How To Improve CrossFit Performance 2x Faster (our NEW RESEARCH) 

Muy buen estudio, es informacion muy util para tener en cuenta a la hora de diseñar o corregir nuestras metodologías de entrenamiento. Se agradece mucho que se mencionen las limitaciones del estudio y de donde pueden venir algunos errores. Fan de tu trabajo, muchas gracias.

The programming in CrossFit gyms that structures a daily one hour workout with a strength piece and then a metcon is an adulterated form of CrossFit. It's really just a normal strength and conditioning workout dressed up as CrossFit. Unfortunately, it's often poor strength training and weak met con work. If you look at earlier CF programming, high end strength work was separated from the met cons as well as the monostructural endurance pieces.

CrossFit has always preached doing heavy or pure strength days with no metcons. Most gyms just don’t do it

Great stuff! Super interesting study! Thank you for just doing this kind of thing and just throwing it out there.

Great study, thanks for putting this together 👏

So better to do the double sessione AM Strenght PM Cardio/Metcon, I knew that! Thank you for confirmation

Crossover is not a limitation for a training study. You did a good design

Next study You guys should compare strength and metcon together against strength in one day and metabolic on another. Awesome job thank you

I'll try to apply this studies with my clients and see what happens. Thank you 🙏🏻

I love that you're making this data accessible and easy to understand for everyone! One question sprang to mind: Why didnt you compare a set-up where you do 2 metcons a week and 2 strength sessions a week? Instead of either doing both in one session or only one of them per week, I mean.

Thank you for this interesting study! For higher volume training with multiple session per day: Why do you suggest to do to the Skill/Strength in the morning and Conditioning in the evening? Does it have an impact to do it in that order?

I love your work and the scientific way to focus on training... I think that based on the results presented, it would not be accurate to say that Program B improves fitness levels by double. Here’s why: NON SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENTS: The improvements in the Crossfit total (+0.8%) and Fran time (+2.8%) were not statistically significant. This means these SMALL changes could be due to random variation rather than a true effect of the program. SMALL SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENTS: While there were significant improvements in the clean & jerk (3%) and rowing (1.8%), these percentages are modest and do not reflect a doubling of performance or fitness levels. STRANGE SIGNIFICANT RESULT: The 19% increase in back squat repetitions is significant and substantial, but for me is a "strange significant result," suggesting it might be an outlier or due to factors not directly related to overall fitness improvements... This result is THE FACTOR THAT EXPLAIN THE DOUBLE fitness improvement and that conslussion you know IS NOT PRECISE. My conclusion is that BOTH TRAINING PROGRAMS result in an improvement in physical performance. Program B demonstrates SMALLS statistically significant improvements in certain performance metrics, particularly in the clean & jerk and rowing. However, these improvements are MODEST and SPECIFIC to certain exercises rather than indicative of a doubling of overall fitness levels. The large increase in back squat repetitions appears STRANGE and for me warrants further investigation to understand its implications. My humble interpretation of results is: while Program B can be considered effective in improving specific aspects of fitness, it DOES NOT SUPPORT THE CLAIM that it doubles overall fitness levels. My interpretation as a COMPETITOR COACH, would be that to AVOID INTERFERENCE EFFECT we have to separate strength training and metabolic conditioning by 6-8 hours, per Mujika and Pallarés, to reduce interference. Competitors should do 2-3 sessions a day for optimized strength gains, enhanced conditioning, reduced fatigue, better recovery, and improved overall performance... I think separating 6-8 hours strength and metcon sessions is sufficient to avoid interference. My interpretation a BOX OWNER, "in my experience" when we conduct training sessions with only one component (crossfit style, ex deadlift 1,1,1,1,1,1,1 or row 5k), athletes tend to get bored and do not enjoy the programming. However, when we include two components (strength & metcon or metcon & skills...) in the sessions, even though it may cause some interference, athletes find the programming more engaging. From my point of view this increases their satisfaction and adherence to the program. Balancing the effectiveness of the training with the participants' enjoyment is crucial, as long-term adherence is essential for success in fitness. Therefore, I think incorporating multiple components can be beneficial in maintaining athletes' motivation and commitment.

