Building the crossfit engine

Hey all,

Almost all CrossFit workouts involve sustaining effort against considerable fatigue. Strength and skill definitely come into play, but if your energy systems aren't up to par, you're going to break down early in workouts.

What are your energy systems? Well without getting too complex, you have three primary systems that provide energy to move - your ATP-PC system (short, high power bursts), your Glycolytic system (short-ish, fairly high power efforts up to ~1min) and your Aerobic system (longer duration, medium power).

Virtually all CrossFit workouts take longer than 1 minute to complete and as such your aerobic system is working in most workouts to both provide you with energy to continue between bursts of the other two systems.

So if your aerobic system is lacking, then your overall performance will be limited, no matter how hard you try in workouts!

To cover this system sufficiently, you need to do some longer intervals (3-10 minutes) or continuous efforts of cyclic activity at a moderate intensity. Now for most people, that looks like a jog, or a bike ride, or a swim. I would suggest that a better way is to involve multiple movements in a session.

An example is doing 2 minutes of rowing, 2 minutes of cycling (stationary bike or assault bike), 2 minutes running, and repeating for 5-8 rounds. You could play around with the length of time at each station, and include other movements like skipping.

Now note that this type of session would be at a moderate intensity, and that should be no harder than a 6-7 out of 10, with 10 being a max effort.

Another way to attack this is to simply try to add more aerobic work into your lifestyle. Biking to and from work/school is an excellent way to get more easy aerobic in without adding in extra training sessions in the gym. Walk a bit more or do some hiking and explore a bit.

If you're able to, incorporating more aerobic work 1-2x per week will build a base of fitness that you can layer high intensity on top of. It will also be a nice counterpoint to the high intensity work that we do in our regular wods.

Cam

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WARM UP: E2M for 6 rounds, starting with an empty bar

5 deadlifts, 5 front squats, 5 shoulder to overhead

Work up as high as you want but save some energy for the workout!

WOD: AMANDA or SQUAT CLEAN AMANDA

*We last did these workouts on Sept 19 2017 and Nov 17 2017 respectively*

A little bit of a choice here - between snatches and cleans! The classic Amanda workout involves full snatches, which are tough technically, especially under fatigue. To change it up a bit we offer the opportunity to sub in squat cleans - equally as tough physically but slightly less technical. Either way it will be a great challenge!

*12 minute cap*

Rx:

Amanda

9-7-5 of Ring MU and Squat Snatch (95/135)

Squat Clean Amanda

Sub in Squat cleans (115/165) for the snatches

FG3: Power snatch or power clean and/or 18-14-10 of CTB pullups

FG2: 65/95, power or squat movements, regular pullups 18-14-10

FG1: Scale bar as needed, 18-14-10 of jumping pullups or ring rows

CP: 115/165, strict ring MU

Cash-Out: 40 strict TTB, strict HKR, or double crunch, 30 double unders or 50 single unders every time you break