Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Not much today. Actually there are a few subjects I would like to write on but I am going to wait until after this weekend. I want to talk about the new MEBB from coach Rutherford which actually isn’t new at all. Its funny how what goes around comes around. CrossFit began as a certain way and now people are wanting more and more and so with that comes a return to how Joe and I were programming and training college athletes.

He talks about tiers, obviously, the effort tier that everyone has grown accustom to implementing into their programming along with met-cons. Now he introduces a speed tier and a volume tier. This is a little off of Westside but not really. Westside Barbell and Louis Simmons are more in line with conjugate or block periodization whereas tiers relate more to concurrent periodization which is more specifically explained in one of the books I recommended, The Coach’s Strength Training Playbook written by Joe Kenn. Joe Kenn is a well respected strength coach, depending on who you ask, who started his career (became better known is what I mean) at Arizona State University. He has now moved on to the University of Louisville. This book explains more in depth the tier method and concurrent periodization. There is also an article he wrote for EliteFTS.com titled, Maximum Effort Training for the Front Seven that explains the effort tier a little more in-depth as well. Because you have an effort tier, a speed tier, and a volume tier, that is only half the battle. What goes in those tiers in terms of periodization is what’s really important. How do you periodize an effort tier, what kind of volume is in the volume tier, and also what exercises are used within the volume tier? What are the major differences between exercises used within each tier? Are you supposed to use or not use certain exercises within each tier?

I guess since I have begun writing and now caught up in it, I will explain this a little more. There are numerous ways that you can utilize the tier method with. There is no real wrong way except for a few simple rules that must be followed. The different tiers are appropriately named because hopefully that is what is being emphasized. Effort tier emphasizes absolute strength or at least strength-speed depending on the programming used. Speed tier emphasizes speed-strength and/or power depending on the exercise used and the set/rep scheme. And the volume tier emphasizes hypertrophy, capillary density, connective tissue strengthening, and strength-endurance. If the reps and sets don’t reflect these tiers then they are not what they are called. Does that make sense?

In the effort tier, the most widely used periodization is a linear/undulating mix with the use of your most complex, compound movements or maybe even movements that the most amount of weight can be utilized. This set/rep scheme usually follows what we call the 5-3-1 method or in other words week 1 will see 5 sets of 5, week 2 will see 5 sets of 3, and week 3 will see 5 sets of 1. This is straight forward linear progression but works tremendously. You can make it undulating by throwing in a down week or a recover phase prior to the 5 sets of 1 week. Maybe it is a 3 sets of 10 during week 3 and moving the 5 sets of 1 to week 4. It really is a preference. Try both ways and see what works best for you. I tend to think that if you are only working one tier into your programming (only effort), that you need to throw in that recover week. If you have a speed tier and a volume tier then you might just want to rotate what is emphasized. Maybe the volume tier becomes the emphasis for a period of time. Anyways, most of the exercises used here will be like squats, presses, cleans, snatches, and so on. It might even be limited range of motion lifts so that more weight can be used such as dead-lifts off of pins, high box squats, goodmornings, squats with different types of bars, etc.

With the speed tier, we are looking at speed strength and/or power. We are looking at lots of exposure to a lift or in other words a lot of first reps. These first reps allow us to be more explosive and somewhat fresh. We also look at taking a shorter rest period between sets. It might look something like 12 sets of 2 during week 1, 10 sets of 2 during week 2, and 8 sets of 2 during week 3. This whole time increasing the percentages used from week to week. Usually for power-lifts or non-Olympic lifts, we will utilize a percentage of around 45 to absolutely no higher than 60% of your 1RM. For the Olympic lifts, the percentage will gravitate more to around 75 to 80%. For speed strength or the speed tier, exercises used are usually the main lifts themselves. The box squat may be used in lieu of regular squatting but usually you can work full clean, full snatch, full dead-lift, full everything.

