Hey Outlier/CFC,

This Friday we will end our deadlift cycle with a 1 rm test.  I am really excited to see all your gains!  To recap to this point, we started the year with a back squat cycle, then went into a deadlift cycle.  Now we will shift focus for 3 weeks into dialing in position on the snatch and clean, as well as building endurance.  The week of April 25, we will test our max snatch, as well as “Fight Gone Bad” for our endurance benchmark.  We will go through 3 weeks of position work and conditioning.  This means you will see things like halting snatch, and complexes like hang power snatch+power snatch+OHS.  The purposes of these complexes are to build the lifts piece by piece.  We’ve spent the last 4 months building strength, now we need to dial in technique.  The met cons won’t be quite as heavy, with an emphasis on speed and transitions.  Don’t worry, there will still be a few heavy ones:) After 3 weeks we will retest the snatch, and Fight Gone Bad.  This will lay the foundation for the next cycle.

The next cycle’s benchmarks will be the clean and “Fran.” These well blend well with each other as they are similar movement patterns. The previous strength work, along with the technique work from the previous cycles now needs to be applied in the clean. We’ll have been hitting longer wods up to this point, which serves the purpose of developing an aerobic base from which to build upon.

We will test Fran and the clean the same week as Fight Gone Bad and Snatch, and then train hard for 3 weeks. This will lead right into our inter gym team comp, now know as The Inaugural Civil War!  With the aerobic base developed from the previous cycle, we will now go fast!   Fran is very much a test of the glycolytic anaerobic energy system. However, we are never in just one system, the glycolytic system does not kick in until the aerobic system can no longer meet the tasks energy demands. So you can see that a well developed aerobic cycle will help our sprint capacity. The types of wods at this point will be wods with lots of transitions, as well as intervals.  Interval based wods allow for a higher average intensity due to the rest involved as well as allow for a little heavier weight to be used without technique deteriorating.  The intervals will be varying amounts of time, ensuring that we hit all the time domains and don’t lose what we’ve built up to this point. As I mentioned, this will all lead up to our inter gym comp, June 18. If your interested in signing up, just tell one of the coaches, and we will put you on the list. Check out our blog post  this afternoon with full details of how it will work!  The cost is $50, it gets you the comp, a shirt, and food will be catered. I am very excited about this and have wanted to do it for many years. I look forward to seeing all of you make tons of gainz!