As you all know, the CrossFit Open is over! It’s been a great ride, but now it’s time to get back to the drawing board. The past couple of months, we’ve tapered our focus on strength, and during the Open, really put all of our energy into the Open workout of the week.
Without the unknown Open workout each week, we’re able to plan out our strength training in a little more structured way. Generally, we’ll organize our strength programming out in cycles from 1-3 months, and what we’ll be getting started on next week is no different.
What is different, is how who will be doing what each lifting day. We’ll be following the same L1, L2, and Competition format, but we’ll be making some changes to how that’s broken down. First, I can’t stress enough that each cycle is meant to get the most progress out of each individual, as fast as possible, based on each individual’s training history. Going up a level will in most cases, result in slower gains. Once you start on a cycle, you stick with the strength workout until further notice, absolutely no switching mid-cycle.
L1:
You’ve never gone through a linear progression (increasing weight each training session on a particular lift) before. If you have, you made good gains. Don’t fix something that isn’t broke! I know of some of our best new lifters that should still be in this category. This is what the gym’s programming looked like all last year for the vast majority of members, and overall, we’ve been very successful here. Again, L1 = more weight increases, faster.
L2:
Unless you’ve gone through a linear progression already, then you have no business considering this. If you have gone through multiple linear progressions, and are no longer making solid gains, move on to this. It’s a modified linear progression. We’re not expecting the same gains week to week as our L1 members, but will expect you to be making progress on a monthly basis regularly.
Competition:
This is a bit of a misnomer, and we’re using this designation only for consistency reasons. This is for those who have been hanging out around the same strength numbers for awhile, and would kill for some small gains here and there. Most likely, you’re a few years deep in your training as well. You know who you are!
We’re testing TODAY and starting our progression next week. Here’s to a year of big lifting and big gains!