Excellent work. Thanks for presenting.

Personally, I find that 2x strength days + 2x cardio days + 1 ‘crossover’ day + 2 days off, per week, is the ultimate balance. Speaking as a non-pro who can manage 7-10 hours per week.

First of all thank you for your great content and sharing your knowledge. Just a quick question. Can i get likewise progress doing pure conditioning (Zone 2 or row Intervalls) AM and strength PM?

Love your work champ - so, more-or-less, strength only for week 1 and metcons & endurance for week 2 and repeat (forever), yes? Or, for advanced athletes, strength in am and metcons / endurance in the pm should do the same trick, yes?

I really appreciate your study and the takeaways involved. I just want to point out that, especially in purely metcon works, such as Fran, the improvement may have been due to the adjustments in the workout approach like more optimal division of the reps and allocation of rest and transitions between the exercises. Re-testing a workout could often lead to an improvement without any variations in fitness levels. Btw I would suggest to include some gymnastics volume in the next study to test an overall CrossFit performance.

Original crossfit methodology (as I understand it) prescribed a heavy day once every 7-10 days (someone correct me if I'm off on the frequency). Would you consider studying different frequencies of strength only training? From my experience conditioning falls away more rapidly than strength, and so splitting the focus by week is not as optimal as (for example) training with a dedicated strength focus only every few days (1-2 per week or fortnight) and putting more focus into conditioning

Great video! Now that we have a good idea that spattering training styles is the right idea, I wonder what the ideal time solid would be? Could it be that strength training should be done for 2 weeks and then metcons should be done for 1 week?

I feel like this are well known facts in fitness: Train strength and hypertrophic activitys 1st, then conditioning. That safes Frequence and Volume

Congratulations on your study. It's very far from my field, but I don't see any serious methodological issue. There are some obvious limitations like the ones you pointed out, but I'm interested in one possible limitation that you didn't (or did I miss it?). The post training test for the traditional group was the same as the one for the hybrid group, or was the traditional group tested with strength and metabolic in the same session and the hybrid group only strenght in one session and then only metabolic in another session?

One thing, that immediately came to mind was the lack of weightlifting practice. Going full weeks without doing them would probably be a bad idea for intermediate and advanced athletes or were they included in the weeks "without" strength training in form of a metcon? Also note worthy, no gymnastics were tested.

Where does something like muscular endurance fall into this? Or WODs which are focusing on muscular endurance but are raising your heart frequency too?

Why not splitting conditioning and strength by day for the beginner to intermediate athletes? so Day A Strength, Day B Conditioning, Day C Strength, Day D Conditioning, etc.

I would be interested in the results of your drop outs and the stats on them too. Because I think there's a reason commercial gyms have that programming structure: it's because there's alot of people who don't attend regularly, who are recovering from injury or being sick, come back from holiday, or just new... and in that commercial setting of group classes, coaches think it's better to give everyone a little of everything. I'd imagine if one of these drop ins comes to the middle of a strength week and gets only that, they'll feel lost and like they're just wasting time and money and are more likely to drop out all together. So if you have a random person who's not the 6 year experienced crossfitter who religiously trains, which approach to programming is more effective and is there one at all? Plus ofc with selling your own program with a hybrid programming approach it seems like a conflict of interest.

Very interesting, small group, but shoulder we all change the approach of our training or use it for overcoming plateaus with adding some new stimulus? PS: I would prefer to hear your videos without the low volume music … - but keep going please 🏋️

Would you be able to make a video on military training I’m really struggling on how to balance strength and cardio and specificity to the job.

Not only a really interesting study, but I thought it was well-designed and well-explained in the video! Thanks for your work. Perhaps you covered this in the paper itself, but do you and your co-authors have any ideas why the "hybrid" model was more effective?

How do you think this style of training fits into a macro cycle of a year, where you would focus on hypertrophy, strength, power and endurance in different meso cycles? Curious how this style over a longer period of time would fit into a traditional macro cycle from the strength and conditioning literature.

