Programming Corner: Weightlifting Phase
Welcome to the CFTC Weightlifting phase, where we will follow our Base Strength Phase with a focus on the Snatch and Clean & Jerk. The Base strength phase was very polarizing with the 10 general physical skills, we worked a lot on all of them individually. You should notice the focus is here is stepping towards blending these components together, with our macro goal at the end of the year during the fitness phase, to blend them together almost completely.
Our main goal will be to increase your capacity for intensity in the two lifts over 8 weeks. We have lined up our phases this way for two reasons:
Sharpen the “strength blade”
After building strength with a focus on application of force there are no two better lifts that can display it and transfer it like the snatch and Clean & jerk. Therefore, this weightlifting phase is not only meant to focus on the two lifts but have the two lifts facilitate more explosive force that your body is capable of translating from the base strength phase.
Specificity
If you are going to be specific in our sport about anything, getting better at these two lifts is crucial because (the snatch especially) they are extremely common and routinely show up in competition in a multitude of different ways. Nonetheless, increasing your ceiling in the olympic lifts is a huge advantage.
Note: this training phase will be largely focused on weightlifting, but this is a focus and a bias, we will balance this explained below under training modalities. If weightlifting is a strength of yours, it is still worth it to strengthen them further, but you will also largely benefit from the other modalities as we look to balance our program.
Progression: 8 weeks - 6/27 - 8/21
This is an intensity progression. So overall you will notice a linear progression in the percentages week to week.
You will notice two waves of progression, where we focus on linear intensity progression for the first wave, then a volume progression where we cycle back on the intensity and build it back up again using complexes. We will divide the week into 3 sessions: A snatch day, a clean and jerk day, and a combination day; where the combination day is always focused on intensity and the others are focused on driving up intensity through higher volume.
You will notice A LOT of weightlifting accessory. These are drills and will mainly be positional pulling and overhead strength/mobility drills that become progressively more athletic, and therefore challenging, as the weeks go on.
Weekly Schedule
Weightlifting is an extremely regimented sport, so you will notice more similarities in the training week to week than you normally would. This will drive adaptation in the best way for our purposes in this phase.
Monday: Volume Snatch OR Clean & Jerk session + Metcon (Strength endurance stamina- triplet/couplet) + Accessories
Tuesday: Gymnastics Pulling OR Pushing focused session + Metcon (Anaerobic Threshold- multiple short intervals) + Accessory + Power Conditioning
Wednesday: Volume Snatch OR Clean & Jerk session + Metcon (Aerobic Threshold- Longer intervals) + Accessory
Thursday: Active Recovery Day
Friday: Intensity Snatch + Clean & Jerk + Squat + Metcon (Speed endurance- short fast rounds) + Accessories + Power Conditioning
Saturday: Gymnastics Conditioning + Gymnastics accessory + Metcon + Odd Object/Conditioning (Power focused) + Accessories
Sunday: Rest Day
Other Training Modalities
Gymnastics
We will focus on gymnastics capacity within the weightlifting focus because this is a CrossFit competitors program and we need to be balanced. We need to continue to train aspects of everything and we will use the weightlifting recovery days as an opportunity to increase gymnastics capacity. We will have a focus on complexity, power endurance, and muscle stamina in this cycle when it comes to gymnastics. So you will see a volume and complexity progression, coupled with skill work on the more powerful gymnastics movements, such as deficit kipping hspu and muscle ups (Ring/Bar).
Metcon
Our metcons will need to be dialed back on intensity for the CNS, especially on the weightlifting days. At this point in the year, especially if you have summer competitions planned, this will only be a positive thing as the Metcon is being accounted for from the macro perspective as well. We will slowly progress your metcon intensity and volume through the cycles.
so you will notice that they are longer in this cycle when looking at the average time of the metcon, this does not mean the will be ALL long metcons, as you can see our daily metcon focuses above.
Note: These are daily focuses and may not fall on that exact day of the week. We will mix this up in order for the cycle to not be too redundant.
Power Conditioning
We will do power conditioning twice per week in order to compliment the body’s adaptation to weightlifting and fill the endurance gap in a balanced program.
Accessories
Focused on hypertrophy, strength endurance, power, speed, as well as joint and tendon health in the following areas of the body:
Midline/Core
Shoulders- Vertical and horizontal push/pull
Hips/Knees
post chain- Lower/Upper.