jeff
We believe in a few things – balanced fitness, progressive overload, and variation between volume and intensity. This boils down into four-week blocks of programming that focus on a handful of movements or workout formulas.
Generally, we alternate between low rep and high rep strength training to move between volume and intensity. In a cycle we do the same, or similar movements over the course of four weeks so that you can build on weight or total volume for the movement. If you watch folks’ weights for any given movement you’ll often see the PR’s start to come out in weeks 3 and 4 as they advance past their previous levels of strength.
For metcons we typically have 2-3 workouts or movements that repeat over the course of four weeks. For example, we would do a variation on a handstand push up workout each week where the other exercises in the metcon get more complicated AND the total volume of HSPU’s increase. I’m using HSPU as an example, but it could be double-unders, KBS or even running. At the end of any four week section we normally have one to two workouts that are a little more difficult or a little more high volume that act as a test. These four week sections may not all start on the same week, for example, we may begin a ring muscle up progression one week and then start working on GHD sit ups a week or 2 later. We recently closed out a section on short calories on the rower (10-12 at a time).
Lastly, we balance off of avatars in the gym. We look around at folks and see what groups of people are getting better or falling behind on. Then craft a series of 3-4 workouts that help attack that problem for this pretend person. So if for example I see a segment of athletes struggling at upper body pushing movements when they are out of breath we will come up with a series of workouts where we fatigue the body a little AND then push the bar overhead.
There are many intricacies to programming such as pacing, rest periods, total number of intervals.. etc.. But these are really just a means to address the three points above: 1) Balanced Fitness, 2) Progressive Overload, and 3) Alternating between Volume and Intensity.
We hope that helps and remember that we are always happy to chat live in the gym or elsewhere and love any and all feedback.
Finally based on the experience of all the folks who have joined us from other CF gyms — trust the system and you will be thrilled with the results.