CrossFit City Limits Programming Cycles

At CrossFit City Limits, we are constantly testing and updating our workout programming based on world-class anecdotes and the latest scientific principles and methods. We take a periodized approach to programming our workouts and consider many different aspects that we’ll discuss here. First, let’s take a look at some terminology that will aide us in the discussion. Please note, that the actual definitions of the below terms will be more general and what is provided below. We have provided you a description of the definition of each term in the context of how we use it within CrossFit City Limits’s programming.

Programming - The actual design of the workouts and workout program. The CrossFit City Limits programming is designed with periodized macrocycles with the intent of being customized to develop P.A.T.H. Results within the context of an individual’s real life. Through functional movements performed at relatively high intensities, WODs will develop skills that have real world transfer and usability if it’s for a sport or just everyday life.

P.A.T.H. Results - Performance, Aesthetics, Tissue and Joint Health, and Overall Health and Wellness. CrossFit City Limits is not willing to sacrifice one for the other. These four areas work together to create a foundation for individuals to be incredibly fit, pain free, and capable for their entire lives. Technique that carries over to the real world is the secret to elite performance and resolving pain.

Performance - We should be fit and capable of incredible things. We should have access to full ranges of motion of every muscle and joint in the body. We should have the stability, knowledge, and movement patterns to put our body in optimal positions in the gym, in life, and in sport. We should be able to go hard and fast, slow and long, lift heavy things, control our body-weight. We should be able to have fun and enjoy any opportunity that we want to. All around fitness and performance gives us the freedom to do whatever we want to do.

Aesthetics - We workout hard and we deserve to look fit. There are many other lifestyle factors that contribute to aesthetics, but your workouts should promote the body you want to have. Marathon runners, bodybuilders, power lifters, and yogis all have their own look. CrossFit City Limits workouts provide extremely fit, natural looking, defined bodies.

Tissue and Joint Health - You are only as old as how you feel. We need to workout in a way that promotes feeling great. Programming needs to have adequate volume and intensity to maximally promote results, but not too much to accumulate fatigue that someone cannot recover from. Moving properly, working on recovery, and optimal res and sets are key to your body feeling and moving great. It’s not all about resolving pain. When our tissues and joints are healthy, positions can be optimized for maximal performance instead of running around with a parking break on.

Overall Health and Wellness - It is true, you can perform at an elite level and you can have a body builder body at the elite level without being healthy. Everything we do at CrossFit City Limits it is to optimize health along with everything else. We are unwilling to sacrifice this. Our goal is for CrossFit City Limits principles to have a positive effect on every health marker.

WOD - Workout of the Day. The WOD is the workout plan for a designated day. CrossFit City Limits provides class programming for 2 distinct types of programs, CrossFit and CrossFit Strength-bias. Each of these programs will have 5 workout days, or 5 WODs, and 2 rest days each week.

Minicycle - A smaller block of WODs. CrossFit City Limits minicycles are made up of 5 WODs, anticipating 2 rest days a week, to total week long minicycles.

RM - Rep Max. Typically before “RM” will come a number, say, “5.” A 5 RM would mean the maximum you could lift five times.

Intensity - Intensity has two different meanings for our purposes. First, intensity is the out-of-breath, try hard, dizzying feeling we get from going hard. Intensity in reference to weights is typically provided as a percentage of a 1 RM. So, 65% intensity, would mean a weight that is 65% of your 1 RM for that exercise.

Volume - This is reps multiplied by the weight lifted. In CrossFit City Limits programming, volume is typically tracked and controlled depending on the intensity. Higher intensities produce a larger fatigue than lower intensities, so as volumes increase, intensities decrease and vice versa.

