Libsyn Directory

#167 - Using and Deciding on Fitness Standards

Release Date: 03/28/2026

Legion Strength & Conditioning Podcast

Speed and power training is something that is gaining traction in the training world and trickling into the CrossFit world. Elite athletes are posting videos of the more "out there" training they are doing, some people in the community are calling out the testing body of the CrossFit Games, and GPP purists in CrossFit are getting involved. Should speed and power be tested at the CrossFit Games, and is it something appropriate to give to general population clients in classes? In short, yes and yes. In both cases this is a gap in the testing and training we typically see in CrossFit....

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Legion Strength & Conditioning Podcast

CrossFit's primary message has always centred around health, but how healthy is competing in CrossFit at a decent level, and how healthy is taking any sport to its highest level? The trade-off between performance and long term health can be a murky line. Many hobbyists who take the sport seriously push performance to a point where it starts to affect their short and long term health. The common trade-offs range from general aches and pains and reduced immune resilience through to more catastrophic injury. CrossFit training tends to build an extreme tolerance to training volume, which means the...

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Legion Strength & Conditioning Podcast

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Legion Strength & Conditioning Podcast

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#167 - Using and Deciding on Fitness Standards

Legion Strength & Conditioning Podcast

Striking a balance between using metrics and standards to guide fitness, without overdoing it, is more important in CrossFit now than ever. Fewer people are participating in the sport, both seriously and recreationally. The demands of the sport keep getting higher, and the competitive scene is unclear and somewhat chaotic, so more people are taking part in events like Hyrox or simply training for the sake of training. Todd has recently put together some standards for South Loop Strength and Conditioning, and in this episode we continue our discussion about what fitness standards and metrics...

#166 - Right Amount of Legibility in Training

Legion Strength & Conditioning Podcast

There is a fine balance between using metrics to guide your training and becoming overly fixated on daily results. Tracking data too closely can lead to counterproductive habits, such as "rep shaving" during classes or attempting to force progress, often undermining long-term consistency and general enjoyment. But failing to track performance at all can result in a lack of clarity regarding progress and this is something many people in CrossFit expereince. In the earlier years of CrossFit, single-modality testing and benchmarking were popular. Standarising tests like a 2km row, a max set of...

#165 - How to Write Programming Faster

Legion Strength & Conditioning Podcast

Getting stuck writing programmes on a Sunday night, with creative energy at zero, is an all too common occurrence for coaches and is probably where a lot of copy and pasted programming comes from. Writing programmes needs some creative input, but having systems in place to make it easier, and understanding the many small tasks involved in programming and stacking them together, can be really helpful. In this episode we talk about our ways of managing dips in creativity, where we get inspiration from, and how we batch certain tasks and programmes together. Check it out if you want to learn a...

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Legion Strength & Conditioning Podcast

The programme for a CrossFit affiliate’s group class programme versus a CrossFit competitor is obviously going to look different, but does this mean the process for writing the programme has to be any different? We have spoken a lot on this podcast about the importance of templates, how to structure them and why this is how you should start a programme for a CrossFit competitor, and we have all written programming for a CrossFit affiliate in a similar way. However, there is still a large portion of affiliate programming that uses a very zoomed out method. This might work for balancing things...

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Legion Strength & Conditioning Podcast

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Legion Strength & Conditioning Podcast

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More Episodes

Todd has recently put together some standards for South Loop Strength and Conditioning, and in this episode we continue our discussion about what fitness standards and metrics have to offer, using some of the examples in the standards that Todd has created. Listen to find out what some of these standards are, how to design good benchmarks, and how to use them.

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Show Notes:

[0:45] Standards in fitness and motivation for training

[3:00] How to use standards and metrics in training

[6:30] Using metrics to balance out fitness and having a reference on weak areas

[12:00] Keeping tests contextual to CrossFit

[17:30] Are old school CrossFit benchmarks still valid data points

[20:00] Designing tests to avoid bottlenecks

[22:00] When certain tests don’t tell us much about someone's fitness

Show Notes:

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