Performance & Fitness Strength Cycle Notes (11/13/2023 through 1/27/2024)
Performance Strength
11-Week Cycle, followed by a 4-Week Open “Preseason” and a 3-Week Open “Season”
1RM | Front squat, chin-ups, push press
Oly
Snatch & clean (power & full) will work towards heavy, repeatable singles. Lots of technical breakdown through the first 8 weeks of this cycle. Towards the tail end there will be more focus on barbell cycling heading into our 4-week Open “Preseason”.
Push press, jerks, and split jerks
Push press | Building to a 1RM push press. We’ll start changing the angles with the snatch push press. From there we will progress forward with a relatively linear progression towards maxing out.
Jerk | Focus on power/push jerk technique and building absolute power output and power endurance capacities.
Split jerks (SJ) will be less of a priority since The Open never uses them. If you would like to work on this, you can simply perform a SJ variation whenever jerks pop up in strength. Staff can guide you from there. Oly Class on Wednesday evenings with Coach Sadie is another opportunity to practice.
To consolidate stressors, back squatting will have a moderate volume-load (3-6 sets of 3-6 reps) with various pauses and tempos. Plus sets (when the last set is an AMRAP) will be included to elicit a strength/hypertrophy stimulus. This should allow athletes to increase strength efficiently without relying on high-intensity volume to be the primary driver of adaptation.
Skill EMOMs | More of these will pop-up throughout this cycle, but specifically towards the end leading into Open Preseason. If you are newer to these skillsets (gymnastics, barbell cycling, etc.), this is a great time to slow things down and build technique. If you’re refining and advancing these skills, these are great tools to build capacity and ingrain technique.
Fitness Strength
11-Week Cycle
1RM | BB hip thrust
3RM | Deadlift
5RM | Back squat, bench press
Program will remain balanced between building the primary lifts and utilizing tempo and unilateral exercises to work on common postural and movement deficiencies.
First mesocycle
Lots of tempo/time under tension, allowing athletes to streamline and learn technique while providing a strong hypertrophy stimulus.
DBs over BBs | Both horizontal (bench) and vertical (overhead) pressing movements will feature DBs this mesocycle. DBs allow for greater range of motion and can help address muscular imbalances.
Front rack split squats | Good opportunity to work on the front rack for newbies! Can always sub to back rack if preferred. These will progress to 2-DB Bulgarian split squats with an ALAP (as long as possible) pause on the last rep of the last set in the second mesocycle.
Banded deadlifts will make their debut in the second mesocycle. Keep an eye peeled for a video demonstration in the next few weeks.
Hypertrophy EMOMs | To match the skill EMOMs, these will aim at keeping time under tension high with moderate loading. This utilizes density (work done in a shorter time frame) as a driver for muscle growth
Metcons
Conditioning will slowly start to work up to 20 minute durations, challenging varying capacities. We will still be mindful of overall volume and loading parameters as we progress. Most of our conditioning will remain in the 10-15 minutes range.