Go Hard, or Go Fast: Get More Out of Your Workout

One of CrossFit’s main tenants is to maximize work capacity in as many movements, exercises and time durations as possible. Power is king. The more work you can do in the least amount of time the higher the Power or Intensity. Striving to maximize your power is hugely beneficial because it taxes the entire system much more than low power activities including all three anaerobic and aerobic energy pathways.

“The magic is in the movements, the results are in the intensity.” – Greg Glassman

I recently completed our “Jack Bauer” workout and it was a beating! It took me 1 hour and 23 minutes for me to complete it! I bring this up only to demonstrate to you that as the level of work increases the intensity with which you can complete the work drops because you energy systems cannot keep up with the demand. It is like a 100m Olympic sprinter trying to sprint a marathon! It just wont’ work that way.

I have not mentally wanted to quit a workout in a long time but the “Jack Bauer” workout pushed me to the edge! Workouts that are long and have a ton of work to accomplish are one great way to push you to higher levels of mental toughness. Mental toughness is important but a little can go a long way. You actually get much greater benefit from chasing high levels of intensity.

So how do you go about maximizing intensity? Where do you start? You begin with checking your EGO at the door when you enter the gym. The vast majority of people want to jump to the full CrossFit workouts too soon. Then end result is that they end up sacrificing intensity to complete the workout. Only by doing less than you are capable of will you be operating at a workload that is low enough for you to sustain max intensity through workout. For some reason people tend to perceive this as being lazy, or taking the easy road. In reality, by taking ‘two steps back’ and increasing the intensity you will make progress very fast and in no time you will be doing full workouts at higher intensity.

A good rule of thumb that is helpful to go by is to find someone in the community that is operating at a much higher level than you – the more elite the better. Observe how long it takes them to complete the same workout but at the full workload. If it takes them 15 minutes to do the full workout but it takes you 30 minutes then you are not creating much Power compared to them. Instead, you should reduce the amount of work by scaling down the workout to the point that it only takes you that same 15 minutes. As your performance improves you simply up the workload incrementally until you are doing the full workout in close to the same time! This is the fastest way to success!

So before you go wear a 20lb weight vest to make the workout harder, ask yourself if you are really maximizing your potential for intensity before you increase the workload. To illustrate my point let’s walk through a ‘rough’ physics equation demonstrating different amounts of work effect intensity levels.

By The Numbers

Work = Force x Distance
Intensity = Power = Work / Time

I will use myself doing “Fran” as an example.
“Fran” is:
21, 15, 9 reps of:
95lb Thruster
Pull Ups

I weigh about 160lbs, and when I squat my center of gravity moves almost 3 feet. In addition when I press and do a pull up the weight and my body respectively both move about 1.5 feet. Assuming that I am only moving about ½ of my bodyweight on each thruster then the combined weight moving 3 feet for the squat is 175lbs.

The amount of work accomplished with each press is 142.5 ft-lbs. Each squat is accomplishing 525 ft-lbs; therefore each rep of the thruster accomplishes 667.5 ft-lbs of work.

45 reps of the thruster = 30,037 ft-lbs of work
45 reps of the pull-ups using similar calculations = 10,800 ft-lbs of work.

Therefore, “Fran”, for me, is a total of 40, 837 ft-lbs of work.

To determine the power we will need to divide by the total time in seconds.

I have done the full “Fran” in about 3:30 before. This is 210 seconds. My power during “Fran” is 194 watts or close to .26 HP. Great, I can either power a big light bulb or my lawnmower for 3 minutes! Now if I were to complete “Fran” with just 65lbs I would be doing less work – 6,075 ft-lbs to be exact. But, I can do “Fran” at this weight in about 2:30, which is 150 seconds. This amounts to 232 Watts or close to .32 HP!

Take the Intensity Challenge!

Follow this link and calculate the power you generate doing a workout at a given weight. Then repeat the workout at a later time using more or less weight and see how this affects your intensity and power levels.
Understanding this one concept will pay dividends to you in your training! Enjoy!