An insight into our training strategies Pt. 12 – A Periodized Approach to Exercise Selection: Competition season

The competition season is a period of a few weeks leading up to and includes the CrossFit Games Open. The CrossFit Open is a 5-week online competition delivered by CrossFit that tests athletes in a variety of CrossFit style events. Almost all gyms that fly the CrossFit banner take part in this annual tradition and CrossFit Vernon has been a part of it from the very beginning. 
Our goals during the competition season as always, include responsible management of training stress, but extend to a focus on performance during each of the 5 weeks of the CrossFit Open. The latter is a unique requirement in that we have to prepare our bodies to safely handle the tests provided as well as ensure that our performance isn’t hindered by our continued training during this period. 
Special considerations need to be made for exercise selection in terms of monitoring, preparation, exclusion and inclusion, and the balance of volume and intensity. 

One of the things we do differently in the competition season is focus heavily on the exercises we know we will be seeing in the CrossFit Open. You can find numerous analyses of the exercises and workouts that have been performed during the history of the CrossFit Open. We use this history to guide us in program design and exercise selection. 
In the weeks leading up to competition we train diligently in the movements we know we’ll see; Double Unders, Muscle Ups (Ring or Bar), Toes To Bar, Thrusters, Chest To Bar Pull-Ups, Wall Balls, Snatch (Squat or Power), Deadlifts, Burpees (of any kind) are the 9 most common exercises we’ve seen since the open began in 2011. Training goes into perfecting these exercise mechanics with and without the addition of fatigue. 
We also know that most workouts we perform in the CrossFit Open will be couplets or triplets. Couplets and triplets refer to the number of exercises in a given workout, most often performed in an AMRAP format. 
Given what we know about the exercises and workout format, our goals leading up to the CrossFit Open are to gain some exposure to this style of test so that we are ready for it when it arrives. 

When the competition arrives, the biggest considerations we take into account are stress management and exercise monitoring. 
Knowing that the events are released on Thursday evening and, for most, the competition takes place on either Friday or Saturday, we do what is called ‘front-loading’ our week. A front-loaded week means that all of the hardest workouts in your training week will take place in the first 1-2 days, with the middle days being lighter days intended to provide some rest to the athlete before the weekend competition. This is where we’ll do workouts that include heavy patterns, large volumes, or contractions that would typically leave athletes sore and needing time to recover. 
Exercise monitoring is paying attention to which movements we are training or practicing and whether or not those exercises have shown up in the tests yet. It wouldn’t make much sense to do 100 toes to bar on Monday, only to have to do another 100 on Friday. 
Until the time that an exercise has been used in competition we would like to keep it at a maintenance level. After we’ve seen an exercise in testing then it becomes open to reintegrate into our normal training. 
We extend this philosophy to the management of patterns in the same way we would manage individual exercises. Here’s an example: 

Week one sees us doing deadlifts and from then on, we are free to include deadlifts in regular training. However, we need to consider all bending movements when programming deadlifts. If we suspect this week might have high rep burpees, then Wednesday or Thursday might not be a great day to practice deadlifts. 

Deadlifts and burpees, though different exercises are both bending movements and we want to pay attention to the volume, intensity, and frequency of patterns. 
The monitoring of these elements is especially challenging as it takes a bit of guesswork. At CrossFit Vernon, our program is set a week in advance. This means we have to rely on our experience as coaches and as athletes to predict what is safe and effective training during the competition. 

The CrossFit Games Open provides unique programming and planning challenges to even the most experienced coaches. The requirement to balance safety and performance against long term training is no easy task. It takes a broad understanding of the stresses accompanying different exercises, time domains, and workout formats to ensure athletes get the most out of the time they have at the gym while still having fun and enjoying themselves. This all starts with properly selected exercises.

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