The evolution of Thursday programming

Every once and-a-while our team looks at how the programming for the gym is progressing. We discuss how we can continue to evolve to make the programming, the gym, and the learning experience to be as fun as possible.

If you've been here since the beginning, or maybe you've been following us for a while... We have never settled, and have made many evolutions in the process. One thing has remained, and will always remain, is using Thursdays as a lower intensity day, some even call it a recovery day!

Why we decided to make these changes

Our newest innovation in the Thursday process is to expand on our current Thursday Flow sessions. We recognized that many people want to progress and continue to get better, or spend more time and focus on specific lifting techniques, gymnastics techniques, or other areas of weaknesses. Although we do 'practice' the different lifts or movements daily in our warm ups, sometimes, just based on the programming for the day, we can only spend 2-3 minutes on that particular movement before we need to move on to the next movement. Although we are big fans of practicing daily, because remember, before something becomes habit, you must practice! Practice! Practice! ...we understand that we must also spend ample time developing the skills necessary to progress.

With all that said, we've determined that we can use the idea of a lower intensity day - which by the way is a perfect way to practice! to continue to deliver great coaching and teach all of our athletes technique work in specific movements.

When will these changes take place?

Beginning this coming Thursday, you will notice that we will be doing our first Thursday skills session on the concepts of rowing technique. You can see, that developing and practicing the techniques in rowing are pretty complex and can be a class in it of itself! Heck, people even put on rowing seminars that last entire days (hint! hint! Remember, we have the row seminar on January 27th! - Sign up here )

How will this make you better?

The goals of the new Thursday Skills days, will be geared at developing skills in a specific, or general movements. What that means is, that on a given Thursday, our work may be geared at improving your proficiency in the Snatch, or the handstand, toes-2-bar, pull-ups, etc... So the class will be geared at drills and movements that will help us achieve that goal.

Understand, that although a skills day may be working at improving the "Snatch" you may actually never snatch that day! Wait! What?! Before you panic, let us explain; working on a specific movement such as the snatch, has many complex components and subtle nuances that must be practiced and perfected to improve the overall movement. These skills would be the 1st pull, the 2nd pull or the 3rd pull. Then there's speed under the bar, the hip drive, the receiving position, and oh ya, some strength and shoulder mobility in there as well! You can see where I am going here... In many well known barbell clubs they deliver these same types of concepts. We must work on developing all aspects of the lifts or the movements to get better and more proficient!

So, a typical day working on the snatch,  may look something like this:

* General warm up & mobility work

Superset the following:

* 3x5 Snatch grip DL to hang (1st pull) working up to 60%

* 3x5 sots presses last rep stand up out of the hole starting with PVC working up to an empty bar

Followed by:

* 3x5 snatch balance with no heave 

Finish with: