I was an athlete of Dr. Quinn and Ryan Brown from Darkside Strength in 2013 after injuring my knee as a CrossFit athlete. Before Darkside Strength, like many other athletes, foam rolling was my go-to warm up method. As a Darkside Strength athlete I was introduced to breathing and bracing drills to increase mobility for the first time. I learned to give up the foam roller and focus on drills that incorporate muscle activation, proper joint alignment, and movement through full range of motion into my warm ups. I went on to become a Juggernaut Certified Coach through the JTS Internship Program where I had the privilege to learn from Dr. Quinn and Chad about the additional benefits of movement training. During the 12 week internship I started understanding more about WHY and HOW coaches should implement breathing and bracing drills into their athletes program along with how to implement it into a CrossFit Gyms Programming. These drills serve multiple purposes including injury prevention, injury rehabilitation, training full joint motion, and muscle activation amongst other things. When it came time to open up my own CrossFit Gym, breathing and bracing to create proper movement patterns had become an integral part of our gym’s philosophy and I knew it needed a place in our CrossFit class structure.

A Different Approach

At Crossfit Double Barrel we have a systematic approach as to how to train athletes to move properly when they walk into our gym. We focus on more than how the athlete moves at high intensities during everyday WOD or Strength Training. We look to teach patterns that also carry over into our members’ everyday activities. We want to see our members have longevity not just as athletes, but for the rest of their lives. When we opened our doors we had 50% of our initial athletes coming from different gyms and the other 50% were brand new to CrossFit. Most of our athletes had problems getting into proper positions that we consider necessary to lay the groundwork for development of strength, speed and power. The Fundamentals Program offered at our gym is designed to improve the squat, the overhead position, pressing and the hip hinge. This program is a multi-week progression that breaks down the more advanced movements of squatting, overhead pressing and deadlifting and rebuilds the movements in a Ground Up approach. In the 8 months that our gym has been open we have over 95% of our athletes squatting below parallel, achieving a proper overhead squat, pressing with proper rib cage position, and properly performing a hip hinge for the deadlift.

Ground Up Approach?

We push, crawl, walk, and run with every athlete that joins CrossFit Double Barrel. We go through a progression of breathing drills that take our athletes from less challenging positions through more challenging positions. It is part of our approach to teach our member’s how to use their breathing and bracing to place their spine in safe positions for loading and explosive movements, as well as to teach how to provide a solid base for their limbs to move on. This base will allow for full joint motion and will aid in minimizing muscle imbalances. Our athletes are taught to move properly through a series of positions which we call “The Big 4.” These positions teach our athletes how to brace and stabilize in a controllable sequence.

The Big 4

The 4 Main Breathing Postures we focus on are the following:

1. 90/90 Breathing
2. Side Lying Clam Shell
3. Quadruped
4. Half Kneeling / Tall Kneeling

1. 90/90 Breathing

We use this position as an every day prep for teaching how to create a natural spine and improve core stability in getting the body warmed up. Why is the 90/90 the go-to for us here at the gym? We see a lot of over extension of the lower back in squatting and pressing postures which limits the amount of weight that we can load through our spine. We use the floor to teach the athlete how to feel a neutral spine position. In this position we go through a series of breathing drills that trains diaphragmatic breathing and uses rib cage position as feedback for the athlete.

2. Side Lying Clam Shell

We use this position for activation of the glutes and adductors on a stable pelvis. By properly activating the hip musculature in the sidelying position the athlete can learn proper muscle coordination and sequencing to improve hip motion. Often times an athlete will mistakingly assume that their hips are “tight” when in reality their joint has the necessary motion, but when untrained their muscles will often create an imbalance around the joint that stops the athlete from achieving full squat depth and using their joint through the full range. The side-lying position also offers a solid base to improve upper body rotation and thoracic spine mobility. When I see an athlete who has problems with their over head position, or if we are looking to warm up for overhead work and pressing, I will have the athlete go through a series of sidelying drills that locks the lower body in place, but encourages thoracic and shoulder blade movement to improve upper body mobility.

