Varied Not Random

[@trentdooley7300]

Taking Boz's 2 week template and expanding it out to 12 weeks would be phenomenal. I think the "fear" can come from the difficulty of the movements and the "confusion" of can come from how the movement patterns elegantly pair together and how the workouts build off one another. Creating a template that has a similar weekly structure but with varying movements might be the sweet spot for some athletes

[@beckjacob]

As a 53 year-old relatively fit person I had a ton of takeaways from this episode. One of the main takeaways for me was as I age and injuries take longer and longer to heal, and the plateaus get longer and longer, this model offers enough flexibility to focus on the things that are important (to me) in terms of long-term GPP. Walking on my hands, handstand push ups, etc are less and less enticing to master as a skill because the older I get, the less and less relevant they become to my daily life and fitness goals. I think there is a lot of utility in this model for older athletes who are not concerned with competition, but want to remain mobile and functionally fit.

[@samuele.marcora]

Best Crossfit Channel: great guys, useful info, no negativity. Love it.

[@michaelstas9811]

14 year CrossFiter. I really enjoy your show. Thank you for the good info.

[@torricallan3992]

Love this episode - thanks gents! For those playing along at home I wanted to share my thoughts on Boz's two week program with respect to adding movements. - Week 1 Monday you could add rope climbs instead of bent over rows. These could be progressed to legless, then legless from the seated position, then more advanced rope climb variations (front lever, L-sit, V-sit etc.) - Week 2 Monday the type of press wasn't specified, so this could easily be a challenging handstand push up variation (eg. strict deficit, chest to wall) - Week 2 Tuesday you could modify the session to incorporate other ergs (ski, echo bike), or use it as an opportunity to get outside by swimming, mountain biking, paddle boarding - The friday olympic lifting sessions could be done heavy, as an amrap to train barbell cycling, or with other implements if you wanted to train with kettlebells, sandbags, dumbbells - I don't think Boz finished the thought but Week 2 saturday could be Cindy instead of bike erg, which could be scaled to wall balls or some other light squatting variation. You could argue that any leg stamina movement fits here if you wanted to do box step ups, bike erg, rucking and so on - Bar muscle ups don't make an appearance, but they'd easily fit in either saturday session as a scale for pull ups or bar dips. If you did that for the Week 1 session, you get running, thrusters and BMU which Dave programmed in an athlete interview as the ideal workout to test fitness if you had only one workout to do so, which I think is pretty neat The moral of the story is that you could introduce quite a bit of variance under the guide of scaling. Which might not have been the original question's intent, but its cool to play the game. You also get a lot of interesting options come up because the routine is fixed

[@matt_stange]

Great episode! For me, it’s not just about variation, but about walking into a workout i’ve never done before and not knowing how hard it actually is until half way, and finding the mental strength to finish through it. Only crossfit does this for me!

[@jeffreyscott1909]

I think Boz hit the nail on the head. It is about keeping it interesting for people. I visited a gym recently and they had two movements programed that I had never done in another gym. It was a blast. I don't care what you program in a 2-week cycle, people will get bored with it. Now, if it was a longer duration cycle it has some interesting potential.

[@keliparker8746]

Great episode. Love the idea of a set routine

[@enduranceron]

Great convo and something I've tinkered with. Can you perhaps post the template Adrian laid out? I think it would be fun to try.

[@travisjones22]

Would love to have access to these theoretical programs from Pat & Boz! I’ve been experimenting with this style of programming to overcome a few nagging injuries, as well as focus on some things I just flat out enjoy more than others. All in the name of consistency and longevity!

[@maryfitzer8469]

Love it!

[@samuele.marcora]

On variance, people underestimate the cross training effect (I guess Glassman was inspired by that term when he came up with the name CrossFit) and overestimate the interference effect. Yet, for strength and skills in particular, a bit more repetition can greatly accelerate progress. For example, for strength and skills, I focus for a few weeks on a couple of movements, then move to other ones. Still variance but in 4-6 weeks blocks rather than every single training session. Still have lots of variance in the MetCons

[@davidregan6579]

That was an interesting and informative discussion. Here is another possible topic: should older athletes, say 60+ be provided with a different RX than those youngsters in a typical CrossFit class? Practically speaking just scaling will get you a great workout, but we older athletes (I’m 66) rarely have a realistic RX type goal to reach for. The Games recognize this, but I’ve never seen it in a daily box workout.

[@spencergsmith]

CrossFit without variance is not CrossFit, and not just because of the definition. To me, you cannot separate variance from the broad, general, and inclusive fitness that CrossFit aims to develop. If you did, it would become a more specialized program rather than a GPP program.

[@MirkoSalaris]

[My ideas pre listen] *Note A* This concept is worth discussing only for box programming. Indeed, for garage gym athletes it is inapplicable because they need to continuously re-program because of life: an unexpected workout with a friend, a hike, a blizzard that makes you shovel for 4 hours and that is your WOD. The whole idea of having a workout template to repeat over and over assumes your template is greatly programmed (the more the shorter the template) and 100% adherence to the template. *Note B* Important to differentiate between physiological stimulus and psychological impact. Even assuming that for your physiology N workouts repeated over and over are ok, that's going to destroy you psychologically. To avoid this psychological downside, someone else should be doing the programming for you and N should be large enough for you not to notice. *Note C* Premises: - a 1-workout-template is clearly not enough for general fitness - a 2500-workouts-template (worth about 10 years of training) is clearly enough for general fitness There's value in discussing what happens with templates with more than 1 and less than 2500 workouts. • 3 workouts: not enough, not even for specialists • 5 workouts: ok only for very narrow specialists, and for a brief period • 20 workouts: enough to cover physical activities across all subdivisions you can think (10 physical skills, W/G/M, gross movement patterns, time domains) but not to mix them, which you should for general fitness. Terrible for psychology. • 60 workouts: this is about 3 months. Assuming perfect programming, this is the lower limit for general fitness, but still terrible for psychology. You'll live every workout as a benchmark. • 200 workouts: a 10-months-worth of workouts, this is the minimum number of workouts you need to hit 10 general physical skills, 3 time domains, 3 types of loads, 7 combinations of W/G/M AND assuming you hit 3-4 physical skills in every WOD. [if you want to check: 10*3*7*3 = 630, and then divide that for 3] • More than 200 workouts: if you really want to stick with a template, I don't see reasons to go beyond 200 workouts. 200 are enough for the physiology, the psychological downsides never go away and the programming difficulty only increases