Creating a Cross Training Workout

In the world of CrossFit, there is nothing as rigidly planning of workouts. The dynamism of CrossFit owes a lot to the ever-changing workouts. CrossFit borrows from several other fitness niches such as distance running, powerlifting and gymnastics to create workouts. In any given workout, you will find an exercise touching on strength training, gymnastics, and a bike run. Because of this variety, piecing together a CrossFit workout is so much fun.

The Structure of a Week

When creating a CrossFit workout, one of the challenges you will face is coming up with the context. You need to think about the nature of workouts you will be performing on any given day of the week. This is important because failure to lay out a balanced context can mean overworking one muscle or movement. The good news is CrossFit already has a template in place.

Typically, your training should be done three days in a row, and your workouts gradually scaled from the easiest to the hardest. When you come to day 4, you should rest and after that work out for the remaining three days. There is also a template designed for CrossFitters who workout five days in a week. This means exercising five days consecutively and then resting on Saturday and Sunday.

Workout Styles

Once your template is well put down, you should now begin building the workouts you will do every day. There are three workout styles to choose from: weightlifting, gymnastics, and metabolic conditioning.

Weightlifting

These workouts combine Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting to give you an intense strength training experience. It consists of mainly barbell exercises such as cleans, squats, deadlifts, and presses. They also include kettlebell swings and medicine ball drills which combine to give you a hybrid between metabolic conditioning and strength training.

Metabolic Conditioning

Here, you can choose among biking, run, rowing, and jump rope. The goal of metabolic conditioning is to enable your body to do exercises for a longer duration. For instance, you may run 6.2 miles as part of the metabolic conditioning workout.

Gymnastics

These workouts use ropes, gymnastic rings, pull-up bars, and bodyweight exercises to give you a cross between strength workout and metabolic workout. The exercises range from a simple push-up to muscle ups and rope climbs.

Combining Workouts

By themselves, strength workouts, gymnastics, and metabolic conditioning are challenging. However, CrossFit takes these workouts to a higher level by combining two or even three into a single workout. In the three days of workout and a day off the structure, you will be doing one of the three styles of workout on the first day, the second style on the second day and the third day, you will do all the three. If you are on the 5 days on and 2 days off workout plan, you will do one type of workout on day one, the second workout style on the second day, all three combined on the third day and the fourth day, you will back down to two and on the 5th and last day, you go back to one.

Once you have made up your mind whether you will go for the five days on two days off or 3 days on and one day off workout structure, you can then build your CrossFit workout type and feed it into each day.