Getting Started
Welcome to Misfit Athletics. Our mission is to provide the most well-rounded CrossFit program on the planet for elite and aspiring competitive CrossFit athletes. We’ve created a program that hits all of the necessary wickets and then provides you with the ability to customize the program to attack individual weaknesses. Below you’ll learn how we structure our programming, how to choose which of our three programs to follow, what a standard day of training looks like.
To understand what we ask for on a daily and weekly basis, you have to understand the program from a macro level. Our Phase structure builds all the way from the early off-season after the Games all the way through the Open, and then switches gears to get athletes ready for Quarterfinals, Semifinals, and ultimately the Games.
Over the course of the year you’ll go through four 7-week phases, all of which put an emphasis on general physical preparedness, or GPP. Once the CFG season kicks off, we go into our Competition Blocks to prepare athletes for various levels of competition.
PROGRAM STRUCTURE
We also think about training pieces based on “how they feel” and the energy systems we are looking to manipulate, because everyone knows how a workout like Fran makes you feel, and how it’s very different from 30 muscle ups for time or a long 5 round grind.
We think about these things and ensure the program hits these demands in order to prepare you for the broadest, most outlandish things you could possibly face in any event with a smirk that says: “eh, I’ve done worse”. We recommend familiarizing yourself with our description format HERE!
CHOOSING THE RIGHT PROGRAM FOR YOU
When we started Misfit Athletics, we provided one program for the masses. Although it still had the optional training pieces you see today and was incredibly broad, we realized that even those options didn’t allow for maximum customization for aspiring athletes to progress from average to exceptional.
Enter our Hatchet and Age Group Programs. Today, we provide three different programs that can be customized further to truly meet the needs of any athlete.
Choosing the right program is critical in your journey as an athlete, and when doing so you must take into consideration everything from your goals, the time you have each day, the resources and support structure at your disposal, and your ability to recover from day to day and week to week.
Remember that more is usually not better, better is better. Relative intensity is king and hitting the stimulus of the workout rather than what is written on the website is your fast track to success.
Read on to choose the right program for you.
MFT
The MFT program is for today’s individual Semifinal and current Games level athlete. If that doesn’t narrow it down, this means you will easily advance from the Open to Quarterfinals, and will then be in the top 150 men or women in North America, the top 75 men/women in Europe, or in the top 50 of Oceania, Asia, South America, or Africa based on which continent you compete in. If you’re outside those marks, you will be better served by starting with the Hatchet program and gradually building up to the volume and intensity of the MFT program.
A daily dose of MFT programming will consist of anywhere from 3-4 mandatory training pieces and an additional 1-2 optional pieces plus accessory work. To maximize the effectiveness of this program we recommend anywhere from 3-5 hours per day depending on the training, and ideally breaking that up into 2 separate sessions.
Your lifestyle needs to allow for 8.5-10 hours of sleep and a dialed in nutrition plan to truly maximize the MFT program. This is for the big dogs.
Hatchet
Think of the Hatchet program as our feeder system for MFT. It presents you with extremely challenging workouts, skills, and weights that are best for the majority of CrossFitters with a desire to get into the competitive scene, eventually moving up to MFT when you can dedicate the necessary time in the gym and intensity to each training piece. The Hatchet program is for athletes who want to advance from the Open to Quarterfinals, and really want to see just how well they can do in their continent. Once you get within roughly 10% of the Semifinals cut lines (see the MFT description above), you can consider moving up to the MFT program.
The phases of the Hatchet program are the exact same as the MFT program, but with more flexibility to choose between 0 and 2 additional training pieces per day. This means you can really dial up the intensity and focus rather than going through the motions and spending hours upon hours in the gym. The workouts are typically modified versions of MFT workouts (sometimes they’re the exact same) but are by no means “scaled”. We do, however, provide further scaling options as well as modifications to certain movements and pieces of equipment, making Hatchet highly scalable.
Hatchet is the single best place you can start your competitive CrossFit journey, and we believe it is the most appropriate program for 95-99% of Misfits.
MASTERS
The Masters program is for competitive masters looking to proceed through their online Quarterfinal, and compete for a spot at the CrossFit Games via the online Semifinal. After that, we’ve got Masters covered with Games prep, all written for athletes 35 years and older.
