CF
Endurance workout today at 10:00am. Bring a friend! Meet at the
corner of Arden & McClaren. We warm up, stretch and then we'll do a
tasty little Work Out.
A couple of things: there will be NO LUNGES, NO BURPEES… beyond that, no promises.
All three heats from the short but miserable WOD yesterday.
It was nice to get a short intense WOD after all these marathon WODs that CF.com has been blasting us with. Greg Glassman is not joking when he says that, "the .com program is designed exceed the capabilities of the worlds fittest athletes over time." I guess its an elitist thing, which I am cool with, but I never really understood programming with the goal of exceeding the athletes capabilities unless we are talking CrossFit Games competition. My rebuttal to Coach Glassman's statement is that the CFES program is designed to increase the capacities of the worlds fittest athletes, as well as aspiring athletes over time.
We decided to do .com after the games as a break from our own programming. A chance to be forced into doing things we don't normally do, and an opportunity to identify weaknesses and to learn from those experiences. It was also a chance for all of you who have only experienced CFES programming style, to experience the .com style of programming. Having done this over the last month, Travis and I are reminded why it is that we stopped following .com and started programming our own WODs. We switched to our own program design after the CrossFit Games in 2008. That first year, we met and competed against many of CF's top athletes. Almost unanimously, they all seemed to agree that the keys to becoming more fit were to lift heavy more often than .com dictates, and to keep WODs short and intense. The goal of our programming is not to exceed your capabilities, but actually to increase them.
At the CF Level 1 Cert when they talk about programming, they talk a lot about maximizing intensity, yet the program they put out seems to be maximizing volume while maintaining moderate intensity. I think there is a mental toughness that it takes to finish .com workouts, and I think that the mental toughness aspects of training are very important. However, Travis and I think we can get this by throwing in the any asshole WOD every other week or so as opposed to 2 out of 3 days. The problem with a WOD that is taking over 20 minutes to finish is that there is no intensity compared to a 8-12 minute WOD. Also if it takes 5 days to recover from a WOD, that is 5 days in which the intensity of your training is going to be diminished. To be quite frank, the most important lesson we learned over the last month is that our own programming is much more effective at maximizing intensity and increasing strength than the .com program.
You all should be happy to know that we will be getting back to our normal programming style on Monday. The WODs will be designed to maximize intensity, not to cripple you for days, and see who's crazy enough to Rx. We will be placing an emphasis on Olympic lifting over the next 4 weeks. You all have gotten very strong over the 3 months preceding the CrossFit Games. Now its time to dial in some more Oly technique and use that increased strength to let the PR's fly.
