A FULL WEEK OF COMPETE PROGRAMMING ANALYZED

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Boom, boom, boom, rolling.

[00:00:03]So, this is basically a breakdown of what a week of Central Compete training looks like. Um we decided to get into the weeds, the deep weeds. We do this pretty intuitively when we're writing our programming to begin with. We audit our stuff pretty regularly. We make sure we're really varying the movement patterns, movement variations, implements used, heavy, moderate, light, etc. That's kind of our entire program, our entire method of programming is built on the fundamental component of variance. Yeah.

[00:00:44]Movement selection, movement pattern, movement variation, heavy, moderate, light, body weight, modality, time domain, high skill, high strength versus low skill, low strength, um energy systems, volume, high, moderate, low volume. Like we we are pretty like dead set on purposeful and intentional variance within that. Yeah, and I think purposeful and intentional are really important words to describe it. Like a lot of the people who want to get, you know, hate on CrossFit always say random.

[00:01:20]>> Random, yeah. It's not random. It's It's purposeful the way like bodybuilding split days are purposeful. Like an upper day and a lower day and a combo day and a and a posterior day and anterior day.

[00:01:31]Like it's It's purposeful in that sense to allow athletes to recover as much as possible, but also to target redundancy in specific muscle groups um as much as possible. So, this is basically what a day what a week of training looks like minus, this is key here, we did not include our Thursday conditioning sessions because they're optional rest days. They're almost always machine-based and there is an option for a swim workout. So, it's only mono structural.

[00:01:59]Sometimes, very infrequently, there will be running and very infrequently, there'll be bodyweight gymnastics exercises. So, that's to take into account one. Second thing to take into account is we program four pieces a day for compete.

[00:02:12]Usually, it's a lifting or a strength-based session, two workouts, and then an accessory. More often than not, I would say like 70% of the time, our accessories are bodyweight based.

[00:02:23]>> Yeah. Gymnastic strength or skill-based because more often than not, our strength or lifting sessions are weightlifting based. So, we have this balance of most of the time our lifting and strength is weightlifting.

[00:02:38]And most of the time our accessory work is bodyweight strength or skill focused.

[00:02:43]And then within our workouts, there might be a day where we don't have an accessory. We have two workouts and an interval in like a higher volume training day.

[00:02:51]Um but that's what we have here. So, yeah, that's our breakdown. I think another thing typical on Sentinel and how we believe competitive CrossFit athletes or athletes aiming to be competitive should train is relying on interval workouts for if not a majority, at least equal parts percentage of their conditioning CrossFit style training. So, like for us, more often than not, we'll have one interval a day and like a classic CrossFit style workout a day. Um let's kind of go through this. On day one, we have three rounds for time. That's a pretty classic format. It's a 100-m bear hug carry, 500-m run, 10 burpee bottom muscle ups. Three rounds for time.

[00:03:40]Then our interval session that day, we don't have a second workout. We have an accessory that's all weightlifting base.

[00:03:44]It's dumbbell bear crawls and sled pushes. So, this is a little outside the norm.

[00:03:48]And then we have row calories interval base. So, normal workout, interval base. Second day, we have a 20-minute EMOM, which I don't know, maybe I wouldn't even call that necessarily traditional CrossFit, but it's really close to it. Um cuz it's kind of just like you're going back and forth, back and forth. But, let's call this rest even, and this is rest work rest two intervals. So, three on two off for five sets. And this is probably four on one off Right.

[00:04:14]>> for four sets.

[00:04:15]>> Yeah. So, these are two intervals. So, now it's one of four pieces is classic CrossFit. So, then we have three intervals so far. Then the next day, we have a couplet, two rounds for time. So, that's two of four. And then we have This is like work rest is two. I I don't know. How do you feel about calling something like that an interval? It's three sets, rest five minutes between.

[00:04:37]It's three like max effort sets. I would still call it an interval, and I and I think it's some of the truest form of interval training. Like doing like really, really hard efforts and then a big rest. And I know what you mean. I I know and everyone knows what you mean when you say classic CrossFit, but I also think intervals are classic CrossFit. Like I already agree with that. So, now we have two of six are classic CrossFit, four of the six are interval based. And within these intervals, you're still doing CrossFit.

