First, thanks to @Jan Lenczuk for being willing to submit a real athlete’s program and open it up for discussion. It takes some guts to put your work out there. The intent behind these reviews is simply to give back to the coaching community. I’ve been coaching for a long time, and this is a way to share how I actually think through program design when I’m working with real constraints, not ideal scenarios. In this review, I walk through a full training week for Aga (Jan's client), a first-year RX athlete dealing with a shoulder issue, limited weekly training time, and long-term development goals. I start with athlete context and intent, then move into strength and hypertrophy decisions, gymnastics progressions, conditioning structure, and where I’d make adjustments or ask different questions. This is for coaches who want to improve how they think about programming, not just copy templates. If you have feedback on the format or ideas for making these more useful, let me know!

I had forgotten about this blog I wrote (all the way back in 2016) until we were just having a conversation about RC's on the TTT coaches slack channel. I STILL use the program and principles from this blog when coaching RC's now almost 10 years later. https://express.adobe.com/page/6zY62tZZ1VXQW/ This includes a TON of video demos, including training progressions for kipping LLRC's, various leg-drive styles for LLRC's, etc.

My Strain Recovery Philosophy Context: @Marco Mar and I recently had a conversation about our approach to recovery after strain injury. We talked at length about the principles underlying the approach I used during my grade-2 hamstring tear this summer from sprinting. These are the same things I’m focusing on with my quad tear now. Main Pillars: 1. Blood flow early and often: - BFR is the best lever I’ve found for speeding return to training and reducing atrophy. - If BFR isn’t available, cyclical work can still be used to get a “flush” effect started. - BFR can be started as soon as DAY-1 post injury as long as there is not pressure directly on the injured tissue 2. Train around the injury, aggressively - Keep training the athlete as an athlete. This is important for both mental and physical recovery. - Maintain hypertrophy around the injury training any and every muscle group you have safe access to. - Maintain general capacity while the injured tissue catches up. (note: I like to use a “train the systems” approach during the early phase of rehab. Maintaining blood volume with Sauna, building respiratory muscle endurance with Breathe Way Better, keeping aerobic fitness on the non-involved ergs) 3. Contralateral training is a MUST - Train the healthy side hard in the same pattern you’re trying to restore (but don’t overtrain it!). - Training the healthy side keeps neural patterns active which makes the return-to-play process MUCH faster. - Keep “touching” the injured side with the safest version of that same pattern. (note that in many cases this will be handled by the PT, but is still a must) 4. Visualization integrated into training & rehab - Visualization is “free volume” for the brain. - No tissue cost + positive transfer to movement patterns. - Can be integrated during rest periods of rehab work. ------------------------------------------------------------ General takeaways 1. The fastest recoveries I’ve seen happen when we keep the athlete training, not when they take time completely off.

Intervals are one of the most versatile tools we have in CrossFit programming. When used intentionally, they allow us to shape volume, speed, pacing, and intensity in ways that continuous Metcons simply cannot. Below are the four primary reasons I prescribe mixed-modal intervals inside a competitive CrossFit framework, along with examples to illustrate each. 1. Extending Volume Beyond Metcon Limits Most Open and Quarterfinal workouts fall within predictable volume ranges.For example, 100–120 toes-to-bar is a common upper bound inside a traditional Metcon. Trying to exceed that volume within a continuous workout usually leads to speed deterioration and diminishing returns. Intervals give us a way around this: - Breaking the work into repeatable sets allows athletes to accumulate 125–150+ reps at high quality. - This builds tissue tolerance and repeatability beyond what the sport typically asks for. - The athlete gets exposure to higher total volume without the compounding fatigue that would destroy movement quality in a continuous Metcon. 2. Training at Speeds Faster Than Sport Pace Intervals allow athletes to train at supra-maximal speeds: faster than what they can sustain in a continuous workout. Example using toes-to-bar: - Inside a Metcon, an athlete may operate at 15 reps per minute. - With structured intervals, you can train them at 20 reps per minute. Why this matters: - You develop capacity at a speed that’s above sport demand, training TOWARD the goal cadence. - You can progress density and intensity without the accumulated fatigue of long continuous efforts. 3. Developing Pacing Skill and Decreasing Density in Longer Workouts One of the biggest issues in CrossFit is that athletes fundamentally don't know how to pace. Continuous formats make pacing errors hard to identify until a post-session review. Intervals solve this: - Each round gives immediate feedback: if Round-1 is 3:30, Round-2 is 3:40, and Round-3 is 4:25, the pacing error is obvious. - You can intentionally drop density (with built-in rest) to help athletes learn the right effort level. - This builds long-term pacing skill that directly transfers to longer Metcons and Semifinal-style workouts.

Hello together, im reaching out to seek advice for the skill progression of one of my athletes. Were having a hard Time to get her first Bar Muscle Up. She has everything together, in theory, but cant make it. Her biggest problem, in my opinion, is her ability to actively use her hips and pull active with her lats in the turnover. What would be your go to, to fix it. Any ideas? Thank you in advance!