Hello Team,
September is an interesting transition time for a lot of us – regular school, work, and recreation schedules begin to emerge as we let go of some of the wistfulness of summer. Each year as fall begins I always take time to reflect on what has transpired over the past year and what is to come on the horizon as it still feels like I’m preparing for a “new school year”.
Our CrossFit community has changed so much in the past year it’s hard to think back to how things were going even a few short months ago. One thing that has remained steady however is our pursuit to provide you with the absolute best all-round fitness training that we can possibly offer. This means constant revision of our ideas about how we can go about programming and providing coaching for our community that will keep all of us moving forward. Here’s a short list of what we’ve done over the past year that sets us apart as a fitness community and puts us (that means you!) at the forefront of all-round fitness.
1. In January we started an apprentice program to bring in more support for coaching classes as our membership grew. To date, we have added six awesome individuals to our coaching ranks (Justin M, Sean B, Tom J, France L, Heather B, Lucas P), with the last two having progressed to full coach status. This gives us a total of 10 coaches to help provide an excellent overall experience for you when you come in to train.
2. We have gone through three versions of a programming template to plan phases of training and frequency of major lifts to help our members gain consistently in all areas. Some of you may not realize that the majority of CrossFit affiliates do not do their own programming but rather rely on (the randomness of) crossfit.com to provide their members with appropriate fitness challenges.
By taking the programming into our own hands, we have become fully responsible for your fitness, which we take extremely seriously. Our new template takes into account planned variations in terms of the time and difficulty of metcons, frequency of major lifts, and even a periodized structure that provides you with a recovery and technique week in every month of training. This is the type of detail in planning that advanced athletes across all sports utilize so we figured why not offer the best to you as well.
3. We have integrated complimentary activities such as gymnastics, yoga, and weightlifting into our environment. Sean Lind was here through the summer and offered an excellent (daily!) beginner level gymnastics course that improved the movement skill and awareness of all who participated in it. We have invited a competitive Olympic Weightlifting group (the Pacific Weightlifting Club – more on them soon) to train with us, which aside from offering to help with setting up Olympic Lifting meets, will help us to improve our technique and understanding of the snatch and clean and jerk so that we can benefit in our CrossFit training. Lastly, we have brought in yoga instructors to give a new range to the services available to our members.
4. Through the benevolence and genius of one of our members (Sean Falconer), we have a website devoted to the tracking of training achievements (myfrantime.com). This is not only a very useful way of recording and evaluating progress, but also a forum in which we can discuss and share individual successes and friendly rivalries. Fitness is all about moving forward and this website allows us to be objective in the measurement of that progress.
5. We have started a series of our own in-house Zone Games, which provides a forum for open competition for anyone who wishes to test themselves more than in the daily WODs. This is a great motivator to step up consistency and intensity in training, brings our community together really well, and is an awesome springboard to other competitions that people may want to enter down the road.
6. Open gym will begin to change in the very near future as we have recognized this is the perfect time to help you hone your skills as a CrossFit athlete. At each open gym from now on, the first hour will be devoted to working on a certain skill (for example kipping pullups or rowing) with focused coaching and feedback outside of the intensity of a WOD. Look forward to seeing your efficiency and understanding of movements improve.
There are other developments in the works that can’t be divulged yet but I wanted to share with you how much time and energy we devote to your pursuit of fitness. When you come in to train at CrossFit Zone, you are getting the best all-round fitness programming and training experience that we can currently offer. We take no shortcuts and never stop improving and progressing. It’s great to have you all as part of this journey and trust me, there are amazing things to come!
Please reply with comments or questions in the “Comments” section.
Turts.
Today’s Workout
Buy-in: 3 rounds of: 50 skips, 5 goblet squats (progressively go deeper into squat). Coaches substitute technique work for members unfamiliar with the back squat.
WOD: Squatzilla
This is a two part workout, both components contribute to your score!
Part 1 – Back Squat 5 x 5. Sets 3-5 should be at or above 75% of your current 1RM
Part 2 – Tabata Fun
- Alternate Tabata intervals of the following exercises for 4 intervals each: Pullups, Squats, Situps
- Performing 20s of pullups, resting 10s, 20s of squats, resting 10s, and 20s of situps constitutes 1 round. You will be completing 4 full rounds.
- Your score is your total of your low scores for each exercise.
Combine your best back squat for 5 reps with the total of your low scores for your overall score.
Cash-out: Partner hamstring and quad stretching – 2x60sec each leg for each stretch
And don’t forget we’ve expanded our programming to include CROSSFIT KIDS ZONE!!!! That’s cool, too!
Yeah that’s right bonesy… at the forefront of kids fun and fitness!
I am sitting here and thinking how interesting it is that all those six points also represent many firsts and milestones for me on a personal level in the past year.
Never have I in my pursuit of personal fitness have I a) received so much coaching, b) paid attention about programming (and nutrition) c) actively sought out more instruction on gymnastics and weight lifting, d) diligently recorded workouts to measure progress, e) entered myself in atheletic competitions, and f) diligently practicing to get better at a certain skill.
That’s all been a result of hanging out at CFZ. If it wasn’t apparent to me how great of a show CFZ puts out, it is obvious now after this post. Awesome stuff!
