New Training Block- Open Prep:
It’s time for us to go into our next training cycle. The upcoming training block goes between Week 03-Week 10 and our focus is to prepare you for CrossFit Open (Starts february 24th) in the best possible way. In short this means:
- A lot of Couplets and triplets between 8-12 min which is the most common time domain in CrossFit Open.
- Gymnastic Progression EMOMs with advanced gymnastics
- Few sessions but more heavy strength and OLY sessions to get ready for 1 RM tests.
Fitness Level Benchmark:
A new feature in the program is that this year in the program we will use the fitness-level benchmarks in Beyond the Whiteboard more than we have done before. In short BTWB have a system where they have divided Benchmark Workouts in the following categories:
Strength: 1-5RM in Deadlift, Squat, Press
OLY: Different versions of Snatch and Clean & Jerk
Speed: Short sprints of rowing or running
Endurance: Longer single domain workout primarily using running and rowing
BodyWeight: Workouts where we only use our Bodyweight
Heavy: Workouts with heavy weights
Light: Workouts with light weights
Long: Workouts longer than 20 minutes
To regularly test different benchmarks of those categories will give us a very useful tool both when looking at our progressions and it will also help us when we want to know where we should put a little extra focus in the training to get the most improvement in CrossFit. To get the analyzing tool even better Beyond The Whiteboard are right now working on a 2.0 version of this and we’re trying to help the best we can and will hopefully get some of the classic Wolfpack-Benchmarks in the next version.
The Pros and Cons of regularly testing
It’s no secret that we like to test benchmarks often and it´s of course always a risk that too much testing will lead to too much focus on the tests and too little focused training. We try to have an approach where we test a lot but where you also don’t have to treat every benchmark as the most important test of your lifetime but more as a high intensity training session. To see improvement over time our experience says that it’s better to do a lot of different tests often to get as much data as possible.
This Blocks test:
We will use both PreWOD and WOD to test the different categories during this block. The reason for this is that there is some tests that just doesn´t fit as good to test in a groupclass but is very easy to test on your own. The tests will fit in perfect as just another training session and you should not do any additional preparation mpre than maybe have an extra good warm up and be a little extra focused during the workout. The test we will do during this block is the following:
18 Jan: Pre WOD: Boydweight: 100 Burpees For time
22 Jan: Pre WOD: Speed: 250 meter Row for time
31 Jan: WOD: Light: “Karen” 150 Wall Balls for time
1 feb: Pre WOD: Heavy: Deadlift + Burpee Workout
3 Feb: WOD/Tri Erg: Endurance 2000 m Row
8 Feb: WOD: Long Open 16.5
16 Feb: WOD: Light: Randy
22 Feb: WOD: Heavy: 30 Squat Clean & Jerk 70/45 kg
Strength and OLY will be done regularly as always in both pre wod and WOD:
Logging a Benchmark Workout:
When logging a benchmark workout it’s important that you log the workout Rx´d if you did the workout as it´s described and scaled if you did any modifications to get a better stimulus from the workout.
Training VS Testing:
The goal of including fitness level benchmarks into the program is to give you more motivation and to help you get more information about your month to month improvements. It’s not to make every single workout a test. Remember to always listen to your coach in order to get the most out of every workout. Also the data points that we will now get opens up to get better collaboration with your coach on how to adjust the workouts in order to help you reach your goals.
We’re looking forward to seeing your progress during this training block!
