A few questions

[Mike ODonnell]

Originally Posted by Garrett Smith

If you want to gain mass, do little to no metcon.

+1. Train 3x a week max....eat, sleep and play Xbox...walking should be your fastest metcon. You can always easily get back endurance later...and will have better performance in the long run by taking time off metcons and making strength gains.

The day I see some skinny person come into CF to (naturally) put on real muscle with metcons everyday....I'll shut my trap (and then the people will rejoice).

[Randy Hill]

I'd like to clarify my goal. My goal is for the end result of being able to perform CF WODs in a reasonable time without having to scale the weight. I want to do things as rx'd. Right now I am just trying to find the best way to do that and I am getting a lot of helpful advice on this site.

[Randy Hill]

Doing straight CFFB is looking really interesting right now because it allows me to continue with linear progression, and it involves short, heavy metcons. To me it seems similar to CFSB which is what I have been doing (I only tried out CFFB for the first time today).

[Steven Low]

Heavy lifting on linear progression is good.. and yeah little to no metcon. If any, do them heavy and fast.

Eat more.

[Mike ODonnell]

Originally Posted by Randy Hill

Doing straight CFFB is looking really interesting right now because it allows me to continue with linear progression, and it involves short, heavy metcons. To me it seems similar to CFSB which is what I have been doing (I only tried out CFFB for the first time today).

Try it....eat plenty....rest plenty....judge gains in 4 weeks and see if it's working. Don't worry about the perfect program.....there is no such thing, just what works and what doesn't.

[Peter Andersen]

Originally Posted by Steven Low

Heavy lifting on linear progression is good.. and yeah little to no metcon. If any, do them heavy and fast.

On that note, something that has caught my eye recently has been the programming that Justin has been using over at CrossFit Wichita Falls. Back on the first day he referred to it as "the experiment".

Monday: Starting Strength Workout A
Tuesday: Metcon
Wednesday: Off / Foam Rolling / Massage / Skill work
Thursday: Starting Strength Workout B
Friday: Metcon
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off

The metcons seem to have been quite short in duration also.

[Patrick Donnelly]

Originally Posted by Randy Hill

I really don't want to do Starting Strength for fear of losing my CF metcon/gymnastics/oly lift edge.

What edge? What's your SSST? What's your rings routine look like? How much do you total and how many meets have you been in?


All this nonsense about "biasing" CrossFit workouts is starting to piss me off. Specialization is how shit gets done. If you don't like that and you'd rather be mediocre at everything, that's cool too. Your choice. But this "biasing" stuff is saying "I want to be mediocre at everything, but just a bit less mediocre at a couple of things." Dammit, pick your side.

[Mike ODonnell]

Bodybuilders do bodybuilding workouts
Strongmen do strength training workouts
Gymnasts do gymnastic workouts
Crossfiters do Crossfit workouts

pick who you want to be and move forward with no hesitation.......all the other confusion will just have you reading, researching, trying multiple random formats and asking the same questions year after year......the people who get results just pick one format and then don't question it for at least 12 weeks.

[Gavin Harrison]

Originally Posted by Mike ODonnell

the people who get results just pick one format and then don't question it for at least 12 years.

Corrected that for you. Seriously, pick what you want to be good at, and do it. One of the best ways to get better at crossfit is to scale things to a weight at which you can get the workout done in a reasonably fast period of time, then do it.

Force = Mass * Acceleration. This is the basis of all strength training programs.

Weightlifters tend towards F = m*A. (Dynamic Effort)
Powerlifters tend towards F = M*a. (Maximum Effort)
Bodybuilders tend towards F = m*a. (Repeated Effort)

They all work at building strength up. With crossfit, I'd say, just pick a weight, sets, reps that allows you to get the workout done with little resting, then have at it fast and hard. That will get you the best progress towards "Crossfit as Rxed". It's been done many many times, most if not all of the time this gets people the results faster than trying to do WODs heavy and slow and slogging.

[Randy Hill]

Originally Posted by Gavin Harrison

Corrected that for you. Seriously, pick what you want to be good at, and do it. One of the best ways to get better at crossfit is to scale things to a weight at which you can get the workout done in a reasonably fast period of time, then do it.

Force = Mass * Acceleration. This is the basis of all strength training programs.

Weightlifters tend towards F = m*A. (Dynamic Effort)
Powerlifters tend towards F = M*a. (Maximum Effort)
Bodybuilders tend towards F = m*a. (Repeated Effort)

They all work at building strength up. With crossfit, I'd say, just pick a weight, sets, reps that allows you to get the workout done with little resting, then have at it fast and hard. That will get you the best progress towards "Crossfit as Rxed". It's been done many many times, most if not all of the time this gets people the results faster than trying to do WODs heavy and slow and slogging.

Gavin, your post was golden! Thank you. I think I knew the force equation thing but never really thought about it that way before. I can still increase the amount of work done each time by manipulating weight or time, and keep scaling until I can get it done "as rx'ed".

So, I think I have my issue solved. My current plan is to just keep doing the main site WOD 3 on 1 off, while scaling but attempting more weight / faster times each time (like it's supposed to be done anyways).

I figure as long as I eat enough I should see increases in strength.

Nutrition-wise I can eat A LOT of food - so I don't think i'll have trouble eating enough. The only thing is that I am still "worried" about gaining too much fat, but that is another topic. I realize that my worrying is pointless given my stats. After all, crossfitters have been known to add an appreciable amount of muscle just from doing Crossfit, right?

Can't wait to tackle Eva after work..