In our previous article, we touched on Goal Orientated Programming.
Your goal and specialty should always be the focus of your programming.
‘You need to prepare for the test you expect to take’
You would never expect Usain Bolt, to be spending hours on the tar, working on his marathon time. Or a powerlifter spending time doing endless amounts reps. Bolt needs to focus on his speed. Shorter and high intensity workouts, which would be quite different to that of a long-distance runner, who would want longer, lower intensity sessions.
Much like the power lifter, needs to focus on a strength-power session, and would not be pleased if you programmed a 1000 burpees for time (although, who would be happy to see that).
At Jozi East, we do not specialize in one field. Our specialty is fitness, and so, we aim to keep classes as diverse, and varied as possible
The goal and priority of Jozi East’s programming: is always improved overall fitness. Increasing fitness and work capacity across varying time frames and various modalities. To best prepare you for anything that may come your way. Whether it be in competition, in play or in life.
To be able to face a challenge and take it on.
Most of our workouts are shorter in duration rather than longer. There is a lot of science backing the benefits of short high intensity training.
Shorter workouts force higher working intensity: with great roll over benefits onto the cardiovascular system, on our muscles, and ultimately our fitness.
But one of the other reasons why, I program shorter workouts, is because it will help prepare us for CrossFit testing and competition.
If we had to look at the stats, the average length of CrossFit workouts in the Regional Competitions (2011 – 2018), they rarely exceeded a time cap of 11min, and the majority of the top end athletes finished way before the time cap (myself included).
If you are not comfortable with that intensity, you will struggle to keep up and do well.
Below, I have listed all the CrossFit Regional events from 2011 to 2018 in a table, with the length of each event.
As you can see, the most common time cap was 10min or less and making up 38% of events
and a mere 16% of events will last longer than 21 minutes.
This is one of the reasons, we prioritize shorter workouts, so that we can be ‘comfortable’ with the intensity and pace. Intensity suck
Do not get me wrong, both time domains certainly have its place, and are equally important in our fitness.
But if you want to get better at what ‘CrossFit’ is testing, we need to be doing more of what they do.
Results are a reflection of CONSISTENTLY working hard and putting in the time and effort into your fitness.