[00:05:01]Like this one-to-one work rest is a 16-cal echo, 100-ft handstand walk, 16 dumbbell snatches, 20 Turkish get-up and push-up, 16 dumbbell snatches. That's a CrossFit workout. It's just the focus is not one effort through. It's accumulating volume at a high intensity with rest in between.

[00:05:17]Then we've got work rest with burpees and rowing. So, that's uh five of seven interval based. Then we have a 10-round for time, 40 dubs and chest-to-bar. Classic, no rest.

[00:05:28]So, that's three of nine. 33% are classic CrossFit. And then we have an even split on the next day, too. We have a a squatting variation of the standard, 30-30-30 for time. And then we have running intervals to finish. So, that's kind of what our competitive training looks like. And the the focus especially throughout the off season should 100% be accumulating a lot of intensity minutes where the volume is controlled in an interval base session. You're going to just going to get way fitter doing that.

[00:06:02]You can accumulate way more intensity minutes at a higher relative intensity through interval training than if all of your workouts were just five rounds for time or 20-minute amraps. Right. We do include a lot of those though. It's just like when you when you hear the old CrossFit head saying "Oh, we don't do much CrossFit. We do a lot of intervals." That's CrossFit.

[00:06:22]Intervals are CrossFit. What they mean is they're not doing a Fran and Cindy every day. Like the 21-15-9 and then a 20-minute amrap. Those are extremes.

[00:06:30]It's really hard to repeat those extremes because they require uh far more psychological tolerance to get repeated intensity like that. Like to go max effort on workouts like that in that format is just a beatdown day after day after day, whereas intervals make it so easy to get intensity. Yeah, and before you guys start commenting about how intervals aren't CrossFit, just go watch us on CFN Network where we go through what is fitness.

[00:06:57]>> Yeah, look up our episode four, What Is Fitness Part 2.

[00:07:01]That article was written in 2002 by Greg and it says like, "Hey, we rely on intervals more than almost anyone."

[00:07:07]>> Yeah.

[00:07:08]>> Anaerobic intervals. And that is like you know, it's the name of the game here. Interval training's the name of the game. Um even if a lot of these aren't even anaerobic fully anaerobic base. Like a lot of them are aerobic base. They're three on one off, three on two off. But this is one on two off. Um >> And this you're probably getting more rest than you would for a typical >> one to 1.5 or something like that. I don't know. Um So that's that's you know, one component of our training that's really important especially for competitors. And look, the name of the game is intensity.

[00:07:41]So if interval training allows you to get more intensity minutes over a training week than not, you're stupid for not doing that. On our classic track, we still we'll do an interval once or twice a week, not including the Thursday conditioning, and like other large majority of the workouts are your traditional CrossFit formats.

[00:08:00]Five rounds for time, 10-minute AMRAP, 12-minute AMRAP, 20-minute AMRAP, uh chipper for time.

[00:08:06]>> even in those rounds for time workouts, I feel like good programming takes into account that hey, if we're going to do multiple for time workouts this week, yeah, one or two of them might be really like hard to keep moving and hard >> Right. to keep like what feels like really high intensity, but uh most of the time you're going to have a movement in there or like a transition somewhere that makes sense >> Active rest.

[00:08:29]>> to like Yeah, yeah. recover a little bit and be able to go really hard in the >> Over run or over row, and that's a very smart way to use uh monostructural elements within workouts. It's also a really valuable way to use them within intervals to control volume of expensive repetition exercises. Like for example, this interval. Every buy-in is set at 21 med ball GHDs and nine box jumps to a 40 or 36-in box. It's five sets, so we're controlling the total amount of volume, which is really important because the med ball GHD set up or that really tall box jump, uncontrolled, could result in rhabdo, tripping on the box. So, we control the volume, and then the scored portion is max calories on the skierg, which you're not going to get hurt doing, but you can get a ton of intensity. Low skill, low strength metabolic conditioning.

[00:09:17]>> And yeah, and it's not even controlling it because rhabdo or tripping on the box, but also just minimum effective dose.

