Update
The Olympic lifting Clinic will be held at Crossfit 801 in Salt Lake.
Thursday, July 23rd from 1pm -4pm
Cost: $50

I have gotten a couple questions about using 1RM’s and percentages. I will try to clear up some stuff without confusing anyone. You have to go into this with an open mind. There are many different viewpoints on this topic so don’t take this personal.

There is certainly a traditional model and it shouldn’t be too hard to search out on google. It will basically rank everything off a 1 rep max. There is a difference in women. Usually you will find them with higher capacity at higher percentages while having a lower than expected 1 rm. For example they may be able to do 5 reps at 95% but then add 5 lbs and they can’t get a single rep. Women…

So how often do we need to asses the 1RM? I would say that it depends on your level. Beginners will probably get significant gains and need to recheck every 6 weeks. As the skill level gets better the numbers will progress quicker especially in the olympic lifts. For More advanced athletes 12 weeks is usually a good time period. I would not go for a 1RM everyday you lift. This will fry your neurological system and beat you down really quickly.

I am not a big fan of high rep high load olympic weightlifting. I usually won’t go over 3 reps with anything higher than 80%. I find form degrades very quickly and limits your progress. As for the squat, dead, press and variations i like both higher reps schemes and lower reps. I would limit the number of exercises you do and expand your exposure to different rep schemes. We are, after all, Crossfitters and need to be able to do both high rep and low rep. How easy would fran be if you could do 21 thrusters at 155lbs?
A good example of this is the 20 rep squat program. You will basically work towards increasing your 20 rep max in the squat with a linear progression over 4-6 weeks. This is a brutal program but you can’t argue the effectiveness. At the same time i would add in some 10×2 clean and jerks or snatches on off days.

Take one and at the max two movements per day especially if you are gonna do some type of conditioning afterward. I would tinker in the different energy pathways. For example the clean and jerk and snatch should be short explosive bursts of work while your squats should be a little higher rep to push you to the next energy pathway.

My opinion, especially if you are a crossfitter, is to push the limits. We don’t want absolute strength so playing with higher reps at relatively high loads would be ideal. As a crossfitter you need both top end strength and high capacity at high reps.