You’ve been away from the gym for four months, you’ve maybe not worked out as much as you thought you would and you’re now terrified of coming back. Does that sound familiar?
As many people who I have that can’t wait to get back in the gym, I have double the amount of people that are a little nervous or even terrified.
The thing to remember is that this is normal. It’s not wrong to feel like this, you’re not alone and we can help you.
What you can expect on day 1 on your return to CrossFit.
PROGRAMMING – It’s not going to benchmark week.
As coaches it is up to us to keep you safe, that means easing you back into the gym and being selective on how we programme your sessions. As usual, our programme is scaled to the individual, this means that no matter what we programme it will be tailored as it always has been to you.
We will be programmeming for a good month more volume and less intensity. Your usual class consists of a warm up, specific warm up, scales/progressions/building up to a working weight for the workout of the day, the workout itself followed by a short cool down. This style of class/ programmeming is fantastic for intensity and it is CrossFit! With only one workout in the hour it is safe and allows you enough time to find the perfect progressions/weight to use in the workout that will push you to your limits, this is actually why you’re nervous. We spend so much time finding the perfect weight/progression that when it comes to the workout it is very intense.
But for right now, that will be taking a back seat. We will be transitioning things to how lot’s of other ‘CrossFit’ gyms have always programmed, we will pile in strength work before your workouts. Lot’s of gyms have been doing this for a long time, the science behind it is this. More volume = less intensity. You’ll feel like you’re working hard but you’ll be lifting significantly less and scaling workouts a little more. Think about it, if we programme 5×5 Deadlift and then a 5 Rounds of Rowing and box jumps conditioning piece, you haven’t got enough time to build up to the heaviest 5 you can for the deadlift and you wouldn’t want to exert yourself in the first part of the workout knowing you’ve got a small conditioning piece to come. So even though you’ve technically done more you’ve actually exerted way less energy and power during your class. This allows to you to slowly start decreasing the volume and building intensity as time progress’s and that will be our approach.
LAYOUT – You now have your own private space
You may not know it but prior to lockdown, class layouts and planning for class was always to favour intensity. We put people close together in workouts because everyone will always push a little harder being able to see the person next to them not stopping or doing a few extra reps. It’s the stuff that you love to hate. Now however, a wall of equipment separates each person meaning when you’re working out in your box, you probably won’t notice anyone else next to you and so you are now more likely to workout at YOUR pace and not somebody else’s. Group training is not just cost effective, it’s the most effective way to get results because of our human competitive nature. That element has almost been removed due to covid-19, you can relax.
CLASSES – We have new classes you’ll love.
Endurance + and HIIT
These classes are great for total beginners, we are even offering drop in fees for these classes for non members. Why not use your membership to give these classes a go and see what they’re all about?
COACHES
We are Solv coaches, you know what that means. We don’t reward performance, we reward effort no matter how big or small that effort is, you are important to us as a person not because of what you can do but because of who you are and who you want to be. We know you’re concerned and we certainly wouldn’t leave you in the deep end of the pool.
Put your brave shoes on, your lucky underwear, take a big deep breath and get booking in for Monday, you won’t regret it. We’ve missed you and we know you’ve missed us too.
