Our first cycle back post holidays (and unplanned COVID lockdowns).
This cycle was originally written to give us 2 solid months of conditioning & skill prep for the upcoming CrossFit Open (aka #RaincityOPEN). Due to the most recent COVID mandates, we’ve re-adjusted & bumped things around a bit to still prepare you as much as possible, while ensuring everyone still gets the most out of the cycle as possible.
Checkout the ‘short’ breakdown of what’s coming below, or scroll all the way down to check-out the detailed breakdowns & calendars.
What’s Coming?
Every Monday will include some form of lower body pushing (aka squats) cycling through FRONT RACK LUNGES, BOX SQUATS, and THRUSTERS in high volume progressively dropping each week (and increasing in load).
Also on the menu is FF style Olympic Lifting; focusing on barbell cycling & increasing volume under fatigue in the CLEAN, SNATCH, and PUSH JERK.
The hang cleans will be paired with heavy clean pulls to continue speed/strength development in our pulling; snatch cycling days will be paired with nonstructural work to increase our capacity to cycle at higher heart rate; and the push jerks will be paired with midline / core stabilization.
To really maximize on our ability to move loads, we’ll be doing a westside barbell style speed strength deadlift day every 2 weeks. Building to heavy doubles & singles ‘for the day’ and then performing reps @ % of that lift paired with double unders and other high heart rate skills.
Last up, we’ll be hitting the lungs hard with a 'long sweat’ (15-20+ min) style workout every week (not including weekends), paired with either additional upper pulling strength (to help with our pullups / muscle ups) or open skills prep like muscle ups, toes to bar, and pistols.
At the end of this cycle we’ll test:
2 RM Thruster
1 RM Strict Press
1 RM Push Press
3RM Clean
5RM Hang Snatch
Questions about what we’re doing or why? Never hesitate to reach out and ask, or bring your questions to our #athletes-wod channel in slack!
We only outline and share the strength details for clients in advance, because we want you to be able to plan your block and understand what’s coming for future weeks, without being able to cherry pick the ‘sweat’ workout portions - you’ve got to wait for those to show up in SugarWOD :)
If you’re not tired of reading yet…
The Detailed Breakdowns
The software we use to outline / plan programs makes it really easy to share parts of the info… So if you’re interested in the details keep reading:
The outline links can always be found on www.rncty.ca/wod and will automatically update as we progress. The [FF] Calendar ha been updated to color coordinate with the BLOCKS breakdown (below).
What’s a Block?
A block is our version of a group class adapted mesocycle within our overall ~12 week cycle. For group classes, we break our mesocycles up into the different days that happen throughout the course of the full cycle (typically 12 weeks).
An example block would be the high volume Squat cycle we did last year. Increasing volume in the Back Squat every Thursday.
In this cycle, to allow for more variety for athletes (while getting back into the group class groove) we’ve shifted the block days around more than usual. So instead of always doing the same lifts on the same days, you’ll see a variety of lifts if you only ever come one day of the week… except Monday, that’s leg day for the next 12 weeks (but with 3 different lifts).
The BLOCK breakdown can be found HERE and it color coordinates with the calendar link found HERE(also available on rncty.ca/wod).
Whenever you’re viewing airtable links (like above) you can (almost) always click on each section to get more info/details on each section or day!
Looking forward to getting to tackle this cycle together again in group classes! Stay tuned for more details on this years #RaincityOPEN and more awesome coming down the pipeline for 2022!