So to summarize is alternate one week of focused strength training and another week of ,metcon type of workouts?

According to you, doing strength training one day and WODs the next, and so on, can have the same effect as alternating weeks of strength training and WODs as in the study? And if the answer is no, why is it better to alternate weeks rather than days?

Hello, i really like your work and i find it nice that you came with a significative result, but your tests are biased toward strength and only a very fast wod to assess Crossfit progress is a little bit narrow

How do you implement this in parts of the season where your weakness (strength/endurance/skill) is 60+% of the volume? Since one week might only have enough volume for 2 or 3 training days?

8:51 how can average work per week be higher on average of two groups if they themselves have lower averages?

This is not new… This is basic PT thats been used in the military and most other sports for over 60 years and exactly what the argument was against CrossFit when it first appeared. Second issue brought against CrossFit was lack of block periodisation. So essentially you just highlighted the two arguments every sports coach had against Crossfit was true. So your recommendations are to not conduct CrossFit how it was designed to be done and just do what everyone has already been doing - traditional periodisation PT.

Also seems obvious that the hybrid group would performed better on the test that were “hybrid” only . There improvements were only significant in the single modality test . Would have liked to see more or at least equal test of single and mixed modalities .

Se entiendo que en un gimnasio de crossfit hay personas que no van durante toda la semana o todos los días, aun mas especifico con una cadencia de entrenamiento aleatoria podría solo asistir a entrenamiento de fuerza durante mucho tiempo o por el contrario solo asistir a entrenamientos de acondicionamiento metabólico, de esto especulo que el programa fue variado a una primera parte de fuerza o desarrollo de una habilidad y luego una parte metabólica. Por otra parte entiendo el concepto por que hace anos atrás también tuve la idea de que seria mucho mas eficiente para mis alumnos (Soy coach de crossfit o crosstraining como quieran llamarlo, no tengo la certificación por si es relevante) tener semanas completas de "Metcons" y semanas completas de entrenamientos asociados a fuerza o halterofilia, luego de mucho tiempo note que no había mejora considerable y esto se da por la frecuencia de entrenamiento de las personas que van, no son son atletas, simplemento algnos van a mejorar su calidad de vida o hacer ejercicio de forma mas "recreativa". Dentro de lo que veo de las estudios mostrados es que 1 a 3 personas con sus datos hacen que el porcentaje de mejora sea mayor en el grupo hibrido, pero eso se puede deber a otros factores, me refiero no por el estilo de entrenamiento. Para mi en estos casos la mejor respuesta es probar y analizar sus propios resultados, podría llegar a ser que a algunas personas les sirva y a otras no.

The study, is it going to be published or peer reviewed?

Surely this needs to be peer reviewed or at least published? Can you provide access to the study or data?

I miss the "ciao" at the end 💪🏼🦁💙🚀...

Testing difference in % changes is the worst statistical approach. I suggest you run an ANCOVA on the post test with the pre test as covariate. It's the most powerful approach and you may find statistically significant differences

You guys made it seem like this wasn’t a study and was for in-house information and never went through an IRB, but plan on trying to publishing? Don’t you think “pay to participate” along with no IRB approval is an ethical issue?

I keep saying, people who are “hybrid” athletes that run in the morning and lift in the evening, are taking the easy way out. Mix the 2 together in the same session and it’s a completely different level of fitness, which alot of people could not cope with..Synergy, as the two are working together to achieve the optimal possible outcome!

What you call 'traditional CrossFit Training' IS NOT traditional, it is a more modern application. In it's methodology CrossFit DOESN'T do Strenght and Metcons on a same session. It would be a good research to read both de Level 1 Training guide and the CF Journal Articles. Modern or more popula CrossFit Training IS NOT traditional.

A true interference effect is overrated IMO. The real problem of concurrent training is that often the training load is excessive.

Very clever - unpublished,un peer reviewed only available through paywall of $40 USD / month 👏

The test is more orientated towards pure strenght and pure endurance separated. What if the test was a crossfit competition? People who train with the CF methodology would have won...

“wow we trained these people with single modalities and then tested them with single modalities and they got better”