Measuring Progress and the Milestone Project
By
September 21, 2015
3 Rounds for time:
21 Deadlifts 185/135
14 Burpees
7 Overhead Squats 185/135
Strength: Overhead Squat: 1-1-1-1-1
In studying for my CrossFit Level 3 exam, one of the concepts that I was reminded of was the importance of measuring progress. We talk A LOT about recording results (specifically for strength sets and named workouts). We even provided incentives for the month of August for those of you that dug in and worked hard on recording results. Still, we can do more in this area. One of the reasons for measuring progress is to help YOU know that the work you are putting in at the gym is working. But another big reason to measure results is to help ME know that the programming we are putting out there week in and week out is effective.
Many of you have asked how we come up with the programming for the workouts of the day. True, there is a component of randomness to the week by week plan; but there is an overarching master plan that guides what we are trying to do on a much bigger scale. One of the reasons that I love CrossFit is that it is backed up by research and scientific principles. There is a template with many inputs to guide a diverse and well-rounded programming structure. What this means is that as much as we all love a 20-30 minute metabolic conditioning workout, repeating that day after day is not going to be the most effective means of improving fitness. Instead, working across different time domains while varying movements and workout schemes is going to provide a much stronger stimulus to improve our overall fitness.
So what does all this mean... Well, first, it means if you only and come workout on the days when the workout looks like something you like, your fitness will suffer. Second, I'd like your help in evaluating the efficacy of our programming through the Milestone Project. We are going to be flagging one workout per week as a benchmark workout. These workouts will vary in time domain and movement composition. You can help us by recording your workout results for at least these workouts. Then, we will repeat the Milestone Project workouts 2-3 times over the next year. We can use the results to determine the effectiveness of our programming across time domains, movement types, and skills. We will do our best to let you know they are coming so you can do your best to record scores on the days we do them. And we will flag them in ZenPlanner so that they will be easy to find when you want to compare results.
There will be more details to come on how this is going to shake out. But let's start gathering the data now. Monday's workout will be the first data point in the Milestone Project. Join me in recording the first data points tomorrow for the Milestone Project.
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