If you’re making less than $100,000 a year from your business, I’d advise you to buy back some hours to build your business.
Programming is an easy win: Trade $150 for hours you can spend on marketing, staff development, retention and other critical tasks.
So what if you’re making $100,000 a year and love programming?
You can certainly handle the role yourself if you want to. I do.
I’ve detailed my gym’s comeback story on “Run a Profitable Gym.” When I found myself without a GM, I divided the GM role into six parts, and I decided to handle the programmer role personally.
I took on the programming role because I have the freedom to choose how I spend my time, and I love programming.
After decades in business, I also know how to get results for clients, and I know exactly what they want to accomplish. So I create programming—but I don’t spend a lot of time doing it.
Here’s my system.
Catalyst Programming Template
CrossFit’s Level 1 Manual contains a template for creating programming. You can see it on Page 74 here.
- I swap monstructural (M) for aerobic (A, Zone 2 work).
- I swap gymnastics (G) for high-intensity interval training (B, Zone 3-5 work).
- I swap weightlifting (W) for strength work (C).
Here’s what it looks like in a three-week block with five days on and two days off:
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 |
| A | B | A | A | C | ||
| C | B | B | ||||
| C |
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 |
| B | C | B | B | A | ||
| A | C | C | ||||
| A |
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 |
| C | A | C | C | B | ||
| B | A | A | ||||
| B |
And here’s how I fill out the week of programming:
1. Program an annual challenge for the month. This is a measuring stick for your clients. You can use a workout like Fight Gone Bad, Fran, a local 5-km run, etc. It provides a point of focus for the month and gives people something to train for.
2. Insert your weekend workouts. For me, we always do a partner HIIT workout on Saturday, and we are closed on Sunday.
3. Head to days 1 to 5 and program strength work (C), HIIT work (B) and aerobic work (A) in that order.
- Strength work is first because you have a higher need for specificity.
- HIIT work is second because you have a medium need for specificity. Workouts can easily be selected from old CrossFit.com programming: I love the stuff in 2008-2009.
- Aerobic work comes last because you have the lowest need for specificity. I want to provide Zone 2 training for my clients who want to lose weight, so I use cycling, rowing, rucking, swimming and so on. The body can’t tell the difference in modality.
This process takes me about an hour every month.
For a deeper dive, check out this video:
And if you want to see the exact workouts I create, visit my gym’s website: Daily Catalyst.
How to Evaluate Your Programming
Is this process complicated? No.
But it gets results and helps clients accomplish their goals.
How do I know? We find out what our clients’ goals are and track their progress toward them. If they are moving forward, we know the programming is working. If they are stalled, we know the programming isn’t effective. Good programming gets results, period.
This evaluation was standard operating procedure at the very first CrossFit gym, where founder Greg Glassman adjusted his programming based on his clients’ results. But it was forgotten by a generation of gym owners who never asked their clients about their goals and never adjusted programming based on results.
- The first step to improving your programming is asking your clients about their goals.
- Step 2 is tracking their progress.
- Step 3 is adjusting your programming based on the results you see.
I learned my lesson after years of mistakes, and now I know that my programming is only “good” if it helps clients accomplish their goals. It doesn’t have to be clever or creative, and it doesn’t need to be hard for the sake of being hard.
It just has to produce results for clients.
