Previously on Friday Night Lights…
After the open score submissions closed last Monday, here are where the teams ended:
Team 1 (Deb’s Illegitimate Children) – 37 points
Team 2 (The Rainbow Warriors) – 37 points
Team 3 (NADS) – 38 points
Team 4 (Winnerz) – 45 points
Now that 15.4 is in the books, let’s see if any teams changed places after Friday Night Lights. Remember, if you’re signed up for the open, you have until Monday at 8PM to submit your scores. This is a very very very easy way to get an extra point for your team. I see that there are some people that are registered for the Open and don’t even bother to submit a score. To win placement points for you team, you must compete on Thursday or Friday. It’s only fair.
Team 1 (Deb’s Illegitimate Children) – 50 points
+8 points for participation
+3 points for JD, John, and Kortney doing the Thursday Night Throwdown
+2 points for Stevie giving it her all and never giving up to win Spirit of the Open
Team 2 (The Rainbow Warriors) – 49 points
+8 points for participation
+1 point for Jacqueline doing the Thursday Night Throwdown
+1 point for Courtney runner up Women RX
+2 points for Courtney working outside her comfort zone and continuing to grind through the WOD to also win Spirit of the Open
Team 3 (NADS) – 51 points
+7 points for participation
+2 points for Gerard and Kent doing the Thursday Night Throwdown
+2 points for Diana grinding through the WOD and also winning Spirit of the Open
+1 point for Max runner up Men RX
+1 point for Kent first place Men SCALED
Team 4 (Winnerz) – 62 points
+7 points for participation
+5 points for the team with the most spirit
+2 points for Kate winning Spirit of the Open by putting her ego to the side and RXing the WOD
+1 point for Natalie first place Women RX
+1 point for Taylor first place Men RX
+1 point for Haley first place Women SCALED
Only one more week of Friday Night Lights left! We’ll get the pictures up soon! Make sure you write down on the announcement board what you’ll be bringing to FNL…I think we have enough chips to last us a while!
GORUCK WOD
We decided to delay the mini-GORUCK wod to a Saturday after the Open has come to an end. It’ll last 2+ hours. To give you an idea of what might be in store, you can check out my write up on the DC Challenge my brother and I did a few years ago. GORUCK HQ found my story, reached out to us, and next thing you know there are Challenges and GORUCK Lights in Athens! We’ll give you advanced notice when we decide to do the GORUCK wod. If you have one, bring a ruck or backpack when we finally do it.
FINAL WEEK OF THE CYCLE
So this is week 12 of our planned 12 week mesocycle. Just doing a few benchmarks before we start the next cycle. I’ll have more information below about what to expect for the next 12 weeks.
Monday – CrossFit Total
Tuesday – Fight Gone Bad / Hope
Wednesday – Max effort lifts and a short wod
Thursday – Kalsu / Filthy Fifty
Friday – Open WOD 15.5
Saturday – Oly class and team wod returns
Sunday – Open gym
NEW PROGRAMMING
You know by now that we always change up our programming and try to incorporate new things to get y’all in the best shape of your life. We’ve made you stronger, faster, more powerful, and you look better naked! Why stop now?! We’re still going to have the two basic levels of programming: fitness and performance. But now, they’re going to vary greater day to day. Some days the two levels might be similar, but most days they will be different. You can pick one level and stick with it, or you can hop around and pick the programming that best fits your goals.
What to focus more on your squats? Do performance on Monday (front squats) and fitness on Wednesday (back squats) and fitness on Fridays (overhead squats). Want to focus more on the olympic lifts? Make sure to come on Wednesday and Thursday for performance because we’ll be doing nothing but lifting (aka no metcons). Upgrade to unlimited and join our oly class on Saturdays! Want to get better at everything? Talk to me or my brother about doing two-a-days: you’ll do both fitness and performance most days, as well as some supplemental work. This option is not for everyone and requires a base level of fitness and a greater commitment to improving your performance. It’ll be hard and it will be challenging, but it will produce results.
Here’s a rough outline on what to expect with each level:
FITNESS
Monday – overhead work and skill work
Tuesday – bench press and metcon
Wednesday – back squat and metcon
Thursday – deadlift and metcon
Friday – overhead squat, accessory work, and skill work
PERFORMANCE
Monday – front squat and metcon
Tuesday – deadlift and metcon
Wednesday – heavy oly and accessory work
Thursday – lighter oly and barbell complexes
Friday – gymnastics, bench/jerk, metcon
You may have noticed that we didn’t program a metcon for each level every day. Astute observation! The next cycle we’re focusing on pulling power, improving squatting form, and refining technique. We’re hoping to get everyone stronger and more powerful, so metcons as we know it will be dialed down to 3x a week. BUT…since you can jump around between levels now, if metabolic conditioning is your goal, then you can do a WOD every day between both levels. You just might not see as great or as quick of an increase in strength and power.
Are you wondering what the accessory work and skill work entails? Good! You’ll see once we start the new cycle. We’ll give you some options and you’ll choose something you’re bad at. We’ll give you bodyweight work (pull ups, handstands, etc), bodybuilding work (hypertrophy, elbow prehab, etc), skill work (rowing, double unders, etc) and anything else we can think of to fill in the gaps of your personal fitness. Is there something you want to work on? Strike back below with a goal and we’ll find a way to incorporate it. You never know, someone else might be thinking the same thing but is too scared to bring it up. We want to get you better, let us know!
One last thing about the new cycle: there will be much less calculating for barbell work. I know every week y’all had to use your brains or your phone or the chart to calculate some percentages for the strength progressions. That’s really hard work, I’m sorry…
This cycle will be a little more subjective and adaptable to your performance each week. While we program and plan for a linear progression on most of the classical lifts, everyone has an off day from time to time, and we sometimes can’t hit the weight we’re supposed to. You’ll see once we get started, but we won’t have something as rigid as 5 @75%, 5 @ 80%, 5 @ 85%, 3 @ 87%, 2 @ 90%. Ok, I kinda lied…we’ll still have strict percentages on the heavy oly day but that’s because we want you to make small jumps and not just throw weight on the bar and fail to achieve the intended stimulus.
Instead, we have you going for a max lift for the day (either a 10RM, 5RM, 3RM, or 1RM), and then a few dropsets from that weight. You might increase each week, you might not. If you don’t, it’s not the end of the world, just give it your best for the day.
Having said that, the only max lift you need to know, and the only lift that we are following a specific cycle for is the DEADLIFT. Make sure you know what your max deadlift is. Then, add 20-40 pounds to it for your goal. The average is 30 pounds, but it’s best to stay conservative: you can always exceed the plan on the very last day when we retest your max. Fitness and performance are both doing the deadlift, but they’re each doing a different cycle. Fitness is doing a lot of heavy pulls with the mag/ort routine. Performance is doing some heavy deadlifts as well as speed pulls with the coan routine. Pick one or the other. My brother and I are almost done with the mag/ort routine and it’s working wonders. It’s a lot, and I mean a lot of heavy weight, but it is manageable. The coan routine doesn’t go as heavy, but it’s also supplemented with speed deadlifts. Links to the printable documents are below. If you’re going to bring your sheet(s) to the gym, make sure your name is on it so it doesn’t get lost or thrown away.
We’re doing the CrossFit Total on Monday (max lifts on back squat, press, and deadlift) so you can find your max lift then. If you already know what your max deadlift is, good! If you can’t make it Monday, we’ll make you do your max pull on another day. For all the other barbell movements in the next cycle, you’ll just need to know a rough idea of what your max is to get started.