I think a lot of people misinterpret the word “elegant” when it comes to gym programming.
The word popped up a lot in the fitness community after CrossFit founder Greg Glassman used it frequently in these sentences starting in about 2017 or so:
“We sit collectively in unique possession of an elegant solution to the world’s most vexing problem. And it may be so elegant that it’s optimal.”
Glassman’s “elegance” means “simple and effective.”
To me, that’s how you’d describe the programming seen on CrossFit.com back in 2008 or 2009.
Fran one day, 5 x 5 deadlift the next day, run 5 km the next day, then a rest day. And so on.
That, to me, was simple and very effective.
But what I saw on many gym websites—including mine—around 2017 was not elegant at all.
After the high-volume 2009 CrossFit Games, programmers very clearly started down the “more is better” path, and they gained momentum quickly.
You could see the shift in focus without looking hard: weight vests where they weren’t needed, scaled-up loads or greatly increased rep schemes, “monster mashes” that combined two or three very hard workouts, much more difficult gymnastics skills, etc.
For top or even upper-mediocre athletes, you’d also get two-workout “double days” and training sessions that stretched well beyond 60 minutes.
Further, programmers showed an increasing tendency to create complicated strength pieces that were “complemented” by long, brutal, ass-kicking conditioning workouts—with some gymnastics skill training as a “little finisher,” of course.
The worst offenses were almost always workouts that tried too hard to use Da Vinci Code rep schemes. You know the stuff: “I’m turning 30, so I’ll do 30 reps of 30 movements” or “It’s 2019, so we’ll do 20 rounds of 19 reps.”
Far from elegant, all this could have been described as “excessive adornment and silly creativity”—and yet it almost never was for reasons I can’t comprehend.
As a community of box owners, we were quick to criticize others, but we rarely turned a critical lens on our own programming, even when it was increasingly obvious that we had traded simple for silly.
I was guilty of this. At the time, it felt important to show off your knowledge and experience by creating WODs no one had thought of. Basic—but very effective—workouts just didn’t seem cool enough.
And—let’s be honest—how many of us created workouts that were designed to manage crowds rather than produce results? (Guilty, again.)
We also forgot some important activities—such as auditing client results and working on our soft skills to ensure members actually wanted to show up and do the workouts we had created.
It was just way more fun to lock yourself in the office and crank out percentage-based lifting schemes that showed an advanced level of knowledge.
Overall, it was as if an entire generation of gym owners forgot these words Glassman wrote in 2005, well before he started talking about elegant solutions:
“There is a compelling tendency among novices … to quickly move past the fundamentals and on to more elaborate, more sophisticated movements, skills or techniques. This compulsion is the novice’s curse—the rush to originality and risk. The novice’s curse is manifested as excessive adornment, silly creativity, weak fundamentals and, ultimately, a marked lack of virtuosity and delayed mastery.”
Ask Yourself These Questions
The novice’s curse doesn’t have an expiry date, and everyone likes to feel clever, so you’re still at risk of writing bad programming.
To help you avoid that, I’ll offer a clarifying question you can always ask yourself:
Who am I writing this workout for and why?
It might seem like a stupid question, but if I’m honest with myself, this would have been my answer many times:
“I’m writing this workout for other local gym owners because I want to look smart if they visit my website.”
I definitely would have said this many times: “I’m writing this workout for myself because I want to show off how much I know.”
And a final confession: “I’m writing this super-hard workout for my clients—but I wrote it because I’m scared they’ll think simple is boring and go to the gym down the street if I don’t post monster mashes, too.”
Here’s the answer you really want:
“I’m writing this workout for my clients because it’s exactly what they need to make progress toward their goals. I know this because I constantly measure their progress and adjust my programming to ensure they are always moving forward at the optimal rate.”
That answer is less common than you might think.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a final question:
When’s the last time you objectively evaluated your programming against your clients’ progress?
Many gym owners never do this. We write our workouts, pat ourselves on the back and assume they’ll produce results because we’re brilliant.
But are clients getting measurably fitter?
You can’t answer that if you’ve avoided turning a critical eye on your scripts and client results.
If you’ve never evaluated your programming or haven’t done so recently, it’s high time to put it under the microscope to ensure you’re doing everything you can to help clients reach their goals.
