Dutch Lowy

Crossfit is about acountability. We have the message boards, the comments, texts to and from friends on a daily basis. Most importantly we have the white board and a stop watch. That shit doesn’t lie.
What hold you accountable as a trainer? Do you regularly travel to different affiliates and observe their training methods? Do you notice yourself giving less focus later in the week as you get tired? It is hard to stay on top of your game.
Trust me, i know. I used to work full time at the gym while taking over 15 hours at school. Until i left town in late June 2008 i had not trained at many affiliates let alone had a chance to see other people train. Luckily as i got to observe more and more affiliates my resounding response was, Cool, this is exactly what i used to do. There were some minor differences but for the most part Crossfit ATM was on par with the best gyms i saw.
How confident are you that you are offering quality training on a consistent basis?
What do you use to keep you accountable as a trainer?

I got a very thought provoking question last week from Aaron at Potomac Crossfit. Here it is followed by my response. Remember it is just my opinion so don’t go taking it as law.

I’m writing because your thoughts on power output (and few others I’ve
run across lately) have got me to thinking. I started an email
conversation with a our coaches on the subject and would love your
thoughts. My email was long and rambling so I’ll try to give you the
short version.

How valuable is the load in a metcon. The easy example was Fran. I
have a decent Fran time in the 3:20′s. The power output according to
Catalyst Athletics is .38hp. Unfortunately, a 2 minute Fran with
45lbs has a significantly higher power output. In most instances of
benchmark WODS even near elite level times produce inferior outputs to
those that would be achieved by a significantly lighter weight. A 3
minute grace is a lower power output than 2 minute version with 95lbs.

So where do we draw the line. Where do we decide that a certain
amount of weight and a certain duration of time is sufficient? or do
we embrace this theory, relegate everything even remotely heavy ME
type days and lighten the loads for WODs for almost everyone.

Aaron,
Let me start with the simple answer and i will elaborate. It’s not simple or definitive. The answer is do both… light, heavy, or combine both. (that would be fun).
Ok, so here is my take, Power is good. Weight is good. I use an example in my seminar to illustrate this and i make a point to show that the workout originally designed (not scaled) is the gold standard. So in this case with fran, do it with 95 and do it in 2 minutes!
You say, “great dutch but i can’t.”
I say, “lets figure out a loading that will keep you in the time domain i want.”
Today might be 2 minutes. Tomorrow might be 10. How would you scale fran to last 2 minutes? 10 minutes? My idea here is to challenge you as a trainer to decide what you want from your clients. I say make an effort to give everybody relatively the same experience.
Is fran the same at 2 minutes as it is at 10 minutes? Fuck No!!
Is there value in doing both? Yes!

I am sure this will create additional questions so keep them coming. I hope this helps you put your programing into perspective. An interesting observation would be to take a look at your whiteboard at the end of the day. Are the times tightly clustered or is there wide margins between athletes?
Post your thoughts and a picture of your whiteboard from today. Show everyone where you stand.
Are you meeting your programming goal?

Periodization is an organized approach to training that involves progressive cycling of various aspects of a training program during a specific period of time. wikipedia.com

Thats right, I said it. Why is it such a dirty word in the crossfit community? There is an instant discounting of it when mentioned to a crossfitter. They claim it goes against everything crossfit. Here is my argument, but first i need to qualify a few things. When i talk about a crossfitter, i do not mean any first responder, or military personel. I feel they truly benefit from constant variation; although, military personel can and do ramp up training before going over seas. Is this periodized? I think so.
They need to be ready for anything at anytime.
Because of all the questions i have gotten from people across the country asking what i do or how they should prepare for the games i feel it safe to say that crossfit has become a sport, and a sport with a scheduled event. Anytime you know when you are to compete you have the opportunity to periodize. In this case we had a year to decide what we need work at and structure a program to get better at it. You usually think strength training but i think it can go many ways when looking at weaknesses. Take a second and think about yours and what you would have done differently or could start doing now. ( If you really want to put it out there post it to comments.)
With a scheduled event like the games there is no reason you shouldn’t be doing dedicated training in certain areas to build a solid base for yourself whether it is this year or next year. I think in the near future the winners of the games will be people who have coaches that manage their training in a periodized fashion. Imagine if you could take a year and dedicate yourself to O lifting then another year and dedicate yourself to gymnastics, then a couple months of conditioning and look out!! You have just become the worlds best Crossfitter. That is periodization at its finest.

Next time how do we make Crossfit as a sport more random? I hae some wacky thoughts about this so it should be fun.
Post thoughts and weaknesses to comments.
Dutch

Cathletics TD Seminar 1/31

Thank you to everyone that came out to my seminar this weekend hosted by Greg and Aimee of Catalyst Athletics in their brand new kick ass gym! If you are in the area (or not) you should do yourself a favor and go by and get some top notch olympic lifting and Crossfit training. Don’t let the big guy fool you. Greg has been a crossfitter since the first affiliates popped up. He was actually co-owner of the 3rd or 4th affiliate with Robb Wolf waaaay back in the day. Aimee is not a bad Olympic lifter herself.

The seminar went really well!! We had a really fun group and had some great discussion about programming. I added a new section into the seminar which allows the participant to program a workout on their own and then present it to the group and get feedback. You are given guidelines and then a couple minutes to formulate a workout. I really think it helped people quantify what they just learned and put it into practice. Thank you for being my guinea pigs and i can’t wait to hear how it affects your training.
Thank you again for having faith in me!
Dutch