At Viking Athletics, we sell coaching. It’s more than just workouts or programming. And we’re about to make it even better for you, by assigning each of our members an accountability coach (stay tuned!) Why work directly with a coach? To be your filter.

There’s too much out there. You know you can’t do everything. A lot of it looks—or sounds—good. This is true with diet plans, supplements, supplemental workouts (additional “Murph” prep, power abs, etc.), or even daily WODs you may find on the ‘gram.

You can’t do it all, and trying to do too much will actually set you back. I’m guilty of this too. I royally messed up my shoulder when mixing CrossFit with a supplemental powerlifting program that I spliced together with an Olympic lifting program (circa 2012). And I knew better than to do this, but did it anyway.

Everyone knows about overtraining, and we’re all scared of getting injured. But most don’t realize there’s an optimal amount of training to do, just as there’s an optimal amount of food to eat. Too little, and your progress will be slow. But doing too many workouts has the exact same effect.

For this reason, our group classes are balanced. In CrossFit, we regulate intensity. Some days feel easy, some make your lungs want to explode, and some leave your muscles fatigued. We want you to train optimally. Enough to progress without beating yourself into the ground.

Powerlifting and Viking Barbell follow periodized training plans that similarly increase and decrease intensity. Some weeks may feel absolutely brutal. But then you have a deload week following it. We build, we peak and test, and then we back off. Again, it’s about making progress long-term without overdoing it in the short-term.

Because we live in a world that conflates sweat angels, pain or “feeling the burn” after a workout with progress, we are often tempted to do “more.” This is especially true during deloads or steady state cardio days. It might be a little “recovery run.” Maybe it’s some additional gymnastics work. Maybe it’s multiple workouts in the same day. We’ve even had members attempt to do 100 biceps curls every time they were in the gym. Doing this randomly or haphazardly is NOT the path to success.

More is NOT better. Better is better.

You have coaches. And soon you will have an accountability coach. That coach will be your filter. He or she will tell you what’s optimal for your goals, not what’s maximal.

At Viking Athletics, we want you to talk to your accountability coach every 3 months. One-on-one, in person. We want to put you on the InBody, ask about your goals, review your progress and then give you the best possible prescription.

What we DON’T want is for you to have to guess.

We don’t want you to try fad diets just because someone else is doing them. We don’t want you to drink a gallon of milk a day just because you saw it online (truth: this was a CrossFit fad circa 2011. I didn’t join that one). We don’t even want you to do what everyone else in the gym is doing, because their program is theirs. It’s not yours. Train in a group, tailor individually: That’s what our coaches do.

You have a coach.

They’re a filter.

Next time you see a workout online and think, “Oooooh, that looks spicy! Gotta try it after noon class tomorrow!” ask your coach if it fits your goals. Take it from a banged-up meathead who learned the hard way. Stay tuned, and see you in the gym!