Alright who is excited? My name is Jacob Heppner and for the next 31 days you will be following my programming. What should you expect? Lots of squatting, Olympic lifting, highly technical gymnastics skill work, and of course your day wouldn't be quite complete without a metabolic conditioning (METCON) workout that humbles you. We will be following a daily format that I personally believe works the best: Strength / METCON / Skills. I’ll be honest with you -- this month is going to be hard. The weights and workouts programmed are going to be heavy. One major point I want to stress is SCALING. I program heavy and hard for the purpose of pushing your body. If you are unable to accomplish these workouts at the specified weight…fret not! There is absolutely no shame in scaling the weight down to keep the intensity high. Main point when concerned with scaling: remember to leave your pride at the door. Scaling is important for your safety and to guarantee that you will be able to physically join in the following day, and the day after that.Dovetailing off the idea of this month’s programming and how it’s going to push your body, I have some good news: I am declaring Wednesdays an “Active Recovery” day. Don’t believe rest is important? Here are a few quick articles (here and here) on the topic. Think about it -- you cannot give 100% to strenuous workouts for five days straight. Don’t believe me? Try to PR Fran five days in a row. Your body needs some rest to repair torn muscle fibers. Wednesday's programming will consist of monostructural movements that are not for time. I’m talking rowing, DU, and swimming with some light skill work. So what am I saying? Well if you have one day a week you need to skip, make it Wednesday.
Daily Format. First, here's what the daily format and flow will look like. The format for each day will follow a specific order. This order will not change throughout the whole month:
- Warm Up. Athletes will pick whatever way they need to warm up, this will vary upon age, injury, and other factors. Hence, why I don’t have this actually programmed. Look at the upcoming workouts that day to focus your efforts. Every day there will be some form or fashion of squatting, so that will always need to be warmed up. Rowing and burpees are usually my first choices for warming up.
- Strength. M/F we will be heavy squatting. T/R we will be Olympic lifting. This strength portion will ALWAYS have a time limit. We don’t want to spend all day squatting and miss out on burpees now do we? Partner up, work quickly and efficiently, and motivate/provide feedback on form for your partners.
- Rest. This “programmed” rest is primarily to transition for the upcoming METCON (set up bars, organize heats, review movements, etc.).
- METCON. Hit these hard! They will all have time caps, and many will have built in incentives to keep you moving.
- Skill. Quick sets to address key areas of improvement in highly technical gymnastic areas. This should take no more than 10 minutes.
- Accessory. Every T/R we do some additional exercises targeting our posterior chain. These should also take no more than 10 minutes.
We will stick with our normal start times of 0545 and 0630 to kick off strength work. You must be warmed up and ready to go at these times. Trainers will be available to assist with scaling and technique, but dio your homework. Review the WOD and any prep materials in the Coach's Notes beforehand so we can hit the ground running. The general target is to spend 15-20 mins on strength, do a quick transition, and kick off METCONs at around 0605 and 0650. That should leave about 20 mins at the end for skill and accessory work. Some strength days will take longer, be flexible and stay with the group.
We'll give it a test run on week 1 and adjust fire as needed. Goal is to get you in and out in under an hour -- but everyone needs to work with a purpose to make it happen. Team WODs continue on Fridays, with Squats before or after.
Definitions. Last, some explanations on terms you will see throughout the month:
Every Minute on the Minute (EMOM). Every time the clock hits a minute (0:00, 1:00, 2:00, etc.) you will perform the specified EMOM penalty. For instance, "4x burpees EMOM" implies every time the clock hits a minute you will perform four burpees before continuing with the workout where you left off. Unless otherwise stated, assume the EMOM work starts at the beginning of the workout at Go (time 0:00).
Every (Number) Minute on the Minute (E#MOM). Every time the clock hits that minute multiple of the “#”, perform the specified E#MOM penalty. For instance, "4x burpees E2MOM" implies every time the clocks hits a minute multiple of two you will perform four burpees before continuing with the workout where you left off. Again, unless otherwise stated, assume E#MOM starts at the beginning of the workout at time 0:00.
