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The Power of Personalized CrossFit Programming for Competitive Athletes



Kelly Baker - CrossFit Games Athlete - Ascend Coaching

Introduction


  • As the sport of Crossfit has continued to grow and evolve the demands placed on the athletes has grown with it. In just a few short years all of the competitive metrics for the elite of the sport have increased by a near 50%. Athletes are stronger, faster, and more enduring than ever before. This makes becoming one of the elite in our sport an always increasingly difficult talk for newer athletes. In this new age of competitive Crossfit it’s imperative for serious athletes to have individualized programming. The price for not training your weaknesses appropriately or improving your strengths along with the rest of the field can cost an athlete an entire year of work and it’s so easy to miss something when writing your own training and fighting against your own biases or following a group program. 


  • At Ascend Athlete this is what we excel at. We are professionals at individual program design for the one on one athlete. Bringing the combined knowledge of coaching staff we create training tailored to our athletes specific needs. There are many, MANY reasons personalized programming is a game changer for the competitive athlete. 



Section 1: Why Personalization Matters in CrossFit Programming

  • Highlight Key Differences Between General and Personalized Training

    • General CrossFit classes vs. individualized programming. If you are following a generalized program or a affiliates programming the simple truth is you are likely not spending your training time most effectively. As an example, if you are an athlete who can run a sub 6:00 mile but has a major strength deficit why would you do running intervals weekly? You would be much better served increasing your strength numbers and doing training that is geared toward that and running a bit less. In a general program you have no control over how often you may run or lift so your training in the gym is already less than optimal. Juxtapose this with an individualized program. An Ascend Athlete coach would focus your training around your biggest needs as an athlete, in this case being improving your strength, while keeping your strong points mixed into training just enough so they are still your strengths. It’s not hard to see why in this example or any other you make like this an individualized training program is going to be more effective and improve your performance faster than a group program. 


  • Address the Needs of Competitive Athletes

    • I haven’t met a SINGLE person since I started Crossfit who doesn’t LOVE a good group class. The fun, the jokes, the community feel of the class; those are some of the fondest parts of being in a Crossfit gym. Unfortunately the needs of a competitive athlete and the needs of someone who is just training to be fit and healthy for life are simply not aligned. Greg Glassman once said “The needs of the Olympian and the grandparent vary by degree, not kind”, and this is 100% accurate. However, this also applies to the competitive athlete and the everyday athlete. Excluding the specific movement needs of a competitive athlete the amount of pure fitness needed to be a successful competitor cannot be attained by simply attending a daily Crossfit class.  

    • Additionally one of the most overlooked advantages of having individualized training is avoiding injuries. As athletes improve and their training age increases they must be careful with the frequency and intensity they do certain movements. This is something an individual coach is always considering when writing programming and something that is an afterthought at best in a general or class program. Injuries are one the the most common derailments of someone's goal to becoming an elite competitive athletes and should be avoided at all cost. 



Section 2: Benefits of Personalized CrossFit Programming for Competitive Athletes

  • Enhanced Performance and Goal Attainment

    • Working with an individualized coach allows athletes to fast track their performance in areas they need specific improvement. This can range from strength, endurance, or gymnastics skill and capacity. By having a coach in your corner writing specific progressions for you to improve your weaknesses the increases in your performance outpaces the improvements on a general program. 

    • The loftier any goal is, the more difficult it is to achieve. For athletes who have dreams of competing at the highest levels of the sport such as Semifinals or the Crossfit Games having a personalized program that lays out the plan to get there step by step can mean the difference between reaching those goals and falling short year after year.  

  • Better Recovery and Progress Tracking

    • A major advantage of individualized programming is the ability to make quick adjustments depending on how an athlete is feeling that day in training. Training volumes and intensities can be adjusted if an athlete is super sore, got less than optimal recovery several days in a row, or has a bit of a nagging body part that needs to be rested and taken into account during training. 

    • At Ascend Athlete we believe in resting lifts, workouts, endurance tests, and gymnastics tests is necessary to see if the programming we are writing for our athletes is truly working or not. We use these tools to show our athletes the improvement they are making and include them in their training process. In addition because we believe in using an annual periodization cycle athletes may retest a workout they did last season in the next training calendar. This leads to TRULY seeing how far an athlete has progressed in the last training year. As an example, we have had athletes Rx an Ascend Athlete benchmark workout the year after they scaled it AND go 2:00+ minutes faster than they did the previous year with scaled movements and weights. THAT IS PROGRESS! 



Section 3: Components of an Effective Personalized CrossFit Program

  • Assessment and Baseline Testing

    • Personalized programming always begins with an assessment and gathering baseline metrics. This information gives the coach and athlete an accurate picture of where the athlete is currently at and helps the coach start to create a framework of what areas need to be addressed first in training. 

    • After baseline testing and assessment are completed coaches rank order what metrics need to be improved by the largest margin. These are then set as the first order training priorities. From there secondary and tertiary training priorities are set and an individualized program for that athlete is starting to truly take shape. 

  • Goal-Setting and Milestone Planning

    • The process of setting realistic goals and milestones. Part of the coaching process with an individualized coach is goal-setting. If an athlete has a goal of  snatching 300 lbs but their current max is 225 lbs we have a long way to go and it’s going to take significant time to achieve that goal. A coach would not only help an athlete understand the time that goal may take, but also set milestones along the way. As an example, the first milestone may be to snatch 250 lbs then 265 lbs, etc. This helps athletes stay focused on closer shorter term goals and not be overwhelmed by their long term goal in daily training. 

    • Examples of how goals might differ (e.g., improving Olympic lifting vs. endurance). Additionally, coaches give clear and unbiased guidance on what needs to be improved. Working with the example above let’s say an athlete snatches 300 lbs. They may REALLY want to snatch 315 lbs, but their mile time is 8:30. A coach is going to give them the hard truth and explain why for their goals it makes much more sense to attack their running and overall cardiovascular fitness rather than adding another 15 lbs to their already very competitive 1RM snatch. This is part of why a coach can be so valuable. They steer athletes and their training the direction it needs to go without letting emotion cloud their objective judgment.  

  • Programming Structure

    • Weekly programming will look different for every athlete depending on their work schedules, training time, training age, time of the season, and goals. Ascend Athlete coaches don’t force more training than is necessary on their athletes. More training than is necessary for improvement is simply a waste of time. What athletes can expect is to train daily, sometimes multiple times a day focusing on their weaknesses and ensuring the rest of their program is structured to keep them well rounded and progressing in other areas as well. 

    • TYPICALLY (this is very general), athletes will have a warm up, a skill focused time, strength training, conditioning, accessory work, and a recovery portion to their training day. What these specific blocks look like varies greatly depending on the level of athlete and their needs as discussed above, but this is a loose framework that outlines training as an Ascend Athlete. 



Conclusion

  • The days of hopping in on the local Crossfit affiliate workout and competing at a high level in Crossfit are gone. Athletes today have their training dialed in to the upmost degree and having personalized programming is the only TRUE way to make sure your training is setting you up for success. 

  • At Ascend Athlete we are committed to helping athletes achieve progress and peak performance regardless of their goals. We achieve this through tailed training and programming built for the individual athletes specific needs that changes and adjusts as their abilities grow! 

  • If you are ready to take out the guess work in your training and get on a path you KNOW will lead to your goals, reach out to us today for a no pressure call with one of our coaches to get started with your personalized journey to success!

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