Welcome to ‘Medusa’!
Programming Approach:
Our weightlifting work will have a focused lifting session weekly that will build in some quality work with some pulls into positional work on the Snatch and Clean and Jerk. This will reinforce quality positioning to the hips and get athletes focused on being patient from the floor to the hips. This will also just take a little more patience from the coaching perspective as a lot of athletes might be new to this. We will also incorporate some specific work for the Push Jerk and Split Jerk along the way to round out our form and lifts.
Our powerlifting/absolute strength work will incorporate more heavy lifts with back off sets. The lifts will stay more in the range of 3-5 reps in order to target both absolute strength and muscular endurance and utilize % work that we tackled in our most recent cycle. We will also be incorporating more frequent EMOMs for lifts in an effort to tackle specific volume targets with quality sets and reinforcing correct mechanics through the use of small quicker sets, rather than large sets that tend to fatigue over the course of the set. i.e. 10:00 EMOM of 3 Back Squats @ 60-70% rather than 3 Sets of 10 Reps @ 60-70%, resting 2:00-3:00 b/t sets
For our gymnastics work, we will center our training around muscular endurance and stamina in prep for Murph at the end of May as well as peak our capacity for those higher volume, density style workouts we are expecting for the Community Cup the week of June 9th – June 15th.
Lastly, when it comes to our conditioning, we will keep a varied weekly approach to conditioning with a mixture of For Time Workouts, AMRAPs EMOMS, and Max Rep Finishers while being sure to incorporate both long and short intervals along the way. The approach here will be about blending in different styles with some interference worked early on in the cycle and then proceeding to more complementary couplets and triplets later in the cycle to peak intensity and capacity as these elicit the most power development.
Week 1 Summary: May 12th – May 18th
Strength & Weightlifting Progressions:
- Deadlift + Box Jump (Tuesday): Absolute Strength and Plyometrics
- Push + Split Jerk EMOM (Wednesday): Building overhead power and transition speed
- Front Squat Wave (Thursday): Continued leg strength development
- Hang Power Snatch (Friday): Light, fast barbell cycling
- Hang + Full Power Clean Complex (Sunday): Focused clean mechanics and barbell control
Conditioning Themes:
- Murph Prep (Monday): “Candy Land” chipper retest
- Grip & Core (Tuesday): Russian swings, sit-ups, and rowing intervals
- Short Interval Power (Wednesday): “Hypnotize” sets of high-intensity barbell + burpee sprints
- Gymnastics Density (Thursday): TTB + Bike EMOM with KB lunges
- Strict Gymnastics + Plyo (Friday): HSPUs, DB Snatch, and Box Jump OVers
- Partner Conditioning (Saturday): High-volume wall balls and muscle-up scaling
- Classic CrossFit Sprint (Sunday): Rowing, Dumbbell power cleans and wall walks
Weekend Training Focus:
- Saturday: Partner strategy, gymnastics scaling, aerobic power
- Sunday: Sprint-style couplet with wall walk interference and barbell pacing