Metabolic Conditioning (MetCon) - As the body works it relies on different energy systems to get the job done: 1) Phosphagen - capable of providing high energy for a few seconds of effort), 2) Glycolitic - capable of producing high levels of energy from a few seconds to a couple of minutes, and 3) Oxidative - providing sustainable energy for longer duration efforts.. Metabolic conditioning refers to the development of all of the energy pathways. As endurance athletes will surly have their oxidative pathway developed and power lifters will have their phosphagen pathways optimized, CrossFit City Limits trains and develops all pathways. Ask a marathon runner to push a sled as hard as they can or as a power lifter to run 3 miles…their underdevelopment of the other pathways is limiting outside their specialty.

Anaerobic - From a few seconds to a couple of minutes, anaerobic exercise includes the phosophgen and the glycolitic energy systems. This is exercise that is more explosive, strength-related, and powerful in nature. Time spent exercising anaerobic has a carry-over to aerobic exercise, but not much the other way around.

Aerobic - From a few minutes to longer duration efforts, the aerobic system, the oxidative pathway, is the primary energy source. Most of the time all systems are at play in some capacity, it’s just a matter of the percentages of each.

Yearly Calendar - For CrossFit City Limits programming, each calendar year is made up of four distinct macrocycles, each typically 13 weeks long.

Macrocycle - The big picture. CrossFit City Limits’s periodized programming, is designed in Macrocycles. CrossFit City Limits’s macrocycles contain Hypertrophy, Strength, Peaking, and Benchmark mesocycles. You will see the macrocycles referred to with their own distinctive, and usually “Punny” name. Things like, The Upside Down, Gains World, A PR is Born, etc. So, each week (minicycle), we can put a name to it. For example, The Upside Down: Peak Week 2 of 4. This would correspond to the 10th week of the 13-week Macrocycle.

Mesocycle - A series of minicycles (weeks) that work together to create a block of programming. Each mesocycle is designed to elicit a specific stimulus and the periodization of CrossFit City Limits programming orders each mesocycle in a way that builds on top of each other. CrossFit City Limits utilizes mesocycles in this order:

1. Hypertrophy - The purpose of the hypertrophy mesocycles is to build new muscle. In a typical program, there may be anywhere from 1 to years worth of hypertrophy mesocycles in a row, but in CrossFit City Limits programming, we typically do 1 mesocycle before moving on to our strength phase. A hypertrophy mesocycle is typically between 2 and 6 weeks and CrossFit City Limits programming will typically use 3-4 weeks. Volume is typically higher and intensities for muscle building will average to be around 65% of a 1 RM. Workouts average out to be longer with relatively lighter weights than the later mesocycles, but keep in mind that they just average out that way and the CrossFit City Limits programming always keep overall metabolic conditioning high. Each larger muscle groups can handle around 2 hard hypertrophy WODs each week. In the hypertrophy phase, a much wider range of exercises are utilized and the specificity of the WODs to the individuals goals will increase with each mesocycle.

2. Strength - The purpose of the Strength mesocycle is to strengthen the newly developed muscle from the hypertrophy mesocycle(s). In a typical program there maybe anywhere from 1-4 strength cycles in a row, but in CrossFit City Limits programming, we typically do 1 strength cycle before moving on to our peaking phase. Strength mesocycles are typically between 2 and 6 weeks and CrossFit City Limits programming will typically use 3-4 weeks. Volume is typically lower than the hypertrophy mesocycles and intensities for strength building will average to be around 75% of a 1 RM. Each larger muscle groups can handle around 1 hard strength WOD each week.

3. Peaking - The purpose of the peaking mesocycle is to teach the body how to maximally perform with its new, strong muscle. This is where the specificity of the athlete’s WODs would be more customized to their particular goals. If someone is training for a CrossFit competition, the movements would now be performed to maximize performance based off of competition standards. A typical peaking phase is 2-8 weeks and CrossFit City Limits typically uses a 4-week Peaking mesocycle. Volume will be lower than both the strength and hypertrophy mesocycles as intensities will average to be 90%+. With athletes needing more time to acclimate to 90%+ lifts, CrossFit City Limits’s peaking mesocycle provides opportunities for 90%+ and 1 rep maxes throughout the cycle with the intent to taper fatigue to set new strength personal records (PR’s) during this phase or immediately after.