3. Quadruped

We love this position because it offers much variety for limb motion on a stable trunk, . We can use this position to teach the athlete to squat below parallel by focusing on keeping a stable midline and neutral spine. We also use this position as a foundation for reaching and pulling to teach the athlete how keep a stable core, and to understand that the arms and legs are able to move while maintaining a neutral spine.

4. Half Kneeling

This position being the most advanced of the 4 allows for a great amount of muscle activation. It can be used for pressing, pulling, pushing and lifting motions. In this position full shoulder motion can be trained with the upper body stacked over the hips and a neutral spine locked in place. It is also a great tool for introducing full foot contact as well as single leg strength development.

The ground up approach that we teach at CrossFit Double Barrel has unlocked unparalleled potential for our athletes to use full range of motion of their joints, and to achieve positions that minimize injury. These positions are emphasized in each fundamentals class so that the athletes develops consistency and awareness. In addition 2-3 breathing and bracing drills are incorporated into the warm up for daily CrossFit classes. We believe that all athletes, not just those who are new to CrossFit, will benefit from these drills to prevent muscle imbalances and movement compensations from occurring. Even seasoned athletes will require a “regression” from time to time to train basic movement patterns in order to see transfer of skill under high loads and high intensity. Undoubtedly, the low injury rate at the gym and the success of my athletes is rooted in the belief time spent daily on muscle activation and proper posturing has aided in our athlete’s growth since joining CrossFit Double Barrel. In conversation with fellow gym owners and program developers there seems to be a lack of awareness as to where to place breathing and bracing drills in the athlete’s program. Our CrossFit community has found success with using the drills with new athletes before progressing to barbell training, as well as maintaining those teaching as part of the class warm up.

Learn more about the 5 recent positive tests among Olympic Gold Medalists

#10-Complete Guide to Putting Your PRs on the Platform by Chad Wesley Smith

If your goal is competitive powerlifting, then your goal needs to be to put your best lifts on the platform where they count. Nobody does this better than Chad Wesley Smith and in this article he shares with you some keys to helping achieve this better for your own training.

Related: Peaking for Powerlifting by Dr. Mike Israetel, Designing A Peaking Block by Chad Wesley Smith

#9-The Laws of Optimizing Body Composition by Dr. Mike Israetel

What are the most important factors in dieting for physique and performance? Are you putting your emphasis on the right things or majoring in the minors?

Related: Calories: Your #1 Priority by Dr. Mike Israetel, The Renaissance Diet by Dr. Mike Israetel, Carbs: The Training Fuel by Dr. Mike Israetel, Protein: How Much and What Kind? by Dr. Mike Israetel

#8-5 Things That Are Holding Your Squat Back by Chad Wesley Smith

Are you making one of these cardinal sins in the squat and not progressing like you could because of it?

Related: Shoulder Mobility for the Squat by Dr. Quinn Henoch, Creating A Strength Block by Chad Wesley Smith, 10 Steps to Great Squatting Technique by Chad Wesley Smith, The Myth of Perfect Form by Greg Nuckols

 #7-CrossFit: A Sport of Specificity by Chad Wesley Smith

Specificity and CrossFit are rarely used in the same sentence unless it also includes a phrase ‘a lack of’ but if you want to excel as a fitness competitor, you need to practice your sport which is often a multi-domain mash-up of skills and energy systems.

Related: 4 Common Mistakes in Energy System Training by Jacob Tsypkin, [Strong360] Nutrition for CrossFit by Nick Shaw, Fitness As Sport by Jacob Tsypkin

#6-Mobility Gone Wrong by Dr. Quinn Henoch

Are you mashing, rolling and band distracting all your limbs and joints before training but not seeing improvements in your movement? Then this one is for you.

