Sixteen weeks ago I was doing 5 to 6 WODs a week, and had seen a drastic improvement in my metabolic conditioning. I could swing a kettle bell all day, air squat until the end of time and had acquired all the skills I needed to complete workouts at speed: kipped pull-ups and toes-to-bar, consecutive double-unders, and rebound box-jumps when Kat wasn’t looking. But whenever the workouts went from long and gassy, to short and heavy I would fall behind. I was becoming frustrated that I couldn’t keep up in heavy workouts and it seemed that WODs weren’t making me improve.
This is not to say that CrossFit training won’t improve your strength; it just won’t improve it fast. I guarantee you that the top CrossFit athletes didn't get their strength through WODs alone. The CrossFit philosophy of constantly varied movement means that you will inevitably engage in some strength training, whether it be the strength component or during a heavy WOD. But I’m impatient. I wanted to be stronger now. So I decided to undertake a properly structured strength programme.
I spent a long time agonising about which programme to follow: Wendler 5 3 1, Juggernaut, 5x5. There's a lot to chose from (in retrospect I could have just done any programme for beginners, but my ego wouldn’t allow it). In the end I decided to go with Juggernaut 2.0, mostly because everyone had positive things to say about it, or be doing it themselves.
It involved training your squat, deadlift, bench press, and overhead press once a week. The weights used are based on your 1 rep max, and increase as you progress through each wave of the programme. I haven’t fully retested all of my 1RMs, but already know that they have all incased significantly; my back squat, for example, is up 20%.
Now that I have finished the programme, it occurred to me that it didn’t really matter which one I chose to follow. What I needed to do was to just do it more. By and large, these programme are made for professional lifters; people who can already lift weights I can only dream of. The real benefit for me wasn’t from the carefully calculated rep scheme, or from the workout schedule. The benefits came from simply doing it more. I was heavy squatting, benching, deadlifting, and pressing every week - far more often and for longer than I had been in regular classes. I was still doing WODs a couple of times a week, but I was now lifting for 5-6 solid hours per week.
Conveniently for me, the back room self-training at Malcolm Place coincided nicely with the start of my strength training. For most, the only way to access self-training is via the S-Course, the next of which is on 8th March at SE11. It’ll teach you how to back squat, box squat, olympic/overhead press, bench press, deadlift, sumo deadlift; everything you need to know safely self train your strength. The back room is a terrific resource at CFL and well worth investing your time in.
My advice to anyone looking to improve their strength is to simply lift more. You will get better at WODs by doing WODs. You will get better at double-unders by practicing double-unders. You will lift heavier things by lifting heavy things. Any of the coaches will be happy to help you pick a programme, or in helping create one yourself. You might spend 15 minutes in a regular class doing a heavy lift. Do it for an hour. Do it every day. Squat. Front-squat. Back squat. Bench. Press. Deadlift.
