Welcome to “Winter” and all its glory!!! (note that “winter” is n quotations! This is Australia!).

As you know we are about to hit the Hero WoD “Murph” on Saturday week (the 10th). Look out for another blog post released this coming Sunday for tips on how to prosper in the WoD & more importantly, recover well from this massive workout. Back to this post now…. So you know Murph is around the corner. What you may not be as aware of is that all of the week leading up to “Murph" is going to be a Testing Week for us all!! How exciting!! Now we use the term “testing” loosely as we run a GPP program on the rooftop (meaning a year-round General Physical Preparedness Program which trains you to be in a "ready state" of Fitness). We train & teach all year long to try try and be at a level of great Fitness so to deal with challenges that are posed to us both inside & outside the gym “walls” (more quotations!!). However this doesn’t mean that we can’t steer our focus or set ourselves some internal targets throughout the year. Its a well known fact in CrossFit circles that if you were to define a “season” in CrossFit it would be from Mid February-March for those of us that target the CrossFit Open as our “peak”. (If you are a regionals athlete then your season is February-May & the Games Elite’s season is February-August). If you haven’t heard terms such as pre-season, in-season, & off-season before allow us to explain. If you have an period of time you wish to be tested or compete in something this would be your “In-Season”. The period leading directly up to this would be your “Pre-Season”. And the period that is directly after the “In-Season” is known as the “Off-Season”. your pre-season is used to prepare you for the test. Your in-season is the testing/competing, & the off-season is the time to actually recover, reset & start it over again before recommencing your next pre-season. Although the CrossFit Open may be our "Season" of choice we don’t necessarily see CrossFit as a Sport. It is fundamentally a training program and should always be treated as such. Even if you have competitive aspirations in CrossFit the core of your training is our GPP program we run. Any additions or “Comp work” is a feature that works off the back off of our base program which already gets you very Fit & strong! (Maybe a post is due about what the “Comp” work is & who should / shouldn’t do it. Another day maybe). Now as the amateur Crossfit season is just 5 weeks long leaving us with 47 other weeks in the year to live & breathe and be fit, we use these other 47 weeks to program for a well rounded, general Fitness. In amongst these weeks you will see some focus shifted to certain goals (like spending time building strength or preparing you all for the rigours of the Open itself). We are slap bang in the middle of the calendar year and its a great time to hold a test week. View it as “Check-in” of sorts where these workouts are a way of measuring your Fitness at this CURRENT time of the year. We should point out there isn perfect time of the year to do this as some of you may be coning off a cold or flu. Some may be in the busiest time of year at work .You;re going on holiday tomorrow and won’t get back in time, etc etc. It is what it is. We are simply compiling a series of varied WoD’s that will test you among some key areas in your Fitness. Across the 6 days (Yes “Murph” will be testing your long game!) you will see a Strength Day. A Heavy MetCon. A Stamina based MetCon. A Cardio-Respitory Based WoD. Skill based Tests & a Bodyweight/No-Loading based MetCon. Together these comprise to test you out on the areas mentioned above but they will also test time domains from 5-15 mins (not including Murph here). They will test high skill barbell, low skill barbell, high skill gymnastics, low skill gymnastics. Your classic “Cardio” monostructural components will feature. Basically by the end of the week you will have seen pretty much as many different facets of Fitness as possible tested trying to encompass as much of the 10 General Physical Skills of CrossFit. Is it the perfect test? Of course not! There is no such thing and we have but 6 days to make it happen for you. BUT it is we believe the best test right now. That should be enough 🙂 Now here is an important one. If you don’t already train 6 days a week this is NOT the week to suddenly try it out!! Take your usual rest day/s. Listen to your body & if you are not pulling up well then don’t get tempted to come in because the post the night before has you all giddy. Don’t listen to peer pressure to come in anyways. You won’t be very happy if you post a slower time or score than usual & have this down as your CURRENT time/score as your base marker now will you?! Get your rest in, eat clean, drink LOTs of water. Do your mobility!! & eat yer spinach!! We won’t release all the actual WoDs but we will post this: Monday - Strength Day (The CrossFit Total) Tuesday - Stamina & Speed Wednesday - Cardio-Respitory Endurance Thursday - Skills Tests / Bodyweight MetCon Friday - Heavy MetCon Saturday - Long! (Murph) You can speculate all you want, go on its fun. Guess away but you will just have to wait each day for the WoD post to appear on the website (the Beyond The Whiteboard posting goes up a lot later than the web WoD posting so check there each night. (Clear your Cache-de-leches off your phone to see the latest post!!) This check-in week will act as a great data measure for myself & Susan to look over and assess where the weakness lie. And in turn we can then direct & drive our next phase of programming in a direction that will help shore up said weaknesses whilst also keeping to our core values of doing a GPP program & doing it bloody well. You can expect another check in week further down the year (don’t necessarily expect all the same WoDs to feature that week. They will appear at their good time at points through the year). It all kicks off on this Monday 5th June with the famous Strength WoD called "The CrossFit Total” which tests your 1 Rep Max in The Back Squat, The Shoulder Press, & The Deadlift. (Please note: if you haven’t been lifting with us that long we may well have you do a 3 rep max instead as its more appropriate to your journey in the strength stakes). Please keep your eyes peeled for a post about the Total too (another post! Jeez!!). It will explain in more detail on how the class works that day & will ask you to get in EARLY to warm up out rear half of the gym area. All of your CrossFit CBD Coaches are so PUMPED for this week coming up!! We hope to see the PR bell ringing but most of all we just want to see you try your hardest, listen to your Coaches & have FUN FUN FUN along the way!.

After all it’ll be just another week up on the Rooftop of Dreams!!!!!!!!!!

If you've any questions about the week please fire us an email karl@crossfitcbd.com