If you’re anything like me, you’ve wondered what’s the difference in programming between a top level Games athlete and your average gym goer. Every functional fitness athlete knows what it takes to do well in their gym, and they know how hard they work to make gains. However, you don’t know how much work it takes to become an Elite athlete, until now. This article is going to examine one week of programming for one of the fittest people on earth, Rich Froning.
In doing research for this article, I found it incredibly hard to dig up any information on Games athlete’s programming. Historically, they are fairly secretive, and don’t broadcast what they are doing besides the occasional workout, or strength session. I mean, they have to put something on Instagram right?
You rarely get to see a few days of programming together. Luckily, I was able to find this article that covered a whole week of Rich Froning’s programming. I then analyzed the programming for total volume, as well as a few other key metrics, and compared it to more traditional programming, that you might do in any local box. Before we go crazy with stats, let’s talk about how I did the calculations.
Calculating Functional Fitness Program Volume
I chose to analyze this program from a volume based perspective. Time and again, research shows that as long as you are working out with the right intensity, the total volume is most likely the primary driver of growth. This means that the total amount a work you do matters. It matters a lot!
Calculating workout volume is a pretty simply calculation, if a bit time consuming. Most strength and conditioning programs are measured in total foot pounds of work. This is a measure of how much weight is moved how far. For example, if you lifted a 100 pound barbell two feet, you would have done 200 foot pounds (ft/lbs) of work. If you did a set of ten reps, you would have done 2000 foot pounds of work. You can continue this calculation for all reps and movements in a program to determine the total program volume.
The hard part happens on workouts that don’t have a fixed amount of work. When Rich has an AMRAP planned, I use his past performance data to estimate his total amount of work completed, but I don’t know exactly what his scores were for those style workouts. For fixed volume workouts like Fran, when you have a set amount of work to do, the calculation is simple, and known. Now that we know how the calculations were made, let’s get to the details.
Rich Froning’s Training Week
This training week totals 6 days of training. Each training day is a minimum of an AM and a PM session. Often times there are even longer pieces in each session, where he might work to a heavy lift, and then complete a WOD immediately afterwards. Check the article linked above for the specifics on each WOD.
Broadly speaking, Rich does a ton of work each day. His average daily training volume is 393, 351 ft/lbs of work. To put that amount of work into perspective, that is enough energy to move a one-pound object 74 miles. Put another way, Rich is doing more work in one day, than one would do in a traditionally bodybuilding program in 10 days of work. Check out the chart below for the daily average work volume, measured in foot pounds (ft/lbs) of work.
We can see that Tuesday is a very high volume day, but the majority of his days are between 350,000 and 400,000 ft/lbs of work. As a long time coach of functional fitness athletes, I can’t stress to you how much work that truly is. The best way to think about this is to compare his work rate to one of my most popular programs, my 8 Week Bodybuilding Hybrid Program for Functional Fitness.
Hybrid Bodybuilding Volume vs. Rich Froning
This program is a four day per week program, with a heavy emphasis on bodybuilding style moves, and a WOD each day. It’s designed to increase muscle mass and maintain your conditioning. It happens to be one of the higher volume programs I’ve written, but it pales in comparison to Rich’s program.
You can see in this chart, that we are comparing a traditional bodybuilding program, with no WOD and a traditional body part split, to my hybrid program. The traditional program is 207,497 ft/lbs of work in one week. My program is 452,613 ft/lbs, and Rich’s is a whopping 2,360,111 ft/lbs per week. He is doing ten times the work of a traditional bodybuilder, and five times the work of my already high volume program. Needless to say, there is a reason he is one of the fittest athletes on earth.
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Elite Level Fitness Discussion
The first thing I think is important to point out is that you should not attempt to do this program. I’ve seen a disturbing trend recently, where Youtubers will do something asinine like doing 30 Murphs in 30 days. This is a terrible idea. I understand the compulsion to challenge yourself, but you need to earn the right to workout like this, and you don’t do that by smashing yourself for week, and then taking a month to recover from injuries and over use.
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The second thing to remember is that Rich works out like this all year round. This isn’t an abnormal amount of volume for him. It is his consistent hard work, as well as genetics, that allow him to crush his competition. If you want to push your fitness to the next level that is great, but you will only do so with consistency and the right program. The programs below will get you started on the right track.
- 8 Week Functional Fitness Bodybuilding Hybrid Program
- 9 Week Functional Fitness Strength Program
- 72 Weeks of Free Functional Fitness Programming
Rich’s program also illustrates an excellent point. Having done many of the same Open workouts and Regionals workouts that Rich has done, I know he is generally 30% faster than me. Sure, some workouts he’s way faster, and some I might only be 20% slower, but he crushes my scores.
I know from using Beyond the Whiteboard, for many years, that I’m generally a 90th percentile athlete, and I normally score right around there every year for the Open. Rich is obviously a much better athlete than me, but it takes him five times the work that I would normally do in a week, for 30% more fitness.
It’s important for all of us to realize that as we get closer to our genetic potential, it takes exponentially more work to make progress. You need to decide what your personal goals are, and then decide how much work you can do to reach them.
Final Thoughts
If you truly want to get to the Games, or win a functional fitness competition, you will need to put in tons of work, and choose your parents wisely. Nothing in this article is meant to discourage you from seeing if you can become the fittest on earth. Quite the contrary. I’m hoping that this article motivates many of you high achievers to get to the point where you can consistently work this much, if that is your goal.
For the rest of us, don’t worry if you aren’t putting in this amount of work. I’m not, and I still make progress, and I still have fitness goals that I can achieve. We need to get away from the all or nothing mentality, and choose our goals wisely. Now get out there and hit the weights!
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