Some of you have been asking about the seemingly sudden uptick in intensity with our conditioning workouts. There’s a reason for that. Next week will be tier testing, but beyond that, we have two primary focuses, two things we’re programming for out on the horizon.
First Up: Crosstown Throwdown on October 11th
More immediately, we have the Crosstown Throwdown, our annual gym vs. gym competition with CrossFit Sweatshop, which goes down on October 11th. This is always a blast, and we get to do workouts that we won’t see anywhere else, competing against our friends from across the tunnel. We’ll be doing a follow-up post on the Throwdown, explaining its format, how to participate, and anything else you might need to know. In short, this is something you want to be a part of.
Back to the programming…the Throwdown always ups the ante in terms of conditioning challenges (just ask anyone who went through the tabata gauntlet during last year’s Throwdown). We need to be ready for that. The workouts are mostly on the shorter end (think 5 to 7 minutes or so), but they push the intensity to the fullest. They make you go to that dark place. With that in mind, we are going to be doing a couple of short (5- to 10-minute) conditioning workouts each week that will really push the envelope in terms of intensity (think of the 9-6-3 5-rounder we did last week). Also, once the Throwdown workouts are published (usually about a month out from competition), we’ll be cycling those into our programming, too. We want to be prepared!
The key focal points of the training cycle leading up to the Throwdown will be as follows:
* Short-end conditioning focus, with one or two workouts each week pushing the intensity envelope
* One longer, lower-intensity workout mixed in each week for recovery
* Some higher-rep work with the squat and press (in our strength workouts) to create some work capacity
* Folding in the Throwdown workouts to our programming once they’re published
Second Up: Fight Gone Bad Fundraiser Workout on November 8th
On November 8th, we’re going to be doing our second annual Fight Gone Bad (FGB) fundraiser workout in collaboration with United Barbell. We’ll follow up with more details about the fundraiser in a later blog post. As it relates to programming, though, we’re going to start preparing for FGB by doing a dry run through the workout this Saturday August 30th during our group classes. If you’ve never done FGB before, let’s just say it’s best experienced rather than described. We want you to have a baseline, in terms of performance and in terms of strategy, so that you can use your experience this Saturday to improve when it comes to game day on November 8th.
The key focal points for the training cycle leading up to the FGB fundraiser workout will be as follows:
* Benchmarking performance this Saturday during group classes as we run through FGB
* Utilizing EMOM work and superset work to practice the 5 key movements of FGB (push presses, wall balls, sumo-deadlift high pulls, box jumps, and rowing)
* Throwing in conditioning workouts with these movements in different combinations and rep/time schemes
After FGB, the focus will move to preparing for our annual CrossFit Total, but this post is already too long, so I’ll save that for another day.