Workout of the Day
STRENGTH
A1. Weighted Chin Up: 5×2, as heavy as possible
A2. Single Leg Squat (Pistol): 4×5 each side
Notes
Superset the two movements, resting about 30 seconds after the chin ups and about 1 minute after the pistols.
On your chin ups, pull as high as possible on every rep (Think “peak pull”!). If you’re running into a wall on adding load for your chin up doubles, one option is to complete the set as two singles with a 10-30 second break between reps.
Chin Up Progression/Options
Adv: Chin Up, Accumulate 16-30 reps (bodyweight or negatives if needed)
Int: Chin Up Negatives, 6×3 (bodyweight or weighted)
Beg: Foot Assisted Chin Up, 5×5 @ 2121
Pistol Progression/Options
A. With Hand Assist: Grabbing the Toes
B. Box Pistol
C. Pistol with Toes on Calf/Ankle
D. Single Leg Squat to Bench/Box, with optional plate counterbalance
PARTNER METCON
A. 5 minute AMRAP:
Bike Calories
DB Hang Power Cleans
3 minute Rest
B. For time:
Complete the same number of reps on each movement you accumulated in the AMRAP with your partner.
Notes:
In this workout, both athletes are working the entire time. One will start on the bike, one on the dumbbells. Trade movements with your partner as desired, while keeping transitions as tight as possible. (For example, you might start with a 45 second effort and then switch movements, aiming for a 5-10 second transition). Start the AMRAP at a challenging, but sustainable pace and work hard for 5 minutes. Choose a DB weight that you can cycle for sets of 10 reps at a time.
The bike will count your reps for you (don’t reset it), so you will just need to keep counting up total reps on the DB hang power cleans as a team.
After the 3 minute rest, aim to push your effort and finish the same number of reps you accumulated as a team in part 1 as quickly as possible. Again, you may trade movements at any point you like.
Example:
Part A: Completed 63 bike calories and 98 hang power cleans in total.
Part B: For Time: 63 bike calories, 98 hang power cleans, as a team.
CrossFit Group Class Programming Template (WK6/8)
Watching the finals yesterday.
4 Things I believe are necessary to running a successful CrossFit gym
As we’ve mentioned on Inside the Affiliate before, coaching skill is only a small part of what it takes to run an affiliate, and there are countless other qualities that are required to excel in this business. For starters: the ability to manage people, make tough or sometimes unpopular decisions, listen to your instincts, and the humility to know that you won’t always be right. Here is some advice I’ve given to people who are interested in running their own gym:
1. You must be good with people.
If you’re not comfortable working with a variety of personalities, this might not be the profession for you. As any seasoned coach or trainer knows, a huge part of this business requires the social fluency to deal with a vast spectrum of people on a daily basis. This skill becomes even more critical when running an affiliate, as your reactions and responses to different situations carry greater weight and begin to represent the ethos of the business itself. If people easily get under your skin, I recommend treading lightly—how you interact with members, coaches, or partners can easily turn a potential success into a frustrating mess. 
2. Focus on the experience over income.
Running a small business can be hard and unpredictable. One of the biggest lessons I learned from CrossFit founder Greg Glassman is that “excellence is obvious to everyone”, meaning that if you put in the effort to create a consistently positive experience people will stick around. Focus on the experience and the income will follow. I’ve never had a “business plan” for the gym, I don’t have projections that I run, I’ve never advertised, ran discounts and I don’t get lost in “KPIs”. Are people smiling? Are classes run on time? Are people getting fitter? Are we having fun? Those are the metrics I focus on and that have kept us open for 17 years.
3. Learn what’s most important when it comes to hiring great coaches.
When I first moved to New York City, I had the good fortune of being hired by an insightful coach who taught me that for the most part, any dedicated, intelligent person could learn the skills required to become an exceptional coach. Learning how to identify and triage movement faults, effective cueing, and the nuts and bolts of programming and kinesiology can be both taught and learned. Shitty personality traits, however, are much harder to modify in adults and often fall well beyond the scope of any affiliate owner who is looking to train or mold a coach.
So, hire based on personality first, then potential. Make sure that the people you hire have the people-person qualities we outlined in Number 1—namely, the maturity to be professional and work well with a variety of personalities. We are in the service industry, and the success and reputation of your gym depends on having a staff that honestly cares about the people they’re working with. Individuals who are condescending, impatient, and create drama in your gym are to be avoided at all costs, in my opinion. These people can corrode and undermine the culture you’ve created by placing their own interests and biases above the greater common goal of helping run a great affiliate.
Almost all of CFSBK’s coaches have been hired from within our community after they first demonstrated an interest in learning the “hard skills” of becoming a coach and second, all the “soft skills” of personality I mentioned above.
4. Don’t cut corners when it comes to the details, and be the person you’d want to hire.
In the early days of CFSBK, I did everything from the blog, to cleaning the floors and organizing the equipment on a daily basis. Know that there are going to be days when you start to lose sight of why this is important—but taking pride in all the little things helps you appreciate the entire spectrum of work that goes into running a tight ship.
One of the best ways to be an empathetic manager is to first become a dedicated employee in your own business. Especially in the future, when you’re not the one doing it all, you’ll be glad that you know what goes into executing each detail well. On the days when you’re tired and want to start cutting corners, remember that details matter and every little piece, even those that are less glamorous, is an important part of a much larger whole.