8/19-8/24: Back to school & lifting cycles

Best wishes to those of you and your families that are heading back to school this week! With summer travel winding down, we are returning to a lifting cycle to build strength and are kicking off week 2 of a 9-week programming cycle. Here are some highlights:

• Heavy days: these will be programmed in three 3-week blocks. Within each 3-week block, the movements will stay the same, but reps will go down and hopefully the weights will go up. Each block will pair a strength lift with a weightlifting variation. This first block is weighted lunges and hang power cleans.

• We’ll continue to have a day with a longer workout to focus on conditioning. You can stick with the Zone 2 target or you can push for a harder, but still sustainable, pace.

• Grunt work: we’ll have a day each week with some “grunt work” – different types of carries, sled pulls and pushes, etc. Sometimes these will be in the main workout and sometimes they’ll be our post-workout accessory work.

• The rest of the week will consist of our classic types of workouts – AMRAPS, EMOMs, chippers, etc. – in short to medium time domains. Depending on the length of the main workout, you may see some lifting before or some post-workout accessory work.

Here’s what’s on tap this week: