August was full of excitement, the main highlight being the 1RM attempts for both the Clean & Jerk and Snatch to end our Olympic lifting focus in our Group CrossFit classes!
We continued to see the Phase III focus of “Horsepower” show up in 1-2 SPRINT workouts per week where the only strategy was to push the gas pedal down!
We built pressing volume for both the Push-Up and the Handstand Push-Up that showed up once a week. This was built into workouts in various ways throughout the month. We still saw some great SHRED bodybuilding finishers to keep the show muscles alive while working through the summer months and also worked on a short Pistol progression to help build skill of a very tricky movement!
Lastly, we had an opportunity to get a taste of a CrossFit classic “Nancy” and one of our favorite NCFIT workouts, Supersonic (partner style). “Kelly” was on the menu for August but that classic GRIND will be showing up in the first week of September. Let’s talk about what’s in store for September!
September marks the final month of our Horsepower phase! This month we will focus on GPP (general physical preparedness) strength training with 1-2 lifts or lifting complexes per week. These are not a linear progression and will not culminate in a 1RM test, but the continued exposure to various lifts and loads will help us continue to gain strength!
Kicking off the month we have an at home workout on Labor Day along with a retest of the classic CrossFit benchmark, “Kelly”. We will also see the Hero workout Amanda workout this month – a classic combo of explosive strength and high skill gymnastics. On 9/11, we will run our tribute workout “Stand Tall” to commemorate the events that took place on that day…this is an important one so mark your calendars.
We will continue to see 1-2 SPRINT workouts to push our pace along with 1-2 SHRED finishers weekly. Our gymnastics focus will center around the Muscle-Up and building efficiency with this high skill movement! If you’re someone who thinks you’re far off from this movement, don’t worry, they’ll be a lot of progressions to practice. It’s important to learn new movement patterns and skills as it develops and trains different neurological pathways. This benefits us in long term brain and body development. We will also see some big chipper workouts during the month. If you’re not familiar with this format, these workouts are higher rep one rounder workouts that deliver some of the most fun and exciting workouts!
Something fun for the month of September will also be a “Strong Saturday” extra credit workout. These will be done in a bit of an unstructured design where clients will get the opportunity to play with some of our odd objects like the sandbag stones (maybe actual stones), sledgehammers, tires, and yokes (just to name a few). We will have these available after our Saturday 8am GCF class. Know that these are just fun add on pieces and meant to be done as a community time not necessarily as structured as our class set up. Have fun with these mini workouts and enjoy learning some new things!
Lastly, since July, we have been experimenting by utilizing many of our Group CrossFit workouts in our Legends classes. Coach Alyssa and I have been working together to modify programming to meet the needs of that class, but much of the structure stays the same. Many of the conditioning workouts mirror our Lifestyle track in GCF and we adjust the strength movements to the degree that group will benefit from most. We’re excited for what this connection of programming can do for both of our group programs moving forward!
Summers over folks, let’s get back in the swing at the gym and ‘fall’ back into those healthy habits! 😉
-Coach Josh