4. Benchmark - Each macrocycle ends with a benchmark of some sort. Some athletes test by entering a completion or race. This is where CrossFit City Limits provides its Benchmark Week. Benchmark Week is a minicycle of classic CrossFit benchmark workouts, Fran, Elizabeth, Nancy, DT, 13.3, Helen, and Lynn, along with opportunities to test handstand holds and handstand walking, and movement tests to test and identify range of motion progress and issues.

   CrossFit City Limits’s programming builds on itself through the year and year-after-year. One cannot simply look at one day, one week, or one month of workouts and understand the methods and principles behind CrossFit City Limits’s program. The context of the entirety of the year must be taken into consideration. CrossFit City Limits programming design controls and varies volume and intensity to optimize the stimulus and maximize results. Contrary to popular belief, the mantra of “one more rep,” and working as hard as you can every single day, does not produce elite athletes. This mentality produces athletes destine to perpetually plateaued. CrossFit City Limits’s programming principles are designed based on world-class training principles common across many disciplines: Olympic Weightlifting, Power lifting, Gymnastics, Bodybuilding, Endurance Events, and Track and Field, and Sports. The key is working towards P.A.T.H. Results and adjusting for the context of each individuals’ goals and the reality of their lives. When technique is the priority of the best in the world in every discipline, we must trust in value of efficient movement building technique brings and the scientific approach to prioritization and optimize training volume and intensity. We cannot just go as hard as we can all the time to maximally produce results. Optimal stimulus when delivered in waves produces maximum adaptations from training. Certain efforts, like a max deadlift, can take 2 weeks to fully recover from whereas recovering from a max push press is just a matter of days. We cannot simply design workouts one at a time, go hard, and expect to maximize results. We need to plan, so we can manage fatigue to optimize P.A.T.H. Results. Let’s take deeper look!

   SRA Curves

   Stimulus, Recover, Adapt. For every movement, energy system, and volume and intensity combination, there exists a theoretical SRA curve. The CrossFit City Limits program optimizes the interactions of the SRA curves generated from WODs within the scope of the bigger picture. This way, over-time, fatigue is managed in a way that delivers supercompensation.

   Fatigue - In this context, fatigue is more of a long-term thing. Fatigue is how you feel, how you perform, your motivation levels, and your propensity to get sick. The more fatigued, the less you can squat, the slower your mile time, etc. Fatigue is interesting as it accumulates. This is why when intermediate/advanced athletes follow an elite-level workout program, they can hang with it for a few weeks, but eventually, get burned out, injured, sick, become unable to lift the weight prescribed in the program, and/or don’t make good progress. Because they are not at the elite level and are not following elite-level recover protocols, over time they cannot recover adequately, even if just by a little each day. When accumulated fatigue is not managed properly, it is a detriment to progress and is what plagues many trying so hard to get to the next level with the working as hard as you can every single day mantra.

   Supercompensation - After a workout, if we think of recovering as moving back towards our original fitness level and adaption as moving higher to a new fitness level, supercompensation is more of a delayed adaptation to training that would produce bigger adaptations than without the delay. After you take a look at the SRA curves, you may want to come back to this definition as it will make more sense once you see it in action.

   There are a few potential scenarios to discuss that will help show why more is not always better.

Let’s look at SRA Curve #1: 1 workout followed by a rest day. The horizontal black line is your starting level of fitness with the y-axis being your overall fitness. The workout is the stimulus shown by the red line curving downward. Think about it this way: Let’s say you go to the gym and warm-up. You then do one of two things. You either test your fitness or you workout and then test your fitness. If you tested your fitness, it would be at the horizontal black line. But, if you worked out and then tested your fitness afterwards, the fatigue from workout would create a short term decrease in fitness. You would actually be less fit in the short-term because of your workout. This is why the red stimulus curve is downward. But, as we all know, once we recover from the workout, our fitness should, hopefully improve. If our workouts are appropriate, we will recover back to our original level and adapt based on the stimulus to become more fit. Our goal in our scientific approach to programming is to maximize the adaptation curves.

