I’m a pretty simple guy… minus the stuff that goes on in my own head. That part is any thing but simple right now. But I like a good pair of jeans, a plain tee shirt and my Chuck Taylors’. I like simple vehicles, like my Jeep. And when it comes to training, I like the basics. Now this time of year in strength and conditioning is a busy time, with athletes back for the summer from school, winter sports performing their summer dry land training and, well, preparing for the fall. So as you can tell, time is of the essence, and workouts have to be short, or tend to lean on the shorter side.
So with that in mind I started to think of doing, dare I say… Crossfit? Yeah I said it, but let me explain. As many of you know I at one point did my level one Crossfit training. Or should I say, paid $1000.00 for a weekend for information I already knew. But there was some fantastic information came out of that weekend, it was not a total waste at all. However, to follow the online page is bound to get me injured, and I find it a little too much, “lets throw a bunch of S%#t at the wall and see what sticks.” Although the main page of Crossfit claims to have a periodization to it, I am yet to see it. However, a good friend and mentor of mine, Andrew at Natural High Crossfit has a great site, with a structure that I could follow. He does strength focus before the her moves to the workout or WOD. I have so much respect for Andrew and I tell people, if you have to follow Crossfit, then his is the site you should look at.
So I started back in May, however, I have admit, I did modify some of the workouts. Okay, I modified all of the workouts to fit my liking. I took out double unders (I suck at them) but I would double the amount of skipping. I kept in box jumps but instead of something like 20 I would do 4 x 5 quality sets (my glutes do not fire well and I would be completing a sloppy set if I did not scale). They say if you do something for 21 days it becomes a habit, so I can say I stuck with it for at least 21 days. However, it did not and will not become a habit. It is nothing against the workouts or how they were written, but I think that I am a bit too OCD for “Crossfit”. Now the workouts did have elements of the basics, but here is where every thing fell apart. I like to see progress, consistency and I track ever set, rep and load of the workout. My workouts track volume by the amount of load lifted in a given workout. And therefore I track that I am lifting more from one workout to the next. To not have a consistency within the program, I could not follow that I was making the progress that I need to experience.
See, I like the basics. And I have talked about this with other professionals in my field. If you look around at all the top guys in our filed, we are all doing something similar. Every one is doing a dynamic warm up, some form of power movement (Olympic lifting, plyo etc), the basic accessory lifts (push, pull, squat, lunge, twist and bend) and some recovery/ regeneration/ rest. We are not doing a squat – to curl – to press on a swiss ball while doing calf raises, with knees banded. We do not work in gyms covered in Chrome and Ferns. We are doing the basics, the things that have worked time and time again. And the key that I look for is reproducibility. And that is what I found missing in the 21 day Crossfit experiment. I could not go back and be certain in the fact that I could reproduce the results time and time again. I do not get paid to guess in my job, I get paid to produce results, and if I cannot recreate results, well, I am out of a job.
So what should a typical week look like? This is an example, as there are many combinations that could take place but the easiest breakdown is as follows, and I know, not everyone will be performing Olympic lifting movements, but I will modify the exercises based on the needs of the client.
Monday/ Thursday
Warm up – 10 minutes
Olympic type movement
(Snatch 5 x 5 and Clean Pulls 3 x 5 for example)
Strength
(Upper Push and Lower Pull)
Accessory
(Areas of concern like shoulders, core or glutes)
Recovery/ Regeneration
Wednesday
Cardio (intensity based)
Tuesday/ Friday
Warm up – 10 minutes
Olympic type movement
(Cleans 5 x 5 and Snatch Pulls 3 x 5 for example)
Strength
(Upper Pull and Lower Push)
Accessory
(Areas of concern like shoulders, core or glutes)
Recovery/ Regeneration
Saturday or Sunday
Cardio – Long slow distance work.
A simple break down like that will build the foundation to a program that will cover the basics that should be present. And that is the beauty of it. The programs do not need to be long. My personal workouts last about an hour in length. They are measureable, and the biggest part, reproducible. Aside from the last little experiment, I would be honest in saying I have rotated a series of workouts, or modifications of the originals, over the past 6 years. I would have to say going from 145 lbs back in 2005 to 196 lbs this past year, something must be right to reproduce gains time and time again.