Programming 2026

Programming for results, purpose and fun.

While our fundamentals of building strength, gaining muscle and living healthier, more capable lives have not changed, you may have noticed some slight changes to our programming. I am writing this blog to give you insight into what we are doing and why.

Strength is the foundation of fitness.  Without strength, no other fitness measure matters. We must have strength to do all the other things such as run, jump, carry grand kids, ski, kayak, hike mountains, etc... Having the greatest cardio in the world means nothing if you do not have the strength for these basic functions. As more science based evidence comes out, we see that strength and building muscle are the two most important factors when it comes to longevity, fighting chronic disease, remaining capable as we age and preventing all causes of mortality. Muscle mass is also a metabolism booster!  The more muscle you have, the more calories you need to support your basic metabolic rate.  Muscle burns calories all day long.  Cardio burns calories while you are doing it, and not as many calories as you think. If you want that “toned” look, you must build muscle. These are just a few of the reasons that we focus on building strength and muscle first. 

We write our programming in a way that prioritizes strength, builds muscle and does not neglect cardio. Our main lifts of squats, bench press and deadlifts are great tools for building lasting strength. This is why you see these consistently. Strength is typically built in the lower rep ranges, 1-5 reps with heavier loads, with longer rest periods so that you are fresh for another heavy lift. Hypertrophy or muscle building takes place in higher rep ranges, typically 6-20 reps, completed at or near muscle failure. We work our conditioning in a variety of ways. EMOMS, AMRAPS, Supersets and Rounds for time. These are all great ways to build cardio and muscular endurance. What I like about how we do these is that we build muscle and cardio simultaneously. A big misconception is that a good workout must leave you laying on the floor panting for air. This is not true. A good workout is calculated in a way to push you to progress slowly over time, measuring your results. Gaining and maintaining a high level of fitness is often boring. It entails doing the same movements over and over again for a very long time as you progress slowly, this is the mark of a good program. Creating workouts to “feel hard” and for novelty just is not good programming. Your program should show incremental progress over time, not leave you feeling wrecked. I’m not saying that you will never feel wrecked after a workout with us lol, but…that should not be the goal of the program. 

Recently Taryn, Patrick and I have met and discussed programming and how we can make it so the largest number of people achieve great results, have a purpose behind their training and have fun doing so. What we came up with is this. 

We broke our training down into 4 or 5 separate cycles for the year. Each with a slightly different focus. Don’t worry, all cycles focus on strength, muscle building and functional fitness. We tweaked each cycle to lean slightly in different directions so that we give exposure to different types of training while never losing focus on our main goals of building strength, muscle and functional fitness. We broke our cycle down like this. This spring will focus on functional strength and the cycle will conclude with an inhouse team strongman competition. The next (mini) cycle will be a short muscle building cycle combined with prepping for “Murph” in May. Then we will have a chance to “max out” in July. After that we will lean toward functional fitness “CrossFit” style training that will end with another in house team Functional Fitness competition. After that, our next cycle will lead to another opportunity to “max out”. So, our yearly training plan looks like this: Strongman cycle, Max out, Functional fitness, Max out. Keep in mind that no matter what cycle we are in or what we are calling it, we will not lose focus on our priorities of building strength, muscle and maintaining a high level of functional fitness. Our goal is to provide the best service to our athletes as possible. Most people want to get strong, build muscle, lose fat, tone and feel great. We believe that the plan we created will do just that.