The program consists of a similar volume of training to our MFT program, but with weights and intensities expected of competitive masters athletes. For Masters 55 and over, we provide Age Division Modifications, (ADM) for each training piece as required based on standards we’ve seen in the Open, Games, and what we believe is reasonable for our fittest Masters. The Masters program includes mandatory and optional work just like our other programs, but volume selection is tailored to either the 35-54 age groups, and the 55+ communities.
What makes this program different is that we take more care to moderate the volume of things like squatting, overhead work, jumping, and more to ensure recovery is possible from day to day.
TEENs
The Teens program is for younger Misfits, athletes in the 14/15 or 16/17 age group looking to push into the top 10% of their age group worldwide, with the ultimate goal of competing at the CrossFit Games via online Semifinals.
This program is specifically tailored for the needs of a developing young athlete. With this program, we are principally concerned with movement quality and efficiency, creating a solid foundation of strength and conditioning. Like our Masters program, we write workouts for 16/17 year olds, and then provide ADMs for 14/15 year olds.
Modulating volume and intensity will allow for long-term development with our younger athletes as they progress from their teenage years into adulthood.
Daily
Training
Now that you understand a bit about the programs we provide, let’s talk about what you’re looking at in a typical training day. One of the cornerstones to our program is the customization we afford our athletes by providing “mandatory” and “optional” training pieces.For our MFT and Age Group programs, each day you’ll first see anywhere from 3-4 mandatory training pieces, followed by directions as to how many of the following optional pieces you should choose from. When choosing optional work, we’re expecting you to pick the things you least want to do, and therefore probably need to do most. Once again, RELATIVE intensity is your fast track to success. Attempting to perform more work than you’re ready for or able to recover from is a recipe for disaster. We usually recommend athletes begin with the Hatchet volume (3 pieces per day) and gradually introduce more volume as you adapt to it.
WARM UP
Like most of our programs, our Warm Up structure has changed quite a bit. For every Lift, Metcon, Interval, Bitch Work, and Skill piece we will provide you with a warm up protocol to follow which will include things like a Sweat Check, Activation, and barbell-specific complexes designed to prep you for what’s ahead. We encourage you to mix in your own movement prep and warm up protocols to get the most out of each piece. You can find our Warm Up Protocols HERE.
LIFTING
Squat, press, pull, snatch, clean, jerk… you get it. These may be labeled “Lift”, “Strength”, “Oly”, or something along those lines. Sometimes we prescribe percentages and sometimes we use the description to describe the stimulus. Unless we prescribe rest or the lifting is on some sort of clock, you should rest as needed.
CONDITIONING/METCONS
Classic CrossFit. These are usually your standard CrossFit workouts and usually do not include rest built in. They’re your standards “3 rounds for time” or “AMRAP” style workouts. This is your bread and butter.
INTERVALS
Also fairly self explanatory, intervals allow you to push harder for a shorter period that you would if it were a longer conditioning piece. Go hard, rest, repeat.
BITCH WORK
Unique to Misfit Athletics, Bitch Work is the term we use to describe the terrible and/or boring stuff no one likes to do, which also means it has a massive return on investment. We’ll ask you to go really long, or sell your soul on an assault bike as many times as it takes until you can’t do anything but laugh as that little pesky devil on your shoulder that makes you feel sorry for yourself goes away. It’s boring, it sucks, it’ll make you very uncomfortable, and it’ll make you better. You’re welcome.
SKILL WORK
Low intensity skill sessions with a purpose enable you to really drill home movements that require practice outside of a conditioning environment. These may be gymnastics, handstand walking around obstacles, odd dumbbell movements, and more. These should be treated as “for quality” rather than for time.
ACCESSORY
Stay healthy. We ask a lot of you, so maintaining your body is insanely important, so we provide a combination of upper and lower body, as well as midline exercises that should be done at submaximal loading and intensity with an emphasis on control and quality. We usually mix in a Lift, a Carry, and Hold into accessory work, unless one of those things were done in training piece on the same day.
Resources
We are constantly providing more and more information and training tips via our Blog, the Misfit Podcast, subscriber email, social media channels, and the website itself to set you up for success every day. This is our way to play remote coach to thousands of athletes worldwide.
Check out the links to some of those resources for you to add to your favorites.
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Our programs are designed to attack weaknesses and track down your personal goals. Combined with the power of the Misfit Community and our relentless creation of content, we believe these are the most thoughtful programs available. Are you ready to join the crew and see what you're capable of?
WEAKNESS
TEMPLATE
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