How a Strength Cycle Works

You will have noticed the same lift coming round on the same day each week, with a number written next to it. That is a strength cycle. Here is what it is doing.

The goal of a cycle isn't to go as heavy as possible each week. It is to go heavy enough, for long enough that your body has a reason to change.

The numbers come off a percentage of your training max — a figure set slightly below your best, so the weight on the board is one you can hit with good form. For those without a 1RM to work off then we use RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion). In other words how difficult it should feel on a scale of 1 to 10.

Week to week, either the load goes up or the reps do. Rarely both. Over six to eight weeks that adds up and builds true strength in that lift at a rate where your ligament and tendon growth can keep up.

Three things to avoid.

Do not treat the light weeks as wasted. The weeks that feel manageable are where the work from the hard weeks gets built from. We need time for the connective tissue to build strength.

Do not chase the number when the movement has gone. If your back rounds at 80% and holds at 70%, use 70% that day. The percentage is a guide, not a fixed instruction.

Strength comes from repeating the same pattern under gradually more load. Yes, that's boring, but boring works!

Your weights will differ from the person next to you. That difference does not matter. Everyone in the class is training at the same relative intensity for them — the same proportion of their own capacity, the same effort, the same result. The bar looks different. What it is doing is the same.

A cycle ends with a test. That is the point of the numbers — not the individual Tuesday, but the figure you can put next to the one you set eight weeks earlier. Benchmarks and test lifts here get retested across twelve months, so one cycle is a single data point in something longer.

Strength is programmed every week of the year here, because we value its importance in health and longevity.

If you are new and none of this is on your radar yet, it will be. Not sure where to start? A free, no-obligation fifteen-minute call with Jeremy or Beth will point you the right way. crossfitchiltern.com.