Hey Old Cityzens!
Another great week and weekend. Keep killing it in the gym.
I wanted to talk about the programming this week, something I first brought up back in June.
This is a general outline of what the strength programming looks like.
Currently we do back squats, bench press, and deadlifts as our main lifts. We’ll finish these for the year and in 2018 probably switch out push press for the bench press. You can’t go wrong with sticking with back squats and deadlifts. For the Olympic movements, I try to give cleans a focus one week and snatches the other. Recently these have been done as complexes – stringing together 2-3 movements – but we’ll get back to doing squat cleans, push jerks, overhead squats, and power snatches on their own. Front squats is the other main lift, but every 3-4 weeks I like to do Bulgarian split squats, or some kind of unilateral (single leg) work. It’s a good way to identify and work on imbalances and weaknesses in one leg vs the other. This is also why you see dumbbell and kettlebell work – single and double.
It would be ideal to have the first week be repeated weekly, but then people who come MWF would miss bench press and the longer workouts, and those that come TWTh wouldn’t back squat or spend any time practicing their Olympic lifts. So this is why it rotates. Each movement shifts over a day each week. Sunday is taken out of the mix since we always do a hero workout that day, and on the 8th week we are back to the start with back squats on Monday. As for the metcons/wod that follows, we try to use movements similar to what was done for strength to reinforce that movement pattern. For example, back squats might be followed by wall balls, air squats, or even lunges. A deadlift day will have KB swings, hang power cleans, and box jumps. And after bench press we’ll press in all types of planes of the body with burpees, dips, shoulder to overhead, and floor press. Make sense? These try to be anywhere from 5-15 minutes long. Yeah.. sometimes we’re off and they’re closer to 20 minutes. *shrug* Just roll with it. But days with no strength we have more time to play with and have wods that are 20+ minutes long. Or do max jumps for distance, height, heavy thrusters, clusters, Turkish get ups, and gymnastics skill work. And every 3 weeks we do a benchmark Girl WOD.
So even if you don’t like to know what the workout is before showing up, this should give you a better understanding of the outline. Next time I’ll delve a little deeper into what goes into each workout.
Also, be sure to read the posting each day for additional tips and videos. Even if it isn’t until you get to the gym, check it out on your phone or on the iPad so you’re ready to attack each day.
Enough babbling.. let’s see what’s coming up this week..
Monday – Remembering that we back squatted last Monday, this would be Week 2 of the pictured programming. No strength, so we’ve got a doozy of a workout. A chipper of sorts, four movements including some time on the bike.
Tuesday – Back squats will be a little heavy, so be sure to get in a proper warm up of the glutes, hips, and ankles before getting under the bar. Following up the strength with the girl WOD ‘Helen’.
Wednesday – I talked about the use of kettlbells to identify imbalances as well as following up a pressing day by pressing in different planes of the body.. well here you go.
Thursday – And some days we like to follow up deadlifts by doing more deadlifts. This is one of those workouts that looks easy on paper, but by round 9 you’ll be thinking ‘oh boy..’
Friday – See the pattern? Long day today. Long and heavy, which is a good complement to the rest of the week.
Saturday – Getting away from the complexes within the Olympic movements, and we’ve got some snatches today. Bring your jump rope, too.
Guys and gals.. Keep killin’ it. You make your coaches proud!
Let’s have another great week!
