Intensity and variance are critical components of CrossFit programming. Intensity drives the tremendous results CrossFit athletes experience, and variance develops the broad, general, and inclusive fitness we’re after. We must preserve the intended stimulus for each workout to ensure we optimize for both intensity and variance in our programming. Here are five factors to consider when determining the desired stimulus of a workout:

#1 – How the workout feels

Is it a lung-burner? Is it heavy and slow, or will it cause muscular fatigue in specific areas?

#2 – Loading

Is this a heavy workout where the loads challenge the athlete between 1-5 reps and a longer rest is required, a moderate workout where the athlete can perform 6-20 reps with the load and requires moderate rest, or a light workout where the athlete can handle sets of 20+ reps with short rest. This heavy, moderate, or light classification applies to weightlifting movements and gymnastics movements. For example, a muscle-up is a heavy gymnastics movement, a push-up is moderate, and an air squat is light.

#3 – Timing

Is the workout designed to be long, medium, or short? For example, Fran is meant to be a short, intense workout, so loading for the thrusters and pull-ups should be scaled appropriately to preserve this stimulus. Cindy is a longer workout intended to keep the athlete moving continuously for 20 minutes, which may require athletes to scale movement patterns or the rep scheme.

#4 – Volume

Does this workout intend to accumulate many reps or rounds (like the Filthy Fifty or Fight Gone Bad), or is it a lower-volume workout consisting of fewer reps or rounds, such as Grace or a heavy deadlift day? Volume is correlated with loading in that high-volume workouts tend to use lighter weights, and lower-volume workouts use heavier weights.

#5 – Movement patterns

Does the workout include an upper-body push or pull, a deadlift variation (hinge), or a squat? Ideally, we want to preserve the programmed movement patterns as much as possible for each athlete.

Consistently preserving the target stimulus across varied programming ensures we hit the full spectrum of intensity levels. This enables us to increase capacity in all areas, which is critical for optimizing results over the long term. If, however, we ignore the intended stimulus and bias our workouts toward what we’re good at or prefer, we’ll hamper the depth and breadth of our fitness development.

If we always do long, slow workouts, we’ll struggle with heavy days and short, high-intensity challenges. If we always lean toward heavier loading, we won’t do well with long, light, and fast workouts. We’ll find any movement patterns we consistently avoid difficult to perform. Fortunately, with some math, practice, and common sense, we can get very good at hitting the stimulus. We simply need to understand how long a workout should take in the case of a task-priority workout or how many reps or rounds should be completed for a time-priority workout (AMRAP). This guides the scaling of the above elements so athletes hit the intended time or rep targets.

https://www.crossfit.com/essentials/crossfit-hitting-the-stimulus?utm_source=owned&utm_medium=internal&utm_campaign=mswod