First, before anyone freaks out, I did not go out and join a Crossfit. That said, I'm not embarrassed to say I'm a big fan. A lot of the top athletes are not just wildly conditioned, but crazy strong as well.
Being a fan, I watch the games and other big competitions on youtube. Now there are a lot of things I don't find particularly safe like doing overhead Olympic lifts while being completely exhausted. Meanwhile, I would imagine a lot of Crossfitters would argue putting 900+ pounds over my face wearing a bench shirt is not inherently safe either.
Now being equally interested in my conditioning as I am in body composition and strength, Crossfit is a good place for me to find training ideas. I'm a big believer in circuit training which is what a lot of Crossfit workouts resemble.
I know circuit training is not the most effective way to individually train for strength, conditioning, or hypertrophy. However, this is where I don't let perfection be the enemy of good enough. When you have a body of work behind you, circuit training is still a great way to hit the three training modalities I just mentioned.
When using circuit training in the past I always programmed it so I could complete every set and rep of each exercise. That would tend to make the weights lighter and feel more like straight cardio. Recently I have seen lots of literature and studies discuss how important it is to come close to failure while training.
That caused me to think I needed to challenge myself a bit more with the weights I was using. The problem is while pushing the pace I don't want to risk pushing myself to the point of failure with heavy weights in a fatigued state.
The solution is "broken sets." Crossfit workouts or competitions very much resemble circuit training, but often with conditioning, bodyweight movements, strongman objects, and weights. For example, they'll have to go from 20 pullups to 10 deadlifts with 315 and so on. But, they don't have to do all of the reps for a movement consecutively.
If a competitor gets all of the reps in the same set it's called unbroken. If they have to stop in between and take a break, it's called a broken set. It's not revolutionary, but I never thought of treating a set that way.
With the new goal of keeping weights heavier on circuits I feel like I have a plan to keep them safer. Using the broken set option, let's say I'm doing 405 on deadlifts for six and I'm exhausted on my fourth round, instead of risking injury when I know I'm close to a 10 rpe on rep four, I can stop, take a few breaths and then get the next two reps. Or, I can do two more singles to get to my six.
While this concept is not revolutionary, I have never implemented it with my own weight training. I also think these broken sets will come in handy when I am in a more traditional strenght block especially as an older lifter with a lot of miles and injuries.
