Make CrossFit Fun Again: D.O.E.S.S.
A memo from the Department of Eliminating Stupid Shit:
CrossFit, Coach Greg Glassman’s industry-changing fitness methodology, identified that the biggest opportunity to improve athletic sports performance lay not in sport-specific training which has already been highly developed by sports scientists within each training discipline. The greatest opportunity lay in the underdeveloped area of non-specific, generalized strength and conditioning. By building a better foundation of generalized fitness he could profoundly impact sport performance even at the highest levels. How does developing pull up strength improve downhill ski performance? Ask me. I’ve worked with one of the sports scientists involved in that project.
The CrossFit programming specializes in not specializing. It does not replace sports specific training. It cannot and was never intended to. It provides an athletic base which fills in the gaps created by sport-specific training reducing injuries caused by imbalances and overuse. It also builds work capacity giving elite athletes bigger, stronger engines.
How do we do that?
1. Constantly Varied
There is nothing predictable about CrossFit programming and it includes an infinite skill set. Yes, there were always a staple of recurring, high value movements but there were also fresh, unfamiliar movements to make sure your body was always challenged in new ways. The skillset was broad enough that you did not see burpees programmed on a weekly basis like a programmer who has run out of ideas. Technical skills showed up with sufficient frequency to develop competency, but we did not practice CrossFit for CrossFit’s sake. Competition skills like T2B did not show up every week as if we were trying to prep for a movement certain to show up at the Games.
2. Functional Movements
These are full body movements that mimic the universal motor recruitment patterns your body is required to use in order to navigate the world outside the gym. Loss of competency in one or more of these movement patterns results in an inability to safely and effectively perform the tasks of daily living. Can’t squat? How do you get up and down off the toilet? Can’t deadlift? Who carries your groceries for you? You might bungle your way through the world with impaired squat or hip hinge mechanics but the compensatory movement patterns you resort to as a result lead to a gradual degradation of your joints and muscles that put you on a one-way route to decrepitude and the inevitable loss of the capacity to care for yourself independently. Failure to train is training to fail and will end with you in a nursing home unable to care for yourself. Functional movements are, by definition safe because they train us to move the way our bodies were designed to move. The effectiveness of a movement is not judged by its difficulty level but by its functionality and its ability to make us stronger and more competent through a functional range of motion. I’m talking to you devil’s press.
3. High Intensity
Intensity is defined as work divided by time. How much load did you move in a given measure of time. The higher the numerator, the lower the denominator, the higher the power. As Glassman said: “Intensity is the independent variable most commonly associated with maximizing your rate of return on favorable adaptation.” From the start, Glassman was adamant that intensity, not volume was the hallmark of effective programming. Intensity drives physiological adaptation. And the great thing is, unlike volume, the required dose to drive adaptation is small. This optimizes recovery time. More volume equals more damage equals more recovery required. CrossFit made an important distinction between difficult and intense. This is not semantics, it is the difference between a subjective experience and measurable work per second.
The Goal
The goal of CrossFit was to optimize fitness preparing athletes for the unknown and unknowable. The inaugural CrossFit Games held at the Ranch in 2007 was intended as a test to find out who was fittest. How do we define fittest? When we take athletes from around the world and present them with a series of physical challenges that they could not have possibly trained for, who comes out on top? In these innocent, early years, the goal of CrossFit programming was to develop fitness and the CrossFit Games were for testing fitness.
But human beings are by nature distractable, their attention quickly stolen by shiny objects such as the medal hung around the neck of the person standing atop the podium. When I was young, we teased people by comparing their attention span to that of a goldfish. But goldfish back then were believed to have an attention span of 9 seconds whereas a 2015 Microsoft study found humans today to possess a mere 8 second attention span. Apologies goldfish.
Programming Drift
Goldfish that we are, in the excitement of the Games and the quest for the podium that 99% of CrossFitters will never even get close to, CrossFit programming has drifted from training for fitness, to training for the Games. That’s right, the training methodology that specialized in not specializing had become sport-specific training specifically for the sport of CrossFit. And the Games? Instead of testing fitness as they tried to do in the early years, the events now specifically test your CrossFit skill. So, instead of testing fitness, they test your training.
So, the fitness methodology once programmed to optimize your fitness is now programmed to optimize your CrossFit competition performance (though the effectiveness is debatable) and the CrossFit Games originally intended to test your fitness now instead test your competition prep. Oopsie. Something has gone very wrong. Glassman’s vision has been lost.
There is very little unknown or unknowable about the sport of CrossFit today. Since Glassman’s departure from CrossFit in 2020 we have seen a gradual programming drift and marked volume inflation. We have seen glimpses of non-functional movements like the devil’s press steal into our space inserted by programmers who mix up challenging with functional. Should a fit person be able to perform the devil’s press? Absolutely! Is the devil’s press an effective way to train functional fitness? Absolutely not! Cannot understand the difference between those two concepts? Neither could the programmer in question.
How about variety? These days the programming scope has narrowed to skills relevant to CrossFit competition discarding an ocean of effective movements and subjecting us to overuse injuries as the sport-specific programming no longer provides the variety necessary to strengthen us through all possible movement patterns.
And intensity? It has been replaced by volume. Lots and lots of volume. 600 double unders, 120 burpees anyone? Intensity or volume? CrossFitters used to laugh at the uninitiated who could not differentiate between hard and intense and wound-up accumulating hours of high volume, low intensity junk training instead of producing amazing results in short, efficient but incredibly effective sessions. Well, joke’s on us because now it’s the CrossFitters who can’t differentiate between intense and hard. When did we get so stupid?
