Athletes who have committed to joining the CrossFit Raven community can expect to benefit from a whole body program designed to build mental and physical fitness regardless of experience, age, gender, ability or health need. However, for those of you about to start their fitness journey with us, there may still be questions around what is crossfit…….its class structure, suitability and programming. We’ll attempt to answer these questions here and demonstrate why our program will provide you with the best possible opportunity to grow your fitness.
What does a class structure at CrossFit Raven look like?
A regular class workout is broken down into four components:
1. Warm Up
- A series of cardiovascular and stretching exercises designed to raise your body temperature, increase blood flow to your muscles and prepare them for action. Warming up plays a key role in reducing muscle soreness and injury.
2. Strength & Conditioning
- Strength and Conditioning training incorporates a diversity of exercises focused on improving your mind, mobility, stability, strength, endurance, power, speed, agility and performance.
3. WOD (workout of the day)
- A WOD steps up the level of exertion by focusing on movements using heavy weights, high cardio, high reps and quick repetitions for more extended periods of time with fewer breaks.
4. Cool Down
- Cool down involves completing one or two simple exercises to allow the body to gradually transition to a resting or near-resting state. Like warming up, cooling down plays a key role in reducing muscle soreness and injury.
For those athletes wanting more out of their standard one hour class, our coaches incorporate an ‘Extras’ component which complements the standard WOD by adding additional exercises whilst making sure you aren’t overworking any particular areas of your body.
How can one workout be suitable for all abilities?
Our coaches are able to cater for athletes of all fitness levels by making sure every single workout is scalable. Scalable exercises are ones that can be modified to align with your fitness level, experience, and skills. Our coaches achieve this by adjusting your workout routines according to:
1. Load (the amount of weight used)
- By adjusting the load our coaches can identify the ideal amount of weight striking a balance between correct execution and exertion.
2. Reps or Rounds (how many times you complete the exercise)
- The amount of times you complete an exercise can be adjusted to match your level of fitness.
3. Movements (the level of complexity)
- Should an exercise be too difficult due to complexity, injury or level of ability substitute exercises can be assigned to work the same muscles.
By adapting the program for everyone in the class, our coaches are able to create a training environment where everyone can train together, and still get the same intensity of stimulus regardless of whether they are an elite CrossFit Games athlete or a beginner.
What is CrossFit programming, how do you do it and why?
It’s defined as constantly varied, functional movements performed at high intensity. From a developmental perspective, it’s a process where coaches combine their knowledge of fitness theory and methodology with their understanding of the abilities and motivations of each individual athlete attending the box to develop a targeted plan to grow fitness.
In terms of why we create our own programs, we do so because we pride ourselves on knowing our members, knowing the skill sets we are programming for (the ratio of advanced, intermediate and beginner athletes that make up our box) and knowing the sporadic weather Geelong throws at us at times.
With regards to how we program, our key goal is to create a program that strikes a balance between safety, engagement and interest for our members whilst ensuring that everyone is pushing their boundaries and getting out of their comfort zone. From a technical standpoint, our programming utilises three key approaches:
1. Constantly Varied, Functional Movements
- Our programming incorporates movements closely associated with Gymnastics, Weightlifting, Sprinting, Combat and Personal Training and harnesses them into regimes that optimise your physical performance, endurance, and strength.
2. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
- HIIT is a training method based on alternating intervals of high and low-intensity exercise. High-intensity intervals are movements conducted at an elevated rate of exertion for up to a few minutes whilst low-intensity intervals utilise. movements that keep moving but at a much slower pace.
3. Observable, Measurable and Repeatable Methodology
- We repeat numerous workouts, lifting benchmarks to track progress, not just to track an athlete’s rate of development but also to review our program and make additional adjustments where needed.
We believe our programs are designed to give every athlete the best possible opportunity to grow their fitness. As we see everyone improving we also continue to improve our program thanks to the results we are seeing. We can’t have one without the other. So thank you for being an amazing community of athletes.
Don’t just get fit……get CrossFit
So if sharpening your body as well as your mind sounds like your ideal goal, then CrossFit Raven Geelong have the classes for you. If after reading this article you still have questions, please reach out to one of your coaches, they are here to help.
So regardless of experience, age, gender, ability or health needs, get in touch with CrossFit Raven today and experience why we have your Geelong gym needs covered.