[00:09:23]>> Minimum effective We know that in this format in this workout, 105 uh medicine ball GHD set ups or whatever is the appropriate amount and enough for someone to get better at them and get a really good training stimulus.

[00:09:34]>> Exactly. Exactly.

[00:09:36]Um so, basically what we did here is we wrote out the training week minus our conditioning days.

[00:09:42]Um, but including all of our weightlifting sessions. And then we went through and we broke down kind of the variance in the spread in a couple of different fashions. So, we took the three main modalities, monostructural, weightlifting, gymnastics, and we did total reps for weightlifting and gymnastics, and then total minutes for monostructural. Um, we scored the monostructural reps later in movement patterns, but let's just start here. So, we had 51 total minutes. Key here, not including our Thursday conditioning. If we're including our Thursday Thursday conditioning, it's almost double. Yeah.

[00:10:15]It's probably like uh 80 minutes or 90 minutes total. We have six different monostructural variations. We have double unders, echo bike, biker, skier, rower.

[00:10:26]No, we maybe don't have biker. So, we have row, echo bike, skier, double under, shuttle runs, and regular running. So, we broke those up between the two.

[00:10:36]And the monostructural components included in seven of the 20 pieces.

[00:10:41]When we go to weightlifting, we have a whopping 753 total reps.

[00:10:46]Um, 172 of those were heavy, 286 of those were moderate, 295 were light.

[00:10:54]Included in 14 of the 20 pieces, and we had six barbells, four dumbbells, one sandbag, two med balls, one sled.

[00:11:03]For the gymnastics, we had 552 total reps. 302 of those were either high strength or high skill. Included in 10 of the 20 pieces. Um, we didn't break down pull-up bar, rope, rings, which probably we should do.

[00:11:19]We should go through We did have one workout with rope. Um, one workout with rings. One on a pull-up bar. Two on a pull-up bar. Two on a pull-up bar.

[00:11:28]Burpees.

[00:11:30]Box. Three on a pull-up bar then. Cuz we almost had a sled total bar. Okay, yeah.

[00:11:34]Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:11:36]>> Anyways, wow, we should have included that. Sorry, guys. Um, we get a lot of variants in the body weight exercise, for sure.

[00:11:43]Um, other important context is if you take out the weightlifting, it's seven out of the 15 not like meaning you >> Take out the lifting piece.

[00:11:51]>> session, which is always almost always single modality strength based. Um, so if we didn't include our always single modality aerobic based Thursday, just for, you know, a thought experiment, taking out and it makes us look better, taking out uh the five single modality lifting sessions, we'd have a seven of the 15 pieces are mono structural, nine of the 15 are weightlifting, 10 of the 15 are gymnastics. Um Well, and also in the same along the same lines as this, if we look up here and take away these 172 heavy reps cuz those are all the lifting pieces, then this is almost the same as that.

[00:12:30]>> as the gymnastics, yeah. And and you're not only taking out the heavy reps, but you would also balance with the accessory, which is typically far more body weight based for us.

[00:12:39]Um but in this set in this component this is a for us this is a weightlifting biased training week.

[00:12:47]Um, we're getting really close. This is the first week of a semi-finals preparation block. It's the second block, so basically we had nine weeks from the end of quarterfinals to individual and affiliate semifinals. We had a four-week block, one week back off, and this will be a four-week block, three of which So, the second block, three of which will be a ramp, the final week will be a taper. So, this is the first week of that second block.

[00:13:13]You would expect in an affiliate semifinals for there to be a lot of high strength high skill gymnastics and for there to be a lot of heavier to moderate weightlifting components.

[00:13:22]And less mono structural. You're going to maybe have a rower and double unders, maybe shuttle runs, but it's going to be like W G M W G G G W W type of classic CrossFit workouts.

[00:13:35]>> feel like in in online semi-finals last year, most people are limited by weightlifting movements.

[00:13:42]>> the high-skill gymnastics. Yeah. The muscle-ups in the back squat workout or legless rope climbs in the newest fast.

[00:13:47]So, that's kind of why we have that spread like that at the moment.

[00:13:52]Um And then we took things by movement patterns.

