Training for the Crossfit Total

[Rick Deckart]

Out of interest: What's considered good programing if the Crossfit Total is a main goal? What would be considered an optimal approach for somebody who would want to spend say 6 to 8 weeks training for it (3 to 4 sessions per week) assuming that the base performance in the three exercises are relatively balanced?

Thanks in advance!

[Patrick Donnelly]

Wouldn't training for the CrossFit Total sort of defeat the purpose of it? It comes up at random, to get a general idea of your strength at any given time. If you train for it, then your strength won't be very general at all, nor will it give a good idea of how you may do on any random day.

[josh everett]

8 week program: very simple...
Mon: squat & Press (as heavy as you can go)
Tuesday: DL (as heavy as you can go)
Wed off
Thursday: Squat & press (use the same wt as mon)
Friday: deadlift but always light
Saturday: alternate weeks between working up to a heavy single on squat & press..next week heavy single on DL. (take week 4 off)

Each mon & tuesday move up the wt if you completed the reps the week before

Saturdays: a heavy single may mean a pr...sometimes 85% may be all you have that day...listen to your body.

newbies would do "press" reps for all exercises

weeks 1-3: press 5x10, SQT/DL 5x5
week 4: press 5x5, SQT/DL 5x3 *** with same wt as week 3***
week 5: Press 5x5, SQT/DL 5x3 Back to as heavy as you can
week 6: press 5x3, SQT DL 5x2
week 7: press 5x1, SQT/DL 5x1
week 8: mon & wed light press/SQT/DL..sat total

example of 5x5...set 1 40k, set 2 50k, set 3 60k, set 4 70K, set 5 80K
IE: 4 warm-up sets 1 working set


add assistant movements as needed/tolerated

[Mike ODonnell]

I'd google some Westside programs....cause that is basically what you are doing, heavy lifting. I know they do alternate between ME and Dynamic progressions. Also search for DJ's 21 program, that's a good progression as well. In all cases....you are lifting heavy.

[Steve Shafley]

Crossfit total is basically raw powerlifting. Press instead of bench. Incidentally, the good Olympic pressers pressed 3-4x weekly, and had to clean their presses.

Patrick:

The Crossfit total is the brainchild of Mark Rippetoe, and he's had at least one XFT meet at his place. So, it's a competitive thing. It's not just something that gets tossed out there as a WOD every now and then.

One thing that is absolutely not built by accident is maximal strength. You can get by up to a certain point with random stuff, but that certain point is not going to be very high, especially if you are coming from an endurance background into Crossfit.

Getting and maintaining a high strength base is more difficult than maintaining a high level of conditioning. Arguably.

[Steven Low]

I wouldn't really say it's arguable.

Building up a high level of strength does take much longer than a high level of conditioning as well as maintaining it. At least that's from my experience, and I'm sure many would agree.

[Allen Yeh]

Note sure about the date of this interview with Rip

http://www.elitefts.com/documents/crossfit_total.htm

[Robb Wolf]

Has anyone messed with the combined CF/PL template Jason Bagwell put forward a couple years ago? Tweaking this to the press seems like a nice way to go.

Josh, do you remember this template?

[Pierre Auge]

Originally Posted by Robb Wolf

Has anyone messed with the combined CF/PL template Jason Bagwell put forward a couple years ago? Tweaking this to the press seems like a nice way to go.

Josh, do you remember this template?

Robb,
yes I've played around with it quite a bit and it works very very well. One note I will make and this is right out of the mouth of Rip and into my programing which I've shown to be very productive is to keep your deadlifts down to 1 set of 5 per week. Or 5 singles once per week. That is the only modification I would make to what Josh posted at the beginning or to the Bagwell program.

While Bagwell due to time constraints places the lift immediately before or after the WOD, it is far more productive to have a fixed linear program performed say late afternoon to mid evening while performing the wod in the morning. So basically you end up doing a WOD then an ME workout later in the day. I recommend no more than 3 movements at a time and keeping the volume very low. Say 15 total reps or less - that's where I've seen the best results in programing. It also makes that the ME blocks usually takes less than 30 minutes. <20minute WOD + <30minute ME the volume stays low but the weight stays very high relatively progressing linearly week per week. Huge gains...

If people are looking to gain mass the high velocity, moderate volume WODs are best for promoting that. Eat a shit-load immediately after your WOD and you'll grow like a weed. That combined with the hormonal response generated by the heavy lifting in the evening can and does produce some wicked results if thats what you're looking for.

[Dave Van Skike]

Originally Posted by Pierre Auge

Robb,
yes I've played around with it quite a bit and it works very very well. One note I will make and this is right out of the mouth of Rip and into my programing which I've shown to be very productive is to keep your deadlifts down to 1 set of 5 per week. Or 5 singles once per week. That is the only modification I would make to what Josh posted at the beginning or to the Bagwell program.

While Bagwell due to time constraints places the lift immediately before or after the WOD, it is far more productive to have a fixed linear program performed say late afternoon to mid evening while performing the wod in the morning. So basically you end up doing a WOD then an ME workout later in the day. I recommend no more than 3 movements at a time and keeping the volume very low. Say 15 total reps or less - that's where I've seen the best results in programing. It also makes that the ME blocks usually takes less than 30 minutes. <20minute WOD + <30minute ME the volume stays low but the weight stays very high relatively progressing linearly week per week. Huge gains...

If people are looking to gain mass the high velocity, moderate volume WODs are best for promoting that. Eat a shit-load immediately after your WOD and you'll grow like a weed. That combined with the hormonal response generated by the heavy lifting in the evening can and does produce some wicked results if thats what you're looking for.

Why ME later? Seems the opposite, morning ME, metcon later is more intuitive....lift heavy while fresh...