I am curious about the versions of the programming templates and programming in general though.
Hey Felix!
Good to hear from you budday! Great points on your personal journey, I’m glad to have witnessed the massive amount of progress you showed from that first day of push presses ;).
Regarding the templates, they’re pretty simple in terms of their components, it’s just the mix that gets a bit complicated.
Metcons are designated as either short (< 6min), medium (7-12min), or long (13+ min) – these being estimated or known average times – and we rotate through these every week. Each week has a different sequence though, so it isn’t usually short – med – long – short – med … etc.
For strength work, the idea is to stimulate the same kind of movement on a frequency of 2 times every 3-5 days, but how this is manifested can be quite varied (i.e. back squats, front squats, thrusters, and overhead squats are all types of squats that might have that frequency of practice).
Other important components such as Olifts and pullups are prioritized in our current template to make sure we’re getting frequent exposure to them.
There are other elements to the programming but those are the base blocks in a nutshell.The real key of course is still keeping the variety in terms of the workout combinations and which days we work on certain elements, which keeps things fresh and exciting! It can be fresh and exciting with a totally random approach but I prefer to have a little more planning in the programming as that is much more likely to produce consistent results.
Turts
I joined CFZ one year ago, and I can’t say enough positive things! You coaches have created the most amazing environment. When I rave about crossfit, at times it’s not even the awesome fitness instruction that I stress, but simply the wonderful people! I feel so fortunate that I’ve learned so much this past year, and have had so much fun and support doing it! Thanks all!!!!
Thanks Turts! It is pretty cool when you put all those points together. We sure care about our peeps… man we are awesome!
Hey Cam,
I really enjoyed your post and thanks for the shout out about MFT. I’m glad to see I’m not totally forgotten :-). I’m sure my name has been erased from the leaderboard by now.
Since I started helping with some of the coaching and programming at CFPA, I’ve really started to realize just how much work it takes to design workouts and develop a successful program.
I think the big thing that you guys realize (and I think us), is that building a program that’s going to help people develop their overall fitness and make them better athletes inside and outsides the gym is not just about kicking their butt. You need variety but not total randomness and providing that variety while still giving people enough consistent exposure to technique, movements and lifts takes a lot of planning.
Not only that, but the Zone in particular also figures out several levels of appropriate scaling for their members. I keep intending to try this at CFPA, but it’s a boat load of work :-).
Yeaahhhh budday!! Agree with it all. You can’t beat The Zone on all levels, from programming, community, staff, etc…I mean, who blogs EVERY SINGLE DAY??? Obviously some people who care a lot about quality and their members.
Love you guys and see you all very very soon!
I just had a go at Crossfit Gothenburg. It was an Crossfit experience, but not what I am used to. You guys are doing a great job.
Hey Turts,
Awesome post, You guys are creating something awesome over there on the other side of the tracks!
One bone to pick however: In my experience (I’ve been a part of 6 different affiliates so far), Very few affiliates “rely on (the randomness of) crossfit.com” for their programming :P, most affiliates program their own WODs. That being said, every affiliate I’ve been a part of other than ours does so with no rhyme or reason, something I’m glad you guys have taken a much better approach with!
See you in November!
Hey guys,
Thanks for all your positive comments – it really makes Dee and I happy to know that we’re doing things right like we think we are!
Sean,
Programming for crossfit is definitely time consuming and it can take over your life a bit if you’re not careful (trust me on that one haha). But then at the same time it is one of the most rewarding things you could ever do as a coach. There is no greater feeling than coming in to the box and seeing your friends (i.e. members) working their earnest hearts out in a workout you designed for their benefit. Over the long term, witnessing the improvements in your membership is even more awesome – knowing that you personally helped people reach milestones they once perceived beyond their reach is an amazing feeling.
Good luck on the journey – let me know if I can help in any way.
PS – you’re still on the leaderboard!!!!
Turts
Hey Chris,
Just caught your comment now – it was held up through our “Taranis filter” … haha :). Thanks for your input, on further thought about my traveling to different affiliates (states and canada) it’s probably closer to 30/70 in terms of affiliates using .com versus doing their own programming.
I definitely agree though that the thought process around developing programming seems to be a bit lacking in many circumstances. I’m hoping that as CF moves forward there will be more departure from the “crush them” mentality and greater attention paid to creating progressive and thoughtful programming.
It will be interesting to see if .com evolves at all as this natural shift takes place – I think some alterations have been made in their programming but I’m still unsure of both the short and long term structure of their planning…
Any thoughts?
Cam
Although I find it extremely hard to pinpoint long term structure, it is pretty easy to notice overload phases (most predominantly in a push vs pull comparison) as well as movement back and forth on the weightlifting vs gymnastics continuum when one is using the programming (and really getting to know how your body has been feeling). This was noticed most easily where from the time the games ended until the end of August we only had 1 lift come up, all met-con – really light weightlifting and a ton of mono and gymnastics.
I think the area where .com falls short, that makes it hard to really see rhyme and reason from an insiders perspective is the idea that the onus falls on the athlete when it comes to de-loading phases. It’s taken me a really long time to get a feel for where to implement these for myself and I know we have a ton of athletes at the gym following 3on1off who still don’t really have a grasp of when to implement this strategy.
You thought about this before?