C’ville Strength Workout: Wednesday 2/20

• max jerk, behind the neck 1-1-1
• no-leg rope climbs x4 (add weight if possible)
• Sott’s press 20% x2x10 (% of max SP)

I want to provide a little more guidance on how to follow this cycle if you are also going to be doing CrossFit conditioning during the week.  My most general advice along those lines is to err on the side of caution and on the side of doing significantly fewer conditioning workouts than you would normally do.

Before you go on to read my more specific advice, please make sure that you have read and understood the post C’ville Strength Workout: Saturday 2/16.

Here are some possible recommendable combinations of CF training with C’ville Strength workouts for this cycle.  There are four days of Strength programming each week with two “max effort” or ME days, and two “dynamic effort” or DE days (these terms are borrowed from Westside Barbell terminology).  The ME days will always be programmed on Wednesday and Saturday, and the DE days will always be on Sunday and Monday.  So, a week of nothing but C’ville Strength looks like this:

DE / ME / rest 1-2 days / ME / DE

If you’re going to do some CrossFit conditioning, or CF days, here’s my ideal picture of what that would look like:  You’ll substitute one CF day for a DE day, and you’ll alternate which DE day you drop (either a Sunday or a Monday):

DE / ME / rest 1-2 days / ME / CF

Here’s a slightly less ideal, but probably still worthwhile program.  You replace the DE days with CF days:

CF / ME / rest 1-2 days / ME / CF

Here’s a very challenging program that might be appropriate for those of you who are already accustomed to doing two workouts per day:

CF / ME / rest 1-2 days / ME / CF / DE

Or, less ideally,

CF / ME / rest 1-2 days / ME / CF / CF

In more general terms:

• All of my recommendations above involve hitting the two max-effort days, and hitting them with optimal rest.  If you are unable or unwilling to do that, then you should not follow the program.  You can always come in during C’ville Strength classes and work on your weaknesses, and get coaching to correct those weaknesses.  There is never any problem with that.
• All of my recommendations above involve doing a maximum of one workout per day, and the majority of you should only be doing four workouts per week.  If you think that my “very challenging” five-day program won’t be challenging enough for you, you need to come and talk to me or send me an email.  I’m not insinuating that you’re wrong, I’m just saying that we’ll need to have a detailed discussion about how to figure out if you’re right without risking you getting injured or funking up your endocrine system in the event that you turn out to be wrong.
• All of my strongest recommendations above involve severely limiting the amount of CF conditioning that you do during this cycle.  There is some scientific evidence (as well as lots of anecdotal evidence) to suggest that conditioning efforts can be inimical to the development of maximal strength.  In general, the longer the conditioning effort, the more counterproductive that conditioning is in terms of strength-development.  Thus: all of the CF conditioning sessions that you do should be workouts of 10 minutes or less.  Ideally, all of these conditioning workouts would be like Fran or Grace, meaning that they will have durations of 5 minutes or less.  20 minute AMRAP workouts and Hero workouts will be highly counterproductive.  You will be surprised (perhaps even amazed) by how much cardiovascular capacity and muscular endurance you will retain while only doing CF conditioning once or twice per week.