weeks wrap up!

Wowee!
What a massive week of training crew. We retested our old benchmark, hit up a spicy new one and tested a whole heap of strength 1rm’s.
 
All of the numbers we tested for this week (Back Squat, OHS, Press, Deadlift, Clean, Jerk) will be recorded up on the blackboard. In addition to being great standalone benchmark markers for your ability in that lift and a guide to ascertain where you’re strength is at were more so going to use it as a guide and basis to work your percentages and training loads from in our strength portion of our next training cycle. i.e when you see 3 x 5 @ 80% you now know this is relative to your maximal ability in that lift.

Now we wanted to take some time to bring up training percentages and rep schemes within
our strength programming. 
We are all hitting super crazy numbers week by week and as your coaches nothing could make us happier, however it’s important to understand the body’s process of adaptation for continual progression to avoid any possibility of burning out and plateauing. We all want to push ourselves and lift more than our previous session but just make sure you respect the percentages! 80% means 80%. Not 90%, or a max attempt or some random weight you used in a metcon workout. The load you use should be within the nearest kg of the exact percentage written based off your 1rm.

Having set training percentages within different phases is the best long term approach to improving muscle strength, performance and body composition a big reason to this is due to the built in reovery aspect of different muscle fiber types that comes with alternating volume and intensity systematically.
So after maxing out this week, the upcoming week will be geared toward ‘de-loading’ our strength numbers and kick starting the new programming cycle based off of these numbers we obtained this week. Nothing is changing except our strength side of things is going to take on a more systematic approach within our training phases.

Now for all of the guys and girls that are new to the Brawn team and more so crossfit itself, knowing or more importantly obtaining a true 1rm is not our focus for  you just yet, we want you to first understand and then perfect the mechanics of the lifts. The reason we want you to start “so light” when first getting into it is so that you can continue to practice and refine the lift. As a guideline we tell our new crossfiters to go by feel for example in establishing a deadlift 5 × 5 number you can use an effort scale of 1-10 (1 lightest, 10 heaviest) and look for a 5. As you continue to progress and you have built a base level of mobility/range of motion, stability and strength in the position it’s time to move forward and add some more weight and eventually also establish your (1RM’s).
 
So with that said, great work and congrats on a huge week legends! Lets keep up the intensity and stay on track especially through the more miserable winter months! Now rest up, enjoy your weekends and we’ll see you at the box Monday.
 
#seizethewod