Related: What Is Tightness? by Dr. Quinn Henoch, Why Stretching Isn’t The Answer by Dr. Quinn Henoch, [Strong360] Assessing Movement by Dr. Quinn Henoch

Stay Tuned for Articles #5 through #1, coming soon!

Avoid these four common pitfalls to make sure you’re developing the engine you need.

1. Treating Running and Rowing Interchangeably

Substituting running for rowing or vice versa is no different than arbitrarily deciding to do back squats instead of deadlifts. Do they have similarities? Yes. Will they elicit some of the same adaptations? Sure. Beyond the most base levels of competence, will one make you better at the other? Almost certainly not.

Although both running and rowing are monostructural exercises, and are likely our two best tools for improving aerobic capacity, they are distinct skills which require specific training and specific adaptation. Substituting one for the other in the occasional multimodal endurance piece is acceptable. But specific endurance training utilizing these modalities should be taken seriously, and substitutions should only be made when there is no better option.

2. “Active Recovery”

Say it with me: Low intensity steady state training is still training. Low intensity steady state training is still training. Low intensity steady state training is still training.

I frequently see athletes treating their low intensity steady state work as “active recovery”. This is problematic for two reasons.

Firstly, it can lead to the athlete not taking their low intensity steady aerobic training seriously. It becomes “recovery” work, not a serious component of their athletic development. Once it is relegated, in the athlete’s mind, to this secondary level of importance, it becomes susceptible to being changed in favor of something “more productive” (read: more painful), or forgotten entirely in favor of more couch time. After all, the whole point of low intensity cardio is recovery, right?

This is the second issue. Calling aerobic training “active recovery” isn’t precisely accurate.

Aerobic metabolism does play an important role – indeed, the dominant role – in an athlete’s recovery between training session. However, the process is not acute. Rowing for sixty minutes does not suddenly replete substrates. Instead, athletes with a high level of aerobic development are better at repletion of those substrates in the long term, because their aerobic metabolism is better, making the processes which drive recovery more effective.

A low intensity aerobic session in and of itself may reduce acute soreness and stiffness, and the athlete may feel energized afterwards, but the extent to which it actually improves recovery is up for debate. Low intensity steady state training is still training. It’s purpose is to develop your aerobic capacity for purposes of improving your performance.

3. Not Working on Your Technique

Fitness sport athletes take their lifting technique seriously. Low bar or high bar squats? Sit back or sit straight down? Catapult or Triple Extension? (Ha! I’m kidding.That one’s not a real argument.)

Gymnastics is treated as a technical discipline as well, with a strong specialist market emerging and many athletes seeking out gymnastics coaches to both improve their fundamentals and learn more challenging skills.

Monostructural movements, however, are often left out in the cold. Running and rowing in particular are given short shrift. This is a real shame, because a little bit of technical work goes a long way towards reducing risk of injury, improving efficiency, and maximizing return on investment.

There are plenty of good resources available to help you with your running and rowing technique. Utilize them.

4. Not Treating Energy Systems Programming Like Programming

Periodization is no longer a bad word in the fitness sport community. Coaches and athletes understand that if they wish to achieve the best possible results at the right time, training must be organized in a logical, progressive manner.

This paradigm shift towards well designed periodization protocols is clearly visible in the way we approach weightlifting and strength training. But when it comes to energy systems training, the attitude often seems to be that just doing it is sufficient.

It is important to remember that fitness sport is, ultimately, an endurance sport. Yes, strength and power are very important, but your ability to apply strength and power in aerobic and glycolyic bioenergetic environments are going to play the larger role. If you are serious about developing those capacities, training for them must be approached every bit as seriously as your strength and power training. You must create sufficient overload to drive improvement, you must track your abilities, and you must understand the why behind every workout you do.

I am of the opinion that deliberate blocks of hypertrophy training are excluded to the detriment of competitive CrossFit athletes. Below are some of the potential benefits of this manner of training with relation to CrossFit.

1. Strength

Let’s start with the most obvious: Strength is important in CrossFit. How does one go about getting stronger?

