Introducing The 2019 CBD Benchmark Cycle!!

Well the CrossFit Open has finished. Just like that it has flown past us and left us with a myriad of "must do's" to work on! Unlike years gone past where we have a full 11 months to train any weaknesses, we are in a unique situation of having just 6 months as the newer timeline for the sporting side of CrossFit is coming into effect and their season will now kick off in October (instead of February).

Why does this matter for the new Benchmark Cycle you may ask. Well you are right in asking why this effects us here at CBD. You know that we program to train for life itself & all its glories and tasks, NOT for competition. With that said we all do partake in the Open as its amazing fun & highlights areas to work on each year. But with the advent of a change in the calendar we have thought long & hard about this new series.

So we are pumped to say that we will be shifting our own Benchmark timeline to coincide with the Calendar year itself and not the Open-Calendar year!! What does this mean you ask???

Well it means that this new Cycle will be 9 months long instead of 12, and we will embark on a brand new one in January 2020.

With a fresh new set of goals in training to look forward we here at CBD have been busy behind the scenes developing the new selection for us to test our Fitness out without of course losing our core values of training for GPP & training in true authentic CrossFit programming.

Why do the Benchmark Cycle in the first place? Aren't we meant to just do varied workouts and just throw it down?

To a certain degree you are right. Yes, we do want to keep our variance in our programming. This keeps our bodies & minds fresh and stops you all stagnating because we don't do strength day on set days each week, or only do squatting at a certain point every week. However, if we don't test ourselves by repeating some workouts we won't always see the progress you are making.

Benchmark testing has long been a part of CrossFit and Coach Glassman has written about it numerous times. From our perspective as coaches and programmers, we want a systematic approach to test our athletes’ progress and evaluate gym weaknesses at CBD as a whole. In addition, we found that some of the most rewarding days for athletes occurred when they retested a workout and saw huge improvements. We have always had a special place in our heart for "named" WoDs and outside of things like the CrossFit Open you may have noticed you get exposed to a Named WoD every 7-10 days or so. You get to visit so many cool & famous WoDs that perhaps some of them won't come back quick enough for you to see results. Well this changes that.

We also know that some maybe don't enjoy being retested on a single WoD 3 times in quick succession. This may be self-pressure related. Now you know what you are capable of you are being asked if you can better it. Its a pretty scary concept (maybe getting a worse result) but its a very valid part of Fitness training. To help you combat this we fully encourage that you start making more detailed notes in your BTWB accounts when you log these results. Did you for example go unbroken on the Push-Ups in "Cindy" in the first go only to see yourself fade away with over 5 minutes left? Then on the retest did you make any changes to your strategy?? Did you intentionally break those push-ups into two sets to see if it helps you maintain pace, ORRRR did you just go "ham" again and hope for the best???? These testing days allow us to try different approaches to workouts. By rights the more you do a particular WoD the better chance you stand of bettering that result as you get to know the WoD more in depth. Plus after each benchmark is done we have 3-4 months to TRAIN to make it it better. Try new progressions out in the skill portions. Put in some extra training time just before or after class. Get some personal training in if you think that may help you too. Put in the work and you will fare better (disclaimer: this is all under the assumption you have a smooth run at training and nothing has drawn you away fro large bouts of time, like sickness, family/work things, etc).

(Second side note: This doesn't mean that the WoDs we've selected will be the only Benchmarks you get to do here. We will still reserve right to pick any of the other Benchmarks if we see it as an appropriate addition the Gyms programming at that time. It just won't be labelled as part of our "Benchmark Cycle" and as such won't be guaranteed a re-test 4 months down the track).

And so the Benchmark Cycle is here.

How Does it Work?

We have this time selected 9 workouts that collectively represent a broad range of fitness and capacity – from short to long workouts, low to high skill, light to heavy workouts, and more. Over the course of the next 9 months we will incorporate those workouts into the monthly programming and retest each benchmark once every four months. That allows us to retest three times over this period which we think will be the sweet spot. The "Year" will run from April to December starting directly after the CrossFit Open & run up until Christmas.

How Do We Choose?

What do you do when you’re tasked to select just 9 workouts that will best test the effectiveness of programming and the development of fitness for a large population of everyday athletes? We start our search by narrowing it down to CrossFit benchmark workouts – including Girls, Heroes, Open, Regionals, and Games workouts, and also pull from the coaches’ notes & class debriefs to collate data on general gym weaknesses or workouts that stood out as “stumping” our population. From there we apply a great resource from the CrossFit Journal, “A Theoretical Template for CrossFit’s Programming.”

In this article, the founder of CrossFit, Greg Glassman, walks us through the logic behind creating a template “to allow for a wide and constantly varied stimulus, randomized within some parameters, but still true to the aims and purposes of CrossFit as described in the “What is Fitness?” issue.”

The template divides movements into one of three modalities: metabolic conditioning, gymnastics, and weightlifting. Metabolic conditioning is described as monostructural movements such as running and rowing and are commonly referred to as “cardio.” The gymnastics modality is all things bodyweight and weightlifting is all movements that incorporate an external load. From there, the workouts are combined into singlets (30 muscle-ups for time or 30 snatches for time), couplets (Elizabeth), triplets (Helen), or chippers (Filthy Fifty). Each workout can further be categorized to reflect the combination of the type of modalities involved. Take for example the workout Helen – 3 rounds for time of: 400m run, 21 Kettlebell Swings, 12 Pull-ups. This workout would be classified as Monostructural/Weightlifting/Gymnastics WoD.

With the movements categorised, and the singlets, couplets, triplets, and chippers all on the table for consideration – we dive one layer deeper and classify workouts as:

High or Low Skill Gymnastics
Light, Medium, Heavy Weightlifting

We then select workouts that, collectively try to incorporate all areas listed above – and not bias one area – such as heavy weightlifting.

From there we narrow down to roughly 20 Benchmark/Named possibilities and further filter using 2 criteria: constant variation in movements and time domain. We want to make sure we’re not just testing power cleans and pull-ups over and over and we need to ensure that we’re hitting short, medium, and long time domains. (lot of spreadsheeting going here btw!)

Using a spreadsheet grossly simplifies the process but let’s be honest, there is still some subjective element in the choosing of the workouts. The “sexy” or “fun” aspect is definitely considered which is why once the list is compiled it receives many eyes and feedback before it is finalized, placed in a calendar and then dished-out in your regularly scheduled group classes!

Now we aren't saying its a perfect selection. Rarely will you find a list that embodies every little detail but we think we have covered a fair amount in this one.

How to Participate

Participation is quite simple – come to class!! You’ll know the benchmarks for the year and we’ll remind you about it over & over. Make sure to log your score in Beyond The Whiteboard as you’ll want to track your progress over the course of the year.

When you review the workouts, there will probably be 1 or 2 workouts that you look at and say, “Ugh, I DON’T want to do that.” Or, there will be a few workouts that you do and think – “Why was I so bad at that?” And right there, you have self-identified the exact workouts that YOU MUST come to if you want to improve your fitness. We don’t become better athletes by working our strengths. If you fall short in capacity on the workouts that involve a particular movement , then try & make every effort to come to the workouts at the gym that involve that move.