Ensure Varied, Thought-Out Programming for your Affiliate

This post summarizes and builds on top of Shut up and and Scribble episode How I Program for My Affiliate: Taylor Self // Shut Up & Scribble Ep 24. The goal of any CrossFit programming in affiliates is to increase work capacity across broad time and modal domains. How different affiliates get there will vary widely but there are some rules and commonalities that can be followed to ensure you're programming is varied and well thought out.

Rules for Programming

1. CrossFit Definition

CrossFit is constantly varied, functional movements performed at high intensity. If you're familiar with CrossFit at all this definition will be familiar to you. It's important to keep this in mind when programming.
Constantly varied means you switch up the movements, time domains, and modalities while maintaining some consitency so that you don't fall into the trap of doing the same thing over and over or being completely random. CrossFit stays broad, general, and inclusive knowing that as humans we fail at the margins of our experience. When we keep our movements varied we expand those margins and become more capable humans Functional movements are movements that are natural to the human body. They have 6 characteristics to them: - Natural - Universal Motor Recruitment Patterns - Essential - Compound yet Irreducible - Safe - Core to Extremity Movement Patterns e.g. Squatting, deadlifting, pressing, etc. Not bicep curls, leg extensions, etc. High Intensity is relative to the individual and their physical and psychological tolerances. e.g. What can the body handle and What can the mind handle? It's not about going as hard as you can every day. It's about going as hard as you can while maintaining good form and technique. Which brings you to the second rule.

2. Proper Progression of CrossFit

Before you throw people into high intensity workouts, you need to build the foundation of mechanics and consistency. CrossFit preaches:

Can my athlete get into the proper positions? What faults are present in the movement? How can we fix them? Are they consistent in their movement or showing different faults with different reps? Eventually we want to get to intensity but we don't want to sacrifice mechanics and consistency to get there. This is where the magic happens This progression is up to the coaches to determine for individual athletes and scale workouts for them accordingly.

3. Complimentary Movement Patterns

When programming workouts, you want to make sure you err on the side of programming complimentary movement patterns. e.g. Fran: lower body push and upper body pull. Redundancy is when 2 or more movements hit the same movement pattern. e.g. JT: 3 upperbody pushing movements Redendancy has it's place but will reduce intensity for most people because they don't have the capacity to push that movement pattern that hard.

4. Simplicity and Elegance

Don't get complicated or cute with your programming. Stick to the basics. Add complexity as you get more familiar with your style of programming and your athletes.

5. Zoom Out

Every other week, zoom out and look at the past 2 weeks of programming. What have you not done? What do you need to prioritize in the upcoming block?

6. Trial and Error

Trial and error your own workouts. You'll find out quickly if a workout you programmed is trash.

7. Set Aside your Ego and Be Flexible

If you program a week and it's beating people up in unexpected ways, change it if you need to. CrossFit Charlotte sends out their week of programming with the message: > "Workouts may change to ensure the quality of your CrossFit experience" This gives the them flexibility to change something if workouts are beating people up in unexpected ways.

8. Build in your own rules

There will be movement patterns and strength cycles that you and your gym prefer. Maybe you like to do a heavy day once a week or maybe you like to do a high skill gymnastics day once a week. Find those rhythms and build them into your programming but use the process below to keep things varied.

Process

1.) Sketch out 14 blocks representing a day a week for 2 weeks 2.) On the board, write out the different aspects of a workout that you want to vary:

3.) Fill in the blocks with the workouts you want to program for the next 2 weeks 4.) Cross off different aspects of workouts you used from the list for that 2 week block 5.) Zoom out and look at what you haven't done and prioritize that in the next block You'll get a lot of variance if you follow this process. More movements you will want to consider programming:

• Bench press
• Handstand push-up
• Ring dip
• Ring push-up
• Bar muscle up
• Kettlebell shoulder to overhead
• Dumbbell shoulder to overhead
• Burpee box jump
• Burpee pull-up
• Devils press
• Dumbbell snatch
• Kettlebell hang snatch
• Squat snatch
• Overhead squat
• Squat clean and jerk
• Heavy squat day
• Wall ball
• Medicine ball clean
• Kettlebell squat
• Sandbag squat
• Air squat
• Lunge (db/kb/plate)
• Chest to bar pull-up
• Strict pull-up
• rope climb
• legless rope climb
• Knees to elbow
• V-up
• Strict toes to bar/t2b
• GHD hip extension

Swapping out movements for different variations of the same movement is a great way to keep things varied. Maybe you've done front squats and overhead squats so you could throw in squat snatches to keep things varied.

Example

Here's an example of 2 weeks of programming for CrossFit Charlotte and a breakdown of each workouts characteristics.

At the end of the 2 weeks, zoom out and look at what you haven't done and prioritize that in the next block.