Our final 4-week cycle of the year is here! It begins Monday, November 24 and runs through Sunday, December 21.
This cycle is intentionally programmed to help you navigate the busy holiday season while still making significant progress. We encourage you to prioritize consistency as we make a hard pivot toward preparing for the 2026 CrossFit Open, which begins on February 26.
Get some motivation from our latest blog post on 5 ways you can build fitness in the winter, and read on below for a look at what's new and why in our last cycle of 2025.
🎯 Why We're Doing This: The Outcome
This cycle is designed with intentional progression and purpose.
Holiday Consistency: The programming allows for effective, safe volume even with a potentially erratic holiday schedule. Your primary goal is to maintain consistency during these next 4-6 weeks to carry momentum into the new year.
The CrossFit Open Prep Begins: We are moving away from absolute strength focus and committing to building the stamina, power, and cardio endurance required for the 2026 CrossFit Open.
Building a Deeper "Engine": You will see a significant shift toward more Olympic weightlifting, higher-level gymnastics skills, and aggressive metcons to increase the training capacity that will be required.
The Wendler Advantage: We are using the tried-and-true Wendler approach to safely build strength on the Back Squat and Bench Press, providing a structured way to test your strength capacity week over week.
💪 Strength Progressions
Wendler Back Squat & Wendler Bench Press
We are implementing the Wendler 5/3/1 training philosophy for our two main lifts this cycle.
The Protocol: The Wendler approach is a great way to ensure you get in good, safe volume and consistently test your strength capacity. This program is based on working with percentages of your training max (a calculated max, not your true 1RM).
Max-Effort Last Set: The final set of each training day for both the Squat and Bench Press is a max-effort set. You will perform as many reps as possible (AMRAP) to gauge your strength for that week.
Estimated 1RM: The Wendler formula provides a way to plug in your number of reps and load from your max-effort last set to figure out an estimated 1RM for that day based on your performance. This is a great way to track consistent progress!
🏋️ Weightlifting / Technique Focus
Olympic Barbell Training
We are increasing our exposure to Olympic movements as part of our Open preparation.
Barbell Cycling: Increasing our barbell cycling with OLY lifts metabolic conditioning will be a subset focus on this cycle, as well as the first cycle of 2026.
Practice Under Duress: You will see more opportunities in class to practice Olympic lifts fresh and under duress in a workout.
Gymnastics Skill Development
We are slowing things down to focus on high-level skill acquisition.
Higher-Level Skills: We will be working on progressions for higher-level gymnastics skills, such as Ring/Bar Muscle-Ups and Handstand Walking/Pushups.
Fresh Practice: Expect dedicated time in class to practice these skills fresh before the conditioning workout, helping you build both confidence and efficiency.
💥 Conditioning / Metcon Focus
CrossFit Open Benchmark Retests
To measure our progress and get our minds geared towards competition, we will be using past CrossFit Open workouts as our conditioning benchmarks.
Check-in on Conditioning: We will be practicing benchmark workouts from prior CrossFit Opens to check in on our conditioning and capacity.
Increased Work Capacity: Expect more aggressive metcons, including barbell cycling and higher CrossFit skill training, designed to build the immense work capacity required for the upcoming Open season.
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Have fun, train hard, and recover smart. See you on the training floor.
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