New Advanced Class Programming: Part 1

JakeArticles

With Team SuperFit Richmond 2012 wrapping up, and so many of you signing up for Charlottesville SuperFit 2012, we’ve received many questions about our programming. Specifically, many of you are concerned about how you should train for CrossFit competitions, and how/if our group class programming adequately prepares you for them. We want to address the needs of everyone in our classes as best as possible, and have decided to begin alternate Advanced/Competition programming for some individuals that would benefit from it.

To introduce our new programming, we held an information session on 9/1. Many of you were unable to attend, so I wanted to write up a little summary going over everything we covered. The purpose of the meeting was not only to discuss our new programming, but also to make it clear who should follow it, why they should or should not follow it, and to also explain in more detail how we program for the group classes, to make it clear that absolutely everyone is getting excellent training.

Our Group Class Programming

Our group class programming takes several hours each month, and has been done by John Huston exclusively for the past few years. We work together to determine the needs of the group and the overall structure, but he’s the guy to thank for what’s happening in the gym each day. I’m sure most of you can pick out the organization in our lifting progressions, but know also that everything from our general movement selection over several months at a time, to the volume each each metcon is planned out with purpose.

We begin with a yearly template:


This template has changed some over the years, but a template like this has been in place for about three years now. We train up to SuperFit and the Open, and initially, structure everything around our lifts. We think that the barbell lifts are the most important tool in the gym, and that strength is a physical quality that most readily impacts all other attributes. We want you all to be strong and powerful, as indicated and developed by the “slow” lifts; squats, presses, and pulls, as well as the Olympic lifts; the Snatch and Clean & Jerk.

Once we know when we will be doing a particular lifting cycle, we can begin to setup a weekly and monthly framework.


We typically lift three times per week, based on our current lifting cycle. Each week, we program in a benchmark workout (one of the “girls” usually), and a chipper. The chippers are in there by popular demand; we realize that a big part of staying in the gym is enjoying yourself, and you all enjoy the chippers… Outside of that, we program in relatively short metcons, based on everything else already happening in the week. In other words, our conditioning workouts are structured around our lifts, not the other way around.

You can see below how we begin to plug in the lifts, benchmarks, and a guidelines for our metcons.


Finally, below is a close to finished product for our weekly programming. On this particular week, there were many considerations to be made, namely when and when to not include overhead work. After this point, we include our warm-ups, which are again structured around the lifts, and and supplementary work as well for a finished product.


Our workouts change throughout the year as well, based on how far out from SuperFit or the Open we are. We’ll shift from more strength-based training to strength-endurance, and throw in more competition specific movements as well, including box jumps, kipping pull-ups, and double-unders.

The above process takes several hours each month initially, as well as tweaks throughout the week based on how things are going. What we’re hoping to convey is that the programming every single person training with us receives is well thought out, and diligently adjusted to meet your needs.

Finally, we’re not perfect, and are always learning something new based on how all of you perform. We’ll continue doing our best to make sure you all stay safe, make progress, and have fun.

In future posts we’ll be covering why people need different programming, who might simply need some more detailed skill/movement progressions, and finally, the details on our new Advanced Programming.