CFS Weekly Rundown (11/13-11/18)

Hey guys,

       What a great week we just had! We know this one was super heavy on the squats and everyone’s legs were pretty sore. So hopefully you guys got some good rest and recovery this weekend and are feeling great. We know some weeks can be tough but that’s what makes us stronger and helps us grow. Remember if you’re ever feeling especially sore or tired there is never any pressure to Rx a workout or go heavy. Sometimes it’s just as important to back off and take an easy day to let your body recover and heal! This week won’t be quite rough on the legs but we still have some really great workouts for you! If you just attended the free gymnastics skills workshop we had on Sunday at open gym then you might just get a chance to put everything you learned into action! Now let’s check out some announcements and see what lies ahead!

  • Thanks to everyone who came out to the gymnastics skills workshop on Sunday and especially thanks to Stewart for sharing his time and knowledge with us all! Be on the lookout for another one of these in the future!
  • Our first community outing of the year will be Friday evening, January 24th at the Country Club Lanes bowling alley in Burlington! We hope you all will be able to attend and we will have more details as the time approaches!

Monday: We are starting off the week with a really cool workout! This one will be fast, fun, and won’t kill you for the week ahead! This will be a 12 min AMRAP with dumbbell snatches and bike/row calories. Because this is ladder-style workout the transitions will be really quick at first and things will feel like they are flying. The reps start at 3s but as the workout progresses (by 3s each round) things will start to slow down and you’ll have to settle in. There’s not a lot of competition between these movements so you should be able to stay moving as fast as your heart and lungs will allow. As always, pace things out to some extent to begin with and then try to finish strong in that last couple of minutes. Good stuff!

Tuesday: Oh boy…do we have a good one for you guys today! This is an old familiar CrossFit benchmark workout…with a twist! Today we’ll be doing “Filthy Fifty Plus!” This is the standard Filthy Fifty workout we’ve done in the past except every minute on the minute you’ll have to stop where you are and perform one power clean at 80-85% of your one rep max power clean. Do not be deceived, this is going to slow things down quite a bit. Filthy Fifty is a pretty light chipper. The movements are pretty basic/bodyweight/light but there are a lot of them. This heavy power clean is going to force you to stop and start your progress every minute as you continue through the chipper. This is going to change your strategy a little bit because you’ll probably want to pace things off a little slower than normal if this was a standard Filthy Fifty workout. As you begin to fatigue make sure you do your best to keep your power clean form as smooth and efficient as possible because you can expect to do between 20 and 30 of these today. We will time cap this workout so consider the scaled option where we will do 35 reps of each movement.

Wednesday: Heavy day! We will be focusing almost exclusively on your upper body/pressing strength today. We will begin the day working towards a heavy single on the strict press. If you were here last week you should be familiar with this movement which is just a basic press from a front rack position using no legs/drive. We want to find a heavy single or a one rep max today but we also want to make sure we get in at least five singles within 90% of that one rep max. After this we will work on some really cool single arm dumbbell pressing accessory work to finish off the day! This will be a good day to focus on some upper body strength and allow the rest of our body to recover from the previous day of Filthy Fifty Plus!

Thursday: “Filthy Fifty Plus” was definitely a really cool workout and a nice twist on an old favorite…But today was by far my favorite workout of the week! This layout is a little unique but it’s definitely one you guys will be familiar with and a style that we have seen in the past. Basically what we will have today is five rounds, each consisting of two minutes of work split up by a one and a half or two minute rest. During your working minutes you’ll have to first run 200m and then come back inside and perform as many back squats as possible in the remaining time. This will be from the rack today and the weight will be challenging. We are looking for about five reps each round. We will have a prescribed weight but usually this Rx weight doesn’t exactly fit everyone in the class. So think about using roughly 80% of your most recent one rep max back squat.  It’s a really unique chance and a great stimulus for your body to move some heavy loads under some duress that is caused by that first 200m run in each round. Have fun with this one and really push yourself on the last round or two and see what you can do! Good stuff!

Friday: Big day today for you guys. We have a lot to do but we are going to try to get it all in and make it a great day. We haven’t done this in a while but we will actually have a lifting piece followed by a conditioning piece that go together. We will kick the day off with a 10 minute snatch EMOM consisting of one snatch pull and then one power snatch. This will be without dropping the bar. Remember that a snatch pull is exactly like a snatch from the floor to the hip. You do your normal pull from the floor and then when you get the bar to your hip you’ll make contact, drive up, and shrug hard…you just won’t continue to pull under the bar. You’ll return the bar to your hip, get reset, then flow back through your positions, touch the bar to the ground, then continue your next pull…except this time you will go ahead and power snatch under the bar. This is an amazing exercise to work on technique, especially if you have trouble getting your bar to the hip and making contact. This is absolutely necessary to being successful and performing well in the snatch movement so really go for technique today and drill these positions. After this will have a quick little seven round workout with handstand push-ups, ring muscle-ups/pull-ups, and power snatches! This one is very low rep and should take us about 10 minutes so don’t pace things out too much, but rather really attack this one and see what you can do!

Saturday: Ever heard the phrase: “Simple, yet effective?” Of course you have! And today you’ll find out exactly what that means. Like all Saturdays this is a partner workout and it’s a good one. It’s going to be a very simple and straightforward work out with only two movements: wallballs, and running! Wallballs you will split anyway you would like between yourself and your partner but the running you’ll do together as a pair. The runs will stay the same each round but the wallballs will decrease in reps as you progress through the workout. Psychologically this is great and will allow you to stay positive and keep the pace high.  like all of our partner workouts be sure to give it your all when it’s your time to work and keep your partner motivated when it’s your time to rest. Have fun with this one and let’s kick the weekend off right!

        As you guys can see we have an amazing week ahead of us…Possibly the best week of the year thus far! The programming this week is such that we will get in some really good workouts but you shouldn’t destroy one certain area of your body and feel super beat up. Because of this, really try to give it your all each and every day and get in here and be consistent. If you do feel a little bit run down remember that it’s always a great idea to take a rest day here and there or even come in and heavily modified to work out into more of an active recovery piece.  As always we want you guys to know how grateful we are to have you all as a part of this community and how much your presence in class motivates and inspires us. We can’t wait to see you here this week!

~Daniel