Our new Team Soul Training cycle will begin one week after the final week of Quarterfinals and will run through Sunday, June 12. The purpose of this new training cycle is to prepare everyone for in-person competition.
Whether you’re someone who has the ability to move on from Quarterfinals to Semifinals, your training needs to change to accommodate for certain factors that come into play when it comes to in-person competition. For those who are not lucky enough to advance to Semifinals, we strongly advocate and recommend that you sign up for as many summer in-person events as possible to continue giving purpose to your training.
The goal of this cycle is to keep everyone on the same trajectory of working towards in-person competitions, whether you’re a CrossFit Games hopeful in any division such as Individual, Team, Masters, Teen or maybe you’re not one of the lucky ones to advance into the Semifinals stage, this cycle serves the purpose of getting everyone prepared. For our Florida followers, the last couple of years we’ve been supporting the Atlantic Coast Classic, formerly named The Bacon Beatdown. It’s a fair judged event that runs well, good programming, always on time and it provides us with the opportunity to send everyone following the same trajectory to compete together at the same event.
Training in this cycle will have a different shape, look and feel in comparison to The Open Prep Cycle, you will find the re-introduction of several training methods that have been a staple of our program when it comes to preparing for in-person competition. We’re re-introducing Battery Work, focused primarily in Snatch and Overhead Movements. For those of you who are new to our program, battery work serves a few different purposes, for one, it tests your ability to be repeatable at high percentages while under fatigue but it also gives you the ability to train using percentages relative to yourself. An example would be establishing a heavy lift for the day, resting for a specific time and then using percentages based off of that heavy lift in a conditioning piece, this gives us the ability to personalize the program design more towards you, not using the more common 135/95lbs format that we feel it’s not always gonna set you up for success. We will focus mostly on Snatch because it will allow us to get some volume early in the week and give us the opportunity to push the heavier Clean & Jerks towards the end of it.
You will find this cycle to lean more towards Sport Specific Gymnastics, the difference being the level of high contraction, high volume, high skill movements that you will likely encounter in an in-person event rather than in The Open where the skill has remained low in the past years due to the new format that was introduced. This is the kind of Sport Specificity that our program will reflect as we advance into the cycle.
Mixed pieces will also have a different look and feel to them where they will be designed as competitive pieces that you would find during competition, this is also a good area where utilizing your training partners as judges will help keep accountability on those pieces where you might not feel as comfortable, or maybe the movement selection fall into difficult ranges of motion for you to meet, we strongly encourage you to judge each other and simulate that feeling on in-person competition.
Lastly, you will find the weekends back loaded with extra volume and mixed work in the program; this is designed to simulate what an event preparation looks like. We use this for what we call “Patterning”, it will help your body acclimate and adjust to what an in-person event will feel like, exposing your body to this kind of volume and mixed work will prove to be crucial in your preparation for competition.
As always, at Team Soul Training, the only way to get better is if you keep giving us feedback, without it we cannot make our programs better for you. Keep posting your scores on SugarWOD and hit us up with any questions you have!