By Head Coach Kerry Kirsch + Coach Elizabeth Hall of Rhapsody Fitness in Charleston, SC.
It seems, much like an opinion, everyone and their mother has programming these days. With the barrage of packaged tracks and tricks, it can have you spinning to make sense of intentional, educated programming versus…everything else.
Before we continue, let’s make one thing clear – programming is a path and your coaches are your guides. Without a coach in your corner, you won’t be able to learn, adapt and adjust as needed to reach that higher level of performance.
In short, your programming will only ever be as good as your coaching. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s demystify what makes for quality programming and how you have seen it in action here at Rhapsody Fitness.
Intentionality
We won’t bury the lead, quality programming is deliberate and mindful with each workout paving the way to a greater goal. For example, September focused on power-output, or specific yields in short durations, which is why you saw workouts with novelties like seated box jumps and Echo bike sprints tracking wattage.
Knowing how your body responds to power-output directly translates to the explosive hip drives you rely on for power lifts – fast forward to heavy days, and you’ll understand the method behind the madness.
Rhapsody Fitness in Charleston, SC.
Compounding
With quality programming, nothing happens in a vacuum. Each training session is designed to build on itself and strengthen or prepare you for the next. For instance, the first workout in September tasked you with bike sprints tracking wattage – this first pass set a baseline that you were then asked to reference back to and increase by 10% a week later.
(Re)Testing
How will you know where you’re going if you’re not sure how far you’ve come? A hallmark of CrossFit, establishing benchmarks and (re)testing performance is a cornerstone to understanding progress. Thoughtful programming is two steps ahead on this ensuring that tests and retests are baked into the plan. For example, you were tasked with max vertical jumps and 2x high box jumps in Week 1 before testing your max box jump in Week 4.
Varies The Variety
Constantly varied stimuli and movements are at the core of cross-functional fitness. Quality programming takes this a step further to vary expected energy output. For instance, over 30 days you saw a smorgasbord of sprints paired with generous rest on to 45-min steady grinds. All of this was by design.
Not only does varying energy keep you from running yourself into the ground, figuratively and literally, but it also helps you understand how your body will respond under different conditions and challenges.
Values Recovery
Alongside varying expected energy, prime programming values recovery and proves this by working it into the master plan.
Over the last few weeks, you may have noticed a few workouts peppered in that seemed gentler than others. Trust and believe, these active-recovery days were just as important to increasing your strength and stamina as the full-send days.
Makes You Think
Smart programming seeks to make you a smarter athlete. It does this by encouraging you to see, evaluate and understand different data points with the ultimate goal of giving you a solid sense of how your body is going to respond to particular stimuli.
Let’s go back to tracking your wattage on the Echo bike – this may have been the first time you paid attention to this metric as the usual suspects have you watching distance or calories. Now you have working knowledge on how power-in – not just RPM – affects your pedal performance.
Rhapsody’s programming balances fun, engaging challenges for its members that are equally interesting to coach. Our objective with programming is to enhance your strength, stamina and knowledge over the long haul of your health and fitness journey.
With that said, trust the process – we know where we’re taking you and are here to help you understand the why behind the work.
Learn more about our programs here at Rhapsody Fitness or let some Rhapsody into your life today.