Generally speaking, there are two types of adaptations to any kind of training. (1) Functional adaptations, which are adaptations of the nervous system resulting in improved skill in the given task. (2) Structural adaptations, which are actual physical and physiological changes resulting in an improved ability to execute the given task.

In simpler terms, functional adaptations are your brain and nervous system learning how to do what you want them to do, and structural adaptations build the things necessary to do them.

Here’s the thing: functional adaptations eventually run out. Once you’re really good at squatting, from a neuromuscular point of view, there’s only so much more you’re going to get out of getting better at it. So what to do? Well, you aim to get more out of the structural adaptations, which, in the case of strength, means building more muscle. Once that muscle is built, you are able to create new functional adaptations.

Is it possible to build muscle with lower reps and heavier weights? Sure! But for well trained athletes, it probably doesn’t work as well as using higher reps and lower weights, and, for the aspiring competitive CrossFit athletes, those high reps and low weights come with a host of other advantages.

2. Strength Endurance

Just as hypertrophy training can lay the base for improvements in maximal strength, it can also lean towards the other end of the spectrum and lay the base for improvements in strength endurance, a critical component of performance in CrossFit Games competition. Although most (not all) events in CrossFit competition are closer to the endurance side of strength endurance, hypertrophy training can still help to create the foundation to improve the athlete’s fitness with lighter weights.

This is especially true for newer athletes. Where more advanced athletes will benefit the most from highly specific training to improve their sport specific strength endurance, hypertrophy training is an excellent introduction to strength endurance for novice and intermediate trainees, who can reap the benefits of both improving their strength potential and their strength endurance potential from a single stimulus. Hypertrophy training can serve as the prime driver of improvements in strength endurance until the athlete is at a pretty high level of sport specific development.

3. Sport Specificity

This one seems a little funny. As I mentioned previously, CrossFit was often juxtapositioned against bodybuilding in the early days, so it comes across as a bit odd to suggest that hypertrophy training is sport specific. But, when we consider hypertrophy training built around heavy compound lifts rather than single joint isolation exercises (though those have their place as well), I think there are three ways in which “bodybuilding” is actually pretty similar to CrossFit.

3.1. Variation is rewarded. CrossFit is built on variance. Exposure to a wide variety of compound exercises is required to be competitive in the sport. Hypertrophy also benefits from variation. Regularly changing the exercises targeting a given muscle group or groups when the athlete plateaus can help spur new growth. If an athlete normally squats two to three times a week during a strength building block, a hypertrophy block may have them squatting once a week, with two or three secondary exercises for building muscle and strength in the legs and hips, such as lunges, step-ups, or even more isolative exercises such as glute bridges.

3.2. Hypertrophy training is closer on the bioenergetic spectrum to most events in competitive CrossFit than maximal strength training. It is true, of course, that maximal strength is very important to the sport, but one could argue that there has not been a true test of absolute strength in individual competition since the deadlift ladder at the 2009 CrossFit Games. Max lift tests have included snatches, clean & jerks, overhead squats, and shoulder-to-overheads, all of which certainly require a high level of maximal strength to be successful at, but none of which are exclusively tests of maximal strength. Strength endurance at various loads, however, has been tested at least once at every stage of competition (Open, Regionals, Games).

3.3. Hypertrophy training fills the middle range of load that CrossFit athletes often miss out on. Many athletes tend towards strength programming which focuses primarily on loads of 80% and above for low reps, along with conditioning work the vast majority of which is executed at loads below 60% for a ton of reps. Both of these are important components of training for the sport, but the middleground – loads between 60-80% for moderately high reps – gets left out. If the goal is to create a program and a fitness inclusive of all load and rep ranges, this scenario is unacceptable, and concentrated hypertrophy training can fill the gap quite nicely.

4. Technique

Hypertrophy training necessarily requires the athlete to perform a lot of repetitions with submaximal load. This fits nicely within the context of the hierarchy of “mechanics, consistency, intensity.” Regularly implementing concentrated blocks of hypertrophy training ensures that the athlete is routinely afforded the opportunity to reduce the absolute intensity and perfect their mechanics by performing a lot of perfect reps with relatively light weights.

Additionally, more specific hypertrophy training can help to improve technical flaws. Often, when an athlete breaks down at a given part of a lift, the breakdown represents a relative lack of strength in a particular muscle or muscle groups. Fortifying the area in question with muscle mass via targeted exercises can help the athlete eliminate weak spots which improve their mechanics, thereby raising the ceiling for their strength potential and reducing risk of injury.

5. Joint Health

Last, but certainly not least, is the potential impact of hypertrophy training on joint health. Competitive CrossFit athletes put a lot of stress and strain on their joints. When it comes to strength training, much of the stress on the joints is a result of how much weight the athlete is using, rather than the total volume of work (although high volume at high intensity certainly compounds the stress.) Regularly cycling in blocks of lower weight, higher rep training can help to alleviate this stress, keeping the athlete healthy for long periods of hard training.

My recommendation to the reader is this: After your next cycle of strength training ends, don’t jump right back into a high intensity program. Take six weeks for a hypertrophy focused block, following these simple guidelines:

• Focus on loads between 60-80%, with the bulk of the work being done between 65-75%
• Work primarily in sets of six to twelve repetitions
• Pick variations that are slightly different from what you’re used to
• Slightly reduce the frequency of the heaviest movements, and supplement with lighter ones, particularly unilateral work
• Don’t be afraid to do a little bit of single joint isolation training

My strong suspicion is that you will come out of this block of training with healthier joints, improved special work capacity, and new muscle to turn into PRs on your primary lifts.

Though it is the bane of my existence during competitions – I feel like I spend half of my time slapping phones from athletes hands as they incessantly, obsessively check the standings – during the rest of the year, it is perhaps the most important tool for program development available to us, apart from the basic principles of program design.

As of this writing, we are privy to five years of data from what I consider the “Modern Era” of the CrossFit Games (2011 and on – “Open Era” or “Froning Era” would be equally appropriate.) Across the Open, Regionals, and CrossFit Games, this totals one hundred twenty-four scored events from which coaches and athletes may glean understanding.

These events lend us direct insight into performance, i.e. how well an athlete must perform in a given event if he or she expects to be competitive. But with a little bit of digging, we can also use this information to create a deeper understanding of the sport and how to train for it. This is done by drawing correlations. In the case of this article, the correlations drawn are between particular events at the 2015 CrossFit Games, and final placement at same.

To determine the correlations between individual events and the final placement, we took the athletes placing in those events and determined the correlation to their overall finish in the Games. In this method we are simply comparing rankings to rankings, with no regard for how close the athlete was in either real performance or points.

What the data actually tells us is how strongly related an athlete’s finish in a certain event is to their final placement in the 2015 CrossFit Games.  With this information, we can draw conclusions about which tests and abilities are most important for an aspiring CrossFit athlete to excel at, and use those conclusions to impact program design.

Let’s take a look at three interesting, and potentially meaningful relationships from the 2015 CrossFit Games.

1) The most classic CrossFit event had the greatest predictive power

In a landslide victory, the Triangle Couplet was the event most strongly correlated with final placing for both men and women.

I don’t suppose I should have been surprised by this, but I was nonetheless. It makes sense, of course. Events such as this one do a good job of precisely what they claim: test overall fitness. At relatively low levels, one can take the cross section of a few different monomodal tests – for example, max back squat, 30 muscle-ups for time, and 5k run – and estimate an athlete’s capacity. But the more those numbers improve, the less bearing they seem to have on the athlete’s ability for multimodal events.

Training Implication: Practice your sport

There’s no way around it. Sport specific preparation is king in all athletic endeavours, and the CrossFit Games are no exception. Challenging multimodal workouts, mostly couplets and triplets with occasional pieces consistent of four, five or more parts, in a variety of time domains, executed at high intensities, are completely irreplaceable. Even if you’re of the opinion that they’re a poor way to develop general health and fitness, you must make them a cornerstone of your training if you wish to be competitive at any level of CrossFit Games competition.

