Crossfit Football, John Welbourns brainchild, is an awesome program. The way i see sport specific training is in line with how John programs his Football WODs. He openly says that CFFB is not geared towards making you a better Crossfitter. We have had this discussion before, but an athletes performance in the gym should do one thing, and that is to allow them to excel on the field. John gets that. Here is what he has to say.
I am not programming for the games, that is maxie’s realm. If people want to use the cffb programming for the games that is their right, as this shit is free. I am not tapering, focusing on weakness or worrying about building work capacity outside of the demands of football. My goal for the cffb program to make muscular, extremely strong and fast athletes that are not limited by flexibility or change of direction. So to sum up cffb….big, strong, fast people that can bend and change direction. If I can accomplish that the program is a success and I am happy. If I train athletes that mistake work capacity for athleticism I have missed my mark.
Well said.
I really like their approach to Strength training as it is a well thought out strength program for all levels. The difference between a novice and an expert is huge and they will not benefit from working above their current experience level. The beginners are on a more basic linear progression while the more experienced athletes are on a percentage based program. I like the complexity this program has taken on with the in season and off season strength WODs and conditioning. There is some serious consideration going into making this program as effective as possible.
If you miss the point that training is preparation then you have changed your sport to training. If you understand that what you do in the gym is meant to make you better on the field then you will be a more complete athlete in the long run.
In case you didn’t pick this up already, i don’t think this is a very good Crossfit prep program. You will not win the Crossfit games by doing CFFB. Nor is that the goal. I think it could be a fun alternative to .com but you have to realize who the workouts are for and what their intentions are. If these workouts are taking you 10+ minutes, you need to scale back. These should be high on intensity and power output.
Lastly i want to restate John’s purpose with this program. he is committed to making Crossfit the training program for football players across the world. he is constantly checking results and tweaking the program and this is evident with the advent of his in season/ off season programming.
In my opinion, as soon as a program stops evolving it is dead. With a brain like Johns behind CFFB you are in good hands.
I’m a avid follower of CFFB due to me being a former football player and having coached at the JV high School level. The only problem I have with CFFB is if you are a football player that is in HS or College the program is a little bit intense. Take Sept 19th thru Sept 24th there isn’t a rest day, this is the inseason program. Kids in HS are following this program with little supervision and this is too much volume especially for a inseason program, it’s inviting injury or a serious plateu do to lack of rest. I think this program has the blueprint to be awesome. Just some minor issues need to be address. The concept and vision are there just need to tighten up somethings. I love John and would really like this program to take off like it should. It’s a better overall program than Nike SPARQ and TNP by under Armour.
Thank you for your input Terrance. I will pass it along to John.
Terrance, I think you are missing a huge part of the system. There were actually many rest days for the In Season program between the 19th and 24th, but since John is programming for 3 different levels of Athletes, there are In Season wods everyday. Look under the strength calendar on the right and you will see that many days are actually rest days for the In Season program, you just have to know how to use the website. Hope this clears things up for ya.
Dutch, I may be mistaken, but I don’t believe that it is John’s intention for you to ever scale the workouts for intensity or power output. As he has said many times in the comments, if you can safely handle the load, do not scale back the weight. This would makes sense, since this is a strength biased program.
On a side note, I am not a football player but have been following the program for quite some time and have seen major strength gains. I would highly recommend it to anyone.
John has mentioned however, that the weights in the daily WOD are those that he would use. I haven’t met John but I’m pretty sure he is a large man. That being said, that weight may not make sense for a much smaller athlete to use. I have been following the CFFB workouts for several months and love them. However, I have scaled the weight on several workouts (I weigh 140) because I don’t see the benefit in the DWOD being done super slow just so that I can use John’s prescribed weight (that he would use). I would much rather scale the weight and have much higher intesity. I do not see this being a problem as far as strength gains are concerned because of the heavy lifting in the strength WOD. This is just how I use the site and if other people want to do differently then have at it.
Kyle,
I took a look at it and for what I see and read under the FAQ is there is a Strength WOD (SWOD) and a Daily WOD (DWOD) the DWOD is on the left and SWOD is on the right? I may be wrong in my interpertation of this. If I am then I apoplogize for my misinterpation and thanks Kyle for clearing that up….
After meeting and speaking with John, I got a better grip on what CFFB is more about and Dutch couldn’t have hit it any harder on the head then he did.
Just as he talks about scaling Crossfit workouts to increase power outputs, I believe that the same could be used for CFFB. That being said, you also have to look at where you are going with the programming. If it is strength that you are looking for, AND SPEED then it is necessary that on CFFB you focus on getting through the strength training as HEAVY as possible, and then making the WODs scalable to making top times. Obviously, this isn’t going to mean a WOD calling for 80% 1RM and you scale it to 40% 1RM, because there is a point in power output that once you drop the load, your time benefit will not recover the power output difference. I think Dutch says it best when he first says look at some of the top finishing Rx’d times, and scale so that you are finishing in relation to those times.
As well, if you are using this program as a true football training workout, meaning you play or are planning to play, hit it as close to Rx’d as possible. Scale where necessary. A young high school CFFB follower, more then likely, can’t hit 185lbs overhead anyhow, so in certain cases scale. Yes, Welbourn, is a huge guy, so the weights are going to be easier for someone of his size and strength. Most NFL players if not big, are still strong, and that is the level that must be trained up to as well.
So my recommendation is that if you are looking to use CFFB for football training then go Rx’d as best you can.
If you are using CFFB as strength training, then hit the strength portion hard, and hit the WOD as close to Rx’d as you can as well.
If you are using CFFB for getting to AND winning the games, not likely, so maybe it’s time to find some new programming.
Just my thoughts though. Not saying that’s how it is and has to be.