Why so much volume? Well, in the effort to find the fittest on earth the CrossFit Games expanded from a two-day event to three days, then four and now it spans the better part of the week. In the modern era the testing volume at the Games punishes athletes who lack the work capacity to endure the gruelling gauntlet of events so for the elite CrossFitters training volume is a must. If you are in the 1% of CrossFitters likely to qualify for the Games, you’re training better have prepared you for the ungodly work load that competition will dump on you. If you are an elite CrossFit athlete.
But what if you are a regular person doing CrossFit for fitness? Why should your training volume mimic that of the world’s elite athletes and is that even healthy? The answer is it shouldn’t and no, it isn’t. So why are we seeing volume inflation in the workouts posted on CrossFit’s website? Do the programmers imagine they are programming for the elite athletes? Because I promise you, the elite CrossFit athletes have their own programming.
In 2018 Glassman had a fit about this departure from the methodology and January 1st, 2019, he bumped us back to a steady diet of fundamentals in an unappetizing daily dose of SLIPS and variations on Cindy. And in 2020 he was gone and without a visionary leader providing a compass, CrossFit has since lost its way.
To my eternal embarrassment, I didn’t notice this at first. And then I thought my memory of the past was mistaken. We always look back to the good old days recalling them as better than they were. Until I actually took the time and go back through the historic programming day-by-day, WOD-by-WOD and realize how dramatic a departure we’ve made from the classic CrossFit programming.
My god, CrossFit used to be fun! That’s not just my memory playing tricks on me, it is right there in the programming. There was more intensity, less volume. More variety, less repetition. More skill and strength development, less low-skill drudgery. Looking at the contrast between the programming of today versus the programming of yesteryear it was immediately apparent to me why we have all experienced declining benchmark scores and why the rate of training injuries has continued to climb. No, it’s not just the fact that we’re getting older, the programming went off the rails a long time ago. It wasn’t sudden so the drift was not noticeable at first but look back a decade and the departure from CrossFit’s original theoretical programming template is alarming.
A half month into the 2015 programming and my body feels so much better and I’m having so much more fun. I am actually looking forward to my next workout. There is so much more variety, so much less volume, so much more skill work. But don’t imagine it is easier. In fact, I can Rx far fewer of the 2015 workouts than the 2025 ones. The WODs are short but intense!
Since opening in 2013 Empower has followed the Workout of the Day as posted on CrossFit.com. We will continue to do so except, effective June 1st, 2025, we will turn back our clock a decade in order to follow the programming as intended by CrossFit founder Greg Glassman, the programming that made Empower athletes their fittest and most successful. We are going to make CrossFit fun (and effective) again!
The old programming was amazing but not perfect. As such we have established the Department of Eliminating Stupid Shit in order edit WODs where needed to best meet the interests of our athletes. So, while we will stay very close to the classic programming, we will not be following it dogmatically.
What does this mean for you?
More fun, better health, fewer overuse injuries, better performances, and fewer Rx’d WODs. Remember, the Rx is a ceiling, not a floor. Do not bring your ego to the classic programming. Use loads appropriate to your fitness level and embrace the journey like you are starting all over again. The volume is going to decrease but the difficulty is going to get dialled up.
This also means a return to the classic 3-on, 1-off programming. That means an end to Tuesday & Friday make up days. Starting June 1st make up days will be every fourth day.
What, more changes?
In a practice followed by CrossFit gyms the world over, in the spirit of community, starting Saturday June 7th, the Saturday group class workout will be a team version of the programmed WOD. When the make up day falls on the Saturday, there will instead be a specially programmed team WOD for us to do together.
Change is scary and can be difficult but, in this case, our team is excited, and we think you will be too. It is rarely ever true, but a careful investigation has revealed that, in this case, the grass was in fact greener back then. It is time to come out of the darkness and step back into the golden age of CrossFit and all the fitness benefits that excellent programming delivers. We apologize that it has taken us so long to see the light.
Stat tuned for more exciting Empower news as we prepare to unveil our Empower Summer Shake Up!
Friday Make Up Day
1) Empower Reset #5-0
1 min Belly Breathing
30/30 sec Head Nods/Rotations
5 mins
20 Deadbugs
20 Windshield Wipers
20 Shoulder Pullovers
20 Egg Rolls
5 mins
20 Bird Dogs
10/10 Kickstand Rocks
10 Plank Bird Dogs
10 Judo Push Up Rocks
5 mins
10 Get Ups
20 Ring Row Squats
20 Alt Ring Row Reverse Lunges
2 Rounds (2 mins each):
Hollow Rocks
Skin-the-cats
Headstand/Tripod with knee tuck and extend
2) 4 rounds for time of:
50 air squats
15 shoulder-to-overheads
3) On a 5-min clock, complete:
200-m run
Then, 2 rds of:
3 bar muscle-ups, 6 deadlifts, 9 box jumps
Rest for remaining time in the interval.
On a 7-min clock, complete:
400-m run
Then, 3 rds of:
3 mus, 6 dls, 9 bjs
Rest for remaining time in the interval.
On a 9-min clock, complete:
800-m run
Then, 4 rds of:
3 mus, 6 dls,9 bjs