The volume tier will mainly be geared towards hypertrophy and mostly use isolation movements since connective tissue and joint integrity is what is focused on with the volume tier. As you can probably assume, less sets and more volume within each set is utilized. I, nor a lot in my field who know what they are doing, shy away from using compound lifts within the volume tier (other than CrossFit met-cons, which basically is a version of the volume tier). You will see things like rows (bent over, cable, db, etc), pressing (benching or overhead), glute ham raises, basically any exercise where you isolate a muscle region or movement pattern. The programming here can follow a basic linear model as well. Week 1 will see 3 sets of 10, week 2 will see 4 sets of 10 (or you can stay with 3 sets of 10 and move the weight up), week 3 will see 5 sets of 10 (or again, 3 sets of 10 with moving the weight up). You can go as high as sets of 20 if you like. The key here is volume and some form of isolation.

Lastly, and I mentioned this above briefly, you can do some rotating of different sorts in order to make the program run smoothly and to emphasize not only different aspects of the force-velocity curve but also emphasize regions of the body such as full body movements, lower body movements, and upper body movements. This can be broken down into doing the effort tier first in your workout, the speed tier, second in your workout, and the volume tier, last in your workout. From here on Monday, you can do a full body movement for the effort tier such as the full clean, a lower body movement for the speed tier such as box squats, and finally an upper body movement for the volume tier such as presses or pull-ups or both. Then Wednesday rolls around and now for the effort tier you will go with a lower body movement such as front squats, for the speed tier you will focus on the upper body such as doing clap pushups, and finally for the volume tier the rotation would say to use full body. It gets a little tricky here but you could throw in high rep db box jumps or similar. Finally on Friday, the rotation is effort and upper body, speed and full body, and volume with lower body. Make sense?

The last type of rotation would be looking at the season as a whole or the yearly model and rotating the tier based upon where you are in terms of when competition is. Very early in the season, the first tier of any workout would be volume and you could use compound lifts here if you so choose.  This may be the only time that I would recommend that too. Second and third in the workout would be the effort tier and finally little attention is paid to the speed tier. As the season approaches or the midway point from competition and when you began training, you could rotate your tiers to reflect effort first, speed second, and volume last. Finally as the competition nears and the time for strength development is short to non-existent, the emphasis should now be on speed strength and utilizing the strength we have created to become fast and powerful. We would then follow workouts that start out with the speed tier, followed by the volume tier, and finally, little attention is paid to the effort tier.

I know this is a lot of information but it really is an interesting method and one, if you’re like me, that would increase your knowledge base and help out with CrossFit programming. Especially, if you are looking into adding strength development into the mix more often by way of MEBB (Max Effort Black Box). Its just better to educate yourself. You may never need this much advance knowledge but it will open your eyes to different styles of programming and how to get athletes to peak at the right time.

If you have any questions concerning this stuff or need something explained a bit further, don’t hesitate to ask.

BTW, I was reading a blog of another post and their disagreements with CrossFit and what it is and what it isn’t and I think it is safe to say that not everyone who believes in CrossFit is a black eye to the strength and conditioning community. I think they think that we all come from endurance backgrounds or other cults. (ha) I am a strength coach first and a Crossfitter second. I know my shit and laugh in the face of CrossFit’s detractors. I see everything from both aspects or both sides and there is truth to both sides. No one is right and no one is wrong. Its a fantastic program that really works. I also think that not every CrossFit affiliate should be teaching the Olympic lifts, especially, if they don’t understand the movements fully themselves to begin with but that is for another post another day. All CrossFitters should educate themselves in the science and art of performance enhancement, exercise phys, biomechanics, motor learning and performance, anatomy and physiology, and just straight up programming. Learn all you can everyday that you can. Don’t let them tell us we don’t know what we are doing. Be smart about how you program. Have a plan. Be able to explain why you are doing what you are doing. If you can’t answer how your programming unfolds then you are just guessing and it really is random and I can safely say that you don’t quite get it. Don’t let that be the case.

Wednesday’s WOD (090930)
As many rounds in 8 minutes of:
12 Front Squats @ 132 pounds
12 Burpees

Rounds completed: 6 (holy shit is all I got to say.)

Tuesday’s WOD (090929)
Back Squat 5×5 (last weight was 276)
super setted w/
Push Press 5×5 (last weight was 192)
(both lifts using progressive sets until last set is 85%)

followed by

7 rounds for time of:
10 below the knee power clean and jerk (98 pounds)
20 rotational slam ball throws against a wall (20 pound ball)

Time: 10:17