November Preview / October Recap
by Erik Castiglione

Greetings Relentless Family!

We have a fantastic November planned for you! As far as weightlifting is concerned, last cycle we worked on the pull, and when we tested, we had great results with the clean and jerk. However, with the snatch, even though we had people pulling the bar up to their shoulders (success!), most people lacked the confidence to drop under the bar. And so, this cycle, we’re going to be working with barbell complexes that focus on building speed and confidence in dropping into the catch position.

We’re going to continue the 5/3/1 program for our slow lifts, focusing on the front squat, low bar back squat, push press, and bench press. This cycle, we’ve increased the percentages by 5%. This means that your 1+ days will be at 95% percent, which will be a significant challenge. We’ll be testing shortly thereafter, in early December. Until then, you’ll still be able to attempt total tonnage PR’s like we did last month.

As far as conditioning is concerned, we’re going to continue mixing in longer time domains with our normal 8-10-minute range. The 2019 CrossFit Games Open is a mere 3 months away, so we’re looking ahead to that. The last several years have seen rowing. Just as we built our running capacity through September, we’re going to start accumulating rowing volume and building capacity in it through November and December. Prepare to develop an intimate relationship with the Concept 2 rowing ergometer. You’ll see rowing intervals, and rowing in workouts. You might even develop some nostalgia for running.

Additionally, we’ve been working on our ring dip form and stamina, and with good reason. We’re going to be testing it along with your barbell cycling ability in the benchmark workout “Elizabeth.” On Veteran’s Day (Nov 11^th) expect to see high volume bodyweight exercises in a hero WOD. And, as mentioned in our November newsletter, we’ll be tackling Fight Gone Bad to test your anaerobic capacity on Thanksgiving. It’s going to be a busy month!

Now let’s recap what happened in October. We tested our classic lifts (snatch and clean & jerk), and we built strength in our other lifts. We tested “Grace” and started focusing on longer time domains. Finally, we focused on ring dip form and volume accumulation, worked on muscle ups, and provided plenty of opportunities to work on other skill work as well. The results:

• 15 snatch PR’s
• 38 clean & jerk PR’s!
• 5 “Grace” PR’s, plus 5 additional people who performed it with heavier weights than last time and were still within the desired time domain (many gym members have never done it before and now have a baseline time)
• 13 log clean & press PR’s
• 8 40’ Yoke Carry PR’s
• Gary Costa hit his first (and second!) bar muscle up
• Sara Fortin got her first toes to bar
• Nathan Berry kicked up to his first handstand
• Paula achieved her first double under, and several after it
• Jen Martin strung together 5 consecutive double unders
• New member Hani Ghloum kicked to his first handstand
• Erica hit her first ring muscle up!
• Christian Calyore performed ring muscle ups for the first time in a WOD and managed to string 2 together in a row!
• 285 total tonnage PR’s