June Programming Overview || Coach Wes Kimball

 

Goodness! Happy June people! May flew by and summer is upon us! I want to give everyone a quick update on programming for the next 30 days, and what to be looking out for. Before we start, remember we have a few basic themes you’ll see (and you’ve seen) with the programming:

• Strength and skill focuses run on a 6 week calendar, and are coupled together to maximize the time we have in class.  The goal is to get consistent touches at light, medium, and heavy loads in each lift and skill to create a level of mastery we can’t achieve by putting these movements in the programming randomly and sporadically.

• Skills focuses throughout the year are designed to build on top of one another and safeguard against injury. What this looks like in practice is a simple to complex movement progression, and single limb to double limb progressions in most cases. An example is: doing single arm ring rows and single arm presses to eventually progress into strict pull-ups and handstand push-ups.

• The conditioning work we do progresses from longer work when the strength progression is in a lighter phase, and shorter more intense workouts when we’re lifting heavier in the progression. If you prefer one side of the coin more than the other just be patient it will show back up after a few weeks.

• We also include conditioning “tests” every other week or so. These tests will be retested in the future.  I will keep folks apprised of when a test or retest is happening and whether it falls into the category of long, light, heavy, bodyweight, or team focused.

• Finally there will be other elements including cashouts, skill warm-ups, and additional strength / skill work peppered in to round out the program. However the above represents the core work that will keep folks moving forward over the long term (2+ years).

 

Strength & Skill Focus for May

Today was actually the culmination of our Power Snatch cycle and I’m excited to see the Power Snatch PRs go up on the board! The rest of the month will be focused on Jerks and Split Squats until we do our overlap again with a pretest for the “Front Box Squat” tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, June 21st!  

One thing to keep in mind as we work through the Jerk / Split Squat cycle is not to blow off the split squats. I know they’re not always fun, and can be tedious. However they do a great job of building balanced leg strength that will really pay off on your other squatting lifts, as well as help keep you knees and back healthy. So again make sure you challenge yourself on the split squats!

Conditioning Test in June

Below is the tentative schedule for conditioning tests in June.  Some may shift by a day or two as the weeks get put together, but all of these test will be seen in June.

Heavy – “Isabell” Monday 6/12 (last tested 1/2/2017)  

Light – “Fight Gone Bad” Wednesday 6/14 (last tested 10/31/2016)

Bodyweight – “Baseline” Friday 6/23

Long – “ Murph” Saturday 7/1 (last tested as Team Saturday 5/27/2017)

We also will be doing some Murph specific buildup work in our Wednesday Cash outs as well as this Saturday and next (6/10 & 6/17) for those of you that need some extra running work to get prepared.  If pull-ups or push-ups are your nemesis with Murph schedule a hybrid session with your CFL so they can get you on a specific individual plan to improve one or both of those movements in preparation for our big event!

That’s it folks! Embrace the heat, and drink lots of water!