Our Programming

CrossFit the Sport vs CrossFit as a Training Program

“Does anybody in our gym have a chance to qualify for the games?”, Is the question I ask myself often. But more of a question is if there is anybody who is willing to dedicate all his/her time to training CrossFit and sacrifice everything: injuries, pain, food, sleep, free time, parties, family, friends, hobbies and work? Being a top level CrossFit athlete is a full time job nowadays and you cannot just do it as a hobby.

CrossFit training methodology had originated 35 years before the first CrossFit Games took place. Greg Glassman started CrossFit with a goal to bring real athletic training to everyone and not just professional athletes. CrossFit brings great results and when it is done right it promotes health and longevity. Nowadays we hear about CrossFit from media especially thanks to the CrossFit Games and we can see top athletes like Mat Fraser or Tia Claire Toomey. How has CrossFit changed over the years? And what is the difference between CrossFit Games athletes and average members of our gym?

“Our needs vary by the degree of intensity of the exercise, not kind.” - Greg Glassman

This claim by Coach Glassman is still valid, but the difference between the degree of intensity of exercising and the training volume of a Games athlete and an average person from our gym is huge. The Games athletes have CrossFit as their main sport and they do it professionally. They have their own coach (many times they have a few of them), they follow an individual training plan, accessory strength program, they practice their gymnastics skills and develop their endurance. They also really focus on nutrition and recovery, because they could not manage their training volume otherwise.

99% of our gym members are people that do not have ambitions to compete. They come to CrossFit because they want to be healthy, look better or be better at their main sport. They want to improve their general physical preparedness, so that they can be better in their life priorities: be a better mom, manager, runner,.. They want to avoid injuries, boost their energy and have a good feeling about themselves. Good, balanced programming should do this for our members. That is why we often do not have so many “sexy” exercises like in the Games, but we try to stick to the core of CrossFit methodology: constantly varied, functional movement at high intensity.

And that is the difference between us and other boxes. We do not focus on the elite 1%. What we do day in and day out at CrossFit Subtero is not flashy nor complicated. We only care about workouts being effective and producing results. Our training is precise. It is classic CrossFit and it works.

Our goal is GPP or "General Physical Preparedness", aka, fitness. We will develop your engine, your lifting, and your body weight movements. We do not lift everyday because it is unnecessary and likely to leave people over trained. The weights we use will vary from light to moderate to heavy. We will have single modality days, couplets, triplets, all the way to chippers. Repetitions will be as low as 1's on dedicated heavy days to 100 or more on high volume days. Time domains will vary from the very short to the very long. We will do classic benchmarks and we will create new workouts. We embrace variance. We do not avoid hard work. We judge you not by your scores but by your effort. The daily design and workout selection is crafted to get you as fit as possible in an hour a day.

“The goal is to get fit, make it the best hour of your day, stay safe, turn up the music, high five some people, and blow off some steam. So remember that. RELAX. HAVE FUN. WORK OUT.” - Pat Sherwood