2) Strength and Endurance are of equal importance

For both men and women, the most conventional strength event (the clean & jerk) and the most conventional endurance event (Pier Paddle) had effectively the same correlation to final placement.

Although these events were not quite pure strength or endurance events – the clean & jerk testing the athletes durability under fatigue nearly as much as their strength, due to it’s placement in the competition, and Pier Paddle testing the athletes adaptability to a modality which was new to most of them – it is still fair to say that they did an effective job of testing the athletes maximum strength and their aerobic capacity. If we are willing to take this claim as true, it suggests to us that the CrossFit Games does a good job of assessing athletes at both ends of the bioenergetic spectrum.

Training Implication: Equal Measure for Equal Measures

By now, I think most people interested in training seriously for the CrossFit Games are aware of the importance of developing strength and endurance in equal measure. But this measurement hammers the point home: you cannot rely on either your ability to move weight, or your ability to endure, in isolation. If there ever was a time when specialists could succeed in competitive CrossFit, it is long past. Train both your maximal strength and your aerobic endurance, year round, with slight emphasis in the areas you are weakest. Avoid biasing weaknesses so much that you create deficiencies elsewhere.

If you haven’t read Part I yet, you can find it here.

Gymnastics

1) More Development of Strict Variations

In past years, my programming has included plenty of work on developing fundamental gymnastics strength (hollow rocks, anyone?) and skill, but relatively little on strict variations of the actual movements commonly seen in competition.

Two years into seeing a strict gymnastic movement (handstand pushups) on the Regional stage, I’m left wondering if other movements, such as pullups, muscle-ups, and toes-to-bar will head down the same path. Just in case, I plan on a slight tipping of the scales towards strict movements.

This is particularly important, I think, for particular athletes. Disregarding the obvious case of athletes with a significant weakness or disparity with regard to strict movements, it seems that female athletes and long- limbed athletes see substantial carryover into their kipping movements from strict development.

This does not suggest that there is any less importance in developing efficiency and capacity with kipping movements, which will continue to be an integral part of competitive CrossFit.

2) More Max Effort Work

With regard to developing capacity, my gymnastics programming has typically focused on pacing, volume tolerance, and reducing rest periods between manageable sets with relatively little focus on being able to do very large single sets. The last few years of the Games and Regionals have demonstrated that there is a great advantage in having a high threshold for top end sets, through events like the pullup/overhead squat at 2014 Regionals, the Muscle-Up Biathlon at the 2014 CrossFit Games, and the muscle-up/squat clean ladder at 2015 Regionals.

Accordingly, this year I will spend more time helping my athletes develop that max effort capacity in the “big three” gymnastics movements.

Muscle-Ups: These will see the most focus in this area, because they have the highest cost of failure (breaking a set of muscle-ups has a higher time cost and fatigue cost than breaking a set of pullups or handstand pushups) and the lowest cost of training (max sets of kipping muscle-ups present far less total volume than max sets of kipping pullups or kipping handstand pushups.)

Pullups & Handstand Pushups: These will see less max effort work than muscle-ups. Pullups have arguably the highest cost of training for top sets, due to the risk of tearing the hands, which can impede training for days. Handstand pushups for max sets can present a tremendous amount of stress to the shoulders, in a sport which already emphasizes a lot of work overhead. Both pullups and handstand pushups have a relatively low cost of failure compared to muscle-ups.

Energy Systems

1) Row for Calories

As much as it must irk the rowers amongst us, in competitive CrossFit calorie rowing is at least as prevalent as rowing for meters. Since the first inclusion of rowing in the Open in 2014, both Open workouts (14.4 and 15.5) and both Regionals workouts (the 50s chipper in 2014 and the row/chest-to-bar pullups/strict handstand pushup in 2015) involving rowing have been performed for calories, with only the rowing event at the Games (Triple 3) being contested for meters.

