- We are but just a few short days into the lockdown here in Melbourne town. Box’s and gyms around the nation (& indeed the world) are shutting down to play their part in getting the crisis that is COVID-19. And with it has seen a rapid rise in people turning their homes into temporary gyms which is so cool!

- First off this is amazing that so many people are willing to continue fighting the good fight toward fitness even when told to stay at home. It makes trainers like us here at CrossFit CBD so proud to see this type of enthusiasm. What we are seeing though is a rise in jumping lunges, walking lunges followed by front rack lunges then sprinkled with some Bulgarian split squats (fyi, thats another form of lunging). Don’t get me wrong I think it’s amazing so many people out there are wanting to contribute at hole workouts and they only want to help peoples fitness in this time but it can be misguided at times.

- The rise of working out at home with limited, or even no, equipment can see the same moves or movement patterns appear over & over (cue burpee workout combined with push-ups). And the prevalence is seeing most workouts be super intense deals with lots & lots of volume. Heck, even just this week at CBD we started with a workout of 225 reps then went to 300 reps the next day, followed by 400 reps the day after! What we have lost with the closure is the control of this volume. When programming in a gym environment we are able to control those factors with load, movement complexity & skill requirement. We can also be there in person to moderate how the workout goes down for the individual.

- With CrossFit Boxes being unable to open at this time we (Affiliate owners & CrossFit Trainers) need to ensure is that we step up our game and give our communities the best damn service we possibly can. The best damn coaching & guidance we can (from a computer screen). And we need to offer the best damn programming we can! It’s time to get creative as there is still so much we can do.

- It has been said before that fitness can be achieved even with the poorest of programs if it is coached well enough & if it is consistently adhered to. Like wise you could have the best-ever written program laid out for you but if it isn’t coached well enough, or if it not consistently attended then it will be rendered useless.

If we cannot be there physically in person to correct possible faults we need to ensure that the “nuts & bolts” of the program are then good enough. This is where ’strength days’, or ‘heavy days’ come into play.

- We aren’t saying that the CrossFit CBD program is the best in the world (although we do rate it highly if we do say so ourselves! Cue self-pat on the back. lol). But we do feel we know how to produce a decent program that elicits results but also shows sensibility & longevity. We love intensity. In fact we crave it as it THE independent variable to increased fitness & results. Yet we know the limits of that intensity and know first hand that you absolutely canNOT do that body blasting every day and expect to come away unscathed & un-battered in the months/years that follow it. We KNOW that if you throw down at your hardest each & every time you train you are fast-tracking your way to less fitness, overuse issues or worse still, injury!

- Respected CrossFit Seminar staff member Austin Malleollo uses a great phrase when to describe true CrossFit training under the core methodology. He says that “We are on a slow trajectory to a distant horizon. What’s the rush?”. He hits the nail on the head with that last part. What indeed is the rush?? What is it that we are fighting and striving to get to? Are you afraid of losing your gains??

- Where we as trainers can help is to interject, dare we say intervene and write a program that can cater for these desires but also look after the people taking part too. We need to ensure safety as well as efficacy. Strength days are the tonic to break up the hullabaloo of “the intensity bits”. At CrossFit CBD we, when in the gym environment without a worldwide crisis happening, program in “heavy days” at least once a week & often times we put two in there. Why? Well, if the blurb/rant I wrote above wasn’t enough then let me explain it more. They are there as they are a valuable piece of the strength & conditioning program that is CrossFit. They are the days where we get to work at absolute loads of that given task. Be it for 3 reps or 12 reps. Each time we are trying to maximise our return and work on/show our strength levels.

They also are times for everyone to dial in technique under less harsh environments. The trainers get to have a real good in-depth look at you and you get to pour your heart into the set without fear of having to pack away in 6 mins to go do some burpees! They also happen to be some of the best community days too. We get to crank the tunes. Watch each other lift, cheer each other on. All in a great more detail than if you are lying in a pool of sweat trying to see straight. They also allow a participant to train most days if they want to/are recovering well enough. Those that “met-con” every day wouldn’t be able to attend the gym all week. They’d be forced into more rest days, likely unable to move their body much at all!

- Perhaps the biggest reason for  is the safety side of training. Yes, for sure CrossFit is very safe and anyone who usually hurts themselves doing it either was carrying a pre-exisiting condition into it, or they were over-training/under-recovering. But that topic is a whole other blog post waiting to be written (one day maybe!). What we mean by safety is that we get to take down the intensity-o-meter down a notch or two and calm the nervous system down from the rigorous effects of hard “met-cons” day after day. You wouldn’t think it but to do “just 10 mins really intense training 4,5 or 6 days in a row can be devastating on the system. (I know a lot of you are feeling the soreness already this week. We are!!) By interjecting a strength day into the weeks' program you can kind of offer you body a reset of sorts. Get it to work hard of course & breath a little heavy possibly. But in all this you can let your body continue to recover before coming back and hitting a WoD the next day. For sure a 5x5 heavy back squat day will leave you quite sore & the CNS may take a hit but the stress levels on the body in general will have been eased a bit from the simple act of not putting up a timer and saying to blitz this 3 rounder into oblivion.

- It is easy (in our opinion) to do this on a face-to-face Box/Gym setting . Doing it as an online/virtual thing is another. Doesn’t mean it can’t be done though! This is where the programming comes into play. We will endeavour to continue our heavy days with our community. They are needed, (even with limited equipment) Not only for all the reasons listed above but also to slow things down a little bit. Life is moving very fast right now with everything going on. Last thing we need is to feel like we are on runaway train of endless lunges!!

- How do you go about this? Simple. Choose the move or moves you wish to prioritise as your strength moves this week. Layer them into the days you think they will fit and be most welcome. Then assess what movement patterns you can use. What movement pattern/exercises you used last week and try your best not to double up on them over & again. This is a big simplification of the process of programming. We don’t just grab random workouts and slap them in y’know!!

- What we are saying is to think about what your community needs right now & not just what you think they want. More volume isn’t going to solve anything and we want to keep our communities alive & kicking all through this lockdown we need to service them well & take care of them. Then when our Boxes open back up again we can continue the good trend of these heavy days and watch our members kick-ass all the way through to 2021 & beyond!