Let’s look at two more scenarios with one workout and one rest day. There is an optimal amount of work from which we can recover and adapt maximally. In SRA Curves #2 and #3 below, the dotted lines represent optimal stimulus. SRA Curve #2 shows that if we don’t work out hard enough (solid red line) that the total adaptation we get is sub-optimal. Now, going back to the more is not always better, in SRA Curve #3 if we workout more than our bodies can effectively recover from (the solid red line) then the adaptation we get from that scenario is also sub-optimal. This is an interesting scenario as each rep you do beyond what you can efficiently recover from actually is working to get you less results. One more rep is not always better. There may simply too much fatigue to maximally recover. In both the too little and the too much scenarios we can still make progress, but it’s not maximal. In CrossFit City Limits programming, we are careful to elicit the response we are looking for for that WOD’s place in the cycle to maximize adaptations.

But, it gets more complicated as we do not workout one day on and one day off…so why? Simple answer, to take advantage of the bigger results created by supercompensation.

Linking SRA Curves

Now, let’s look at SRA Curve #4. Supercompensation is an additional boost to adaptation created from an appropriate amount of accumulated fatigue. CrossFit City Limits program design includes 2-3 days on followed by 1 day of rest. As you can see in SRA Curve #4, when we workout day after day, we are actually making ourselves less fit. This should make sense because if you worked out hard 3 days in a row and then tested your fitness, you will be less fit after day 3 than if you tested before day 1, after day 1, or after day 2. But, when we back off a bit from training, we can recover and adapt to levels of fitness higher than where we began.

If we try and fully recover and adapt from each individual workout, then we will not be stressing our bodies enough to maximize our results. When we pair WODs together day after day, all of the SRA curves produces from each WOD combine together. If we combine WODs and rest days in a balanced way to accumulate appropriate amounts of fatigue, we can build bigger adaptations. But, we need to back off to realize these adaptations. This doesn’t mean not working out, it simply means working in easier workouts and easier weeks of workouts to allow our body time to realize our potential gains.

Just like SRA Curves #2 and #3, we could do too little or too much, allow for too much or too little recovery time, or not cut back enough once we have accumulated fatigue which would all cause us to miss out on potential adaptations. The way in which we combine WODs together needs to be optimally planned and not just thrown together randomly.

Within CrossFit City Limits’s bigger macrocycles, within each mesocycle (Hypertrophy, Strength, Peaking, Benchmark), each week has appropriate and varied volume and intensities to maximize adaptations long-term. If you test yourself randomly in the middle of a cycle, you will likely not see much, if any, gains. But, at the end of the cycles, we are peaked and ready to set new PRs. If there is an event one of our athletes has in the middle of the cycle, we simply taper appropriately leading into the event to bounce their fitness up.

In the SRA Curve #4, the stimulus, or the fatigue of the WODs, was constant. We can further control and manage fatigue to maximize adaptations by purposeful making some workouts easier and some workouts harder. Like we said before, for every movement, energy system, and volume and intensity combination, there exists a theoretical SRA curve. Some are longer than other and some are shorter. Some muscle groups respond best to more training frequency and some respond best to less. This can be easy to imagine because if you do a hard lower body day, your upper body may be fine the next day. It’s the interaction of SRA curves that need to be considered to properly manage fatigue and produce P.A.T.H. Results.

