The Winter Strength Cycle
Welcome to the Ransom Winter Strength Cycle!
This cycle will last 8 weeks and will lead us into our CrossFit Open Prep Cycle (which will be the 4 weeks prior to the start of the Open). The focus will be, well, strength.
What?
The cycle will have a 5x5 Back Squat every Monday. The goal is to add 5-20# each week. If you do that 7 times, we are looking at 35-80 pound jump on our 5x5 Back Squats in the 2 months. This is the main mover of the block.
There will be an additional leg dominant strength day. Could be a Front Squat or Deadlift or Lunge or Step Up or ETC. There will also be one 5x5 pressing day each week. This will be a Bench, Strict Press, or Push Press. Lastly there will be a secondary emphasis on the Olympic lifts. So we will have cleans, snatches, and jerks 2-3 times a week. Sometimes they will show up in a MetCon and sometimes they will be broken out into a EMOM or secondary lift for the day.
Why?
The purpose of this cycle is 3 fold:
To gain strength (duh).
To increase our confidence lifting heavy under fatigue or at an elevated heart rate.
To stack on a little muscle mass to give us a head start on those summer booties and guns.
While the point of the cycle is to gain strength, the focus isn’t on top end strength. I think you can expect to see some improvement in the 1-2 rep range but the game plan is to be better in the 3-8ish rep range. There are a few reasons why we are gunning for improvements here. The Open (or most functional fitness competitions) has moved towards a testing something heavy under fatigue. This will certainly not be your 1RM. This is also a bit more “functional” as the odds of us having to lift something at maximal capacity, one time, in real life is low. But helping your friend move will require picking up heavy things a few times. Lastly, and most importantly, it accomplishes the two main reasons we want to lift weights at all: getting stronger and looking better naked.
We gain top end strength, primarily, through neurological adaptations. That is our fancy exercise science way of saying your brain and nervous system gets better (via practice) at moving a heavy load. This happens through more efficient recruitment of muscle fibers, better movement patterns, and probably due to self confidence (the brain is a big part of this whole fitness thing).
Hypertrophy, or adding skeletal muscle tissue, is what most people think of when lifting weights. It is what defines body building, getting as jacked (and lean) as possible. While adding cross sectional diameter to your quads or glutes or biceps will increase your actual strength, it mostly serves to make you look better naked (or in your Lululemon tights or the Burt Reynolds’ shorty shorts all the fellas are wearing these days).
Both neuromuscular efficiency and hypertrophy are good for getting stronger (and a mix is probably optimal). So we want both at the party. Plus being swole and strong is a peanut butter and jelly like combo. It just works.
So what will conditioning look like during this 8 week cycle?
Awesome question!
Some days we will have a shorter (4-12) minute MetCon. The goal will be for things to be more intense (more work done in less time) and maybe heavier than usual.
Some days it will be an EMOM with some more lifting and accessory work.
Some days it will be purely monostrucutral (or what most people call “cardio”). Just a bike, row, ski, run, or jumping rope (or a mix of those things).
There will be limited longer MetCons during the week. If you still want some of those in your life, Saturday class and Ruck Sunday will still be around to satiate that desire.
Taking a small dip in longer conditioning to get stronger leading into the Open Prep Cycle (which will have all of the 8-20 minute MetCons you could ever want in it) is exactly the plan. Lean into that.
Things to note for this cycle…
You will need to sleep. Especially if you are coming 4+ days a week. Use this time to practice getting 7-9 hours of sleep. Your body will use that time to recover and build muscle tissue and do all of the things we want. Every night won’t be perfect, but now is the time to TRY and find more sleep.
You need to be eating well. A great time to focus on strength is during the holidays where studies show we consume a little more calories naturally and gain a little weight. (To nerd out check out “Winter Holidays and Their Impact on Eating Behavior - A Systematic Review” by Abdulan IM, Popescu G, Maștaleru A, Oancea A, Costache AD, Cojocaru DC, Cumpăt CM, Ciuntu BM, Rusu B, Leon MM. in Nutrients. 2023 Sep 28.) This will put them to good use! Having said that, eat the good stuff when you can so you can enjoy the holiday treats when at parties or with your family.
You need to warm up well and cool down. I hate to break this to us but our gym is mostly folks who have been around 35 or more Christmases. We require being warmed up well to move heavy weights. And cooling down will help start preparing for tomorrow’s session. Take this seriously. Get to class on time so we can get you ready to go.
Let’s get strong(er) and better looking naked(er) this Christmas season!
PS- As always if you have questions, ask a coach, email ryan@crossfitransom.com, or hit us up on social media. We love answering questions and it will give us topics to talk about in the future!