5/23 Technique Tuesday

Jen runs with a sandbag during OCR training. She was third in her age group at the Montana Spartan Sprint race and qualified for the OCR Work Championships in Toronto. Nice job Jen! 
Today's technique Tuesday post is a bit different. Rather than sharing a movement technique tip, I'm sharing a bit about my programming technique. 
As most of you know, I program the daily workouts for the gym. I use workouts created by CrossFit Training, Beyond the Whiteboard, CrossFit Linchpin, and ones I create myself. I follow the definition of CrossFit which is constantly varied high intensity functional movement. 
Last week was our twice yearly Fitness Testing Week. Most of you enjoyed new Personal Records in our strength, endurance and various work capacity workouts. I was curious about what our programming looked like over the past 6 months since I saw so much fitness improvement across varied time and domains. 
Using the Analyze tab on the BTWB website I choose Programming from the Dropdown menu. 

I then selected 6 Months for my analysis. Here's the chart BTWB created for me. 

As you can see, about 50% of our workouts involve some sort of weightlifting. BTWB defines a weightlifting workout as anything with a barbell, dumbbell, kettlebell, wallball, sandbag, sledgehammer, slam ball, or anything else that is weighted. A gymnastics workout is one that is solely bodyweight with no weighted apparatus and a monostructural workout is just running, rowing and/or jumping rope. 
Our weekly programming always includes one heavy day, one day sans any overhead movements, 3-4 workouts in the 8-15 minute time domain, 1 workout that is short or untimed and 1 workout that is longer than 18 mins. One workout is a repeat, one workout is a BTWB Fitness Level workout, one is from another CrossFit source and the rest I usually create. 
I am not surprised that most of you set new personal records in strength, endurance and the other work capacity tests. The last 6 months of programming have been constantly varied high intensity functional movement, in other words, for the past 6 months we've all done CrossFit and we've all seen a measurable increase in our fitness. We've increased our strength even though we didn't do a specific strength/barbell cycle, we've increased our endurance without a specific endurance program, we've increased our stamina, power, speed, and our general fitness across broad time and modal domains by doing CrossFit.
It's amazing how well this elegantly simple system of constantly varied high intensity functional movement works to make us stronger, more durable, faster, more powerful, more agile, more coordinated, and increases our endurance, stamina, flexibility, agility, and balance. I hope you've enjoyed the past 6 months of programming and how much your general badassery has increased. You're welcome. It is my pleasure to program for you. I look forward to the next 6 months of constantly varied high intensity functional movement. 
Today's Workout