ME Black Box
 

Under the suggestion by Robb Wolf, I decided to take a look at the ME black box and variations. Based off of my understanding of the templates, I came up with a couple of variations I wanna try. It wont be next week since I dont wanna take my barbell to Santa Cruz but probably the next after that. I prefer the 5 days on, 2 days off because it gives me weekends to do what I want.

A)
Mon - XFit
Tue - Snatch (power, hang, etc), Bench Press, Deadlift
Wed - XFit
Thur - Clean (power, hang, etc), Standing Press, Squat (back, front)
Fri - XFit
Sat - Rest
Sun - Rest

B)
Mon - XFit
Tue - Snatch, Standing Press/Dip (switch every other week), Deadlift
Wed - XFit
Thur - Clean, Pullup (eventually weighted), Squat
Fri - XFit
Sat - Rest
Sun - Rest

I think A might be a little better since I already do several sets of pullups and dips every day as GTG, and most my workouts have pullups and/or dips in them already.

It seems a little intense on the ME days. I am not sure what your conditioningis, maybe you handle it. The templates I have seen have one exercise for the ME day.

Could be a little rough.

If you're going to do that many ME exercises.. (are you going to go singles or triples or what?) make sure you try to keep the volume pretty low as you work into it. If it's too much at first try cutting the wed X-fit to a half intensity day.

GTG along with this will probably be too much unless your conditioniong level is *very* high.

I would group cleans and DLs together and snatch and squats together. Basically the oly lift variation will be a warmup for the heavy work (e.g. clean is a warmup for DL) which will cut down significantly the amount of warmup sets (if any) that you need to do. It really doesn't matter what goes what day really though... try to keep it synch with X-fit in terms that if you're doing max DLs on Monday maybe put your clean-dl-bench on Thurs instead of Tues which you'd have to do it 2 days in a row. That would be ROUGH.

P.S. I hope your diet is optimized as well.

Some good points above. I dont have the best conditioning, but Ive always been able to recover quickly, but why risk it. So I sat down and have been trying to figure out something that might be a little better.

As far as reps, I was thinking of doing the one from the ME Blackbox variations article. First group of exercises, week one 5x5, two 5x3, three 5x1 and then repeating with second group of exercises. After the six weeks, take a week off. I want to use this week to test myself. I was thinking a 5k run, CF total, and the old school strength challanges from underground strength coach.

When I talk about crossfit, I dont mean whats up on the page. What I meant was doing randomized, "no rules", metcon workouts. So sometimes a crossfit metcon, sometimes something from undergroudstrengthcoach.com, etc, its just easier to say XFit.

A.)
Mon - XFit
Tue - Snatch (power, hang, etc)
Wed - XFit
Thur - Standing Press
Fri - XFit
Sat - Back Squat
Sun - Rest

B.)
Mon - XFit
Tue - Clean (power, hang, etc)
Wed - XFit
Thur - Deadlift
Fri - XFit
Sat - Benchpress
Sun - Rest

That sounds saner.

I Black Boxed for a couple months. You can also throw in a little non-maximal work to keep the groove smooth. E.g.:

Snatch heavy
Back Squat heavy
Overhead Press medium

C+J heavy
FSQ heavy
Overhead Squat medium

You can also get mileage out of progression from exercise to exercise, e.g.:

Power Snatch until you have to squat snatch
Squat snatch to max
Overhead squat reps with a heavy squat snatch weight
Back Squat to heavy triple

To be honest, I didn't see any oly progress until I started adding in some more non-maximal oly days. All the pure strength exercises went up nicely, though, even though I was still doing X-Fittish stuff then.

Just a little confused here. For the first scenario:
Snatch heavy
Back Squat heavy
Overhead Press medium

C+J heavy
FSQ heavy
Overhead Squat medium

Are you talking about doing the first three for three weeks then switching to the other, or am I off?

For the second:
Power Snatch until you have to squat snatch
Squat snatch to max
Overhead squat reps with a heavy squat snatch weight
Back Squat to heavy triple

Im guessing that this is done all in one day.

An important question that needs to be asked is;

What are your goals?

My main goal right now is to lose weight. Im down from ~290 in March to 254 yesterday morning. I dont really have a goal weight, but I would like to hit 15% body fat or less by New Years, which according to a body fat calculater thing I downloaded, is only about another 11%, but I dont know how accurate it is.

For this reason I've been doing a lot of Metcon workouts along with a Fast-5/Paleo diet. However, I also dont feel as strong as I used to in some areas. In others Im great, I can now do three tactical pullups in a row, where as in March, I couldnt even do 1 chinup. But in other areas, mainly my standing presses, Im noticing a decline in ability.

Brandon,

you might try focusing on just strenght and weight loss.. I've tried to cut down using your approach and it was slow hard going. A protein sparing modified fast and solid strength based program with long walks paired with ZERO metcon works pretty fast and preserves the meat. You will probabaly gain a little strength as well. once you're gettgin closer to your goal, then consider metcons. Just a suggestion, worked for me but YMMV

Just to give you guys an idea of what I do and what Im talking about when I say Metcon, here's the schedule for this week.

Monday – Hard (originally more of a metcon, but changed it this morning)
1. Pull ups - vary grip 6 x 5 reps
2. barbell bench press (medium grip) 6 x 5 reps
3. KB step up onto bench 3 x 10 per leg
4. 1 arm kettlebell snatch 5 x 5 reps
5. knee tucks off bench 3 x 12 - 15
6. wheel barrow (load w/any resistance - weights) push 3 x 1 minute (loading the wheel barrow w/olympic plates makes it easy to track the loads as opposed to throwing in sand or rocks)

Tuesday – Easy
Start in middle of basketball court. Press bells overhead. Overhead walk to basket, 5 push press. Repeat with rack walk and front squats. Repeat with farmers walk and row.
+ 5/5 snatch, 10/10 High Pull, 15/15 Swing

Wednesday – Hard
A many rounds in 20 minutes of:
·2-handed swings x15
·Walking Lunges x30 (15R/15L)
·Push Ups x15
·1-Arm Rows x15R/15L

Thursday – Easy
30 minute H2H drill, resting for ~1 minute whenever bell is dropped.

Friday – Hard
3 times through, one minute breaks
1. snatches x 5 L/R
2. clean, squat & press x 5
3. Renegade Row x 5 L/R
4. forward lunges x 5 L / R
5. 2 hand swings x 10
6. Floor Press x 10