workouts to that end. The other workouts will be different in kind and time domain and will serve to compliment that focus. CrossFit’s whol goal is to be well-rounded across multiple time domains through multiple modalities. Because of this truth we will always vary the time domain and movements. The conditioning side honestly is just designed to get you in shape right now. There is no necessity to get fancy or to get overly complex in those workouts. We are in the preseason therefore what you need most is a basic foundation of aerobic threshold work and muscular endurance. That work will pay dividends come October when we start to narrow our focus for the Open.
Keep up the good work and keep plugging. Because we are developing so many different facets of your game, results may be slower and PR’s less frequent. That’s fine. The best didn’t become the best overnight.