If specificity is king, and it is, then it’s time I start programming rowing for calories as seriously as I program rowing for meters. Athletes will find value in developing familiarity with their calorie per hour rate, just as they develop familiarity with their 500m split.

It is also important to bear in mind that the Concept 2 rewards input differently for distance (linear increase relative to input) and energy (exponential increase relative to input.) This chart illustrates the concept nicely. As such, it is important for the athlete to know what to expect when they choose to work harder, or not, when rowing for calories.

2) Up the Intensity (Where it Counts)

In the 2015 Games season, one of the major changes to my programming was regular, focused, progressive low intensity steady state training. This type of work was accomplished through two primary means: Firstly, classic, steady state efforts, such as 60 minutes at a low rate of perceived exertion (around @ 6), and secondly, long intervals at a moderate intensity (around @ 7-8) with short rests, such as 3-5 sets of 5-7 minutes of work with 60 seconds moving recovery between sets.

I strongly believe that this has been a great improvement in my methodology. Not only does it have a direct impact on athlete’s performance in aerobic dominant events, it seems to be allowing them to handle higher training volumes across domains.

However, several of my athletes have noticed that while they are able to maintain consistent intensity for longer durations with relatively little fatigue, they find themselves unable to really push themselves to a near redline effort when the time comes.

As a result, I’m taking a more cyclical approach to the programming of monostructural aerobic training, to allow for greater translation of basebuilding work into higher intensities, moving from low to moderate/high to high intensity phases. An easy way to think of this is to make it analogous to commonly used strength training phases, transitioning from hypertrophy (low intensity) to strength development (moderate/high intensity) to peaking or intensification (high intensity.) Below are possible examples of rowing interval workouts for the three phases.

Low Intensity: Row 4×6 minutes @ 7-8, Rest 1 minute between efforts

Moderate/High Intensity: Row 6x500m @ 8-9, Rest 1:1 between efforts

High Intensity: Row 1x500m @ 8 Rest 1:1, 1x500m @ 9, Rest 1:2 3x500m @ 10, Rest 1:3-4

It is important to recognize that while nearly all athletes will benefit from periodizing in this fashion, the top level of intensity which they train at will vary.

3) Integration

I’ve long espoused the importance of creating competition like scenarios in training, especially close to the competition season. I’ve particularly spoken about lifting on a clock and/or under fatigue.

However, I’ve done relatively little of this type of work with energy systems development, instead allowing sport practice to play that role. This year, I’ve decided to take more multimodal work into fully organized, repeatable energy systems development training, particularly for higher level athletes and particularly approaching competition.

As written above with more conventional methods of energy systems development, this multimodal approach can be applied at low, moderate, and high intensities. Below are examples example of a short (three workout) progression for all three.Although the workouts are not identical through the progressions, they contain elements which are similar enough in terms of time domain to be comparable from week to week. It could just as easily be done with identical elements, increasing certain elements each week, such as more repetitions on a particular movement or adding a round.

In the third and final installment of this year’s edition of “I Make Mistakes So You Don’t Have To,” we will delve into concerns of sport specific preparation.

RELATED ARTICLES

[Strong360] Balancing Energy Systems Needs for CrossFit Athletes

I Make Mistakes So You Don’t Have To: 2015 Edition Part 1

 Stop Treating CrossFit Like a High-Intensity Sport

I Make Mistakes So You Don’t Have To: 2014 Edition

Jacob Tsypkin is the owner and founder of TZ Strength, a company providing programming, coaching, and consulting for competitive CrossFit athletes. He is dedicated to an athletes-first philosophy designed to give the athlete access not only to expertise in the sport, but a network of specialists in other domains, as well as a support structure built around a microcosm of the strong community CrossFit is known for. Jacob focuses on improving athletes inside out, from snatches and muscle-ups to mindsets and gameplans.