We are often asked why we don’t do the workouts as posted daily at www.crossfit.com (from here on we will refer to this as the HQ-WOD). With the right amount of determination, discipline and willingness to learn one can get started directly with the HQ-WOD. Success requires that you teach yourself the exercises, learn to scale appropriately, and set your goals accordingly. Given a long enough timeframe you will improve your health and develop your skills in basic weightlifting, gymnastics, and rowing. This is how EmerFit Founder Chris Brown got started with CrossFit.
In developing the programming for EmerFit classes we must take into account a number of factors including but not limited to:
- Ability levels and goals of the athletes involved.
- Space and equipment availability.
- Our ability to coach the various modalities (gymnastics, rowing, weightlifting, etc).
- Class dynamics, organization, and safety.
- Client results with current and past programs.
The mere fact that the HQ-WOD is posted late the evening or night before is enough of a reason for us to not follow HQ programming. (Yes, we know we could run a day behind to alleviate this problem.) More importantly we find that most of our athletes are sufficiently deficient in specific areas of their fitness to suggest they would be best served with a more specific program than the one posted at crossfit.com.
Once an athlete is extremely fit and well rounded we could see benefit in that athlete following the crossfit.com programming for some, if not all, workouts. This would be especially true if the athlete’s goals included participating in the CrossFit Games. We have seen this method utilized with some of the top competitors in the Games.
We see good athletes go to a CrossFit competition and realize they are deficient in something like Olympic Weightlifting. It doesn’t take much analysis to realize that such an athlete is going to need some extra focus on Olympic Lifting if they want to improve by their next competition. The athlete’s schedule and other priorities may dictate that at least for some time Olympic Lifting should make up the bulk of his or her training.
For our average client, who does not aspire to CrossFit Games greatness, we typically find significant deficiencies in strength followed by conditioning. After these two areas we typically see need for improvement in technique with specific modalities such as: olympic weightlifting, gymnastics, rowing, or kettlebells. Consequently, our programming is built around making people stronger, improving their conditioning, and teaching new skills while doing all this in a way that is both fun and builds community.
No. We use the methods and theory of CrossFit programming as explained in the CrossFit Journal and CrossFit Certifications. We augment these methods with others learned from coaching experience, discussions with other coaches, and research. Besides CrossFit our programming is heavily influenced by contributors to the Performance Menu like Coach Rut, Greg Everett, Nicki Violetti and Robb Wolf. We also incorporate ideas and methods from Mountain Athlete, Pavel Tsatsouline, Dan John, and Chip Conrad among others. While we fly the CrossFit flag we try to be as nonsectarian as possible.