One of the biggest programming mistakes we see is the simple lack of planning and understanding. We typically see gyms do a couple of amateur things. First, they just come up with random workouts with no bigger plan in place. They look at the workouts they did in the last few days and they create a workout that looks different to keep it “constantly varied.” “Constantly varied” should not mean random and without a plan. The next mistake gyms make is they want to do a “strength” cycle. So they grab a strength program off the internet, usually these gyms LOVE to do a Smolov Russian Squat Cycle, Hatch Squat Cycle, or Wendler’s 5-3-1. Please don’t misunderstand me, these programs are great, but they are designed to be stand-alone, complete programs that are highly planned according to the SRA curve concept discussed above. So what do you think happens when a gym simply takes one of these programs and then throws metabolic conditioning on top of it? Of course athletes are over-trained and are not maximizing results. Most of these gyms eventually figure this out and then will take just one or two workouts a week from one of those programs and then add their metabolic conditioning. This will likely produce better results than their first method as the volume is more reasonable, but this must be done with the understanding of proper stimulus to be able to implement it in a way that is maximally effective. Without purposefully controlling for fatigue, you can get better, but there will be a lot of potential for the effort that is being missed out on.

So, how do we know and build optimal workouts? How do we create easier days that are not too easy and how do we create harder days that are not too hard?

Prilepin’s Chart was created by studying the journals of thousands of world-class weightlifters and has become the gold standard in weightlifting and power lifting as a tool to manage daily fatigue levels.

First some more definitions:

Minimal Recoverable Volume - The minimum amount of work required to elicit adaptations.

Optimal Recoverable Volume - The amount of work that will elicit maximal adaptations.

Maximal Recoverable Volume - The maximum amount of work that an athlete can handle and still make positive adaptations.

Although every athlete is different, as a simple example of minimal, optimal, and maximal recoverable volume using Prilepin’s Chart, if we look at doing reps at 75% of an athlete’s 1 rep max, we can see that the minimal number of reps to produce a stimulus would be around 12, and optimal number of reps would be around 18, and a maximal number of reps would be 24 (Row 70-80 on Prilepin’s Chart). That means if a workout was programmed to have 30 reps at 75% intensity, reps 25-30 not only would be the hardest and take more time, but the reps may actually be a detriment to an athletes progress making. More is not always better. When we are managing fatigue, we can maximize results by using a variety of effort levels. We can work in “easier” days and “harder” as we control for the combinations of SRA curves. The interesting thing here is that we can get bigger results by mixing minimal, optimal, and maximal, efforts than if we simply did optimal efforts every workout. We need to be ready for anything and we can get bigger gains by mixing.

For CrossFit City Limits programming, based off of our experience, we have expanded on Prilepin’s Chart to include percentages down to 20%, effective reps/sets of body-weight movements, and bigger sets in our 55%-90% range for hypertrophy as well. We also have our own protocols to control for the different effects of more fatiguing lifts like the deadlift, lifts that can handle more volume like the bench press, and muscle groups that can handle more frequency like the abdominal muscles. By building the CrossFit City Limits program off of standards for volume and intensity and creating WODs withing a specific framework, our programming can be more scientific as we can consistently implement rep schemes and make adjustments based off of real performance data in the gym. This is how we can hone in on best practices for a gym community and understand how to make small adjustments depending on the athletes fitness level.

Volume and Intensity Variance within a Macrocycle

Now, let’s take a a look at what volumes and intensity may look like over the course of a CrossFit City Limits macrocycle. Although we don’t always stick to a linear increase of volume and intensity within each mesocycle, for this example, we did. You can see in the 3-week Hypertrophy mesocycle, the first 3 bars (Hypertrophy 1, 2, and 3), the volume and intensity gets higher each week. We will be starting around an optimal recoverable volume using intensities that promote hypertrophy and work towards maximal recoverable volume by the third week.

You can see something similar in the strength mesocycle. As intensity increases, which it typically does throughout a periodized Macrocycle, recoverable volume amounts decrease. This logically makes sense because lifting at 100% of max is much more fatiguing than lifting 20% of your max five times. That would be the same volume, but the training effects would be drastically different. As we increase our training intensities, we must decrease the volume to maximize our adaptations.

You will notice a deload week after the strength mesocycle and a taper week after the peaking mesocycle where volumes are lower and intensities are relatively lower. These weeks are mixed in to manage fatigue and promote supercompensation.