[00:13:55]>> So, upper presses. This includes all the modalities. Um except monostructural.

[00:13:59]So, it includes weightlifting and gymnastics. We have Oh, yeah, we I talked about accessories up there. Three of the five this week were a weightlifting component.

[00:14:08]Um we had the weighted hip extensions, the bear crawl and sled, and then the wall ball shots for height.

[00:14:15]What were the body weight ones?

[00:14:18]Oh, handstand obstacle course practice was one. So, a skill-based and then a death by L-sit, a strength-based.

[00:14:25]>> Um So, yeah, 308 upper body presses, 264 upper body pulls. To to take into consideration here, 150 of these are burpees. So, really low-skill. The upper pulls are far more strength than high-skill based. So, we have burpee bar muscle-ups, ring muscle-ups, uh rope climbs, uh toes to bar, chest to bar, etc. I would say the burpees of all of these are like the easiest outside the monostructural Mhm. component.

[00:14:55]Then we have 203 squats. A large majority are heavy. So, we have heavy overhead squats for 16 reps, heavy back squats for 25 reps. Yep. My I would say we have moderate goblet squats with a dumbbell, and then we have some moderate squat snatches and squat cleans with a barbell.

[00:15:14]Uh I think that covers that spread. Then 287 hinges in this cycle. Our strength-based lifting is a back squat and a deadlift where they're doing cluster sets and really heavy. So, the total back squats are 25. It's basically a five sets, three reps, rest 30 seconds, two reps.

[00:15:33]And then you go at the 4-minute mark and the 8-minute mark, etc. And then we have cluster sets sets of deadlift singles.

[00:15:38]So, it's one deadlift every 10 seconds for five sets.

[00:15:42]At the 2-minute mark, repeat for 10 total rounds.

[00:15:45]So, that's like our heavy heavy weightlifting working like, you know, top-end strength. And then we have two Olympic lifting days, a snatch day and a clean and jerk day that are working power and battery. So, like snatch battery, clean and jerk battery. Um so, that's why we have a higher rep here is the Olympic weightlifting accounts for a lot of battery work when it would previously be lower rep, higher strength. But so, the first block of that semi-final build camp prep camp was high strength, high like uh percentage Olympic weightlifting, and then the squatting it was front squats, and then a deadlift bear hug or GHD superset of deadlift battery.

[00:16:28]Um and then we have 65 lunges. I'm including five 100-ft sled pushes. So, I'm counting 100 ft as one rep. And then we have 60 we have some step-ups. Maybe it's 60 step-ups, I think. And I'm including that in the lunge variation.

[00:16:48]And that you could honestly put into a squat pattern. It's just like a unilateral almost squat pattern. If you want to, you know, if you want to a lot of people would consider it that. I think Yeah, I think it's worth splitting up.

[00:17:00]Yeah, I think it's worth splitting up.

[00:17:02]Um but it's a push with the leg rather than a pull. Um and then 274 trunk flexion and extension reps.

[00:17:10]GHD toes to bar.

[00:17:14]Um the weighted hip extension.

[00:17:16]>> Weighted hip extensions, L-sits.

[00:17:18]L-sit.

[00:17:19]>> Yep. Uh we counted one 12-second unbroken set as a rep.

[00:17:24]And then we have 1,053 monostructural reps. We counted every 20 m as one rep, so 20 m of a run or row as one rep, and then one calorie as one rep. So you notice it's like five x everything else, but I think it's worth considering that one cal and 20 m is far easier per rep than almost everything else on the board. Yeah, there's not like a right way to do it because you could it is just a little subjective, but that's how we did it. So that's what got us this number.

[00:17:57]Um so if you're here because of our Instagram post, we haven't made that yet, but we're planning on making the Instagram post when we release this video breaking down all of this and showing the graphs.

[00:18:08]Um this is how we program. Like we put this much thought into every week. We put this much thought into every workout. We do the workouts.

[00:18:17]Um all we care about is having the best program that destroys every other program. So that's why we do this.

[00:18:28]We love it. We have fun, and um anyways, that's a week of uh Sentinel Compete training. Try us out.

[00:18:34]trainsentinel.com 14-day free trial.